Ivy League Man Sets Women’s Swimming Record

CLAY: This kind of makes me laugh ’cause it’s absurdly ridiculous — and, unfortunately, it is where these policies on gender being a choice lead us, particularly in the world of sports. There is right now a University of Pennsylvania swimmer — and I touched on this a little bit on Friday, but then this swimmer went and performed in a meet over the weekend and set all sorts of new crazy records.

So, at the University of Pennsylvania, there was a male swimmer who was on the team for three years and was really good, Buck, like an all-Ivy League caliber male swimmer. Then this swimmer decides to identify as a woman, gets estrogen treatments, or whatever it is, to fulfill NCAA rules for a year, and now is competing on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team. This is not a made-up story. This is not an Onion headline.

This is not some sort of crazy, outlandish, “this can’t be true” story. This is really going on in the Ivy League. Three years a male swimmer at an elite level for an Ivy League school University of Pennsylvania decides to change gender and is now swimming as a woman — and, Buck, over the weekend won the 1650 by 38 seconds, this man did, who is now swimming as a woman. By 38 seconds!

And then also in a 500 meter race, won by nearly 15 seconds on pace for all-time records in NCAA races, this UPenn swimmer, a man who identifies as a woman. Now, this is an interesting part of this story, Buck. We have written about this at OutKick, the website that I run, a voice for sanity in the world of sports very often, OutKick.com. You can check it out.

After we wrote about it at OutKick and after this story was widely shared on the internet over the weekend and early part of this week, several different swimming coaches and also several different swimmers in the world of women’s swimming have reached out. They are terrified to use their actual names because of being called transphobic.

But they are saying what I think many of you listening right now are saying, this represents the destruction of women’s sports. You have all of these women, biological women who have trained their entire lives to compete at a high level — and suddenly a biological man is crushing them, and they’re afraid to speak out. Your thoughts, Buck Sexton.

BUCK: Well, this is interesting because I’ve been doing talk radio now, conservative talk radio for 10 years, and I remember a decade ago talking about how it was just a matter of time, early on in the LGBTQ trans movement, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It was just a matter of time before you would have the bathroom policies, the athletes competing against the people of different genders. I even said, “What about Mixed Martial Arts fighters?” and then there was a Mixed Martial Arts fighter who was biological male and was destroying women. It was horrible to watching, not even close when this former MMA fighter is fighting women in the ring.

And then also in prison now, increasingly, there’s a movement to take trans females — who are biological males — and put them in women’s prisons or women’s jail facilities. And all the things that, Clay, we brought up to say, this is the logical terminus of the leftists’ insanity. This is where it’s going. They said, “you’re fearmongering, no one’s going to do that, that will never happen.”

But one hundred percent, the nature of the left argument, you know that of course that’s where it’s going. So, this is where we are now. This is essentially the eradication of women’s achievements in sports before our very eyes. People who have spent countless hours, blood, sweat, and tears trying to be the best they can at their sport, what’s even the point now?

You have to wonder how long before all of the women’s records in different sports at the NCAA level, even at the professional level, are held by biological males? It’s not very long before that’s gonna happen at the current rate. And so that’s one big part of it. And the other part of it for me is I just think it’s so interesting that, there was this moment in time where people would still refuse…

We are all now using the language of the left on this, and I find that very troublesome. What I mean is, you turn on news channels and everyone’s saying “she.” Now, I believe… You know, my first name is James, in case anybody doesn’t know. My middle name is Buck, and I’ve been called Buck since I was a baby. My point being on that your name is whatever you want it to be, right?

If somebody wants to be called… You know, if they change their name to Darth Vader legally, I’m gonna call them Darth Vader. Whatever your name is, I’ll call you, right? Gender is a biological reality, and part of the movement of the LGBTQ effort has been, and what the left has wanted, is for people to really be a party to a lie here. To the point where, even the New York Times — which is a left-wing rag, but the New York Times — has had to have discussions internally about whether the plural usage “they” for individuals.

Even if it seems nice it is just so grammatically problematic because you’re not multiple people, so it’s confusing to the reader. We are now at a point where it’s gone so far that, Clay, everyone I see in the news, “This is a male. This is a male.” We can say “a transgender female” if you want. It is not a female. This is a biological male. And we’re all saying “she” and “she’s doing this” and all.

Why? I mean, I don’t think that pronoun is an issue of preference. I think pronoun is an issue of biological reality, and we’re making a concession. This is all over the place, by the way. I’m sure I’ve done it, too, even unwittingly the same way that occasionally you’ll say, “Wait, the undocumented? Oh, my gosh. I don’t want to say ‘undocumented’ because it’s everywhere now.”

CLAY: My big thing is just you can’t allow this to happen, and I’ve been on this for years as well, and it’s so clear that men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. This is why we divided men’s and women’s sports hundreds of years ago, because if men competed against women and we had a unisex competition, women would never win anything. And that’s not me trying to demean all female athletes. I love athletics, period. But if we just had basketball, and we didn’t have men’s and women’s basketball, no woman would mostly ever even make a high school basketball team. Right?

BUCK: Clay, the best men’s 16-year-old soccer team annihilated the women’s national Olympic team. Annihilated them. It was a joke.

CLAY: That’s right. There would be no women’s soccer, there would be no women’s tennis, there would be no women’s track and field. At the Olympics, there would only be male medalists, pretty much. There might be some woman who is a great —

BUCK: Ice skating.

CLAY: — shooter —

BUCK: Ice skating, you know.

CLAY: I think you would… Depends on how you define ice skating, right? Because they have women’s ice skating. Male ice skaters are really good, to my understanding, too.

BUCK: You’re right, actually. Maybe the artistry, though, would push them over the top.

CLAY: Maybe the artistry, but I think… I mean, my wife was a gymnast. But men are able to jump bigger, higher, faster, in terms of doing all of the things that women do as well, even in gymnastics. So, my point here is, if you are going to allow biological men to compete against women, then you are destroying the entire fabric of women’s athletics.

So, Buck, what I find to be most disappointing about this entire process is, almost no one is willing to have this conversation, and all these female swimmers who are getting crushed by this biological man who has decided to identify as a woman, almost all of them are terrified to even speak out. The coaches are afraid they’ll lose their jobs. The women, who are 19, 20, 21 years old, are afraid that they will never be able to get a job because they’ll get branded as transphobic if they speak out.

BUCK: Which now for folks… I know this might sound crazy, but in the more liberal corridors of the country, to be transphobic is right alongside being racist and you are an untouchable.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: You are someone who cannot… It is a liability to even have you around, certainly as part of a corporation, certainly as part of a workforce. So, yeah, if you’re an Ivy League swimmer and you’re looking to get that job at Goldman Sachs or some hedge fund or some law firm or whatever, transphobic is the end.

CLAY: The kiss of death.

BUCK: That’s the end of it for you, yeah.

CLAY: And to how do you reconcile this? I think it’s such a big conversation, because it’s spreading down to the high school ranks. And some people say, “Well, this is not a big deal because women also compete against men.” Yeah, but they never win. Women who decide to change and become men and compete against male athletes —

BUCK: They don’t destroy accomplishments. They get annihilated and then they don’t want to play the sport anymore against the men. This is destroying women’s achievement. What’s amazing is that the feminists are quiet on this because the feminists are actually just leftists trying to kick at the load-bearing walls of American civilization.

That’s a quick way of putting it. But, Clay, I think this only goes away when enough people are so sickened by it and just find it to be detestable that there’s a public outcry against it, but I think we’re a long way away. There are gonna have to have a lot of women’s records destroyed, and they’ll have to be a movement to say, “You know, sorry, we’re gonna take the names off trophies for the best women’s 500-meter, 800-meter whatever, that are actually men.

“We’re not gonna allow this,” and that’s years away, I think, ’cause people are so… Look at what we see all over the country. There’s so much conformity. Everyone’s just carrying around the little propaganda machines with their phone in their pocket all the time. And they’re also so scared of their friends, and everyone’s so terrified of being told that they’re not a part of the smart, cool herd.

CLAY: Unfortunately, I think that’s true — and, man, I don’t know how it’s gonna end. I think women’s athletics is gonna be under a fundamental, an existential assault before this comes to a real head.