CLAY: Buck, this is a crazy story that I think is going to continue to get crazier, and it threatens the very foundation of women’s athletics, and it also points to the cultural fault line, I would say, that exists right now where so many people are afraid to say basic, 100% certain truths, which are these: Men compete against men and women compete against women in all athletics.
The NCAA swimming championships are going to begin in less than two weeks, and there is a big Sports Illustrated exclusive with the transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, who is poised to potentially, despite the fact that this swimmer swam with the men for three years before deciding to become a “woman,” has been setting all sorts of — and I’m using quotation marks here — “women’s swimming records” all over NCAA sports this spring and, well, I guess this winter.
And this new swimming competition, now this women’s swimmer who calls herself Lia Thomas, is going to compete, potentially set all-time records at Georgia Tech down in the Atlanta area for the NCAA women’s swimming championships, and also is now saying that she/he/whatever phrase you want to use to describe this swimmer, wants to be on the women’s swimming team in the Olympics in 2024.
So, if you think it’s already a crazy story that a man can swim for three years as a man in men’s swimming and then change teams and become a woman and become the greatest women’s swimmer potentially in the history of college athletics, that now this swimmer wants to become a member of the women’s swim team. Now, let me just give you this as… Let’s take it outside of the world of men’s and women’s athletics.
This is a direct attack on women’s athletics. It would, in theory, create the end of women’s athletics because as soon as you allow men who are bigger, stronger, and faster than women who life as women and compete against them and beat them, it is an absolute destruction. And we’re not getting — and this has got me so fired up, Buck — all these people out there who claim to be big feminists, all these people who claim to care so much about Title IX and women’s equality? They’re all silent, and they’re complicit in this craziness.
BUCK: This was all predictable, and what was fascinating was as it’s played out I’d say over the last 10 years in particular the trans agenda as it relates to sports issues, we were always told in the early days — I’m sure you’ll remember this — “Oh, that’s not going to happen!”
CLAY: That’s exactly what we were told.
BUCK: “No one’s saying that. Just be polite. Just be nice. This is about being nice! This is about being decent to people. Use their preferred pronouns. Agree with them. Just do this because you’re being a nice person.” I really hate — and this is used often against people on the right in this country, so I think that… I know people would argue for this. They’d say, “Well, Trump might have changed that in some way.”
But I think conservatives have a culture of politeness and consideration. I think that. I just believe that. Maybe people could argue with me. And this is now about trying to take what started out as courtesy, using someone’s preferred pronouns and just deny objective reality. That’s what has… That’s the transition, if you will, that we have been witness to here, and there’s a lot of…
The same way that they were making arguments, Clay, about masks, “Oh, come on. It’ll make people feel better. You know, it’s fine,” and ignoring the downside, let’s just talk about that for a second here because all you ever hear from the media, “This is about someone’s affirmation, and this is about who they are as a person,” and all this sort of stuff.
CLAY: Which is the way the entire Sports Illustrated article is written — not surprisingly — as if this person is a hero.
BUCK: What about the Olympic hopeful on the U.S. team or any team for that matter who has lived a third of her life in the swimming pool to be at the absolute top of that sport who will possibly now go to the Olympics and lose out on a gold medal, lose out on any medal, lose out on a spot on the team entirely?
What about the lack of kindness and courtesy for that person? This is just like we’re talking about, “Oh, let the transgender youth in high school use the girls locker room! It will make them feel better.” Uh, well, what about the 12-year-old girl that now has to get dressed next to a —
CLAY: Biological male.
BUCK: — “biological male,” also known as a male? This is why you started out with just use the preferred pronoun. Just be nice to people. Look, we all wanna be nice, we want to treat everybody well but at some point you can’t live by lies, and Lia Thomas is living by a lie here. Lia. You can change your name, fine. Call this person Lia. But even in all the news coverage of it, it’s always a situation where Lia Thomas is referred to as a “she.”
Lia Thomas is not a “she,” and once you start with the basic, “I’m gonna make this concession that gender cannot be changed,” that’s not reality. It’s not scientific reality. But also, just on the losses that will occur because of this to people, Lia Thomas is not the last person who’s gonads this. And think of all the people along the way who feel like not only they’re missing out on medals and spots on teams, Clay, but at some level their sport is being made a mockery of now. This is absurd. Women’s swimming is being made a mockery of by the reality of not actually segregating anymore by gender. This is absurd.
CLAY: Well, what’s also wild about this, Buck, is we talked so much about improper benefits in the world of athletics. And so take it outside again of transgenderism. And if you are taking steroids, for instance — we’re living down in Houston where Roger Clemens was, right, for a large part of his career, if I remember correctly. If you’re able to bigger, stronger, and faster through using drugs, you weren’t allowed to compete.
They test you for the Olympics, right, to see whether or not you’re using prohibited substances. How in the world is changing your gender not considered to be a prohibited substance? Just follow me on this logic. If you can get… Barry Bonds. Let’s use Barry Bonds as an example. Most people know him. Great player, decides that he’s going to use steroids, becomes the home run king of Major League Baseball, gets caught using steroids.
Congress investigates what is going on with steroids in baseball. You can argue whether or not Congress should get involved. But the idea was the inherent fair play of athletics demanded that Congress investigate and also because we didn’t want to encourage 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds out there to shoot themselves up with drugs. Back in the day, the East German women dominated in the Olympics because they were using steroids.
Same thing happened with Russians, right? They were doping. They were using all sorts of illegal substances. How is that impermissible, but you are going to say a man can decide to turn himself into a woman by using drugs, and then that man can dominate women’s athletics, and that’s considered to be okay? And I’ll give you an example what you were just hinting at, Buck.
My guys did a great job, and girls, covering this at OutKick and still are, because most people won’t touch it in the world of sports. One of the girls on the Penn swimming team who didn’t want her name to be used said that when did she grows up and gets married and has her own kids, she hopes that she has boys because if she has girls, her fear is transgender men who have decided to become women are going to end women’s athletics.
BUCK: And who thinks that there’s not going to be an increase in this, once you… We’re talking about the Olympics. You’re a college swimmer, you obviously don’t make a dime, and swimming is not, in general, a big-money draw for anybody until you’re talking about being a gold medalist. The gold medalist… They’ve done analysis to show it’s worth seven figures. It’s worth a few million dollars.
CLAY: Especially in a sport like swimming where people pay attention at the Olympics.
BUCK: Yeah, there’s actual endorsement value to that. Well, now you get to be a hero to those who are on the ideological left for doing this, because remember they don’t think this is bad. The true, hard-core left in this country thinks that this is to be celebrated — and if you don’t celebrate it, you’re a bigot. That’s the official party line. Ask AOC. Ask anybody who’s a Democrat on the left who is prominent in the movement, and they’ll say, “This is great! I celebrate this. Lia Thomas is a hero, a civil rights hero.” They’re completely insane.
CLAY: She called herself, reportedly, the Jackie Robinson of women’s swimming.
BUCK: That is so offensive.
CLAY: It seems there’s been a dispute about whether that quote was out there but that report has been out there that one of her teammates said that she is referring to herself as the Jackie Robinson of women’s swimming.
BUCK: Unbelievable. And yet here we are. Once you have people that are gonna become millionaires, now your choice is become transgender, become a multimillionaire and a hero to the left, or —
CLAY: An okay male swimmer.
CLAY: No woman, Buck, would ever win an Olympic medal again if we only had a unisex sport, right? Every sprinter… Here’s a great example. We’re down in Texas right now. Every single high school boy who set a Texas State sprinting championship record was faster than the fastest woman who’s ever existed in the most recent state competition. It’s a big difference. A women would never win. This is the destruction of women’s athletics if it continues to grow, which it will.
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