♪ ("LAST WEEK TONIGHT" THEME MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
We're actually gonna start with our main story this week,
and it concerns an absolute fixation of the right.
Because even as the market crashed
in the wake of Trump's tariffs,
Fox News spent a lot of time on this.
A women's fencer is defending her decision
to take a knee to protest her trans opponent
despite getting disqualified for her forfeit.
A female fencer who's devoted years of her life
to the sport was just disqualified.
ANCHOR: This is the civil rights issue
of the hour, women's sports.
Here's the story that everybody's
going to be interested in.
A female fencer stands up for fairness
in women's sports.
Wait, that's the story
that everyone is going to be interested in?
Are you sure about that?
The story about fencing and not the one that's caused
the stock ticker in the corner of your screen...
-(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -...to go bright red
like an inflamed hemorrhoid?
Also, I challenge those anchors to tell me one thing
about fencing besides "Lindsay Lohan
did it against herself in The Parent Trap."
-I don't think you can do it! -(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The issue of trans athletes has become
very important to conservatives in general
and Donald Trump in particular.
He talked about it at length in his address to Congress
and signed an order titled
"Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports,"
which promised to rescind all funds
from educational programs
that allowed trans women and girls to compete.
And at the signing ceremony, he ad-libbed
the creepiest compliment possible.
We're defending the rights and safety and pride
of the American people, including our great,
great, great female athletes.
What athletes you are, too.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
And, you know, I'm not allowed to say this politically.
It could end my career.
They're really beautiful people.
These are beautiful people.
But, you know, like everything else,
it's a little bit different today.
You're not allowed to say that
because if you call a woman or a girl beautiful,
that's the end of your career.
But let's take a chance on it, Mike.
Let's take a chance.
Okay, to be completely fair to Trump,
I will say his understanding
of women's issues is comparable
to his understanding of foreign policy,
domestic policy, trade, the economy,
the concept of consent, human empathy,
and all but one of his children's names.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Trump leads every conversation with a psychosexual energy
that makes The White Lotus look
-like the Teletubbies. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Oh, I'm sorry,
did the incest storyline bother you?
Donald Trump joked about dating his own daughter
on The View.
He said that on a fucking morning show.
At least White Lotus has the decency to air
in the evenings, right here on the Incest Network.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS)
Trump's order has already prompted the NCAA
to institute a ban
on trans athletes participating in women's sports,
but he is not done.
He's also trying to pull 175 million dollars
in funding from UPenn for allowing
one trans athlete to compete three years ago.
And when Maine indicated it would resist his ban,
he threatened to cut off "all its federal funding,"
despite the whole state apparently having
just two trans girls total competing in girl's sports.
Two!
And I know you might be thinking, "Okay, but in Maine,
two kids is like half the kids, right?"
-But it's actually not. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
They've got more.
This issue is an obsession for Republicans.
Last year, they spent over 116 million dollars
just on TV ads featuring trans athletes.
And the relentless focus
on this over the years has had a meaningful impact,
with one poll showing more than six in ten adults say
trans girls and women should not be allowed to compete in girls'
and women's sports,
including high school and youth levels.
Twenty-five states have now imposed
bans on them competing in schools.
Even Gavin Newsom, pictured here as the villain
in a Ryan Murphy production...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...recently said he thought
trans athletes being allowed to participate
in women's sports is "deeply unfair,"
without really elaborating on what he meant by that.
And for trans kids impacted by these bans,
who just want to play sports with their friends,
it's been hard,
as this 15-year-old girl in New Hampshire explains.
It's been stressful and difficult.
Um...
It's been annoying.
I felt very annoyed
and upset that this has been happening
and that it's been happening towards a vulnerable community,
like the trans community.
Yeah, and honestly, "annoying" is an understatement there.
"Annoying" is what you say when your friend is late
or your Wi-Fi is spotty
or when you're a chicken minding your own business
and suddenly you're on the news.
You're hanging out eating dirty snow with seven
or eight close friends, and then boom,
all of a sudden the AP is doing a close-up of your feet.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -That is annoying.
But I know people have strong opinions
on this subject.
In our post-election show,
I said, "There are vanishingly few trans girls competing
in high school sports anywhere,
and even if there were more, trans kids, like all kids,
vary in athletic ability,
and there is no evidence that they pose
any threat to safety or fairness."
After that show aired,
J.K. Rowling herself issued the single longest tweet
I've ever seen in my life,
in which she claimed, among other things,
that I am "happy to watch females suffer injury,
humiliation, and the loss of sporting opportunities
to bolster an elitist postmodern ideology."
And honestly, it feels a bit weird
to catch that much heat
from the creator of Harry Potter,
especially when I clearly look
like what would have happened to him
if they just left him in that cupboard
for the rest of his life.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Now,
I stand by everything I said in that episode,
but I will concede
that this subject is more complicated
than "people should just
use the bathroom that corresponds
with their gender identity."
And since trans participation in sports
seems, for some reason, to be at the center
of our politics right now
it felt like tonight might be a good time to talk about it
at real length.
And in doing so, we're going to try
and explain a few things.
What the facts can actually tell us about trans athletes
regarding competition and safety,
where much of this seems to be coming from,
because it didn't crop up out of nowhere,
and where it looks like things might be going.
And let's start by acknowledging many people do
have good-faith questions about this,
even if they're asking them a little clumsily.
Here's an example of one of those questions about fairness
coming from a less-than-ideal source.
Let's say Serena's in her prime.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -And...
And a tr-- You know? And who knows?
We'll make up the person, right?
So, you know, that's-- Let's not make up the person.
Let's say that Rafa Nadal has some issues
or wants to transition and wins the Wimbledon final
or, you know, somebody wins the 100-meter dash
at the Olympics. I just--
I think that's a-- I think that's a net negative.
Now, clearly...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...when it comes to questions of right
and wrong in sports, Lance Armstrong might be
the last person you'd call,
just after the 1919 Chicago White Sox
and the ear chunk that Mike Tyson bit off.
But to be fair,
I can see how
at the most elite level of sports,
an instantaneous switch like that
would confer an advantage.
It hasn't happened.
And for what it's worth, in tennis,
the WTA already has guidelines for trans inclusion,
requiring athletes maintain strict hormone levels
for at least two years before competing,
with processes for dispute resolutions, if necessary.
So, they're already thinking about this,
and I presume will continue to do that.
The thing is, hypotheticals like that
circulate constantly and often center around
someone transitioning solely to gain a competitive advantage.
But as this trans researcher points out,
that is an absurd proposition.
Trans women don't transition for sports.
Um, no one has ever said,
"Oh yeah, I think I'd like to be a woman
so I can do well in women's sports."
When you go through a gender transition,
um, you lose so many things in life.
My own mother said she never wanted
to speak to me again.
Um, you know, I lost friends, family, got divorced.
Um, you'd go through all of that
just to win a medal in sports?
No.
Um, trans people transition because it's the only way
that we can live happily.
Right.
No one says, "I'm going to transition
just for the sake of sports."
The same way no one says, "Could you please
send me more messages about two-factor authentication?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Or "When I walk down the aisle, I'd like a solo violin cover
of 'Bawitdaba' by Kid Rock."
That is just a made-up person.
Still, let's engage with the underlying premise
of that question
from the world's most famous sports cheater,
that those assigned male at birth
are automatically going to have
certain immutable physical advantages.
That gets raised constantly,
which is why we're going to spend most of our time
talking about trans women and girls,
even though in these five states,
these bans impact trans boys in schools too.
It is obviously true that on average, cisgender men
and post-pubescent boys have some specific
athletic performance advantages, though the relative size
of that advantage also depends on the sport
and the event in swimming.
For instance, male athletic performance advantage
is roughly 13 percent in the 50-meter freestyle,
but less than six percent in the 1500-meter free,
which is still clearly significant.
But in general, there's a lot of overlap
in the average performance ranges
of men and women.
Basically, it is not the case that any man
is going to be stronger or more athletic
than every woman,
which is sometimes what gets implied here,
including by Donald Trump, who brought Riley Gaines,
the former college swimmer who's become
one of the most prominent voices on this issue,
on stage to say this.
Just to show you how ridiculous it is, look at me.
(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)
I'm much bigger and much stronger than her.
There's no way she could beat me in swimming.
Do we all agree?
(CROWD LAUGHS, CHEERS)
Thank you.
(AUDIENCE EXCLAIMS)
I don't agree, but I would like to see it.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I would like to see the 78-year-old president
try to swim in water against a former D1 swimmer.
I'd like to bear witness to that event
and whatever happens after it as a result of it occurring.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But crucially, when it comes to trans athletes
who've medically transitioned,
studies of cis athletes are not necessarily relevant.
A lot of medical gender-affirming treatments,
like hormone therapy,
have a meaningful impact on body and hormone composition.
So the question then becomes,
what do those impacts mean for athletic performance?
We spoke to scientists on all sides of this issue,
and the one thing they actually agree on
is that in part because the number
of trans athletes is so small,
the body of research specifically about them
is extremely limited.
There are a bunch of studies comparing
specific anatomical features like muscle mass
in women who transition,
but which don't directly speak
to their impact on athletic performance.
But we were only able to find 12 studies
that actually tested trans adult women's physical fitness
in a lab or other performance scenario.
Eight have a sample size of less than 20,
and two are of a single athlete.
And look, I don't have any scientific experience,
even though I look like a cross between a scientist
and the profoundly sick mice he's studying, but...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...you probably shouldn't draw broad conclusions
off a sample size of one.
Those 12 studies generally find
that medically transitioning does impact
trans women's performance,
but disagree on how or by how much.
That researcher you saw earlier
actually published the only longitudinal study to date
of multiple athletes, studying the impact
of transitioning on eight long-distance runners.
She found after at least a year on hormone therapy,
their race times turned out to be
more athletically similar to those of cisgender women
than cisgender men,
but she herself will tell you the study was limited
and its conclusions were nuanced.
Here she is explaining what we do
and don't know at this point.
It is undoubtedly true
that trans women will maintain advantages
in some sports.
Probably not so much in endurance sports,
but in size and strength sports.
Trans women will also have
some physiological disadvantages.
Our larger frames are now being powered
by reduced muscle mass
and reduced aerobic capacity,
and that can lead to disadvantages
in terms like quickness, recovery, endurance,
things that maybe aren't quite as obvious
as being bigger and stronger.
Right, bigger and stronger bodies
are not automatically advantaged
in every scenario.
I mean, put The Rock in a pure barre class
-and see what happens. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I mean, we know what would happen.
He'd take a video of himself, caption it,
"Mad respect to these mamas! Everyone go see Moana 2!"
and try to use it to sell his tequila
before eating 13,000 pancakes and drinking a cow.
We know what would happen.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But the degree of difference here matters
because we expect a certain amount of difference
in athletics. Taller basketball players
are expected to compete against shorter ones.
Faster soccer players compete against slower ones.
Michael Phelps was allowed to compete
with other swimmers despite being part dolphin.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -And crucially,
none of the studies I've mentioned so far
bear much relevance to what these new laws target,
which is youth sports usually of all ages.
And the research there is even more scant.
We have no research about how being trans
or undergoing gender-affirming treatment
impacts athletic performance in teens.
And when it comes to kids before the onset of puberty,
I could talk about the studies
showing the subtle performance differences
between boys and girls, but I'd argue
when you're talking about seven-year-olds,
as a practical matter,
that's a point where lots of school sports
are co-ed anyway,
and a key difference between competitors
on a field can come down to whether
a kid was born in October or April.
And at this point, you might be saying,
"I don't need to wait for scientific research.
This is all common sense,
and I know what I've seen online."
But a lot of what you've seen may not be quite
what you think it is, both when it comes
to trans athletes' impact on competition or safety.
And let's start with competition,
because there's a big number
that you tend to hear a lot.
CARLEY SHIMKUS: Listen to this, a shocking report
from the United Nations
states over 600 female athletes have lost
close to 900 medals to transgender opponents.
Female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals
to transgender athletes.
You have the United Nations study
come out not long ago about 900 medals for females
that ended up going to transgender athletes.
Yeah, 900 medals.
That is a go-to statistic.
It was even cited on the floor of the Senate
during their debate over a trans sport ban
and featured prominently in J. K. Rowling's latest tome.
But we got curious about that number,
so we looked at that report, and it turns out,
first, it wasn't produced by the UN.
It was submitted to it by a special rapporteur
who herself said its findings "do not necessarily represent
those of the UN."
And if you go online to the footnote
that it cites and click on it, you get sent to this website,
She Won, where anyone could submit an instance
of a cis woman losing to a trans woman
anywhere in the world in any competition,
big or small.
The author of that report insisted to us,
"I did not rely only on this source,"
but I will say the numbers she cites
do match what was on the site back then,
and they included competitions
all the way back to 2001
and down to the level of a fun run in Topeka, Kansas.
and an Irish dance competition...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...as well as activities where gender confers no advantage,
-like poker. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Also, over a hundred entries on the list
are in the field of disc golf...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...which, if you're unfamiliar,
involves frisbees being thrown into this thing,
some kind of Guantanamo for birds.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And as if that weren't enough,
the way they got to that 900 number
has to do with how they counted the wins.
Because on the list,
one trans woman finishing first
counts as three denied medals.
The logic being,
the second place finisher should have come first,
the third place finisher should have come second,
and the fourth place finisher should have come third.
And look, some will argue it doesn't matter
how minor the competition, the women on that list
were all unfairly deprived of their rightful place.
But even some of those women don't feel that way.
This one, a disc golfer, has publicly stated
she's happy to see trans people in disc golf.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And an amateur cyclist named Kristen Chalmers
is actually on the list twice
because, for some reason, a single race she lost
is on there under two different spellings of her name.
She came in third behind two trans women,
but she has made it clear they are her friends
and she has no problem competing with them.
I think that it would be ridiculous to say
that my life is being ruined by getting third in this.
It would be ridiculous to sacrifice
other people getting to have fun
in a sport that they love on the weekends
so that I could say I was the state champion.
Yeah, you can tell she's not upset
because A, she's giggling through that interview,
and B, that is a very happy-looking photo.
I have, and this is true,
never once smiled that freely in my life.
Look how joyful they are.
That looks like an ad for cycling,
or for having friends, or honestly,
just for mud.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So, for all the talk of how trans women are so dominant
they'll spell the end of women's sports,
the number people keep citing to prove that has,
I would argue, a pretty big thumb on the scale.
And even the famous individual cases
are sometimes missing a lot of context.
You may have seen this photo of two trans high school runners
in Connecticut coming first
and second at a state track meet.
They were the subject of a lawsuit,
claiming, among other things,
their participation wasn't just unfair,
it threatened to deprive their competitors of scholarships.
But you should know,
one of the plaintiffs actually beat
one of those girls twice
just two days after the suit was filed.
Also, most of the plaintiffs ended up getting scholarships,
while these two did not.
But the most famous example is probably Lia Thomas.
As you probably know,
she's a swimmer who initially competed
on the University of Pennsylvania men's team,
including one year while undergoing hormone therapy
as part of her medical transition
as per the NCAA's rules at the time.
She made national headlines
after she won the NCAA championship
in the women's 500 freestyle.
She got a good time in that race,
her best of the season.
Although it was also a full nine seconds
behind the record set by Katie Ledecky.
It's also the only race she won at that meet.
She came in eighth in the 100 freestyle,
and in what's weirdly her most consequential race,
she tied for fifth in the 200 free
with Riley Gaines,
who catapulted to conservative stardom
off the back of that race.
And I will let Riley herself tell you the story
of how Lia Thomas and the NCAA wronged her.
RILEY GAINES: I look up at the board.
Before I even looked at my name,
I looked at Thomas' name,
and I saw the number five,
and I looked beside my name,
and there's a five.
The NCAA official looks at Thomas and myself
and says, "Great job, but you guys tied,
and we only have one trophy,
so we're gonna give this trophy to Lia."
TISHA THOMPSON: Thomas held the trophy for fifth place.
Gaines held the one for sixth.
GAINES: They told me when pictures were being taken,
Thomas had to have the trophy,
which just reduced it down to a photo op.
I felt so belittled.
I felt so betrayed.
-Okay. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So a few things there.
First, that's a story about
how Lia Thomas prevented Riley Gaines
from getting fifth place instead of fifth place.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Second, those trophies look absolutely identical.
Third, yes, it was a photo op
in the sense that everybody arranged themselves
for the purposes of taking a photo.
And while we're talking about photo ops,
I don't know, man, you were on the stage at CPAC
so an objectively drownable man
could announce that he'd beat you in a race.
That's about as photo oppy as it's ever gonna get.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS) -So,
just so we are clear,
Lia Thomas didn't take anything from Riley Gaines.
In fact, you could argue
she gave a lot to her, as Gaines later decided
to forgo dental school in order to be an activist and speaker.
She now has her own advocacy center
and has personally lobbied
multiple state legislatures for bans,
all to address the threat posed to women's sports
by a woman who swam exactly as fast as she did
to the literal hundredth of a second.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
So from the 900 medals,
to the scholarships these girls did not get,
to the most famous fifth place finisher in human history...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...the competition argument is already a lot weaker
than it tends to get presented.
So, what about safety?
Well first, in plenty of sports,
like track and swimming, there is no safety threat
because they're not contact sports.
But in others, like basketball and volleyball,
there clearly is some amount of contact,
either with another body or with a ball.
But even there, the big anecdotes
that get thrown around
tend to be more complicated.
The most famous example concerns Payton McNabb,
a three-sport high school athlete
who was hit in the face by a spike
during a volleyball match.
She suffered injuries, including a concussion,
and started speaking out against the policies
that allowed the trans player who spiked the ball to play.
The video of her getting hit often makes the rounds
in these debates, and she told her story
to the North Carolina State Legislature
before they implemented their ban.
She also attended Trump's address to Congress
and appeared in a video about the incident
produced by an activist group
for which she and Riley Gaines are now ambassadors.
A couple years ago,
I was severely injured in a high school volleyball game
by a male on the opposing team,
leaving me with permanent injuries
that the doctors don't know
if I'll ever be able to recover from.
Because of my career-ending injury,
I was no longer able to perform the way I had in the past.
Progressive gender ideology being pushed so harshly
is exactly the root of why this was allowed to happen to me.
If it wasn't pushed so harshly,
this could have been 100 percent avoided.
Okay, I'll say this, unlike holding up a trophy
with a six on it for 40 seconds,
a concussion is genuinely traumatic.
Though for what it's worth,
she did go on to play softball in the spring
and did pretty well, judging by her school
posting this image about her making the all-conference team
and a local paper pointing out
she helped her team to a 5-0 start.
And I'm not saying she wasn't injured
or that it didn't have some impact on her performance.
But a lot of the groups heavily pushing this story
seem to be overselling it,
including choosing to title that video
Kill Shot: How Payton McNabb Turned Tragedy into Triumph.
Because Kill Shot is not a good title for a teenage girl
who is very much alive and talking to a camera.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Kill Shot is either a movie where Keanu Reeves
and Ana de Armas,
opposing spies and devastating marksmen,
fall in love,
or a hunting reality show that gets cancelled
after its host, Donald Trump Jr.,
is mauled by a moose in heat.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS)
And that is not the only volleyball-related story
that's been oversold.
Last year, there was a controversy
over a trans player for San Jose State University.
Other teams forfeited games
rather than compete with her,
and one of her own teammates joined a lawsuit
to stop her from playing.
But watch as this story mentions something at the end
that puts a bit of an asterisk on that teammate's argument.
BAILEY O'CARROLL: When asked about how and why she felt unsafe,
Slusser said...
The height that the person can jump is so much higher,
and honestly, higher for a man.
It's insane.
And then the strength behind the ball
when they're swinging is also just so much more powerful.
O'CARROLL: But her transgender teammates' stats don't appear
to give the Spartans a dramatic upper hand.
The San Jose State women's volleyball team
is ranked 119th nationally.
Wow!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You must be in a very competitive league,
since it sounds like you've got one
of the Avengers on your team.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And yet, somehow, you're still only ranked 119th.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
That lawsuit initially claimed that the player's spikes
were estimated to be traveling upwards of 80 miles an hour,
a speed, by the way,
that would make her as powerful as some of the hardest hitting
men's volleyball players in history.
But when ESPN used camera calibration software
to analyze video of five of her spikes,
including ones that went viral for being "dangerous,"
they averaged around 50 miles an hour,
which is fast,
but it's also a full speed limit in the suburbs slower...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...than what the lawsuit initially claimed.
And look, they've since amended that lawsuit,
deleting the 80 miles per hour line,
telling us that it was a mistake
and that they meant to say 60 instead,
though notably they only did that
after ESPN published its report.
The point is, her spikes were nowhere near record setting,
which may be why she didn't rank in the top 150
in hitting percentage in the NCAA.
And look, some trans kids
are going to injure their opponents
the same way any kid will.
And concussions are horrible,
although they're also not that uncommon in youth sports,
given between one to two million of them happen every year.
Even in the wake of Payton McNabb's injury,
two coaches whose team had played
against the trans player for the previous four years
spoke up at a school board meeting to say
they were happy to keep doing so.
One apparently told the meeting,
"Every time a student plays,
there's an inherent risk of injury,"
and that she'd "seen cis girls hit the ball harder
than the one in the video."
And the other coach asked,
if they're slated to play a team
with a player who is "100 percent girl,"
and she hits the ball harder than the player in question,
should that game be forfeited?
And that's the thing.
The standard can't be no trans kid
ever injures someone because that's an impossible standard.
And yes, if trans kids were injuring cis kids
at much higher rates,
then we could have safety concerns to address.
But there's no evidence that's the case.
And at this point, it is worth asking,
what is really behind all this vitriol?
Because again, I do believe that some speaking
against trans participation
are just talking about women's sports.
And the truth is, at the elite levels
of competition, this isn't a cut and dry issue.
But in many other cases,
the opposition comes from a much more toxic place.
It is not just about denying trans women the right to play.
It's about denying them the right to exist.
Mike Johnson basically said as much
after the House passed its ban on trans athletes
when he said this.
We know from scripture and from nature that men are men
and women are women and men cannot become women.
That's right, Mike.
As scripture tells us, men are men,
and women are women, and God is his own son,
and some mothers are virgins,
and some mothers-in-law are pillars of salt,
and some daughters are sex partners,
and colorful coats are dream-tellers,
and brothers are murderers,
but also brothers are backup husbands for wives,
and babies can be for splitting in half,
and water is wine, and also with you, sorry,
and with your spirit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Now, the anti-inclusion camp objects to being called hateful,
bigoted, or intolerant usually right before
or after saying something most would consider qualifies.
Here is Riley Gaines doing just that.
I don't want to be considered a bigot
or a transphobe or all of those labels.
There's no hate in my heart.
But me, myself, personally,
I don't actually think this person is a woman.
I don't actually think this person is a female.
Therefore, when I say "she,"
I feel like I'm going against my moral compass.
Yeah, but it turns out
there is a lot of distance between
"I don't want to be considered a transphobe"
and "I don't want to be a transphobe."
Even greater than the distance between you and first place
in that race you make such a big deal about.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS)
The thing is...
this current uproar
is rooted in a very intentional political strategy
by the right to find a new issue
after losing the war over same-sex marriage.
Conservatives' embrace of this issue
came after the failure of so-called "bathroom bills"
around the country, which were widely criticized.
The president of the American Principles Project,
a socially conservative advocacy group,
has openly said,
"We pivoted to the sports issue
and it's been wildly successful."
He even explained the reason for that,
arguing what it did was "it got opponents
of the LGBT movement comfortable
with talking about transgender issues."
And he's kind of right about that.
Because it does seem like right now you can basically say
anything you want about trans people
as long as you tag on "in sports" after it.
"I don't think trans women should be allowed... in sports."
"I don't think trans women are women... in sports."
But it is noticeable just how fast
the "in sports" part can drop off
once people feel that permission has been granted,
to the point that some leading voices
in this movement are now circling back
to bathroom bans, an issue that a decade ago
people felt was a bridge too far.
Last year, for instance, Payton McNabb tweeted a video
of her confronting a trans woman with the caption
"A man using the girls bathroom at Western Carolina University.
Unreal."
Which is really nasty.
And for the record,
ambushing strangers just minding their own business
is not what girls' bathrooms are for.
Girls' bathrooms are for gassing each other up,
making best friends in 30 seconds,
complimenting tops, tucking in tags
and zipping up dresses while one girl says,
"OMG, that lipstick looks so good on you."
The other says, "30 percent off at Sephora right now."
And the first girl says, "Like, now now?"
And she responds, "Yeah, I went yesterday."
She says, "Oh, you're my hero. I've been looking for a nude
that goes with my blotchy skin tone."
And the other says,
"Girl, stop it. I would kill for those freckles.
You know people are buying them now."
And the first one's like, "You're right.
We gotta be loving ourselves."
And the other one is like, "We absolutely do!"
That is what girls' bathrooms are for!
-(STUDIO AUDIENCE CHEERING) -I am told.
-(CHEERING CONTINUES) -I have no idea.
Put your fucking phone away
and build some community, Payton.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the reason this has been an easier sell for the right
is that it's possible to frame all of this
as being about "protecting women and girls."
Although, if that is truly the aim,
there is reason for them to feel a lot less safe,
thanks to these bills,
as, in practice,
they can encourage adults
to police the bodies of literal children.
That has happened in Florida.
A trans kid was kicked off a team after an investigation
which resulted in a report about her
that was more than 500 pages long
and included investigators
asking three girls on her volleyball team
if they'd ever seen her undressed.
And in Utah,
the parents of a girl who was not trans were horrified
when a local member of the State Board of Education
felt empowered to do this.
SHELBY LOFTON: Utah State Board of Education member
Natalie Cline posted this picture with the caption,
"Girls' basketball..."
The couple describes their daughter,
whose image KSL is blurring,
as a tomboy.
She cut her hair short
because that's how she feels comfortable.
She wears clothes that are a little baggy.
She goes to the gym all the time,
so she's got muscles.
LOFTON: They said their family
is rallying around their daughter.
They have a message to other families
experiencing bullying.
I want all the kids to know
that it's okay to just be who they are.
That is awful.
And I hope it goes without saying,
but random adults
should not be publicly interrogating
the gender of children on Facebook.
People really shouldn't be on Facebook at all,
-unless they're... -(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...A, locked in a bidding war
for a barely used set of end tables,
or B, trying to figure out if a family friend died
or if they're just intimately posting about praying.
Those are the only two acceptable uses
of Facebook left.
But obviously,
the bulk of the damage here is being done to trans kids.
Because one thing we know for sure
is that for all kids, the benefits,
physiological, social, and emotional,
of participating in school sports,
teams, and athletics
are wide-ranging.
And to hear trans kids themselves tell it,
participation can be especially important
to their feeling of community and sense of self.
I love track because
I feel like I'm a part of a second family.
It's like another bond that you experience.
EMBER ZELCH: This has helped me so much.
Being able to be part of a sport and part of a team
is such an incredible, amazing experience for me.
Without football, uh,
I don't quite know if I would still be here,
because it's given me a sense of belonging.
It's taken away the spotlight
on the fact that I am transgender,
and it's just allowed me to be a boy,
and it's allowed me to be a kid.
That is a really moving thing to hear.
And if you're experiencing a weird sensation
after that clip that you can't quite place,
it's because it was nice.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
It was happy kids
talking about how they're able to be themselves.
And you don't usually get nice things on this show.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Which, at this point, is honestly mainly
dense statistics and facts and occasional Pikachu porn.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Being trans can mean seeing your body
as a barrier to living life as your authentic self,
especially when you're young,
and especially in social situations.
And it's not even necessarily about being good at sports.
Because for all the focus
on a handful of high-performing athletes,
it is helpful to remember lots of trans kids,
like any kids, are fucking terrible at sports.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
That teenager you just saw, Ember,
was a backup catcher who said, "I'm mediocre, at best."
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And her mom goes even further.
How would you describe Ember's, um, athletic prowess?
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
There really isn't much.
How about any home runs?
(LAUGHS) She's never hit a home run in her life.
-Wow! -(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
That is a supportive mom making it very clear
that she will "protect trans kids,"
but only to a point.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And I love the honesty there.
Athletic prowess? That'd be a negative.
Home runs? Hard no.
I'm gonna answer your question with a direct, accurate hit,
something my daughter could frankly only dream of.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So yeah, Ember is not great at softball,
but she wanted to play anyway.
And she met all of her state's requirements to do so,
including undergoing at least a year of hormone therapy.
But as soon as she was approved,
the state started moving to implement a ban.
And when she testified against it,
she dropped in a little extra piece of info.
Others have said
that I should just play baseball with the boys.
In many ways, this would be easier.
I wouldn't have to go through the time-consuming
and embarrassing process
of submitting intimate medical details to the state.
Also, the boys at my school
have two beautiful fields to play on.
Most years, our softball team has to cancel half of our games
because our old field has no drainage.
But the fact is that, for me,
playing on a boys' team would be a lie.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And you know, it says something
that people seem more concerned about a trans girl on the field
than they do about the field itself
turning into a swimming pool half the time.
And I realize I'm taking a risk
by saying the word "swimming pool" out loud,
because if you say that phrase three times,
Riley Gaines shows up, ties for fifth...
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...and then deadnames everyone in a 50-mile radius.
Unfortunately, though, Ohio banned trans athletes anyway.
And that insistence on aggressively legislating
around a handful of trans kids, while neglecting
much bigger systemic issues around youth sports
just isn't a one-off.
Take Kentucky.
Three years ago, they passed one of these bans,
even though at the time,
there was just one known trans athlete,
a 12-year-old, competing in schools there.
The governor, to his credit, vetoed it,
but the legislators would not let it rest,
because on the second to last day of the session,
they voted to override his veto, with one member doing so
with real regional-theater energy.
CLERK: Veto to Senate Bill 83.
ROBBY MILLS: The gentleman from McCracken.
Mr. Speaker, I move for final passage of Senate Bill 83,
the veto of the governor notwithstanding.
Yeah, they felt so strongly
about protecting young female athletes,
darkest-timeline Drew Carey here...
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...was willing to step in,
but the urgency on display there notably didn't seem to apply
to other issues concerning youth athlete safety.
Because last year, an investigation revealed
a long-standing pattern of sexual abuse
in youth sports in Kentucky.
It pointed out a bill that might have helped prevent that
was this one,
which would have made it harder for school personnel,
including coaches
who've been accused of misconduct,
to move from district to district.
It's been called "the most comprehensive bill"
to address the issue.
Unfortunately, it stalled out in the legislature
for an infuriating reason.
Because it made it through both chambers
and only needed a procedural vote
to be sent to the governor to sign,
but it just sat there.
And on the last day of the session,
it still hadn't passed,
and then this happened.
The members are hungry.
And we quite possibly have considered
the last bill of the session.
However, I'm not a hundred percent
that that is the case.
So, out of an abundance of caution,
we're going to recess until the call of the chair.
Yeah, they fucked off to dinner, and guess what?
They never came back to vote.
So it seems
this is how the Kentucky State House works.
When there is one kid who wants to play field hockey,
it's Pearl Harbor,
but when there's a long-standing pattern
of sexual abuse, it's, "Sorry, we got a 6:00 p.m. reservation
at the Cheesecake Factory."
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And for those who've played girl's sports,
this sudden interest from lawmakers
is a little hard to take,
given, for so long, it's meant having to put up
with constant slights and indignities,
from worse playing fields to smaller locker rooms
to creepy coaches no one will do anything about
to always having to play your games early
while the 8:00 p.m. boys' game
gets treated like the main event.
I cannot tell you how many times
multiple writers who worked on this story
and who played women's sports
brought that last point up.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And now we seem to be hell-bent on adding to all that
the fear that if girls get too short a haircut
or go to the gym too much,
a stranger on Facebook
is gonna start "just asking questions."
And look, this is the part of the show
where I usually talk about what to do,
but a lot of this is currently out of our hands.
When it comes to state-level bans,
thankfully, court orders are blocking enforcement
of them in all of these states.
And courts are also going to have to weigh in
on Trump's executive order,
which some states have admirably resisted,
none more memorably than Maine,
whose governor had this standoff with Trump.
I understand Maine...
Is Maine here, the governor of Maine?
Are you not going to comply with it?
Well, we are the federal law.
Well, you better do it. You better do it
because you're not going to get
any federal funding at all if you don't.
You better comply
because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding.
-Yeah! -(STUDIO AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Yes! You get him, Maine!
(CHEERING CONTINUES)
You get him!
And you know what?
(CHEERING CONTINUES)
I take back everything mean
that I've ever said about you, Maine.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Like that you're lobster-stuffed lighthouse perverts
that the rest of the Northeast loves to forget.
I still broadly think that to be true,
but I'm not going to be saying it out loud anymore.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Because that is honestly heartening to me.
As is the fact
that when Republicans tried to pass a nationwide ban
on trans participation in sports,
it failed in the Senate
after every single Democrat voted against it.
And it's been inspiring to see
some of these trans kids' teammates
coming out hard against the way their friends are being treated.
For instance, in Florida,
where that trans girl was kicked off her team
thanks to, again,
an investigation that was more than 500 pages long,
kids in her school staged a walkout in protest,
and one of her teammates went on the local news
and didn't hold back.
Their main argument is about, um, fairness in, like, sports
and how she probably could have, like, helped us win in ways
or like-- about fairness and equalness in sports,
but how about, like, fairness among, like, humans,
just us as humans, because right now,
she's not being treated like a human.
MARISSA BAGG: If she were here and you could say something to her,
what would you say?
How much I love her, and I'm always there for her,
genuinely, as a human, like...
I do, I love her so much,
and she deserves to be treated just like everybody else.
-Yeah. She's right. -(STUDIO AUDIENCE CHEERING)
She's completely right.
She just encapsulated the argument
I've been trying to make for over half an hour,
but with a vibe both more emotional
and also substantially more chill.
-So... -(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...first, thank you for that, Jordan, and second,
sorry to everyone else,
because now we're going back to my energy,
which we all know is significantly worse.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And look, for the final time,
I will concede there are degrees to which
this issue is meaningfully complicated.
But I'd also argue those complications
are at the elite levels of specific sports.
And we can have conversations about what elite means
and where exactly to draw that line.
We can engage in good-faith debate
about policies that actually balance
competition and inclusion.
But it is ironic that at the highest levels,
some sporting associations are still being thoughtful
and deliberate about this,
even as we are passing blanket bans
for elementary schools,
which is brutal because you've seen how much sports means
to the kids who play them.
Taking that away is not a harmless act.
Not for these kids
or the multiple others you haven't heard from tonight,
some of whose stories we couldn't even show you
because the environment for trans kids
is so fucking toxic right now
that they asked us not to draw attention to them
for their safety.
So if you are someone
for whom this is just about the integrity of competition,
and for a lot of the loudest people pushing this,
I don't think it is,
but if that is the case for you, then I do acknowledge
we're going to disagree about some things.
But the one thing I'd ask of you
is that you recognize the ugliness
of how this issue gets discussed
and how it's being cynically used by some
to advance the eradication of trans people generally,
to get back to what they know from scripture,
that trans people are a myth.
You know, the same scripture
that tells us the devil is an unemployed angel,
and hair is for foot-washing or super strength,
and two fish and some bread is a catering order,
and boats are emergency zoos.
Thanks be to God.
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And just to be clear,
I'm not happy to watch women experience injury, humiliation,
and a loss of sporting opportunities.
But that includes trans women and kids,
and they seem to be getting hurt the most right now.
-(STUDIO AUDIENCE CHEERING) -Meanwhile...
there are much bigger issues regarding women's sports
that we should actually be addressing.
And maybe that could be what lawmakers prioritize
because for so many
who are loudly claiming they're "going to bat"
for women's sports, if I may paraphrase
the single most honest mom of all time...
(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...so far, they've never hit a home run
-in their fucking life. -(STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS)