Veronica Ivy - Trans Women in Women’s Sports

trans right. So if you have a discussion and you say trans people tense up, I understand why we live in a world where now there are people who are so transphobic that it makes it almost impossible for people who aren't to ask any questions, to have any conversations, to have any discourse that doesn't lump them in with transphobia. And so I'm really glad that you're joining us on the show to talk about this because it feels like one of the biggest issues in America and yet no

one can seem to talk about it. So let's start with your journey. Um, you've competed at some of the highest levels in sports, and you know, as your hoodie says, sport is a human right, that that is, that is what you believe in. Total me through, check me through just a little bit of of of why you believe fighting for transgender athletes to compete in the catch of reason they'd like to in sport is so important. So it's a fundamental tenant of like the Olympic movement that

sport is a human rights. So in their Olympic Charter, in their fourth Fundamental Principle of Olympics UM, they say participation in sport is a human right and they mean that at the competitive level. So this issue, people like to say that it's a complicated issue, and I don't actually think it is. I think it's very simple. It all boils down to do you actually think that trans women and intersects women are real women and are really female or not? And if you do, it's very simple,

just stop policing who counts as a real woman. Because this has had history of racism built into it over the years. It's not an accident that the intersex athletes who get singled out are women of color from the global South, because who gets singled out for scrutiny is based on white women's conceptions of femininity, and that's being weaponized against trans people too. So it's a fear of protecting the fragile, weak cis white woman from the rest

of us. So there are many elements to what you've said, which I appreciate, So let's try to break them down. One thing that confuses me personally is it seems like we have discussions about who should participate in which category and how you know, on the face of it, it seems simple, as you say, you know, if somebody identifies as a woman, if they transgender, they can compete against women who are born biologically and and then if not, then not. But then there are many who would argue

who are not transferbs. There are many who born biologically women who will say, but you have an unnatural advantage over me, and that makes the sports unfair. How do you how do you respond to that? Yeah, there's lots of ways respond to that. So the first is the very language of you were born and I'm not biological somehow, Like I don't think I'm a cyborg. So like this idea that like, oh, you're not a biological woman, Well, I am a woman. That's a fact. I am female.

So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records, I'll say female, right, and I'm pretty sure I'm made a biological stuff. So I'm a biological female as well. So this question of do trans women have an advantage over CIS women, we don't know. Um In fact, there's basically no published research on this question. However, uh, there's good reason to think that there isn't. But I think it's irrelevant because we allow all kinds of competitive advantages

within women's sport. So one example I love to talk about is the real Olympic women's high jump final. First place was over six ft three, tenth place was foot five, So a ten and a half inch hype difference between first and ten at the Olympics in high jump, and we call that fair. So the range of body types within the female category is way, way bigger than anything

that could be attributed to trans women. So if there's an advantage, and I'm not saying that there is for trans women and women's sport, it's not an unfair advantage. But also, we've been competing at trying to compete at the highest level for decades, would be allowed to compete for decades, and no one has won an elite world championship, no one has won an Olympic gold medal. This Tokyo Olympics was the first time trans women even qualified for

the Olympics. So this idea that trans women are suddenly going to take over women's sport is an irrational fear of trans women, which is the dictionary definition of transphobia. So it's interesting that you say that, you all, because it interesting that to say that, because I think if if I were to push back or you know, even not even playing Devil's advocates, there were there are a

few things that could be argued. Number One, you could argue that although the trans women who competed in the Olympics didn't dominate, she did beat a field of women who might have qualified for that position, right um. Secondly, when you talk about the hype differences, I agree with this completely, but there are many who would argue that we exist in a state where a lot of the surgeries on you, a lot of the technology, just the technologies and new. Transgenderism is not new. We know it

throughout time, We've seen it throughout history. But there are many who would say, how do we ensure that we are creating some sort of standard? And the reason the reason we talked to this, you know, we talk about this is it's the reason I have to regulate regulator performance enhancing drugs. For instance, what is fair? What can you drink, what can you not drink? What can you consume?

What can you not consume? Um some would say if you are born that way, that's how sports has determined who goes where, and then some would say, no, who regardless of who you are, you should be able to compete. My question then comes in from a really honestly a

different place. I look at somebody like Oscar pa Stories from South Africa, right, he was the double amputee, And Oscar Pastorius actually went well, I want to compete in the able bodied race, right, and people like, well, do you have an advantage do not, etcetera, etcetera, the prosthetics. But then could there not be an argument if there is no advantage in that that then trans women should be able to compete, but in the men's racism because they'd still be able to compete in the sport. But

they're women and they're female. So, like I said, this boils down to our trans women really women? Are they really female? Because if you think yes, then we belong competing with other women. So it's an extreme and dignity to say I believe you're a woman except for sport, right, So you can't single out one of the most important facets of our society. We are obsessed with sport at D to some of the most highly praise, highly paid

people on the plan. Definitely, so you can't say that like I believe you and I support you, but not for this one really big thing that society really cares about. Right, And I'm I'm I'm saying I get confused by why we distill it down into just two things. I'll tell you why. As we learn about gender being a spectrum, as we learn that people can identify in a multitude of ways, we accept the fact that we don't have

to put people into categories of man or woman. You know, That's why they say protect trans women's like otherwise, which women are you protecting? It's it's it's an argument that doesn't separate or diminish anybody, but gives more specificity to what people are saying. And so when we talk about these things, I sometimes get confused by why we're trying to force the people into two again when we've been

taught that there isn't a two. Whereas a sport like let's say boxing, for instance, in boxing, people fight across all weight categories. They don't just go men's boxing women's boxing, they go no men heavyweight, super heavyweight, and then they'll be like middleweight, bantam weight, flyweight, featherweight. There's like guys

who wait nothing punching each other. And I mean the genuine is I've always thought to myself, it's interesting how in boxing they went, well, we don't just want to see guys fighting, we want to see guys fighting at different ways. The UFC does the same thing. They go, you're gonna fight in your weight class, which has it seems crazy? How can you break it down? And yet it's worked. And so I wonder if you've ever considered and I'm not saying it's your job, by the way,

but if you've ever considered it, oh, then great. Have you ever considered a world where it becomes more specific? Then you know the same thing they did in the Paralympics. They had to find a way where they classified how a single ampute could run against somebody who's partially blind or a double emputy, and how do how do we grate that? So do you not think that we're limiting ourselves by saying men's sports women's sports when we now know that there's so many more genders. So I'm really

going to just satisfy you right now. But you don't know what I'm looking for those, so you can't I do. I know you're looking for something other than what I'm gonna say, and that that is a very important question and a very difficult question, but it's a separate question. The question we're talking about is, given how sport is currently structured, should we include trans women and intersect women in women's sport? And my answer to that is a clear yes. If you want to say, should we revisit

how we structure all of sport? I would say, yeah, we should do that. But if your only reason for doing that is because you can't just accept trans women or women, that's a problem I got with you. I understand, and I'm not saying it's not no, No, I hear what you're saying. No, completely, I completely hear what you're saying. So let me ask you this. Then, you know, again, eliminating fringes, because everything on the internet becomes fringe, everything

becomes a fight in an argument. If somebody comes to you in good faith and I mean genuinely good faith, and they say to you, you know, Veronica, I was born a woman, raised a woman. I I've suffered or lived in experienced life as a woman. This is where I am. This is where my body has gotten me too. I've grown as a woman. My bodies had the testosterone estrogen that it had to get me to those points, and that's why I am here. And I feel like you may or may not have the advantage, but we

don't know yet. So why can't we wait to know these things before you compete against me? How would you respond to that? Because that's not how human rights work. So the way human rights work is that the default is inclusion, and the burden of proof is on the people seeking to exclude, not that people seeking to include.

So I want to share something shocking with everybody. It wasn't until five years ago that we actually studied the relationship between natural testosterone and performance, and we found that there's no relationship whatsoever between unaltered, natural and doogenous testosterone

and sport performance. About point five percent of elite mail track and field athletes at the world championship level are below the women's average of testosterone, competing with men with eighty to a hundred times as much testosterone at no competitive disadvantage, and that fact has not been picked up

by the broader media. Landscape. So when you say I'm a woman and I have this much testosterone, well, first, there's a huge range within women into the male range, and there is no relationship between her having a competitive vantage over women with lower testosterone. So there are elite sis men with low testosterone lower than a given woman who's out competing her. So our bodies and biology is not this simple. We thought it was, and it isn't.

So we know that when you add testosterone to your natural levels, like doping, you tend to get bigger, stronger, faster. We also know that when you drop your testosterone levels, like trans women tend to do, you tend to get slower. But what your natural level is has no relationship to your performance, and we've been singling out that factor, testosterone against the scientific evidence. But I'm a little confusing, and

forgive me if I'm slow to understand this. You just said the natural level doesn't give you an advantage or a disadvantage, but you said if people do have an addition or subtraction of it, then it does give you a disadvantage or an advantage. Well, it affects things. So for example, like my body doesn't produce testosterone and it

hasn't for a decade. But I switched sports from a road cycling event to a track power event, and I switched training, and I put on twenty five pounds of muscle, and I went from being able to squat one seventy two. So I don't produce a testosterone and I squat a lot, and that's just because I change training. So it's not so simple as Okay, if you drop your testosterone, you

will get weaker. Because if you change your training, your diet, your rest and recovery, your sport, your performance can change. You bought will change. It seems like we're always going to end up in a cul de sec because many people use it as a cudgel. I've realized to scare people. Oh, the transgenders are coming for you, your both through and your sports. Everything. Be careful what you say. Um. But but it feels like there are many discussions to be had.

It feels like, as you said, you know, the research, the science, that everything hasn't caught up. But I appreciate you for coming on the show and discussing this with us. Thank you so much for joining me to watch The Daily Show weeknights and eleven ten Central on Comedy Central in stream full episodes anytime, I'll on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast