Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 868 | A Biologist Explains Sex | Guest: Dr. Colin Wright (Part One)

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Today we're joined by evolutionary biologist Dr. Colin Wright to discuss the biological realities of sex. We start off with a basic definition of what sex is and why you can't teach biology without teaching the fundamental truth of X and Y chromosomes. We explain how using "intersex" as evidence of transgenderism doesn't make sense when one has nothing to do with the other and "intersex" is an extreme biological outlier rather than a supposed "identity." We also touch on sex when it comes to sports and how we define and accept "fairness" when it comes to athletic competitions. At the end of the episode, Allie's dad, Ron Simmons, joins for a quick news update. --- Timecodes: (01:05) Academic biology (09:43) Can you teach biology without teaching X and Y chromosomes? (12:24) What is sex? (15:43) Intersex (24:59) Sports fairness (43:00) Special News Update with Ron Simmons --- Today's Sponsors: A'Del — go to adelnaturalcosmetics.com and enter promo code "ALLIE" for 25% off your first order! Naturally It's Clean — visit https://naturallyitsclean.com/allie and use promo code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your order. If you are an Amazon shopper you can visit https://amzn.to/3IyjFUJ, but the promo code discount is only valid on their direct website at www.naturallyitsclean.com/Allie. PublicSq — download the PublicSq app from the App Store or Google Play, create a free account, and begin your search for freedom-loving businesses! CrowdHealth — get your first 6 months for just $99/month. Use promo code 'ALLIE' when you sign up at JoinCrowdHealth.com. --- Links: FiveThirtyEight: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/ Election Central: https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/#google_vignette --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. What is sex? Is it chromosomes, gametes, what does this mean? Is it different than gender? Why does any of this even matter?

We've got an evolutionary biologist here today with us, Dr. Colin Wright, who is going to explain all of us. of this science to us like we are five. This is part one of a two-part conversation that I will be having with Dr. Wright. He is also an atheist. So in the second part of our conversation, we are going to talk a little bit about atheism versus Christianity, where morality comes from, why the conversation about fairness and privacy and safety for women and sports really matters morally from our differing perspectives. And so I think you're going to love these two conversations. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com.

Use Code Alley at checkout. That's Good Ranchers.com, code Alley. Dr. Wright, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Before we get started on this conversation, if you could just tell those who may not know who you are and what you do. Yeah, so thanks for having me on. So my name's Colin Wright. I'm an evolutionary biologist.

I'm also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. I write and speak mainly on issues of, biological sex, which might sound weird until you realize that there's a large swath of society that's currently denying the reality of there being two sexes. They think sex is a social construct. Maybe it's a spectrum. Maybe there's more than two sexes. And this has a lot of implications in society.

And so I'm sort of just trying to bring more sanity to this debate, trying to just explain the basic biology out there to make sure that if we're going to be more. making rules and laws and policy based on biology, that we at least get the biology right. So that's sort of what I'm doing. I used to be an academic evolutionary biologist and actually sort of got run out of the academy for making these basic claims like there's only two sexes and it's immutable. And so now I've sort of dedicated my time now to, I guess, pushing back against this large social societal delusion, I would say, about biology.

Yeah, so you graduated. You received your PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara in 2018. Now, in 2018, I know that definitely a lot of this madness was out there, although I don't think it was quite as prevalent and prominent as it is today. So when you were in school for evolutionary biology, were y'all already talking about and debating this issue of, well, is what is sex? What is gender? Is sex a spectrum? Or was this kind of new to you over the past few years? It was fairly new. Like in my direct field, because I studied sort of evolutionary behavioral ecology, so animal behavior, I studied social insects. And a lot of these, you know, the sex differences, it's just taken as a granted because some of the biggest sex differences you see in nature are those that are related to biological sex. So my field, or at least my close colleagues, we were just so far past to this debate of whether sex was real.

we were just already, you know, that's a given. We're doing other stuff at the frontier of science, assuming all that is true and robust, which it is. It was maybe in around 2015-16 when I first started seeing some of these narratives about sex being a social construct. Maybe there's five sexes. And so I kind of just tracked it and noticed it was there, but I treated it kind of like I treated young earth, or sorry, like flat earthism or something

like that, where it's just like, that's crazy that has no chance of taking over society because I just, I can't imagine it becoming, you know, this viral belief because it's so departed from reality. And then it wasn't until Nature published an article in, I think, 2015, it was called the Sex Spectrum, which said that scientists think that sex is more complicated than two sexes. And then it was really the hoax studies that James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Bogosian did where they called out a lot of this stuff and really just sort of exposed some of these fields that are promoting these ideas for the frauds that they are. So I just started speaking up

about that in 2018 is when I first started speaking up about it publicly. Yeah. And I wonder why you did because there were obviously a lot of people receiving their PhD in evolutionary biology at the same time as you, a lot of your professors who knew the same things that you knew, right? It's not like you had any kind of special knowledge about sex that those around you didn't have, but I'm sure you saw a lot of people didn't say anything. Or maybe they even pretended to entertain this idea that sex is a spectrum. What kind of motivated you to say, nope, I can't just sit back and be silent about this? That's a good question.

And I think a lot of it has to do with the reason I got into science in the first place. You know, I wanted to be an evolutionary biologist because I thought it is sort of this rigorous way to address a lot of questions about who we are as a species. You know, it's sort of a philosophically robust field where you can get real answers about, you know, where we came from, where we're potentially going, what is the basis for the behaviors that we see in people, what explains this diversity, what explains our tribalism. You know, all this stuff can be looked through an evolutionary framework. And I initially got into this field because I thought that being an academic biologist was the place that we could have these robust, lively conversations about truth. and if I were to say something that was incorrect, you know, the response is going to be another counter argument based on reason and evidence. But when I started talking about this issue, that was definitely not the case. It wasn't you're wrong and here's reason X, Y, and Z was you're wrong and you're a bigot, you're a transphobia, all of this stuff.

And then coupled with that, this, I was being increasingly required to, you know, I was applying to jobs at this time tenure track positions. And I was being increasingly required to fill out these DEI statements. So not only was I being forced to sort of say certain things that I didn't agree with, but I was also being forced to not say things that I knew were true. And this was just the opposite of why I got into science in the first place and to be a science. I want to say true things about biology. That's what it means to be a biologist. And so academia just didn't seem like it was no longer the right fit for me,

If I can't speak freely about biology as a biologist, then what's the point in being a biologist in the academy anymore? And had you considered yourself politically active at all? I'm sure at this point you didn't really consider it even like a political issue. But were you ever involved in politics or the so-called culture wars up to this point? I wasn't throughout all of grad school. You know, when I went to grad school, I used to have a blog beforehand where I kind of talked about the creationism, evolution, intelligent design debates. But to me, that wasn't really political. I mean, there were some political implications, but it was always an empirical issue for me.

And it wasn't like a main reason I voted one way or the other. When I went into grad school, I was mainly just putting my head down, trying to get my PhD at the time when focused on my academic work and writing technical papers. So I largely stopped even talking about sort of these, I guess, what you can maybe call it a cultural type of debate and just focused on my research. And it wasn't until I realized that, you know, why am I studying these really esoteric topics about the social behavior, personality of wasps and spiders and ants when half the kids in my class that I'm teaching don't even know what a male and a female is? And so I just sort of felt like I needed to look back and repair the bridge behind me that so many scientists before me had constructed because it was just crumbling. And so it was hard to focus on sort of this, the frontier minutiae, when so it was hard to focus on sort of this, the frontier minutiae. many big aspects, foundational principles were being eroded behind me. Hey, this is Steve Day.

If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's

unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. So obviously, I'm a Christian and you're an atheist. And so we disagree about how we all came about. But is it even possible to teach evolutionary biology without the reality of X-X? and X Y?

So, no. I mean, I think it's, you need, if you're going to teach about biology, if you're going to teach about the biology of sex, what makes people males and females, especially if you're talking about mammals, you'd absolutely need to talk about chromosomes because they are what determines an individual sex. Now, an important distinction here is there's a difference between what determines the sex of an organism versus what defines the sex of an organism. So in developmental biology, when we talk about sex determination and that humans and mammals have chromosomal sex determination, this just

means that genes on certain chromosomes are what trigger us to develop into males and females in utero while we're developing. But some other species do this differently, like alligators and lot of other reptiles, they use temperature at which they're incubated that determines what sort of pathway they develop down and become a male or female. So while we might say that chromosomes and humans determine our sex, you know, the sex of any organism across the entire animal kingdom and plant kingdoms, regardless of how their sex is determined, it's always going to be defined based on sort of the type of gamete, either sperm or ova, that their reproductive anatomy has been sort of organized around to produce. So that might be a lot to chew on.

Yeah. Well, that's why I asked you to come on. Now, I'm hoping that you can kind of break it all down for us like we're five in the words of Michael Scott. Because I'm not a scientist. Most people I'm guessing who are listening to this, watching this are not scientists. But we understand that this is a biological argument that must be made. It's important to be made, whether you are an atheist or a Christian. Obviously, Christians, we have a high view of the body.

We have a high view of sex. We have a high view of biology. And so I really do think that everyone should understand this from a biological perspective. You wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal and opinion piece. A biologist explains why sex is binary. Everyone remembers when the Supreme Court Justice nominee at that point, Katanji Brown Jackson, she was asked, can you say what a woman is? And she said, well, I'm not a biologist.

Okay, so Dr. Wright, you are a biologist. I know you kind of just did this, but break it down for us as if we are like, okay, so you're teaching a bunch of elementary schoolers about what sex is. Start us there. What is it? So sex sort of taking a step back is a form of reproduction where two individuals combine their genetic material in order to produce a new individual that is sort of genetically unique. It's a genetic mixture of both the parents. Now, some organisms do this by connecting what they're called gametes. So we have the two different types of reproductive sex cell that an individual can create.

In humans, we have sperm and ova. These are defined by the size of the gametes. So by definition, the larger sex cell is defined as the ovum or the egg, and the smaller sex cell is defined as the sperm. Some species don't have different sized gametes. They're called isogamous. That means there's no such thing as male or female in those species because there's no such thing as sperm or egg.

They're just same-sized gametes fused to create an offspring. Humans, mammals, many other plants, were what are called anisogamous. The term isn't that important. All it really means is we reproduce by fusing two different sized gametes together, sperm and ova. Whether an organism produces sperm or ova, that is what defines what sex they are. Okay, so males by definition produce sperm. Females by definition are the individuals that produce ova.

Because there is no intermediate gamete between sperm and ova in any species, there are only two sexes that an individual. can be. Unless we find this intermediate or third type of gamete that completely, you know, that people can have the reproductive systems organized around to produce. Until then, there's only two sexes. This is a stable reproductive strategy in the animal and plant kingdoms. It's evolved independently many, many different times. And most importantly, humans, we're mammals.

we have our sexes that are split into two different organisms. Some organisms, like your common garden snail, for instance, can be both male and female at the same time. They're what we call hermaphrodites. Humans are not like snails. We have bodies that are either male or female. And this is something that is just genetically set when you're developing in your embryo.

And it's not something that you can change later in life through just changing your secondary sex characteristics like your breasts or your facial hair or deepening or making your voice higher. That's really it in a nutshell. That's why there's only two sexes. And when someone like me says that sex is binary, what we're saying is that there's only two sexes. Now people will bring up intersex conditions. And while I think we need to sort of leave the door open where some people could have conditions

that are very complex, that are a mixture. They have maybe some testicular tissue with some ovarian tissue. They have very ambiguous genitalia. Their cells, they could be mosaics to some degree of X, X, X, and X, Y. It may be the fact that some individuals are sort of ambiguous in relation to sex. This doesn't mean they're a third sex, because there is no third type of gamete that exists that they can be producing. but they're definitely not a third sex.

So sex ambiguity is not a third sex. So even with the existence of intersex conditions, this doesn't undermine the fact that sex itself is binary. There's only two. Right. It is some kind of genetic anomaly, which really has nothing to do with transgenderism. I've always thought that it was very unfair that these people who were born with some kind of anomaly are included in LGBTQ. because it's not an identity that you're taking on. It's not some kind of so-called orientation.

And as you said, it doesn't prove that sex is not a binary. And you can tell me if you think that this is a good metaphor, I've said just because there are some people born with one leg, doesn't mean that human beings aren't bipeds. It doesn't mean that we're not supposed to have two legs. It doesn't mean that that's not the rule. It just means that some people are born with, if you want to call them imperfections or anomalies,

whatever they are, it doesn't negate the rule of binary sex. Yeah, I think that conveys an important point. Although I think, you know, in terms of if we're talking about legs, you know, someone can actually be three-legged, whereas someone can't actually have a be a third sex. Yeah, true. An analogy I tend to use is sort of that of a coin flip where we have, you know, the two faces of a coin, heads or tails. You know, those don't come in degrees.

If you flip a coin, it's not, you can't say that, oh, it was 25% heads on that single flip. So heads and tails don't come in degrees. But there have been people who have done these types of studies. I think with a nickel, one out of 6,000 flips could potentially land on its edge. And the edge, it's neither heads nor tails. It's just sort of like this, oh, we need to reflip the coin. It's this undefined thing. It's neither.

But neither heads nor tails isn't like another face of the coin. if that makes sense. I think that's maybe a little more accurate of analogy, but it conveys the point I'm trying to make. And you make a really good point in your Wall Street Journal article. You say we're not seeing a surge of people born intersex. We are seeing a surge of people identifying as the opposite sex, even though they're not intersex.

They don't actually have any confusing characteristics at all. That is the surge that we're seeing. We're not seeing some growing trend of intersex people. But gender ideology, you say, seeks to portray sex is so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people is simply male or females grossly outdated and should be abandoned for a revolutionary concept of gender identity or really abandoned for a revolutionary concept of like sex fluidity. Because like this is the argument that's made. I see you refuting this all the time on Twitter. People will say, look at this species. See, they're more than male and female.

or this mammal, they're really more than male and female. And they'll try to finagle it in some way that is not actually scientifically accurate. Or they'll go back in history and say, see, there was some kind of acknowledgement that there is a spectrum between male and female that just can't be reduced to X, X, X or X, Y. I saw all George Dekai say that the other day, that science actually proves that transgenderism, not the other day, I think it was like two years ago, but actually proves that sex is some kind of spectrum. And yeah, you're right.

They're just trying to make it more complicated than it really is to basically, it's like a form of Gnosticism. It's like we can't fully know this like special knowledge that's out there. We need these transgender people to tell us what the truth is. Yeah, it's a really important point of their reliance on intersex conditions. So there's a historian of science named Alice Drager. And she wrote in her book, it was called Hermaphrodite to the Medical Invention of Sex. It's a well-written book, but she had a passage that says something like, you know, the existence of the hermaphrodite, this is what she refers to as intersex people, not only calls into question the sex of that individual hermaphrodite, but calls into question the stability of whether or not everyone is male or female. And, you know, it makes us all sort of unclassifiable to some degree.

Now, that is just a complete fallacy, the suggestion that just because some individuals, have conditions that make them sort of ambiguous with respect to sex, therefore we're all, to some degree, ambiguous with respect to sex. That is just a complete non-sequitur. That is not true at all. You can't extend the blur

of a very small percentage of the population. We're talking one out of every 6,000, 5,000 people to the entire tapestry, the entire canvas, and say that we're all just so ambiguous, or at least ambiguous enough where we need to rely on people's self-reported.

We can't rely on doctors to get it right when an individual is born. And as I said in the piece, we're not seeing a surge of people with intersex conditions. We're seeing a surge of people who are unambiguously one-sex identifying as the opposite sex. So if we go back to the coin flip analogy, this would be like, this isn't something that landed on the edge. This is heads identifying as tails, tails identifying as heads, clear cases that are not ambiguous. So I refer to this as the intersex trap. Whenever you're talking, having a debate, let's say, about males and female sports, you want to maybe talk about Leah Thomas because this is a perfect example of a person who's unambiguously male,

playing against people who are unambiguously female. But the activist will bring up someone like Castor Semenya, who's an intersex athlete. Because they want you to, because it's a little more difficult with Castor Semenya. And then they'll say, well, what about this intersex condition? What about this one? And they want you to just sort of be on your heels trying to decide, you know, making calls on these really difficult intersex conditions to distract you from making the easy calls on people like Leah Thomas,

who's not intersex, who's just the heads identifying as tails. So we need to reject that right in the beginning, that transgenderism and being intersex are just, they couldn't be conceptually more different. And we need to treat them as a different concept they are because activists gain a lot of, you know, it's a wedge when they keep them fused together. They pretend they're the one and the same, or at least they're intrinsically tied together in some way that they're not. Yeah, it's really, it kind of reminds me of when you see those, like I saw that when Target had their like pride display and they had a shirt that was supposed to be LGBTQ and one of the people that I guess as a part of this community was a person in a wheelchair.

I'm like, when did we start lumping in people who can't walk with LGBTQ? And I mean, even including like the brown and blacks and now skin color is a part of this. And I think that you're right. I think it's like collapsing all of the supposed victim categories, the ones that are actually, like the identities that are actually innate, like your skin color or your disability and ones like gender identity, which are actually chosen. to just say, you know, these are all people who are just being themselves and are different. We have to accept and celebrate them.

I got in a debate the other day. It's a very, very interesting person. And he kind of conservative, a Christian. So, and he was, you know, he was from Texas and he was telling me about how his parents, like support Ted Cruz. So I'm just assuming that he is also kind of conservative too. But then he said, you know, I'm politically independent. I've never voted Republican before. but I do. I'm pro-life. And so I was like, this is, you know, this is really interesting. So I asked him. I said, what issue do you think Democrats get more right than Republicans or conservatives do? And he said, gender. And I was like, what? And he said, yes, I think that Democrats have it right. When it comes to the fluidity of gender, we talked about Leah Thomas. And he brought up the examples that you're talking about. Because I said, okay, like, you think a man should be able to compete against women. That's not fair at all.

went into this whole debate and he lost, but he brought up, he said, well, what do you do with someone who just happens to be a really good athlete who, like, say a man who's competing against other men, but he's way taller, way bigger than them, has more testosterone, maybe. Maybe he has a greater anaerobic anaerobic capacity. He has greater lung capacity, greater muscle mass, all these things that we use to say, well, this is why men shouldn't be able to compete against women. And sometimes those distinctions are also true within the sexes. And so what are we really supposed to be distinguishing people by when really there is a spectrum along both sexes of hormones and capacity and height and weight and all those things? I'm sure you've heard that.

Like, what do you say to those kind of people? Yeah. So, I mean, sports is meant to be fair within certain classes. But within those classes, you know, we're not saying that everyone who has any sort of advantage. advantage needs to be squashed in some way. I mean, LeBron James is 6'8, 250 pounds, complete athlete in the extreme. You know, he can just jump over the heads of practically everyone. That's just like, is it unfair for LeBron James to be allowed to compete with people who aren't as genetically gifted? Well, no, it's not unfair. Sports wants to find these people who are these anomalies, who are just

these crazy athletes who are just a cut above the rest. But it's within a certain class of being biologically male that we allow this variation to exist. You know, we could have boxing, for instance, which we just say, you know, the best fighter wins, okay? Like, it doesn't matter how much you weigh. But then we would only be seeing, you know, people who are 250 pounds and six foot eight boxing each other.

And that wouldn't be fun. We want to recognize that there's other aspects to being a fighter and skills and training that we want to see. And so we make these things that are, you know, these weight categories so we can see, you know, feather weights, bantam weight, heavyweight, super heavyweight, all that stuff. Because we realize that, you know, we don't just want to see one variable overtake every other variable. And this is the same thing with sex.

So sex isn't simply just, you know, one single variable. It affects every variable in your entire body. It affects how tall you are, how strong you are, everything that affects the way you perform. An important aspect of whether something is fair or not has to do with whether you would have that advantage otherwise. So, for instance, if I were to start taking steroids and I joined a powerlifting competition next week or next month, I'm not a power lifter. So no matter even if I'm, even if I'm juicing, I'm going to lose. Is the fact that I lose mean that it isn't unfair for me to take steroids?

Well, no, it's still unfair because no one else is taking steroids and I'm doing better than I would have otherwise. So the same thing goes for sports that are segregated by sex. So Leah Thomas, it's unfair for Lee Thomas to compete with females because Leah Thomas wouldn't have been as good otherwise had they not. gone through male puberty. Okay, so male puberty is really the variable that is creating this unfair disparity that makes it so male shouldn't be allowed to compete in female sports because no other female has access to this certain going through this process that changes your body fundamentally in every way imaginable that makes you a better athlete.

So this is why some states, for instance, have policies where, you know, they'll actually allow males to compete if they hadn't gone through male puberty, which, you know, is a issue of, you know, are we encouraging puberty blockers, that type of thing. But they're at at least getting at what gives them the unfair advantage. Like, I could ride an e-bike in the Tour de France and I'm probably still going to lose just because, you know, people who are still naturally better at me than I would be even on an e-bike. But it still wouldn't be fair for me to compete on an e-bike because nobody else gets that boost.

And I wouldn't have been as good without the e-bike. So I hope that makes some sense. You do hear a lot that, okay, it's not unfair for these men to compete in female competitions if they don't win. If they, you know, if they come in third place or they come in a hundredth place, well, then it just proves that men are, you know, they're competitive against women that there's not really that big disparity there. But that's not true. I mean, they still have the innate advantage of the testosterone that has been pulsing through their veins of much higher levels since they went through puberty. and whether they're in a hundredth place, third place, first place, there is a woman that they, you know, basically metaphorically or figuratively elbowed out of the way to get to that position. And so some woman was disadvantaged.

It might not have been all the women that were moved out of the way, but some women were moved out of the way because this person has a biological advantage. I remember learning a little bit about this about just like testosterone and how much it changes the body. body. And obviously there are differing levels of testosterone, I think, at birth, the differences in even our brains and how our brains develop in utero can be based on our sex. Sex has a large part of how we develop and then testosterone levels. And of course, correct me if I'm wrong in any of this, kind of even out between boys and girls when you're young. But then when you go through puberty, male testosterone just shoot through the roof. And that is really what makes these huge changes in a male's body that just are insurmountable for the female, right?

Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, there are high school boy athletes right now who are 15 years old, 16 years old, who can beat the women's world record and sprinting in every single category. Yes. I mean, that's how big the disparity is. This isn't, you know, crapping on women athletes. It's just saying that they have very different bodies and they're capable of very different things within their own categories.

You know, we wouldn't say that a, you know, phantom weight boxer is any less of a good boxer or something because they're competing in a lesser weight class. It's just, they're just different classes of bodies that we're trying to account for. Yeah. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. And, you know, it's when you're playing, you know, we see children a lot, as you mentioned, sort of play in co-ed leagues and stuff. But it's not until you get to high school, really, where segregating by sex is really important. And then especially when you get into the elite sports, because even though like some differences might only be like, let's say that there's a 10% average difference in the population between sort of the strength of males and females, it's greater than that. But even if we're only 10%, you know, while that might not seem a lot when you're talking about just the most people you see every day, when you're like looking at the top 0.1% athletes in any category, it's going to be all men up in that category.

there's going to be no women who are going to be up there competing. So you have a league like the NBA for existence or any other professional sports organization. Like the NBA isn't the MNBA. It's not the men's basketball association. There's no rule that's keeping females out of the league. It's just that there's no female who's ever been able to possess the constellation of traits that has made them competitive in the NBA. And so that's just really important to think about. And if we're doing this at the upper, you know, in the Olympics, yeah, there might not be that many trans women who are competing in female sports.

And so they might not always win. But if this trend keeps going along, then for sure you're going to have males that are going to be beating every single category because these differences matter at the elite level. Yeah. And really, if all you have to do to be a woman is to say you're a woman, then you're not even going to eventually you're not even going to require these people to take estrogen or make any kind of change. changes to their body whatsoever if you're going to be consistent in your ideology. Actually, that guy that I was arguing with, the reason why he lost, because he said something that was so silly, and this is an Ivy League educated guy. He said, I said, well, don't you think that there is probably a reason why sports have been separated by sex? Like, you don't think that's just random. He said,

well, actually, no, they haven't always been separated by sex. If you look at ancient Greece, and ancient Greece, they weren't separated by sex. Anyone could play. It's just. that the women weren't competitive against the men. And I said, yeah, why do you think that is? And of course, he got all, you know, befuddled and everything. And, but it's funny. I mean, a lot of these people, and this is not a dumb person, a lot of these people who are smart in a lot of ways for ideological reasons or convenience reasons or whatever, they just don't see the inconsistency in their belief system. It's really wild. Yeah, there's an important, so in what you said there,

and it's something I've been trying to call people out on, it's like you don't need to care about female sports. Like this is a question anyone can have for themselves. Like, if your position is that we shouldn't have female sports because if they can't compete, well, then they can't compete, and then, yeah, that's fine, you know, to the best player wins. Like, that's a position you can argue if you want to. I very much disagree with it.

I think we should have sex segregated sports. I think women and girls should have the ability to win medals and succeed and have to strive to be able to compete and win. But that's just my values. That's my opinion. What I take issue with is people who are pretending that they're not saying that they don't think women should have the right to compete or that they don't want women sports to exist. Instead, what they're saying is they can't even care if they wanted to because sex is. is a social construct and what does it even mean to be a woman anyway? Like, that's what they're saying.

Right. But I wish they would just be honest and say that they don't think women should have the right to compete rather than pretend that women aren't an actual category that can be protected. So, yeah, that's the insidiousness of the ideology. It gives them a shield to sort of mask what they're actually believe. And I just want to, we've cited this study before. I just want to reiterate what you're saying.

the importance of the differences in sex. Duke University released your report in 2017. I'm sure that you've seen it. Sorry, it wasn't 2017. It was a few years ago. And they said this. If you know sport, you know this beyond a reasonable doubt. There is an average 10 to 12% performance gap between elite males and elite females.

The gap is smaller between elite females and non-elite males, but it's still insurmountable, and that's ultimately what matters. They found that in 2017, Tori Bowies, she's an Olympic champion in the 100 meter dash three-time Olympic medalist, that her lifetime record in the 100-meter dash was beaten by men and boys over 15,000 times, including high school boys. The same is true for Allison Felix, another Olympic champion. Her 400-meter dash record was beaten over 15,000 times by men and boys in 2017. So that means, you know, even 18 and under, the times of the fastest high school boys, according to the study, were faster than the times of female Olympic athletes. So the best of the best high school boys, 15, 14, 16 years old are faster than the fastest women adult Olympic sprinting athletes. Like that is the differentiator.

And kudos to Duke University for saying it says it's not because of better resources. It's not because of a different identity. It is because boys have an androgyized body because the girls have ovaries, men have testes, because of the testosterone that is produced by each sex. That is why this gap is totally insurmountable, even between elite females in high school boys. And then you probably remember that story of the U.S. women's soccer team. They lost to the UC Dallas under 15 boys team. It's wild. Yeah, it is insurmountable.

And we just seem to be having, or at least some people seem to have this amnesia, that testosterone is a performance-enhancing drug, and that's why you're not allowed to take exogenous testosterone when you play sports. It's considered doping. It's illegal to do. Why? Because it gives you a major performance advantage. And essentially, every male is just carrying around this factory of,

of performance enhancing drugs that is not available to every female in the population. So this really isn't controversial. We all know this is true. That's why all the PED policies have been set in place for many, many decades, as far as I can remember. So it's just we need to get back to common sense on those stuff. Everyone knows this stuff. This is real. All right, guys, like I said, that was part one of a two-part conversation. Make sure you tune in to the second part with Dr. Wright, where we get a. into atheism versus Christianity. Why any of this matters if God and a transcendent morality doesn't exist. How is anything ever really just or fair or right or wrong or true or false

outside of a giver and a determiner of all of these things? Dr. Wright is going to give us his perspective. I'll give mine on the next episode. Together, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back soon. Good morning, related gals and related bros. This is Ron Simmons. And And as many of you know, I am Allie's dad. Allie is on maternity leave. And we have decided that I will periodically bring you some news updates that keeps you occurring on things that are going on. Of course, Allie's podcast will go on four times a week.

And she's got some great interviews that she's done. You're going to really, really enjoy them. But I'm going to come on just every so often and kind of bring you a little bit of a news update. As you know, if you've listened to me with Allie a couple of times, I've got an investment background. So sometimes we'll talk about the economy and what have you, but also serving in Texas legislature for three terms. And so obviously I'm interested in politics and we'll talk about that. And then finally, I'm an author. I released a book a few months ago called Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.

And we might touch on a few of those as we go forth. But today, what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about our favorite doctor, Dr. Fauci. Well, if you pay attention to Dr. Fauci or if you got tired of paying attention to him like I did, may not have thought about him lately. But if you paid attention to him, Newsweek, the magazine Newsweek, just reported the latest squirm by our favorite doctor, the infamous Dr. Anthony Fauci. in an interview with CNN over the weekend, he agreed that mask, wearing a mask, has very little effect on the overall spread of COVID, but he claims that they work individually.

Now, if they don't help the overall spread, but they work individually, how do those things go together? Seems like an oxymoron to me. But when he's pushed on a study by the University of Oxford proving that there's no evidence that they work, he squirmed, admitting they really don't have an overall effect on the spread of the pandemic. When you're talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong. But when you talk about as an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there's no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage. When you took it the broad

population level like the Cochman study, the data are less firm with regard to the effect on the overall pandemic. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about an individual's effect on their own safety. That's a bit different than the broad population level. Dr. Fauci, would you please just go into retirement with what really amounts to be the millions of dollars that we have paid you and will pay you during your retirement. Just please, please, go away. Now, on to politics. So here we are the day after Labor Day or the week after Labor Day.

And the official political campaign season kicks off for the 2024 presidential election. President Biden, who will be the Democrat nominee unless he decides not to run or can't run. Who knows what the answer is to that? still claims he's going to, so we'll take him at his word on that, which a little bit of a joke in there, but we'll do it. Well, if you ever go to a website that follows politics, 538 is a good one to follow. It's run by a guy named Nate Silver, and they do a pretty good job of being down the middle. They're a little left-leaning, but it's very interesting website and have a lot of data in there. And there'll be a link on the Allie's show page today, which will

show that to you. But in looking at that website, after the first hundred days in office, Biden had a 54% approval rating. Now, since August of 2021, or May of 2021, that has continued to go down. And really since August of 21 and the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, where he left many of our friends there that helped us during that war to go under the Taliban and their very strict and draconian methods. We left them back there. His approval rating has been hovering around 40%, which is very poor. In fact, there's only two other presidents that have been close to that range after

this long being in office, after 955 days, for example. it's only Jimmy Carter, who was only at 29% after the same length of time that Biden's been in office. And then President Trump was about similar to where Biden is. So it's very interesting as to how all this worked out. In fact, Wall Street Journal has something called, there was an article over the weekend on Bidenomics. And for inflation, which all of us have felt, if just go to the gas pump, look at your grocery prices, that only 39% of the people in America believe that President Biden's done a good job on fighting inflation.

63% have opposed that. And that's not good news if you're trying to run for re-election. I can tell you that. But even a bigger challenge that he has, and this was done by website Morning Consult, shows that in key what we would call swing states, like a Wisconsin, a Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, those are states that tend to be 50-50 Republican Democrat. President Biden is really hurting. In fact, his approval rating, which is what we call the difference between the approval and the disapproval rating, how that's changed over time, is in Wisconsin down 13 percent.

Michigan down 14%, Pennsylvania down 15%, Nevada down 14%. Even in his own home state of Delaware, his approval rating over the last, since he's been in office, is down 3%. So that's really incredible. It's just overall, though, for independence even. Now, this is even more interesting because Democrats, you know, are going to support him. but independence where you have to have, if you're either, if you're the Republican nominee or the Democrat nominee, you probably control 40% or so with a vote that's going to vote that way, no matter what. But the 20%, the independence, it's kind of, you don't know where they're going to go.

This is the number that most of us focus on. And for example, in states like Colorado, 53% of the independence approved Biden in 2021. Now in 2023, 60% disapprove of him. In Arizona, 65% of the independents disapprove the job he's doing. And in Michigan, 65% of the independence disapprove of the job he's doing. So it doesn't look good for President Biden. But, of course, the challenge is that former President Trump has challenges as well. when it comes to a general election, he and President Biden run neck and neck.

And you can get this information off the 538 website as well. Now, let's take a couple more minutes and talk about the Republican primary, which is the one that will be the most contested. As of yesterday, the former president, Donald Trump, has got 51%. Governor Ron DeSantis is at 15%. and Nikki Haley is at 6%. And I have found a website that I think you'll really like on U.S. presidential election news. It's just very good.

It looks to be mainly information, not opinion. And it's U.S. presidential election news.com. And you remember that the presidential election is not a national election. And even the primaries aren't national primaries. They're individual state primaries. So it really matters winning states. And in primaries, both Republican and Democrat, they're delegates. So really when you're voting, you're voting for the delegates of your state that go to your state's Republican or Democrat convention.

And then they cast their vote for whomever it is that the majority has told them to vote for. in their particular state. The first primary or caucus, as they call it in Iowa, is January the 15th of 2024. The next one is January 23rd. So it's coming up really right around the corner and you'll want to be paying attention. South Carolina is February the 24th for Republicans, February the 3rd for Democrats, and Nevada is February the 6th. But the big prize is on Super Tuesday, which is March the 5th.

And that will be, there's 10 or 15 states that will be going to the primary election polls that day and voting. And that's where it'll mainly be determined. I think unless the race gets a lot tighter, President Trump could wrap it up by that day. But there's a lot that can happen between now and then. So anyway, I'm going to talk to you more. about politics as we go on, but I'm going to run out of time here. And before I run out of time, I want to bring up a couple of other things. Every time I get on here, I want to talk a little bit about taking the next uncomfortable step. And the next uncomfortable step is something I talk about in

my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. And today's next uncomfortable step. And hopefully, it's not uncomfortable. What it can be is make sure to remember to date your spouse, Sometimes when we get married and have kids and getting our careers, we just get so busy. And we forget to date our spouse. So think about that and make sure that you're dating your spouse. It doesn't mean you have to take, go out to a big fancy dinner, or even have to go anywhere. Just remember to treat your spouse like you treated them when they were your boyfriend or girlfriend. And I think that'll help all of our marriages.

And I can be better at that, certainly myself. Last thing I want to say is our good friends that are also Blaze Podcasts, the Robertsons, that have the podcast Unashamed. There's a movie coming out at the end of September called The Blind. And it's the life story of Phil Robertson. And it's going to be out September 29th. But you can go online right now and buy your tickets at theblindmovie.com. It's very important that we all go do that so that we can get more.

more distribution out into the cinemas because it's an independent film. And I know that it's going to be something that you'll enjoy because there will be lots of humor in there, lots of heartwarming stories, and an incredible story of redemption. Thank you for your time today. Make sure that you continue to listen to Allie's podcast and that you also follow her on all her social media channels. Have a great day and a great rest of the week. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't

just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.