The Highwire with Del Bigtree - HAS TRANS MOVEMENT GONE TOO FAR?

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

One of the most controversial issues of our time, The HighWire takes a look at the transgender movement’s posture, its attitude towards biological women, and the many platforms in play in this tangled societal web.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

We just came from a largely polarizing debates of mandated vaccines, lockdowns, masks, but really perhaps one of the most polarizing debates in America today, which is saying a lot, is the idea of transgender rights. This is a debate that's going on right now. And there seems to be two kind of large topics that make up this debate. One of them is the idea of transgender people basically in sports, competing in sports. And the other one is what we've covered before on the show is the transitioning of children, often without their parental consent, being given some puberty blockers that sometimes

have some really big safety issues around them. So this is what's happening right now. The sports issue is really coming to a head. So take a look at what's happening in the news. This is just from the last couple weeks. She's the swimmer who created shockwaves across the country as the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national title. The 17-year-old Dallas area high school student won the title of champion in the girls' state wrestling competition Saturday.

Two transgender high school runners, where they're kicking up Dustin, Connecticut, taking the top spots at the state girls' championship, leaving parents wondering if they have an unfair advantage. The first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different sex category to that which they were born at an Olympics. She's transgender in last year. She won a world championship for her age group, racing against women. I suffered from a concussion and neck injury that to this day I'm still recovering from. Peyton McNabb is talking about an incident last fall when a transgender athlete she competed against, spiked a volleyball and injured her. I may be the first to come before you with an injury, but I won't be the last. Critics say she has an unfair physical advantage over the other swimmers and should not have been allowed to compete.

Beggs is a transgender athlete, border girl transitioning to become a boy. It takes testosterone injections to make that transition happen. Many believe that provides the young wrestler with an added competitive edge. I have said from the beginning in and I stand with it that I don't want biological boys to compete against women and girls in sports. It's just not fair. Leah Thomas had 10 years on testosterone. If a biological woman was on that much testosterone, she would be banned for life because of the changes that it makes to the body. Her lungs are bigger, her back's bigger, her hands are bigger.

She just has a tremendous advantage in swimming in the pool against the women. And, you know, and she proved that. There's a lot of factors that go into a race and how well you do. And the biggest change for me is that I'm happy. It allows her to be who she wants to be. And I think that has a little bit more weight than just winning a medal. These fears that trans women are a threat to women. sport are irrational fears of trans women, which is the dictionary definition of transphobia.

And we need to call it what it is. I feel like as we dive into this very, very, you know, sensitive space, I want to say that I know our audience, I know that you and I, and we've talked with, and we've been working on how to approach this show in a way that is appropriate. Because truly we are all about accepting people for who they are. This is a free country. You know, we should respect. each other, privacy and stand up for one another. We're all brothers and sisters on this planet

together. But this issue really does challenge the lines between our perspective of ourselves and, you know, honestly fairness and reason seem to be hanging in the balance right now. And you can see with the conversation of inclusion in sports, one of the things just from that that clip we showed was one of the key points is biological men competing in women's sports, biological men and boys. And so the Biden administration has weighed into this, and they unveiled a Title IX update. So this is the headline from Politico. This was earlier this month. Education Department avails Title IX transgender sports eligibility rule. So this is civil rights rule. It's at the federal level. And it originally prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school

program that received federal funding. So what they're doing is the new drafts. Right now it's in draft form, they have to have like a 30-day public comment period. Might be time to comment, by the way, public. This is what this is all about. But continue on, Jeffrey. Yeah. So the new draft would allow people to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity. So that is what's going on at the federal level. And at the state level, the same conversation is happening as well. So we have the state map here of 21 states. And you can see here that have enacted laws banning transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

And so that's what's happening there. So you can see the division is going directly. I mean, right there, you have to look at some majority, you know, if you just look state by state, at least how that map is drawn out of people saying this is not a direction we are comfortable going in, which, you know, is very interesting. Right. And they're not, you know, the lawmakers in those states, their intention, from my understanding, is not to isolate transgender students, but to perfect, protect fair play in women's sports.

that's from my research. But also you see at the House level, this was the headline just about a week ago, House passes GOP billed bar transgender athletes on girls and women's teams. That's not going to get out of the Senate, basically. Biden said he would veto that if it came through. So that's where that stands. So you can see, you know, really the push poll and the conversations back and forth on this, even going all the way up to the executive branch of the government.

But there's another conversation that's happening here. So as people are really passionate about these ideas, passionate about these topics, you're seeing a lot of protests and something that is different than what we're used to here in America. So in America, when we see some of these big issues being protested over the last century, we have women's suffrage for voting rights for women, you know, way, way back. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. That's where he did is. I have a dream speech.

you know hundreds of thousands of people showed up there and even the defeat the mandates rally where you know historically this is going to be really a big deal as we're looking back against mandated medicine medical freedom we saw we saw debate we saw nonviolence we saw people coming together to really let the ideas battle back and forth it's not what we're seeing here with a lot of these conversations around the transgender rights in these protests so let's look at a couple of these And, you know, I know we're going to give a warning here. So if you have kids in the room, it's maybe a great time to have them to step outside for about five minutes or so. We're going to show some video here.

There's profanity. But in order to really get to the heart of this, we need to show it for as it's happening. So we can have a real debate about this. So this is conservative activist Chris Elston. He's also known as Billboard Chris. And he was in Vancouver protesting. And he's being interviewed by Dan Dix, of press for truth at a rally, a transgender rights rally.

So take a look what happens. Why do you think they're getting that kind of representation? I mean, it's clearly was aggressive violence. You suck. You suck. Fuck you. You're not wanted. Fuck you. You're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking idiot. I don't know what to say. I guess these police officers are mostly indoctrinated as well. They're afraid of the mob. I think I think they're afraid that if they do anything to actually.

keep law and order that they'll end up being on the end of this verbal abuse. So it's just cowardice from everybody all around. Fuck you! People probably want to know, how do you keep your composure? What's that? How do you keep your composure? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Excuse me, did you just say he came here to incite violence by forcing his opinion on people?

Yes. You think he came here to incite violence because they got offended by his sign? When you talk to someone and scream at someone and put your face at all. Yes, he didn't. They put their face in his face. What is wrong with you? Okay. How on earth did you become a police officer?

She is literally sitting here saying that Billboard, Chris, is inciting violence by standing there with his sign. Is that really your position? Okay, sir. We're done with this conversation. Yeah, I thought so. I thought so. This is absolutely unbecoming of the Vancouver Police Department.

Disgusting. Amazing, we can see that video not screaming. It's clear there's this one side of perspective with the fact the police aren't there even, you know, representing, you know, what actually happened there. It's disturbing. It's very difficult to watch.

And Del on the other side of this conversation are women working to defend their societal rights and hard-fought equalities throughout the years. An outspoken activist in this space is Kelly J. Keene. And here are some of her views on what she's been saying out in public. Take a listen. Okay. It is the billboard that has caused a lot of controversy this week. Now, feminist blogger Kelly J. Keene Mitchell, she put that up.

This is the definition of woman. I've noticed over the last few years we've seen to be losing the word woman. Why do you not say the pronouns that they choose? I don't care how much effort. I don't care whether they've had surgery. As far as I'm concerned, there is no man on this planet that deserves the pronoun she her. I really don't think there is any such thing as a woman who isn't born female. By calling some men this word trans woman, which I don't feel makes any sense at a woman.

at all. As soon as we use that word, we then can't talk about keeping women spaces for women only. I really don't think you can change sex in any meaningful way. Every cell in the human body has got the DNA code of what sex you are. So India obviously looks like a woman, but I don't see India as a woman. Now, Del she was recently slated to talk at a rally in New Zealand, and we have some footage of that that just happened recently. Take a look at what happened when she did. Okay. I mean, she never even got to the microphone to be able to, you know, speak her perspective,

you know, and so I say it all the time from our side, well, on the anti-vaccin. We've got to be able to listen to each other. If we cannot hear each other, then how do we find, you know, how we work with each other? How do we find our middle ground? It's really disturbing when someone's not even allowed to state their opinion and their perspective. Some really tense moments there as police were really struggling to control that space. to control that space. Now, back here in America, we have NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines. She tried to speak on campus of San Francisco State University about her views opposing the inclusion

of transgender athletes in women's sports. Take a look how that turned out. Gaines reportedly had to barricade herself in the room with campus security at San Francisco State University for almost. three hours until police could disperse the crowd there. So again, another really tense situation that could have spun out of control even worse. Well, I mean, look, if the police are keeping locked in a room for three hours, they obviously think that there's danger there. And, you know, when I think about this, you know, first of all, you know, I'm all about the right to peaceful protest very important. But when you use intimidation, physical intimidation, and we have to be

realistic about this. These are women trying to speak out in most of these situations, and the tension being brought upon them is by physical-sized men, however, they want to call themselves. They have all of the abilities and strength of men against women. So when you look at Riley Gaines, when you look at these, you know, compared to the discussion that's happening here, it's very intimidating. And, you know, as we tried to do this story, so many women want to be able to speak out and talk about how hard they fought for their rights of equality in sports, something that has been, you know, in business. And now to sort of see that under threat is just, and the fact that they can't talk about it because they're being intimidated, it's just not the way this should be. It's not the way conversation

and debate should be happening. The public atmosphere around this debate is concerning. And you would hope at this time that a president would be asking for peace and for calm during times like this. But here's the White House press secretary discussing Biden's stance to a roomful of reporters recently. Take a listen. LGBTQI plus kids are resilient. They are fierce. They fight back. They're not going anywhere.

And we have their back. This administration has their back. I mean, using words like they fight back. Like, we need them fighting. That is not what leadership should be talking about now. We need a time of unity. We need to start being able to converse, not fight. Terrible, terrible advice and words coming from the White House right now.

It's very disappointing. Right. And refusing also to denounce any of these potentially violent acts is also seems to be a misstep from the administration. So it'll be interesting to see how this turns out. This is this conversation is not going anywhere anytime soon. And with Title IX being on the docket and the public space, this is going to be something that I think is really going to be on the front burner of really even moving into the debates of 2024 for a president.