Joe Rogan has launched a stinging attack on transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, claiming that the University of Pennsylvania athlete’s participation is ‘an assault on women’s sports’.
While many have praised Thomas and celebrated the fact that she was allowed to compete at all as a transgender athlete, hailing a big step for inclusion, others – including some of her peers – have criticised the decision, with some athletes even threatening to stop competing.
Now, Joe Rogan has waded in, if you’ll forgive the fairly obvious pun.
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He called Thomas’s participation ‘not fair’ and said that the outrage that some feel about her swimming at the championships could be ‘the woke straw that breaks the camel’s back’.
He said: “People are – Women are so frustrated because if you – or parents if your daughter is competing and they’re competing against trans women it’s not fair.
“It's not fair no matter what anybody says. There’s this nonsense idea of like ‘well there's outliers’.
“There are outliers and then there’s biological males.
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“There's a reason why we have a distinction between men and women's sports.”
Thomas has been required to take hormone treatment since 2019, and has been required to continue doing so in order to compete.
While she has been criticised in an often unedifying and downright offensive way from some quarters – including comments from people within the US government – there isn’t that much in the performance data that suggests that Thomas poses a huge threat to women’s sport.
Thomas might have won the 500-yard freestyle race at the NCAA championships, but she didn’t win two other races, and while her performances have been impressive, they aren’t exactly shattering records.
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At the meet, there were 27 all-time records broken, of which 15 were broken by University of Virginia athlete Kate Douglass.
None were broken by Thomas.
Thomas is currently ranked as the 15th fastest college swimmer, and her 500-yard time is about nine seconds behind multiple Olympic champion Katie Ledecky, who competed in the same event in 2017.
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Basically, the argument that Thomas is an existential threat to women’s sport doesn’t really stack up when you look at the numbers.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence contact Mindline Trans+ on 0300 330 5468. The line is open 8pm–midnight Mondays and Fridays and is run by trans volunteers
Tom Wood