This week, podcast host Joe Rogan slammed the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a biological male swimmer to compete on the women’s swim team.
Rogan made the remarks during “The Tim Dillon Show.” During the podcast, Rogan discussed biological men competing in sports as biological women. He specifically discussed UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas and MMA fighter Fallon Fox.
As I covered, Thomas, who is a biological male on UPenn’s women’s swim team, broke two national women’s records at a swim competition in Ohio last fall. Reportedly, in the 1,650-yard freestyle, the runner-up finished 38 seconds behind Thomas. Dailymail.com reported that Thomas’ teammates had considered boycotting the event, but were worried about being labeled as “transphobic” and would be banned from the Ivy League championship next month.
In 2013, MMA fighter Fallon Fox competed against three biological women before it was revealed that Fox is transgender. Rogan said that there was a difference between Fox and Thomas because Thomas’ teammates “don’t have a choice.”
“Look, I don’t have a problem with trans people. I have a problem with someone pretending that they’re a biological woman and fighting women,” Rogan said. “Once you say you’re trans, and everybody says, ‘okay, I’ll fight her’ – fine. I’m fine with that. In fact, MMA is one of the best places for that because you know exactly who your opponent is. Unlike this swimmer [Thomas], was it UPenn?”
“The swimmer that’s like, lapping all these biological women. That’s f*****, because they don’t have a choice. They have to compete against her,” Rogan added.
“The advantages are giant. The advantages – and I don’t think they go away in two years of, you know, hormone treatments or….it’s too much of an advantage. But, if a woman is a biological woman who wants to compete against a trans woman, I have zero problem with that,” Rogan continued. “My issue is – it’s not an anti-trans position, it’s like, you can’t pretend that that’s fair.”
Rogan pointed out that women and men have different “minds” and that hormone treatments don’t undo decades of “having testosterone pulsing through your system and strengthening your tendons and your muscles and changing the way your mind works.”
“It’s a different mind, the female mind,” Rogan said.
Last week, one of Thomas’ teammates spoke to the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity where she shared that Thomas “compares herself to Jackie Robinson” and “mocks” competing on the women’s team.
“All she does is make comments to people like, ‘At least I’m still No. 1 in the country,’ and those kinds of cocky things,” the female swimmer told the Examiner. “She doesn’t care how all this is affecting us and how this is affecting our relationship to swimming. She doesn't care, and it makes it really hard to like her.”
“It’s been super draining and frustrating,” she added, "because no one seems to care about the actual women.”
In the interview, Rogan’s remarks about Thomas and Fox begin at the 3:18 mark.