The relentless bullying of trans athletes

Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Fighting Matters. I'm Steve Kwan from BJJ Mental Models. I got Jesse Walker from Rough Hands BJJ in Louisville, Kentucky. Jesse, how's it going? Speaker 2: What's up, guys? Things are good. Speaker 1: Glad to have you back, buddy. And I got Mike Mahaffey from Old Bastard BJJ and Magic BJJ. Mike, how are you doing, sir? Speaker 3: I am doing fantastic. I'm happy to I I get to spend some time this evening chatting with two of my favorite jiu-jitsu people. Makes me happy. Speaker 1: You know, I was I was saying, I think to you guys, that it sucks that like all my best buddies live around the world. There's literally no one up here in my area that I can hang out with and have these conversations with. So, maybe we need to start some sort of like, I don't know, chapter or meetup so that I selfishly have an excuse to get people together up here in Vancouver. Speaker 3: That's a great idea. Speaker 1: I would come to Vancouver anytime you want me to, Steve. Speaker 3: I would love to visit. Speaker 1: Maybe not maybe not soon. We were just talking about this before we hit record. Apparently, there's new um, I don't know if it applies to Americans yet, but for Canadians like myself, there's new restrictions coming into the states. You have to basically get completely screened if you want to cross the border, which a little bit scary. Speaker 3: I'm sure I'm already on a list somewhere. Like Speaker 1: If if this podcast has not put us on like Trump's naughty list, then I really have questions about how effective that naughty list is. I mean, they should easily be able to use AI to identify people like us and just be like, put put these guys right on the list. Kash Patel has eyes on us all the time. Speaker 3: Right. If we're not on the naughty list, we're not doing our jobs. It's all I have to say. Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, Jesse's definitely on the nice list. I see you've got your Christmas tree up. I think we talked about that in the last recording. Nice. Speaker 2: I'm a very festive dude. Speaker 1: Sure are. Speaking of naughty lists here, I think the the topic that we want to talk about today, there's a lot of people on my naughty list. Um, kind of a growing problem. We've obviously touched on this many times in prior episodes of Fighting Matters, but we wanted to use this episode to talk about um, really the undue hate directed towards especially the transgender community. Although you could broaden the net. I mean, there's a lot of minority groups that are um, really taking a lot of undue heat due to gender preferences and gender identity. But it really feels like the tip of the spear of that hate machine is hate targeted at transgender people. And this is a a big thing in the jiu-jitsu community especially, where you've got so many young men who lean right and they they seem to slop up a lot of this propaganda. When we publish episodes on this, we see a lot of these like not not just anti-trans comments, but hateful anti-trans comments. And I think it's important to draw that distinction, right? It's one thing to say, I, you know, I have questions about whether trans people should participate in cisgender sports divisions. It's another thing to go on a giant rant about how much you hate these people and they're destroying the fabric of society. And sadly, there's a lot of the latter. Um, I think this is a big problem in jiu-jitsu, not just because of the the moral reasons, but also because this is how hate movements start, right? They find a a small, easily disenfranchised minority that's easy to bully, and that kind of becomes the again, the tip of the spear for their attacks. Um, and they use that to get leverage and to grow their movements. And I think in jiu-jitsu, we're seeing this. There is a a shocking amount of hate for transgender people compared to how few transgender people actually practice the sport. But I'll leave it to you guys to maybe share your thoughts here. Um, I guess Mike, do you want to go first? What what are your thoughts on this? Because I know you've got some pretty strong opinions too. Speaker 3: Yeah, um, transgender people are getting scapegoated, right? And I have some very strong feelings about this. I've I know you guys know this. I think I've talked about it on this show before, that I've got family and loved ones who happen to be transgender, and I have friends who happen to be transgender. And it just makes me sick how much transgender people are getting scapegoated, not only in the broader society, but I've seen so much of it in the jiu-jitsu community. Um, because of some of the work I've done, the the charity work I've done benefiting uh, LGBTQ+ organizations, and I'm really outspoken about it. I've I've taken some heat. My eyes have been opened to some people that I had known and, you know, they turned out to be bigots towards transgender people. Um, and it it really bothers me, especially in a combat sport. It's already intimidating enough to go into a gym when you haven't trained jiu-jitsu and start jiu-jitsu. Uh, but if you happen to be transgender and there's this this zeitgeist in the jiu-jitsu community that you're hearing about, um, makes it 10 times as hard. And it it really it bothers me because I believe jiu-jitsu could be for everybody if they wanted to do it. Um, yeah, I I don't know what else to say in terms of my feelings about this. I just don't I don't we can get into it later in this conversation. I have some thoughts on how to uh, reach people and maybe um, have some conversations and maybe kind of bring people a little over toward our side of this. Um, but the scapegoating, right right now, like just to answer your first question, the scapegoating of it is disgusting in my opinion. I I don't think it's right or fair. They're just people like the three of us. Speaker 1: Jesse, how about you? What are your thoughts? Speaker 2: Yeah, so what are my thoughts? Um, as with most things, they're pretty nuanced, I think. You know, a couple of things that I wanted to make sure that we mentioned on the show. Um, number one, we did have a discussion about who to have on the show and if we wanted to have a trans athlete on the show with us. Um, and my feeling was, number one, we don't the vast majority of trans people that I know just want to be left the fuck alone. It would be we would do them if we could do them the service of ignoring them, they could go on living a happy life. Um, but I I also it's the problem is not theirs. In my opinion. The problem is really guys that look like the three of us. They're the ones causing the problems. Um, and it's it's actually a problem on that exists on kind of both sides of the opinion line. Uh, I think Mike a second ago, maybe it was Steve mentioned, you know, the issue of uh, trans athletes in competitive sports and combat sports in particular. I think that there is a good faith conversation that we can have about that. But nobody is able to even have that conversation because most people are hiding bad faith behind some of those arguments. So it it it becomes impossible to have any sort of productive conversation about this when we allow that kind of hate and scapegoating and nonsense in. Um, so I I just wanted to make that clear that, you know, we we are not trying to speak for anybody or for any population, rather, I want us to speak to the people that look like us and, you know, start figuring out how we can do better as a community. Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that as you mentioned, we've discussed before and I I do think it is of course important to platform transgender voices, which we've done in in the past and I want to continue to do. But as you said, Jesse, we have to be honest that if this problem's going to get solved, you know, it has to be from the demographic that is causing the problem, which has to solve it. Um, this this is something I've heard a lot as a lot of, you know, cisgender white people have started putting together really progressive podcasts, like I've had it and stuff like that. The message that keeps getting said is, it's important to hear people who come from that MAGA target demographic, right? Like, you know, able-bodied, cisgendered, white men and women. It's important to get them speaking up because they're less likely to be villainized and attacked as a target, right? It it means a lot when those people will step up and do the right thing and say the right thing when they say other when they see other people's rights being violated. I mean, man, you know, we had we had Molly Reese on the podcast, right? And we specifically tried to avoid talking about anything that would be controversial. We just really wanted to expose transgender figures in the community and show people that like these are just regular folks. And some of the comments that we got were really disheartening because it was very clear that these people had no interest in listening to the conversation at all, because if they'd listened, they would have known that their comments were completely invalid. They just saw a trans person and went on into attack mode. What that person said was completely irrelevant. So, I do think it's important that we platform those people, but I also think it's important that people like us, um, who aren't part of the attack demographic, stand up for that demographic. That's what martial arts is supposed to be about. So, let's do it. Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so my wife used to work in the domestic violence movement, in the in the domestic violence field. And, you know, one of the things that uh, one of the lessons I learned from her work in that field, uh, was that, you know, the problem lies mostly with men and the abusers, right? Men are typically, not that men can't be victims of domestic violence from other men or or female partners, but like the problem lies with the guys. And we can't put the onus of solving that problem on the victims, right? And so much the same as that, I think that's what we have to do with this uh, discrimination against transgender people. Like it's not their fault. We need to be the ones, like Jesse said, we need to be the ones to speak up and say something about it and hold other people that are like us to account, right? Speaker 1: My my feeling is that for a lot of these people who have very strongly held hate hate-based opinions about transgender people, they must have just never met or befriended a transgender person or must not have one in their family. Because if you have, if you actually get to know uh, someone who's trans, you will be shocked by the way that they are treated. Um, I I don't want to dox anyone, so I'm going to avoid details here, but I have a friend who came out as trans, um, and almost immediately his family fell apart, his kid was taken from him. Um, it just turned into an an absolute disaster. And seeing what happened to him after the transition, really opened my eyes to the fact that there is a lot of persecution um, that happens that targets these people. Uh, I I really think that this is, you know, at least in terms of North America, this is one of the major targeted groups when it comes to discrimination and hate. And much like we've seen in the past from other extremist movements, the group that they're targeting is very small and not big enough or powerful enough to defend themselves, right? It's real easy to hate on a group that represents 1% of the population or less. But that just goes to show how stupid it is to hate these groups because they have, like you said, Jesse, they have zero impact on your life whatsoever. But yet there there are people who have built their entire identities, in some cases their entire businesses around hating trans people and disparaging trans people. And, um, it really does bother me because you don't have to be like, you don't have to be trans or you don't have to be like, I I I love transgender culture to understand that what is happening to transgender people is objectively wrong by by any measure. I mean, if this were any other group being treated this way, people would be freaking out. But because it's an easy target, they a lot of people get away with attacking them and unfortunately, a lot of people choose them to attack specifically because they can't defend themselves. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm always so curious and maybe that's who we should have brought on. Maybe we should have found a guest that kind of feels the other way so that we could have at least tried to have some dialogue with them. Um, it's always so odd to me when hate gets brought into the conversation that people have feelings so strong about something that they're really not that connected to. Um, that they're they're willing to hurt others that they don't know, um, and restrict and take rights away from them. Um, it's such a it's such a bizarre phenomena to me. And, you know, if I had to guess, and, you know, I don't know that we're going to convince anyone tonight about and I've said this before, right? There's lots of cultures and lots of communities out there that I don't fucking understand, right? And they don't make any damn sense to me. Guess what? It doesn't fucking matter. Calculus doesn't make any sense to me either, but it's out there in the world and we we got to deal with it, right? Um, so it it it's really bizarre how threatened people feel, um, by especially in the jiu-jitsu community. And, you know, the more I sit with it, the more I think it is in some way tied, um, to also the way women are treated. And it's this weird if I were to just boil it down, my suspicion is that it is because most men were never taught the difference between sexual energy and physical intimacy. Right? So the the actual the the very act of rolling or training with a trans person is somehow sexualized in their brains, which makes it icky to them. Um, in the same way that, you know, they're rolling with women and breathing heavy and, oh, I like this position. You know, all the nasty shit that we've, you know, that we've heard time and time again. But then when we direct that at a trans person, it just breaks their brain and scares them maybe even and then leads to this kind of hateful, even the idea of doing it, whether they've done it or not. And most haven't, right? Like you said, it's not like there's parades and gigantic hordes of trans people invading America, right? They're not many of them out there. They're it's a it's a very small and rare community. Um, that's really not a threat to any of us. Uh, so it it's it's a peculiar thing to me for sure. Speaker 3: I've heard that before, Jesse, that uh, some of the the fear and hatred of trans people is rooted in misogyny. And, you know, while I don't haven't done any like academic study on that, I find it interesting because most of the negative propaganda I hear about trans people tends to be about trans women and not trans men. Right? Like you don't hear people complaining about somebody who was assigned female at birth and transitioned to a male competing in sports. Right? You don't hear complaining about uh, those people in restrooms, right? It's always the trans women who tend to be getting most of the flack. You know, oh, there's a trans woman in the bathroom or there's a trans woman on my, you know, rec softball league and, you know, how unfair and awful that is. So I can believe that some of it is also rooted in misogyny as well. Speaker 1: We were, um, we're in the process of publishing an audio documentary at BJJ Mental Models on kind of the dark side of martial arts history. It's really interesting stuff. And I've got an episode that I just launched yesterday, um, about misinformation and uh, Chechen warlords and how they use um, martial arts for recruitment, which I found just absolutely fascinating. I mean, there's this massive movement of, um, basically far-right extremists from over in that part of the world who are now trying to get their fighters into the UFC and basically they they use martial arts as a far-right recruitment ground and it's kind of the basis for their propaganda. And listening to that chat and some of the other chats that we've done in that series, I realized that this is a pattern. When you look back at any of these like far-right movements, there is always a heavily misogynistic element to it. There's element of like returning men to their former glory. And the way they do that is by painting someone as the villain. And that villain can be women or minorities or non-binary people or some combination thereof. But it just seems if you look back in history, there has always been a a gender-based scapegoat that is used to accelerate these movements. And so there's something about that that propaganda approach that seems to especially resonate with people who are really disenfranchised and especially men who are really disenfranchised. And that makes me super sad to see, right? I mean, it's just it's it's a a textbook open-shut case of targeting and discriminating against someone who's done nothing to you for no reason. But that seems to be part of the playbook, um, right? And you see this in in the states, right? Donald Trump just said that what what did he just say today or the other day that the Democrats want everyone in your family to be transgender? What a fucking lie. Like just a just a complete on your face lie. Uh, and it's complete bullshit. And you got to think that even his dumbest, most brainwashed supporters know it's bullshit. But the hate speaks for itself. And I I think for a lot of people, the factuality of what he's saying is less important than the fact that he's he's hating the right people from their perspective. And so that's why they follow him. And that's what's so scary about this stuff, right? I mean, as the the saying goes, um, if you can, you know, if you can laser focus people on who you want them to hate, you can control them in a lot of other ways. And that's just a very a very scary thing because we see right now that we're living through history. The exact same mistakes are being made once again, um, and it seems like we're barreling off the cliff and no one is really hitting the brakes hard enough to stop it. Speaker 2: And you know, for the for the, you know, the facts versus feelings crowd out there, it it's wild to me that they don't realize if you could just genie blink all trans people out of existence right at this moment, for the vast majority of the world, it would impact their life zero. Like, it wouldn't improve it, it wouldn't make it worse. They probably wouldn't even be able to tell a difference. Um, so the fact that we're even, you know, in some ways building presidential campaigns around this issue is absolute insanity to me. Um, and the fact that people are carrying around such strong feelings. Um, you know, let's have conversations. I think that's great, right? There's there's there there are meaningful, good faith conversations that we can have about how we all interact in common spaces in in society. Let's let's talk that out. But as as soon as hate enters the picture, like, there's nothing to talk about anymore. That I mean, it it literally is, you know, conversation terminating. Like, I I I that's not a place that we can start from. It's it's frustrating. Speaker 3: Funny you should mention having conversations because uh, I've been uh, my wife and I have been doing some work with an organization called Equality Michigan, uh, around uh, transgender rights in the state of Michigan. And uh, one of the things that we're going to be doing, going to be doing this weekend actually, is some door knocking. Uh, and we're going to do uh, some deep canvassing is what they call it. And we've had some training on this and the the idea is to reach people who are reachable, right? We're not trying to knock on the doors of uh, people with the swastika flags in their front window or the Make America Great Again hats on. We're trying to uh, apparently the addresses we're being given to knock on have been vetted uh, for voting habits and stuff like that. And we're trying to reach people who aren't in complete agreement with us, uh, but aren't um, so far down the hate rabbit hole that we can't talk to them. And and the goal of this is just to tell stories and use ourselves and our loved ones with their permission as examples and try to like educate people that trans people are just people. Right? And, you know, the whole goal of this is to have conversations and get trans people to become humanized because it's hard to hate a whole group of people when you know some of them or when you know somebody who knows and loves some of them. You know, so that's one of the tactics that that we're working on. Um, I want to get one of the trainers from Equality Michigan to come Michigan to come on the show. She's actually agreed, but super super busy, so have to nail her down for some time. But there's some uh, academic data around uh, the efficacy of deep canvassing like this and having conversations with people. You know, um, it's more than just like uh, shilling for a candidate and showing up and giving a flyer at the door. Like I guess the goal is to have long deep conversations with folks who are willing to talk. So, Speaker 2: And Mike, I feel like that is so important. Um, because, you know, honestly, I feel like both sides, if there are really only just two sides, are very much to blame about being kind of absolutionist, right? In terms of you need to agree with me 100%. I it goes back to the purity testing thing we've talked about so many times, right? Um, I don't think that most, again, good faith people, um, are asking for 100% agreement. It's just, hey, let's try. Let's start having some conversations. Um, and, you know, we do know, we've we've seen it. I think it most uh, the illustration of it happened in my eyes and in my lifetime during the kind of revolution around uh, lesbian and gay people that there was a certain amount of the population that was just okay with it out of the box. Like, it's fine that they exist. And then there's another huge chunk of the population that didn't get okay with it until it hit home. Until it was somebody that they knew, somebody that they loved, that they were seeing them get persecuted and it was affecting their life. And then all of a sudden, oh, I'm okay with gay people. I'm okay with lesbians. I'm okay with, you know, um, and maybe eventually there's going to have to be that that sort of reckoning, if that's the right word. Um, and I think those kinds of conversations, you know, meet a trans person is eventually going to, you know, have to be what it is uh, for some people to kind of get over that hump, which is unfortunate that they can't have enough empathy to say, you know, well, Mike's got somebody in his life that is a loved one. I don't want to see anything bad happen to them because I love Mike. Um, that should be enough. But for a lot of people, it's not. They need it really to hit home directly, which is which is a bummer, especially because it's such a small community, right? Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 1: Right. I I think what you guys say is completely correct. Um, we need to engage people in the real world and have those long deep conversations in the real world. It's so easy to just create internet content, right? That's and which is not to say that that's easy, but it's not a complete solution. Someone needs to be having these kinds of conversations and it's good and helpful when people do share their feelings and their beliefs on the internet like this and and do the right thing and speak up. That does matter. But at the end of the day, what you do in person also makes a tremendous difference. And that's getting harder and harder to get people to do, which is one of the reasons a lot of these far-right groups are having success is because they're willing to do that, right? The active clubs, which we've talked about so many times, part of the secret to why they're growing is because they get together in person and they they create a community in person. And it's a lot easier to persuade someone if you make them part of your community first, right? And so, I think we have to be careful in terms of how people like us communicate because if all we do is just, you know, post giant rants on the internet, it's easy for other people to turn away from us. And that that isn't what we want to do if someone is is reachable, right? Because there are, you know, we were talking about this just before we hit record. Yeah, there's people who are just irredeemable. There's a lot of them, but they're not who we're speaking to. There's also people that can be reached. Um, maybe they just don't have the right information yet or they don't have the enough of a lived experience to have have refined their opinion yet, but there are people who are reachable. Um, something else that I I wanted to bring up here while we're on the topic of uh, these far-right groups is when when trans people get attacked, usually this is wrapped in this veneer of rationality. Like, hey, I I'm not hating. I'm just I'm just following what the science says or I'm just being practical or realistic. And again, this is a playbook that you will hear uh, used by racists as well, used by bigots as well. Um, so for example, in the case of racism, there is this um, tactic that a lot of far-right influencers will use where they'll say something to the effect of, oh, I'm not saying that I hate black people, but I'm just I'm just a race realist. Here's some misinterpreted BS study that I'm citing that proves my point. It's not that I'm being racist, it's that the science justifies my opinion, which of course is total bullshit. But if you're a good enough speaker and orator and you're talking to impressionable people who already want to believe you, then you can you can skate by on that and you can convince people of things under the veneer of rationality when it's not rational at all. And I think the trans people get the exact same treatment there. I mean, Jesse, you touched about this, like the from a rational perspective, the number of the impact of say trans athletes, um, to the average American is effectively zero, right? But that said, Americans convince themselves that this was a big enough problem that they voted an election to decide it, right? That was ultimately probably one of the main things that steered this election was, um, Donald Trump put a bunch of words into Kamala Harris's mouth that she never said. She did not do a an adequate enough job of refuting that. And there were enough Americans who actually believed this. Um, and you will you will hear this kind of rationality argument, this fake rationality from a lot of people who are attacking trans people. So in the case of sports, they'll say, well, it's just common sense that men and women shouldn't wrestle together. Strength advantage, yada yada yada. We can't have men on women's podiums. And so they will take this thing that sounds sort of sensible at first glance, but then once you unpack it, you realize like this is a completely fabricated problem. If if if there were if there were actually an epidemic of like trans women completely dominating every sport in America to the point where a cisgendered woman has no chance at all. Okay, fine. We could complain about that. We could talk about rebalancing the field in the other direction to make it fair. But show me the data. Like, show me this army of trans women who are disrupting the sporting scene. It never happened. There are more like accused pedophiles in the Trump administration than there are high-level trans athletes in America, right? It is a there is a very, very, very small group of trans people who can perform at that elite level for a variety of reasons, which we can even talk about a little bit here. Um, but it just it frustrates me to see this because often people will come at you and they they'll say, oh, I'm not I'm not hating. It's not that I hate them. It's just from a science standpoint, I disagree with having them compete in this in this division. And Jesse, to your point, yeah, we can we can and maybe we should have a an unbiased rational discussion about that. But it's almost impossible to do now because that talking point has been so heavily corrupted that if someone brings it up, you know that the next thing that's going to come that's going to come out of their mouth is some really awful anti-trans stuff, right? Like the the two are so married together at this point that you can't untangle them easily. I mean, I would love to just sit down and have a completely rational discussion about trans athletes with someone, but I have yet to find a person who can do that because it will inevitably turn into the conversation will steer into a direction where it's clear that this is guided by feelings and not facts. This is how they feel about trans people who they don't even know, and it's not backed by any objective reality whatsoever. Right? I mean, and go on, Jesse. Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let me give you another example. Um, and it's one that I have actually seen and experienced out in the world. Um, and it it is I think a real and legitimate concern that parents have, and it's this idea of social contagion. Right? And at its at its most insidious, it's that, you know, these trans people are going to turn all our kids trans and, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And, you know, there's that hateful aspect of it. But, but, we have seen that there does seem to be in the same way like that kids are emo or kids are goth or kids are this or that, that there has been in the last 10 years, uh, a higher incident rate of, you know, kids espousing some sort of gender non-conformity, whatever that happens to look like. Um, and then it's something that they kind of grow out of, right? Um, and then when you couple that with things like, well, should we let doctors start treating kids for, you know, all of these are real legitimate conversations that we can have, but so much of it, you know, just like so many other things in America right now, people find that fear, that concern and they turn it up to fucking 11 and everybody goes crazy. And our ability to have any rational conversations about it goes out the fucking window. Um, and so we're at a place now that it's like, you you're you're absolutely right. The when you hear somebody start with something that sounds like a rational conversation topic, almost immediately flips on their next point to be like, and and then they just say something absolutely insane. Um, it's it's a real problem. I'm not sure how to I'm not sure how to get past it. Speaker 3: I mean, speaking as a parent with some experience, uh, around this issue, you know, one of the things I always counter with when people start to go off the rails is like transitioning, it's not as simple as just going to your doctor and saying, guess what? I'm trans. Give me all the drugs and give me all the surgery right now. Like it's an extensive process. And at least, you know, in the states, in my state, in Michigan, you've got to have psychological evaluations, you've got to have, you know, your therapist sign off on stuff. You've got to consult with a doctor. Like there's a lot of hoops to jump through. You know, and so this idea, especially with sports, that some cisgendered male is just going to throw on a dress and be like, all right, I'm competing in the uh, women's division at Master Worlds now. Uh, that's just not feasible. Right? Like there's such a long Speaker 2: Probably wouldn't win that either. Speaker 3: God, no. Look, if we're going to Speaker 1: As an avid competitor, I will tell you that if any organization wants to uh, strictly ban all trans people from competing in jiu-jitsu, they better freaking test every single competitor at Master Worlds for steroids first. Because you want to talk about gender-affirming care, there are some juiced-ass motherfuckers in Vegas at Master Worlds. Speaker 2: And this is part of the conversation that we have to have, right? Speaker 1: This is a perfect example of the conversation and and the double standard there, right? People are completely against hormone therapy in one direction, but they're all in favor of it in another. And this this I have a real problem with because the the total inconsistency that people hold those two opinions at the same time really tells me that this is not based on facts, it's based on feelings. Because if you really if you really cared about the testosterone and hormone levels of the people in competition, the first thing you would do is ban PEDs. Because that is a way, way bigger problem than transgender athletes, right? Way bigger problem. By any stretch. You want to measure the harm to the athlete, you want to measure unfairness, um, you want to measure health concerns, uh, by however you want to cut it, PEDs are a bigger problem in sports than trans athletes, and it's not even close, right? If the situation were flipped and we had reason to believe that like 90% of athletes in MMA or in jiu-jitsu were secretly transgender, then okay, we could have that conversation. It would it would be a high priority. But right now, we know, you know, there's people who who say, and I who knows what the real number is, but there are there are people who who train and and participate heavily in professional MMA and jiu-jitsu and they say like basically everyone is on sauce. That is a way bigger problem by any metric, right? That you that you want to measure. It's a way bigger problem than trans athletes. And again, like if you want to if someone wants to sit down and rationally unpack whether trans athletes should be in sports, okay, we could do that. But the first thing you have to understand is, this isn't a new problem. This was done by I mean, the Olympic Committee did this like 25 years ago. And their finding was basically that this is an is an is a minuscule problem, right? If that changed, if it turned out that, okay, you know what, there's now this influx of trans athletes that are disrupting the sport. Okay, we can talk about that. But at this point in time, it is an entirely fabricated problem, right? It's entirely fabricated. Um, I mean, if you want to if you want to take a look at that, look at look at the number of transgender athletes winning at high levels pre-Trump administration and post. And you will not see a meaningful difference because there weren't any really beforehand either. So it's not like all of this anti-woke anti-DEI shit changed anything. It was attacking a boogeyman. Um, and yeah, I mean, we can there's reasons why you could criticize like, um, you know, having trans athletes in sports, depending on the sport, is actually not as simple a problem as people think it would be. Um, it's one thing if you're talking pre-transition, in that case, I think it's much clearer. But if you're talking post-transition, it actually gets quite complicated because people don't understand um, how much of a handicap it is to your performance to have to go through gender transition therapy. Like think think of all of the things that PEDs do and we, you know, we talk about how how uh, how much of a difference PEDs make and how impactful they can be. Well, imagine that in reverse. Because that's basically what happens when you do transition therapy in the other direction, right? There's a reason why you don't see a lot of of trans athletes winning at high-level competitions. Now, there there is some reason to believe, and of course, this is not like heavily decided science, but there is some reason to believe that if you were born male, you know, you'll even after transition, you're always going to carry certain advantages, especially in terms of putting on muscle. They see this with um, for example, steroid use. There was a study a while ago, um, that I remember Dave Meltzer talking about this, um, some findings that if you were previously on steroids, even if you stop, in the future, it will be easier for you to put back on that muscle again because your body's been trained to do that. Plausibly, that could be the case with trans athletes. So I'm not saying it's a completely fair slate. Um, but I am saying that it's nowhere near the problem that people are making it out to be. And when you see a tiny, insignificant problem like this, which is becoming a national level issue, you know that you're being exploited, right? You know that there's propaganda at play to steer your opinion and they're bullying someone to do it. And and really that's the message that I I want to have here. Like, look, I would love to get back to the place where we could have a rational chat about whether trans athletes should be in what sport. Right now, I just want trans athletes to have basic human rights, right? Like if we could get there, that would be lovely because then we can start talking about the sport stuff again. Right now, we got bigger problems. Speaker 2: Right. And that's it, right? At the end of the day, regardless of how you feel about anything about them, they are still human beings. And they are worthy of dignity and the same human rights that are written on all those old pieces of paper that afford us all the things that we're able to do. Um, just that, like the fact that we're unable to connect to their humanity and just see them as people that are out there fucking struggling in the world the same way the rest of us are, for fuck's sake. Um, just that alone should get rid of all of the hate. For some reason, we just cannot get past it. Speaker 3: We've been fed propaganda. I mean, there's grifters like Riley Gaines out there, like doing doing the book tour or whatever she's doing and bitching about some trans athlete swimmer, uh, that Riley was in fifth place anyway, wasn't she? Like, what is she complaining about? Speaker 1: Transgender athlete held her back from almost making the podium in fourth place, Mike. What a travesty. Speaker 3: Right. I know. I know. So, I mean, people there's there's a lot of propaganda out there, you know, just feeding on people's fear. Um, that it's hard hard to get around. Uh, which is why, like we talked about a few minutes ago, like why I'm going out door knocking with Equality Michigan this weekend, right? We're going to try to have some conversations and see how it goes. Speaker 2: Which, you know, speaking of the misogyny thing, I also think it's so funny that all of a sudden, all these fucking big burly dudes are now interested in fucking women's sports. Like, you all didn't give a shit about women's sports two decades ago. Speaker 1: Right. Two years ago, they didn't give a shit about women's sports. Speaker 2: Right? Why the fuck do you care now? Speaker 3: All the people shitting on the WNBA are now like up in arms that there might be a trans athlete somewhere. Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and then the other piece of this is all of that hate starts to spill out to the rest of the women, right? Uh, how how often are we seeing like all of the all of the other female athletes out in the world like, oh, that's a dude. That's, you know, I I bet uh, you know, whoever it is. If they've got, you know, big muscles or they're high-performing athletes, everybody just automatically, oh, they're trans. They're a dude. They're this. They're that. Um, so it's spilling out into outside of the community. Um, it it's just it's hurting all of us. Speaker 1: It is. It is. Speaker 3: I I'm curious. One of the one of the places I wanted to take this conversation, uh, and we talked a little bit about it before we recorded, um, I want to bring it back to jiu-jitsu gyms and like what we can do as coaches, and I know I think Jesse, you're the only one on this call that's a gym owner. Like what we can do to make our spaces safe and inclusive for everybody, which obviously includes trans people, and support the not only the trans athletes, but the the coaches who are welcoming. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I have I have thoughts, but I'd I'd love to hear from you guys. Speaker 1: Yeah, Steve, if you got something, I I'm still kind of formulating, so I I would love if you wanted to start in on that. Speaker 3: Yeah, it it's a tough one. I mean, you know, the the obvious thing, the the kind of pithy thing is you could put up symbols, right? You could put up a pride flag or whatever. You know, Stefan suggested that and was misquoted and dragged through the mud on that. But there's there's some wisdom to that, right? I mean, look, if you if you put up that symbol, you're number one, you're directly sending a message to people in that demographic that they're welcome there. And the side benefit is number two, it's probably a bit of an asshole filter because if someone walks up to your gym and they want to train there and they see a pride flag out front and that's enough of a reason to make them go somewhere else, you dodged a bullet there. You are better off not having them there. So that that's one thing. But I also get the statement that a lot of people want to keep symbols out of the gym, right? Which I understand, um, because God, you start with one and I mean, it's a fair point. How come they get a symbol and I don't, right? And it theoretically, at the end of the day, to make everyone happy, you have to have all of your symbols in the gym. And so I I don't think you need to do that by any stretch. It's more about how you act and how you behave. Um, and a lot of it is just being explicit and not assuming. There's a lot of people I know who are have really good hearts and they would have no issue with trans people training at their gym. But my question to them would be, do trans people know that, right? Because maybe you know that. I know your heart. I know you well, but if some rando walks in off the gym and they see like buff martial arts guy with a black belt and the only thing they know about you is the stereotype, right? And again, this is getting into the harm of stereotypes. They're probably going to make assumptions about what kind of person you are and whether they would be welcome there. And they have reason to do so. We have people in our community who are transgender and and have been assaulted at the gym because of that, right? Like this is a thing that happens and there is a reason why trans people need to be careful and cautious in today's society, especially going into a martial arts gym, which is probably statistically going to lean far right. So, the best thing you can do as a coach is just be explicit about who's welcome in your gym and by virtue of that, be explicit about who's not welcome in your gym. And this just comes down to your code of conduct. Um, you don't have to have a pride flag on the wall if you don't want to, but every gym should have a code of conduct that says like, everyone who's non-disruptive and non-hateful, you know, this is an inclusive gym. We welcome all as long as you are welcoming to everyone else as well. And we don't stand up for hate, right? If someone's going to come into the gym and hate on other students and and make other people feel unsafe, they're gone. I would regardless of your political beliefs and leanings, I would consider that to be the benchmark for pretty much any single quality gym in the world, really. And I mean, granted, we may have different religions and political beliefs and cultures, but I would hope that most people in the martial arts community can agree on that. Like we should want people to come into the gym and not exclude them. Um, and if someone can meet you there, like I I think that's that's important and that sends a message. And that can be as simple as, hey, you've got the code of conduct on the wall. You give the speech to all new students about what's okay and what's not okay, which frankly, you should be doing anyway, regardless of this issue. I think if you do that, you set the right tone. And that does not require you to put up a bunch of symbols or vote a particular way. It's just about good solid morals that everyone should be able to agree on. Um, and and I think that again, even if you don't even if you don't care whatsoever about this issue, just as a sane jiu-jitsu instructor, you should be having the do's and don'ts conversation with every student anyway, right? So that's that would be my suggestion. At the bare minimum, don't assume that people know that you're willing to include them there. Tell them that. And also tell them what you're not willing to allow and usually that's going to be the flip side of inclusion. Speaker 3: Right. That Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons that I have been in the past year so explicit about, you know, my feelings about this and, you know, making sure people know that when they're on the mat with me, they're safe. Uh, that we welcome everybody. You know, I'm not I don't own our gym, but I'm one of the head coaches. I've been there since day one. Um, and I feel like I have to represent Magic BJJ in a way that lets everybody know that we'll welcome anybody who's not a dickhead. I we somebody came into open mat uh, last week and asked about a drop-in fee. And, you know, Matt, our head coach has said before, we only charge drop-in fees to assholes. And so I asked him, are you an asshole? No. So, that's free. Come on in. If you're a jerk, we'll charge you a drop-in fee before you leave. But, you know, that's one of the reasons I've been so explicit, you know, and I'll wear I wore it tonight to train in the uh, uh, rash guard that Jeff Shaw gave me with the rainbow flag on it and stuff. And I'll just do little things like that on purpose, right? Just to make sure people know, hey, you're welcome here. It's okay. And I'm not going to put up with any disrespect of anybody on our mats. Speaker 2: Yeah. We and I don't know that I've talked about it on the podcast. I know we've talked about it offline. I I tend to not for our school, I don't put big symbols out and it's not because then everybody wants to be represented. I don't want us to become a target because we do have at-risk people at our school. And to the outward-facing world, I would like us to just look like a jiu-jitsu school. But in the community, it is well known in both, you know, the LGBTQ+ community and as well as the, you know, cis jiu-jitsu, you know, we're kind of known as the trans gym, right? Uh, whether that's uh, pejorative or not, uh, depending on uh, the source. But, you know, I'll do little things like, I keep my toenails painted all the time, which seems silly, but it's a it's a gender non-conforming behavior, right? And it confuses the the kids and the kids program sometimes and I'm like, hey, I like having my nails painted. You should paint your toenails too. You might like it. Uh, you know, it's okay for me to have my toenails painted. Um, and it's usually a great litmus test because if someone has big feelings about it, they're probably an asshole. Um, and it's just a signal to everybody else that, you know, this fucking big burly white dude in the front of the room, that motherfucker's got his toenails painted. That's kind of bizarre. Um, but it's a signal. Speaker 1: That's why we're a hot pink gi. Speaker 2: Right. It's it's a it's a signal, um, that is not, you know, going to make us a target, but let's everybody know inside like, oh, that's what this place is about. I got it. Um, so I think there are things that we can do that that can kind of walk that line, uh, of not endangering the people at the school, which I'm always just really sensitive about. Um, but also letting people know what we're about. And what we're not about, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. And that is a fair point too. I mean, Mike, I I know we've had this conversation like in Michigan, um, after Trump's re-election, there were like literal Nazis brigading businesses with pride flags and just trying to intimidate them and standing outside with guns, right? So, it's a it's a valid concern if you start putting symbols up. And and this is part of the reason why I hate this shit when uh, you know, people jump on our buddy Stefan for talking about this stuff because they again, this is just more bullying using trans and gay people as the as the target. Um, in this case, not not Stefan specifically, but the cause that he's advocating for. There are very real security and safety risks to people in this community. I think that maybe people who live in their, you know, straight white MAGA Republican bubble, they don't understand this, but it it is it is not always safe to rock that that pride flag, right? It takes bravery to do that. I mean, people talk about virtue signaling. Let me tell you, rocking a pride flag is a braver thing than rocking a MAGA cap, right? Because you know that the trans people aren't going to come and shoot you. The opposite is not necessarily true. So, it it really is important to bear that in mind. I mean, of course, if you're comfortable, um, displaying those symbols, that's one option. But yeah, I I don't begrudge anyone for not wanting to do that because it drags your gym into a war zone that you might not want it to become the the topic of conversation about. Speaker 3: Mhm. Yeah, I we don't I don't we don't have any symbols up per se. I'm like I'm the symbol. I'll wear all the rainbow stuff, you know, I'll wear the hot pink gi. Like I've got a uh a uh Star Wars custom-made Star Wars Rebellion pin that's done in the rainbow colors that I have on my combat base knit beanie, you know, I I think it's super cool and I do it on purpose. Um, but I but I just found out that on our waiver, we have a question asking about your gender identity. Like I've been there since day one. I haven't signed a waiver in 20 years, right? So I didn't sign that one, but uh a student brought it to my attention. Like not in a negative way, just like, huh, interesting. And like that made me really proud too that that there's another like way to let people know subtly that yeah, you're everyone's welcome here. Like we're not we're going to back you whether you're white, cis, black, gay, Asian, trans, like it doesn't matter. Speaker 1: Yeah. That's another big asshole filter, right? I mean, like, look, I I get it. I get it that some people probably go crazy with the pronouns. And I get that for a lot of other people, they might find that obnoxious. But at the end of the day, if someone else wanting to be addressed a certain way really bothers you and is like a huge problem for you, you might be an asshole. There's just really no way around that. Speaker 2: Especially when you're calling the guy at the front of the room fucking professor. Fucking grow up. Speaker 1: You're not a fucking professor. You you didn't even graduate high school. You want me to call you professor? Speaker 3: We we did we did have a visitor this week from out of state who uh kept calling me professor and I kept saying, no, no, just Mike, just Mike. And he's like, well, I'll be honest, I met a lot of people this week. Professor's a lot easier to remember than you than Mike. I'm like, okay, that's fair. Totally fair. Speaker 1: There you go. Jesse, how about you, sir? If people want to train with you, where can they find you? Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find us in Louisville, Kentucky at Rough Hands BJJ, roughhandsbjj.com and on all the socials. Come see us. We'd love to train with you. Speaker 1: Amazing. And I'm online at BJJ Mental Models. If hey, if you guys want to check out that uh, that audio doc we're making about the dark side of martial arts history, you can check it out there. Really interesting stuff. Speaker 2: Highly recommended. Speaker 1: It's it's fascinating, man. I've learned so much about Chechen warlords. I had no idea that there was this like Chechen MMA to fascist pipeline, but it's fucking scary because you you hear this and you realize like, man, all of this shit is really intertwined and this is a playbook that is not new. This is a tale as old as time, right? Um, appealing to this nostalgic idea of masculinity and carving off enemies that you can attack. This is like the the classic fascist dictator's playbook and we're living through it again. So, the more that you know about it, the easier it is to stop it. But anyway, guys, thanks so much for doing this. Great chat as always. Speaker 2: See you next time, guys. Speaker 3: Good night, folks. Appreciate you guys. Speaker 1: Take care, all.