Welcome back to the Dirt Show. Today we're going to deal with a subject that probably nobody

will agree with me on. Indeed, we haven't even started yet. I just by announcing the subject

are should transgender women be banned or disqualified from participating in women's

swimming and other competitions. I've already gotten emails telling me this no such thing

as a transgender woman. I'm stupid, gullible, I'm some combination of these. What about

men being banned from women's competition? I don't expect a lot of agreement and frankly

I don't expect a lot of thoughtful analysis, but look, I'm a teacher. I've been teaching

for almost 60 years and my role is to teach people even when they don't want to be taught

and to introduce ideas that you might disagree with. So disagree away, but I'm going to give

you my views and I think they're thoughtful views and you, I'm sure, will disagree with

them, but at least listen. Here we go. This all begins with the International Swimming

Federation, making a decision by a pretty widespread vote to ban most almost all transgender

women's swimmers or people who compete in sports like Water Polo, High Diving, Ocean Swimming,

to forbid any transgender woman from competing against women who are born with female

chromosomes, unless, and here's what they say, they have not experienced any part of male puberty

beyond tenor stage two, which marks the start of physical development or before age 12, whichever

is later. So it means that athletes such as Leot Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania,

who when she was a male, was ranked, but not that highly ranked as a swimmer and when she became

a female, she says she's always been a female and I'm going to take that at face value.

She got ranked much higher indeed, probably at some point first in the world, based on her

swimming skills. And so the question that's raised and the question that was answered by Fina,

the International Swimming Federation, is no, no, we're not going to let you do that unless really you

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