 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the video. Salah Mike, 33 Barbell, good company. Today we got a topic that's a little bit more controversial. Talking about the trans community in competition and sport and in particular USA powerlifting, the USAPL as we all know it. The probably biggest tested federation on the planet. A lot of us competed in it. A lot of us have friends or coaches in that space. And Fox News reported over the weekend, or yesterday I believe, on a hearing that was ordered to allow transgender women to compete with biological female in the women's division after losing this discrimination case. I want to start off by, you guys know me, I believe in good company, I believe in community and culture and the beauty of the barbell and the beauty of fitness. It doesn't matter who you voted for, it doesn't matter your income, who you love, who you don't love, what you look like, who your partners are, or what you believe in. We can all get better in the gym and we can all be a community under the same roof, getting stronger and getting healthier. That to be said, I rarely talk politics, but when it interconnects with what we are doing, I think it's worthwhile to have the discussion. I'm not the most educated on the topic, although I've followed it for multiple years now with the Olympics and CrossFit and other federations that have gone through similar cases. But I do think that it deserves a conversation. The only way to get better as a community and to handle hard things and hard topics is to talk about them. The more we ignore them or the more we just throw hate or words to the world, rather than trying to understand each other, the less likely we'll be to actually grow together. So I'm gonna try to do that the best I can. Know that I mean no insult to any one person group in the world if I misspeak, it's out of doing this in one take. Because I think authenticity and being genuine as I can and being me is most important rather than reading from a prompter. If you see me on my phone, it's because I'm gonna read some blurbs from Fox News themselves. And otherwise I'm just gonna give you my opinion on the matter. I would love for you guys to comment below, but if it gets too weird, we'll probably turn off comments because I just don't want anything negative in there. You can have your opinion, you can share your thoughts and we can have discussion, but there's no room for hate or anything weird to happen. There's enough of that in this world and there's enough of that on the internet. We don't need it on my channel and we don't need it in this sport. So we were literally coming back from the Arnold and we saw a tweet out by Fox News. I guess this was reported on by Sage Steel ESPN and she says, yes, this is unfair to women in a response to Elon Musk on Twitter. The irony of this decision being made is that it's happening at the beginning of women's history month, which is true. We're now sitting at like the sixth or seventh of March. It sounds like she was the only one at ESPN to really start to speak about it. I did scroll around on Twitter itself and there was a lot of bigger names making comments, left and right, Zuby Music was starting a thread, as well as Elon Musk himself. This news has traveled fast, which is sad that this is the way that our sport and our community has to get a light shine on it is controversy and people bickering and fighting. I wish she was over something more positive, like the competition at the Arnold. Shout out to Avilu, our lifter who won it and a lot of fun things happening there. Michelle Tafoya says, transgender women have a wide chromosome, biological women do not. There are genetic differences. Women's sports needs to be protected. USA powerlifting must let transgender athletes compete in women's division after long discrimination case. She reposted the Fox News as well. I think one big thing for me, speaking from the knowledge I have within sports, strength and conditioning, nutrition, powerlifting, is that Wada, who runs the anti-doping and a lot of the drugs around the Olympics, made rules a couple years ago that I believe after transitioning you have two years and then you can compete as a transgender athlete in the Olympics or at least try to get yourself there. We have the most popular stories I believe are the New Zealand weightlifter and then Fallon Fox I believe is her name who made big waves in women's MMA a couple years back and there's a lot of talk around that. I've heard of again of similar lawsuits happening within the US APL and also CrossFit over the last decade. So this is no new matter, but this ruling I believe is one of the first to hold up and enforce a federation or a league to allow transgender women to compete. I don't know if that goes for transgender men, which is a whole nother discussion, right? It is much less likely that we see that happen and that's because I believe that there are large biological differences that allow us to compete at the highest level as any sport. Let me first off say that powerlifting is unlike any other sport where there really isn't much of a professional scene. Some people call themselves pro-paralyptors. Some people get paid, but that is literally one out of 50,000 and I know the odds to get paid in any sport are rare, right? The basketball same thing, the chances are to get to the NBA are very rare, but in this sport in particular, it's not driven by money, it is driven by the community. I say and mention all that, that I believe that the beauty of powerlifting is that it is for everyone, any age, any circumstances or background. I think that anyone should be able to participate in the sport of getting stronger and put themselves on the line to test their strength in front of judges in whatever federation they like. I do believe the competition portion of it should probably be biological and I mean no offense to anyone when I say that, but there are such large differences in the capabilities and especially in this sport where don't be offended by powerlifting friends, but the skill is very low. It is almost purely strength. Yes, their skill to the sport, but when you compare it to something like golf, baseball, football, the skill portion, the technique portion of this is minuscule. That being said, right? What we're born with, musculature, ligaments, tendons, all matters a lot. Water, when they start to look at things, they tend to look at hormones a lot. And yeah, testosterone is an anabolic hormone that males have a lot of and allows us to be a little bit stronger, but there's other biological necessities that allow you to be stronger and perform differently in athletics. Bone, ligament, tendon strength, all have genetic factors and gender or like biological factors. Angles of hips and joints, something that's commonly known as the q-angle, which is basically the angle of a hip to knee. Often biological women have wider hips and their knees go inwards, so you'll see a slant in their thigh when they're standing. This actually tends to be a detriment to a lot of athletes as more women, biological women tend to rip ACLs and MCLs based on that instability and that angle when cutting. Beyond that, there's muscle fiber types. And again, going back to powerlifting being a skill very low on the skill scale and very high on the pure genetics or strength scale. It is a sport of strength. That muscle fiber types can be trained and you can grow different muscle fiber types, but we're born with a certain amount. Men, biological men tend to have more muscle, fast twitch muscle types in their upper body than biological women. And that's just fact. We can run it on the science. For those to say, again, that I think anyone should be able to sign up, participate and enjoy the community and the sport, but for those to compete at the top end, just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That's to say that I can draw analogies from any other sport. I don't believe that the NBA should have to have a limit on height. There's no reason why we don't want the best of the best competing against the best of the best. Just because I was born 5'9", it obviously made my chances a lot harder to go to the NBA. I played basketball for 15 years. I played in pro amateur leagues, played in college against pros all over the place. And I wasn't good enough to go to that next level. And that is simply based on genetics or my height. And I don't think that, I think we should have an equal playing ground when it comes to participation and especially like a sport like basketball where it is more hobby driven, a community driven, that doesn't mean that everyone should have an equal chance to win or compete for money or the more prestigious events or competitions. There's a couple of tweets here just from random folks. I'm on a random blog that whipped all these together and I'm just gonna talk about them a little bit or read some off. Just again, hopefully spark conversation and insight into the depths that this conversation is very cloudy. I know it's sensitive for a lot of people and I try and to navigate it the best I can. I'm no expert in this topic by any means. Again, I've just done research over the years as it relates to sport. Tyler Todd, Ty Romper on Twitter says, I love all people. If you're an adult and want to transition, I wish you well. But this is so anti-woman. There will be biological females that trained and sacrificed their entire lives crushed by this nonsense. Men and women are different. This isn't hard. J.C. Cooper, a transgender athlete won a discrimination case against the USA Powerlifting last week after the Federation banned her from competing in female events. With Cooper's victory comes a mandate the Federation ceased and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices because of sexual orientation and gender identity. This organization must revise its policy related to those issued within two weeks, meaning trans athletes will be able to compete in the women's category after previously being banned. Cooper filed a complaint in 2019 with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights alleging the organization violated the States Humans Rights Act by banning her and other trans athletes from competing in female competitions. She then filed a lawsuit against the USA Powerlifting in state court in 2021. The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than the ruling said. That is the very essence of separation and segregation is what the MHRA prohibits. Again, I know a lot of us have strong beliefs in this area, one way or the other, but I do encourage you to read. I do encourage you to truly listen. Don't just hear people when you're speaking and I'm gonna try to do the same. So if you have constructive criticism, constructive thoughts below, let's keep it to ourselves, not in terms of I would like you to share it, but let's not bicker, let's not fight, leave your peace, read your others, read your peers, we're all in this together. And I do think that for the advancement of the sport and the community, we need to look at ways and things that we can all participate and we can all get involved. I appreciate you guys so much for diving in on this more deeper topic. We're gonna try to add more videos a week. So if you wanna get involved in Discord, goodcompanydiscord.com. That's where you can get exclusives, sales and things on Merch, a like-minded community, but we also have a tab on the left for React content. So if you wanna leave, whether it be fitness, TikToks, fun or the otherwise, articles, videos, I'm gonna try to react and open some conversations on some more lighthearted stuff or the deeper stuff as we go forward here again. I know it's not fun and so not always easy, but I think it's something that will overall help us all to understand each other better and to grow the sport as a whole is an ultimate goal so that we can improve our health, our fitness and our mindset through the Barba. I appreciate you guys, 3sb.co for all your clothes, Salamite, goodcompany, Thursree Barba, Sacramento. Catch you guys in the next one, we're out of here.