Speaking during a Tuesday, April 23 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels argued that the evidence that transgender athletes have a strength advantage in women’s sports is “irrefutable,” even when hormone therapy is accounted for. That came in the context of how to achieve fairness in women’s sports.
The discussion was sparked by an incident in West Virginia where several female middle school athletes staged a protest during a track meet. To protest, the female track athletes refused to compete in the shotput competition because one of their competitors was a transgender athlete.
Speaking about the situation, Michaels commented on balancing fairness of competition and inclusion, saying, “You’ve got two competing goals in sports. … One is inclusion, which everybody can understand and get on board with. However, the second goal that’s in direct opposition with inclusion in this instance is going to be a fair competition.”
Continuing, Michaels explained that, in her view, the data “irrefutably” shows that there is a strength advantage that transgender athletes have in women’s sports. She said, “And if that’s your priority, if your overriding priority is going to be fairness over inclusion, you’ve got to turn to the data, and the data irrefutably shows that biological males are 10 to 30% stronger, faster, have better endurance, better aerobic capacity across the board.”
Michaels then explained that, while hormone therapy does have some effect on strength, that decrease is “trivial.” She explained, “If we defer to the studies, and I sent several to your producers … they show that even on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, the decrease in physical performance is, quote, trivial. That’s what the data says.”
Giving a specific example, she cited what a study found about grip strength, saying, “And to give you an example, if you look at a biological male transgender female with grip strength in conjunction with a biological female transgender male – OK, so both of them are on blockers and cross-sex hormones – the transgender female, the biological male’s grip strength was 17% greater than the female on testosterone and puberty blockers.”
Watch Michaels here:
"*" indicates required fields
Also speaking during the Tuesday Fox & Friends broadcast was OutKick host Charly Arnolt. Arnolt spoke about the West Virginia middle schoolers who refused to compete, saying, “It’s really upsetting that these middle school girls have to forfeit their opportunities in order to take a stand.” Arnolt added, “That takes a lot of courage, especially at that age, but they’re doing this for the greater good. It’s not just for themselves.”
She continued, “These girls decided, ‘You know what? We want to make sure that people are paying attention.’ This is the only way and the only way for … the government to really start paying attention, and especially that federal appeals court that just struck down the law in West Virginia that bans transgender athletes from competing in female sports.” Arnolt then explained why the girls did what they did, saying, “It’s the only way they’re going to start saying, ‘OK, maybe we are doing something incorrectly here.’”