Tim sits down for a one-on-one conversation with controversial female skateboarder Taylor Silverman to hear her side of the story as it relates to a trans athlete beating her for top prize in a skateboarding competition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| Welcome to our special weekend show, Sunday Uncensored. | ||
| Every week we produce four uncensored episodes of the TimCast IRL podcast exclusively at TimCast.com, and we're going to bring you the most important for our weekend show. | ||
| If you want to check out more segments just like this, become a member at TimCast.com. | ||
| Now, enjoy the show. | ||
| We're hanging out for a special interview with Taylor Silverman, who many of you may be familiar with because this story went very, very viral. | ||
| For some time now, actually for several years, there's been an issue with women's sports. | ||
| Trans women who are born male have been competing in women's sports, and this has led to a controversy around advantages and whether or not there is fairness in women's sports. | ||
| The way I phrased it on Twitter was, we did not create women's sports because sometimes people wear dresses. | ||
| So when many of the left activists say, if someone says they're a woman, then they're a woman, I'm like, right, but that's not why we created women's divisions. | ||
| So personally, what I see happening is the left semantic arguments over what a woman is, is now conflicting with the actual understanding of why we have women's divisions, and that is females competing against females. | ||
| So the story, I'll give you the simple version, is that in many of these instances, not a single competitor who is biologically female has spoken up and challenged what has been happening. | ||
| There have been a few instances. | ||
| But with the big story surrounding Leah Thomas, a biological male competing in the women's division, you had very few people willing to publicly speak up. | ||
| In fact, I don't think anyone publicly spoke up except for one person who missed the finals bracket by like one position. | ||
| So there were people saying, ah, that's the only reason she's speaking up. | ||
| Taylor Silverman, who's hanging out here, was competing in a skateboarding contest and came in second place after a trans woman. | ||
| So let's do this. | ||
| Let's talk about, first, what happened in this contest, and then we'll talk about speaking up and the political and cultural issues around it. | ||
| Well, first I want to mention, because you mentioned the Leah Thomas thing, one of the swimmers who spoke up had actually tied with Leah and they gave Leah the trophy and wanted to take the picture with Leah. | ||
| And Riley spoke up and was like, well, why are we doing it this way? | ||
| We tied. | ||
| And they basically just told her, you know, step aside, shut up. | ||
| This is how we're going to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| But what happened with the Red Bull contest was I had qualified for the finals in my home state in Detroit, Michigan. | ||
| I drove over to Detroit from Kalamazoo, qualified, and then I made plans to go out to Lincoln, Nebraska to compete in the finals. | ||
| The day before the finals, I did another qualifier that they had asked me to do. | ||
| I placed first in that one as well. | ||
| But both the qualifiers I skated in, the trans competitor did not compete in. | ||
| They'd been doing other qualifiers. | ||
| The day of the finals was when I found out that there was a trans competitor in the women's division. | ||
| Real quick, so these qualifiers, they're like regional or local? | ||
| They would do them throughout states in the Midwest. | ||
| It was the Red Bull Cornerstone Best in the Midwest series. | ||
| So they were traveling around to different indoor skate parks throughout that area. | ||
| So you competed against locals? | ||
| Yeah, actually the Detroit one, there was only two girls in. | ||
| And then the second one that I did in Lincoln, Nebraska, I think there were like 12 of us. | ||
| Right around there. | ||
| Was the qualifier the first time you encountered the trans competitor or no? | ||
| No, no, the qualifiers that I did were different qualifiers in different cities than the trans competitor had done. | ||
| So continue, tell us what happened. | ||
| So, in the finals, the prize money for first place was $3,000, and then second place prize money was $1,750, and then third place was $750. | ||
| money was $1,750 and then third place was $750. So I ended up taking second to the | ||
| trans competitor and they had also taken best trick for a thousand dollars along | ||
| with a thousand in qualifiers and as did I because I had competed in two | ||
| qualifiers in place first. | ||
| But in total, they took $5,000 of the prize money that was meant for the female athletes, and I was paid next highest, which was $2,750. | ||
| Everybody got bumped back and lost money who was going to place or going to win best trick and I just felt like it was unfair and like we're seeing this in so many sports now and I felt like I was in a position where people might actually listen if I spoke up because I had gotten second and we haven't really seen somebody who's on the podium speaking up about it. | ||
| How much would you have won if you got first place? | ||
| If I had gotten first place, I would have gotten $3,000 for first place along with the $500 at each qualifier. | ||
| So $4,000 in total. | ||
| But you did get $1,000 for the qualifiers. | ||
| Yeah, at the qualifiers, I don't remember the exact payouts for second and third place, but for first place prize, I got $500 each time I placed first. | ||
| But the trans competitor competed against other women in the qualifiers, so they ended up losing that money. | ||
| Yeah, the trans competitor was also traveling around and competing in a couple different qualifiers. | ||
| So you would have won an additional $1,250. | ||
| I think you did the math wrong the first time. | ||
| I did, I did. | ||
| But it was because I think you thought that I was saying I would have won best trick, which I don't think I'm really a best trick skater, so I don't think I would have. | ||
| So, for those that aren't familiar, in skateboarding, the typical contest, when people say a contest, is like you do a run. | ||
| What do they give you, 45 seconds or a minute? | ||
| Um, I'm not sure. | ||
| It's like around a minute, maybe a little more. | ||
| But you take a run and sometimes they'll have you do like three different runs and they'll judge it by best run or they'll kind of like accumulate the scores. | ||
| So this means usually you'll throw your skateboard down and try and do your best series of tricks throughout the park. | ||
| In a lot of contests, they'll give you either 45 seconds to a minute, and then you get three different runs. | ||
| They call them runs or heats. | ||
| And then the judge will, like, it depends on how they do it. | ||
| Sometimes they'll take your two best and then total them together. | ||
| Typically, like in qualifiers, they'll have more of a, like, they'll throw a few competitors in together to all go for a couple of minutes and they'll watch it, everyone at the same time. | ||
| But in the finals, it was separate runs for each person. | ||
| So this is the interesting thing that I see with skateboarding. | ||
| Skateboarding judging is subjective. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So you're skating, and there's a judge sitting there saying, I did not like the way she did that, so I mark you down. | ||
| With Leah Thomas, it's were you fast or slow? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So there's a stopwatch, and they go, well, that's the time you got. | ||
| For you, the judges are watching you skate, watching the other competitors, including the trans women skate, and then determining by personal subjective choice what they think was better. | ||
| The interesting thing about skateboarding contests is that you'll get, | ||
| what were they doing? Were they doing like 1 out of 10? | ||
| Like 1 through 10? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I wasn't actually really paying attention. | ||
| They did at certain points have like a screen up with where people were ranked throughout the contest based on the runs they had already taken. | ||
| But I usually avoid looking at that stuff because I feel like it makes me get in my head more. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You just got to skate your best. | ||
| Yeah, I just try to do my best and have a good time. | ||
| And if I fall, get up and keep going. | ||
| Some contests we'll do on a scale of 1 through 10. | ||
| And then, it's actually because it's subjective, if you're a frequent competitor at these contests, and they know that you, let's say, I'm gonna give you a trick, most of you probably have no idea what I'm saying, but I'm just gonna say it. | ||
| Let's say you do a kickflip to boardslide. | ||
| That is, the board flips under your feet, and then you land on a rail with the, you know, just sliding on your board on the rail. | ||
| If you do that three years in a row, the judges might actually be like, you have not improved at all in three years. | ||
| So they scale you down and say, we know that you're not pushing it. | ||
| You're not competing that well. | ||
| So that's an interesting factor here. | ||
| If the judges know you, it can actually affect your score. | ||
| I bring that up because what we're dealing with here is subjective choices in skateboarding that There are skateboarders who have competed who are like blind or missing legs, and the judges take those into account. | ||
| So somebody who has no legs who competes in a skateboarding contest is obviously not doing the same kind of tricks. | ||
| They may look similar. | ||
| Like there's one guy who has his hands on the tail and those in the tail of the board, the ends of the board, and he jumps with his hands and then flips with his hands. | ||
| Very different from someone who's only using their feet to make the board go up and flip with their feet. | ||
| So they take those things into consideration. | ||
| I'm pointing this out because it's interesting. | ||
| In this circumstance, they could have said, well, we see that the trans woman is biologically male, has an advantage, and we'll hold that against them in the scoring. | ||
| But they actually just gave them the better score and gave them the win. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think that people, like, obviously in other sports where it's, you know, you're trying to get there the fastest or get the most points, it's easy to, for them to not be able to do that and not be able to consider those things. | ||
| Or, I mean, I guess they can't consider those things in skateboarding. | ||
| They could, but I don't think they do. | ||
| I think that they're kind of in the boat that they don't want to do anything offensive or discriminate, but they don't even consider how it impacts the women and that this is a division created for us in the first place that we're now getting pushed out of. | ||
| Well, who's us? | ||
| The biological women who haven't even had these divisions very long. | ||
| I definitely want to talk about the cultural issues, too, because as I was mentioning a second ago, we created women's divisions under the cultural understanding it's biological females competing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| You know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, we weren't like, sometimes people wear dresses and they identify that way. | ||
| So let's create a division just for them. | ||
| No, we were like, well, women are not placing in the typical contests. | ||
| So I think most people don't understand this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Like if a woman competed on a man's team or like a woman wanted to play baseball or something? | ||
| Is that what you mean? | ||
| They're not man's teams. | ||
| But just the team. | ||
| The team. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, um, I'm, I'm fairly certain. | ||
| I think college sports do are men only, but, uh, NFL, for instance, women try it all the time. | ||
| The closest they get to is kicker because that they can do, but even then they've not made it. | ||
| Yeah, there was actually, in Michigan, near where I live, there was a female football player on one of the college teams. | ||
| Probably a kicker, right? | ||
| I'm not even sure. | ||
| It was just a story I heard about really briefly. | ||
| Actually, what was crazy is I was at the gym one day, and I heard two women who were working out together right next to me, like, talking trash about her. | ||
| I had to move. | ||
| I was so upset. | ||
| They were like saying that she shouldn't be on the team and I was thinking, well, I mean, she made the team. | ||
| Right. | ||
| With having a disadvantage. | ||
| That's pretty amazing. | ||
| Let's start here before we get into all the cultural stuff. | ||
| What advantages do you think this trans person had over you? | ||
| I mean, I think it's, for me, before I even looked into it, it's just common sense that men have an athletic advantage over women. | ||
| They're bigger than us, stronger than us. | ||
| They have more muscle than us. | ||
| Women carry more body fat. | ||
| Women also have like menstrual cycles that affect the way that they compete. | ||
| Our periods don't stop for contests and we go through a cycle where we actually experience different symptoms that impact the way that we compete and work out. | ||
| But, um, men are also less prone to injuries. | ||
| So, when I'm throwing myself down a stair set, I have more fear of, you know, rolling my ankle or hurting my knee than I think most men do. | ||
| And I know that you talked about some of the hip angle stuff, which I was learning more about, because we have a different center of balance, which makes it harder for us to even ollie as high. | ||
| Well, the hip angle is the injury thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's called the Q angle, the quadricep angle. | ||
| See, I thought even perhaps having less bone density could be related to injury. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And skin collagen. | ||
| And are you familiar with fast and slow twitch muscle? | ||
| No. | ||
| So prenatal testosterone has a correlation to more fast twitch muscle. | ||
| It's something I read about when I was 14. | ||
| I was trying to learn how to ollie higher because I've been skating for 20 plus years. | ||
| And I'm reading how some people have more or less fast twitch muscle. | ||
| Fast twitch is explosive, meaning you can jump really high, boom. | ||
| Slow twitch is more endurance. | ||
| You can hold and push. | ||
| So the people who, for whatever reason, have more fast twitch, there's some genetic component to it, there's some training components to it, prenatal testosterone affects you. | ||
| So this is in the womb. | ||
| When you are developing as a fetus, more testosterone gives you an advantage. | ||
| So this means you're going to ollie higher. | ||
| And so men have more fast twitch muscle than women. | ||
| Yeah, and also just faster reaction time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's a brain thing, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they've done the studies with video games and found that to be the case. | ||
| So... Even men who aren't, like, high-level athletes will have faster reaction times than professional female athletes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Which makes total sense. | ||
| That's why we have the Women's Division. | ||
| So let me ask you this then. | ||
| The argument from the left is, did this particular trans woman have more muscle mass? | ||
| Did this particular trans woman, were they taller than you? | ||
| Were they bigger than you? | ||
| Stronger? | ||
| Did they have those characteristics you described in there? | ||
| I mean, we didn't do like a weightlifting competition to figure out who's stronger, but this person does stand far taller than me. | ||
| I honestly, I don't think it's really relevant whether a trans competitor is absolutely mopping the floor with the competition or the last place competitor. | ||
| It's still not a fair playing field and they still didn't have to work as hard to learn the most basic things in skateboarding, regardless of how good they are now. | ||
| So I think that when you start saying like, well, this person didn't have an advantage because the way that they're built, it just opens the door for this to happen more. | ||
| So, you know, I have a personal stake in this, obviously, as I've been skateboarding for most of my life. | ||
| And with a lot of sports, they make a lot of scientific arguments. | ||
| And as I mentioned, the left will often say things like, well, you know, you're mentioning these things. | ||
| Yeah, there are a lot of guys who are six feet tall and ripped and have longer arms, and Michael Phelps has a wide, abnormal arm span, which allows him to swim faster. | ||
| But this specific trans person did not have those advantages. | ||
| And my response is, in this case, with skateboarding, I can definitively say the trans person 100% did have these advantages. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I mean, I think that's the same reason 12-year-old boys can outskate me if they've been skating for a year, because even being smaller than me and less strong than me, they still have these athletic advantages. | ||
| It's not to say every man or every young man is going to outskate every female. | ||
| There are definitely exceptions, but we shouldn't be going by the exceptions. | ||
| We should be going by the science. | ||
| So there's always a challenge in, can you measure fast twitch muscle? | ||
| How do you know this person had more or less? | ||
| We don't. | ||
| Well, can you measure their prenatal testosterone? | ||
| No, we can't. | ||
| Can you measure their bone density? | ||
| I mean, we can do all those things. | ||
| Isn't that a bit invasive? | ||
| You're right. | ||
| All of that is invasive. | ||
| I totally get it. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| I've been skating for several decades. | ||
| I know about the physics of skateboarding and I've researched this stuff well before it ever became an issue. | ||
| And I can tell you, without having to do any of that science, the number one factor that gives a biological male an advantage in skateboarding is a higher center of gravity. | ||
| And I got triggered! | ||
| Because when I tweeted this, I had a bunch of people being like, actually a lower center of gravity is an advantage for women because they're doing gymnastics. | ||
| Wrong, totally wrong. | ||
| Two big factors. | ||
| When your center of gravity is higher in your chest, you can bail much easier. | ||
| When you're coming down off of a ramp or something and you're falling and you're saying, I didn't make it, doom, you're in midair and you're going, whoa! | ||
| With a higher center of gravity, you can direct your energy forward much more easily when you're falling. | ||
| So that means when I jump off a stair set, I use my feet to guide and then I do a judo roll. | ||
| That higher center of gravity allows me to throw my weight and roll easier than a lower center of gravity, which makes you more prone to flopping. | ||
| A bail is when you choose to back to the trick, And a slam or a slam, a flop is a kind of slam. | ||
| Slamming is when you just eat it and you lost control. | ||
| Flopping is when you, you bounce when you do it. | ||
| Flopping is brutal. | ||
| Higher center of gravity makes it easier for you to escape because you can, you know, you've got more weight up top. | ||
| So when you're coming down, you can push off your toes and then throw your weight forward and roll because your center of gravity is already in the front. | ||
| More importantly though, In skateboarding, an ollie is not a vertical jump. | ||
| So if we're talking about volleyball or something, you can say like, oh, women can get a high vertical and a man can get a high vertical and whatever. | ||
| No, skateboarding is a combination of a vertical jump and compressing your body towards your center of gravity. | ||
| Men carry the center of gravity closer to their shoulders, women closer to their hips, for obvious reason. | ||
| Women have wider hips, men have wider shoulders. | ||
| More mass up top for a man means that if a man and a woman both have a vertical jump of 12 inches, The man will be able to compress his body an additional several inches towards the center of gravity that a woman cannot. | ||
| So if you have a handrail that is two feet off the ground, a railing two feet off the ground or down the stairs, a man needs a lower vertical jump to access it on the skateboard than a woman would need on average. | ||
| So when you're looking at even a trans woman, You can say, that person clearly carries their center of gravity higher than the females who have wider hips, and that is a VERY serious advantage. | ||
| Now, a lot of people like to point out balance, and they say lower center of gravity is better balance. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Men compensate by crouching as they do grinds, or bending their knees to lower their center of gravity to maintain better balance. | ||
| Women cannot lift their center of gravity to counteract that. | ||
| A lower center of gravity is a disadvantage. | ||
| Period. | ||
| So this is one of the, you know what the crazy thing to me is? | ||
| It's beyond common sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anyone who's ever watched a skateboarding contest, I think skateboarding may be the one sport where it is the most pronounced difference in skill. | ||
| And I know a good friend of mine growing up, Marisa Del Santo. | ||
| She's amazing. | ||
| And she was one of the best female skateboarders in the world. | ||
| And in fact, I think she was one of the best skateboarders, particularly in Chicago. | ||
| Because she would actually like back-lip like a 10 stair handrail or something crazy. | ||
| And so that means like jumping down a railing that's very big. | ||
| And that takes... The one thing I always thought about skateboarding that was interesting between men and women is that bravery and your ability to commit can determine whether you're good as opposed to just your muscle mass. | ||
| Yeah, I think there's a lot of skaters who could probably skate a lot better if they just do it. | ||
| If you just risk it. | ||
| Yeah, you have to just commit and trust yourself and trust that what you have right now is going to be enough to get to this bigger trick or the bigger rail or the bigger set and do it. | ||
| But there's a lot of times where it's hard to make yourself do it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then with men and testosterone, they're really aggressive. | ||
| Willing to get hurt. | ||
| But let's talk about the cultural ramifications. | ||
| I'm not a scientist, but I have been reading a lot about this. | ||
| But let me ask you about the cultural ramifications. | ||
| So had you seen the issues of trans women in sports before you came out and spoke about it? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I think the first time I heard about it, I can't remember how old I was, but it was like a track and field story that I heard and I thought to myself and, you know, the friend who had mentioned it to me, like, that's crazy. | ||
| There's no way this is going to keep happening. | ||
| Like, especially their reporting on it. | ||
| They're obviously going to recognize this isn't going to work out. | ||
| But then you just keep hearing more and more impacting more and more sports. | ||
| And it was actually when I heard about it impacting women in contact sports, like specifically like boxing, that I started to feel like Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. | ||
| Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that. | ||
| There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating This has to stop. | ||
| the 2024 presidential election. | ||
| We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. | ||
| Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. | ||
| This has to stop. | ||
| So you didn't speak up right away, did you? | ||
| No, and I'd actually seen this happen at a couple other contests I've done. | ||
| And I always kind of just, you know, ignored it and went on with my life and thought, eventually this is definitely not going to keep happening because obviously people can tell that this isn't fair. | ||
| And I get it that, you know, we're trying it out, but it doesn't work. | ||
| So we have to find a different solution. | ||
| And the couple of times that it happened before, once was at a contest where there were a lot of people from, like, all over the world, and I didn't expect to do that well, but I went out there for a good time and to, like, meet new people and enjoy the event. | ||
| And the trans skater also wasn't one of the top skaters, but I did think it was a little weird that there was a trans woman in the women's division. | ||
| I thought that doesn't seem fair, and the whole event was supposed to be, like, promoting, like, women's skateboarding. | ||
| And it just felt not quite right. | ||
| But then another event that I did, I got second, but it was kind of like an open event that was organized by a local group. | ||
| So I was like, I'm not too worried about that. | ||
| They're going to run it however they're going to run it. | ||
| There's not much on the line. | ||
| It's supposed to be just a fun thing. | ||
| But it's not that fun when you feel like you're only getting to compete for second place. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Even if there's nothing on the line, which is why I know that this story people are listening to because there's money involved, but regardless of whether there's money involved or a scholarship involved, this isn't right. | ||
| This isn't good for girls. | ||
| This isn't going to be good for the next generation of female athletes' mental health. | ||
| And there's going to be a better solution than what we're doing now. | ||
| This can't go on. | ||
| But the third time it happened, I actually didn't speak up right away and part of the reason was I had a lot going on in my life and I didn't really want this to impact me and to upset me. | ||
| I wanted to just move on and do the other things that I had been planning and looking forward to. | ||
| But the more that I sat with it, especially because around the same time there was more and more media about Leah Thomas, and I saw the Riley Gaines interview on Fox where she spoke up about that. | ||
| I felt guilty. | ||
| I felt like I was put in this position that I didn't want to be in, but now I felt like I wasn't fulfilling my values of standing up for myself and of standing up for other women. | ||
| I felt a moral obligation to do something, and I didn't want to make a public post about it. | ||
| What I wanted was to talk to the organizers and have hopefully a private conversation where they would at least get some perspective and understand that this isn't the way to handle this. | ||
| But when I reached out to Red Bull by email, they did not respond to me. | ||
| And after Sitting and thinking about it a little bit longer, I was pretty frustrated. | ||
| I felt like this was a story that needed to be heard, and I didn't want people to think I was just okay with this. | ||
| I want people to know that I'm the type of person to stand up for myself. | ||
| So I posted it, and I did not expect it to blow up the way that it did, but I think that it blowing up just shows how concerned people really are about this issue. | ||
| What was the initial response? | ||
| The initial response was bad because when I first posted I had like 4,000 followers just from like posting skate videos and traveling and meeting people and my follower count went down maybe like a hundred followers in like in the first hour. | ||
| And it was all hate comments and it was from people I knew because those are the only people seeing it when it was first posted. | ||
| So I knew some of the people wouldn't react good to it and I kind of already accepted that I don't really want to be friends with people who don't care about me having this fair place and who don't care about my voice at all and just tell me to shut up and deal with it. | ||
| So, I knew I was going to lose some friends over it. | ||
| What I didn't know was that a whole bunch of people were going to resort to anti-Semitism. | ||
| So, it was pretty hurtful seeing people who I knew and been nothing but nice to for years start saying things that were blatantly anti-Semitic and calling me an evil Zionist war criminal on a post that's completely unrelated to me even being Jewish. | ||
| Welcome to the internet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Brutal. | ||
| Yeah, but then I actually left my apartment. | ||
| I think I called a couple friends just to be like, yo, you know what I was telling you about with that Red Bull thing? | ||
| I posted about it. | ||
| And I don't know what's going to happen. | ||
| It's not looking so good. | ||
| And everyone was like, no, no, people are going to support you. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| Just don't even look at it. | ||
| So I went to the beach and I spent a little bit of time at the beach. | ||
| And by the time I got back to my studio, Everything had changed. | ||
| And there were still negative comments. | ||
| There were still lots of hate comments. | ||
| There were a lot of people sharing the post, like, encouraging people to go harass me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| But there were also a lot of people coming to the post and saying, Hey, I had some friend who told me to come here and harass you on their story. | ||
| And then I read your post and I unfollowed them and I followed you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I didn't like the way that they were talking about you. | ||
| And when you actually listen to what you're saying, it's really reasonable. | ||
| But, yeah, I started getting messages, like these long messages of people thanking me and just pouring their hearts out to me and sharing their experience with me or parents thanking me because they're concerned about their kids' futures. | ||
| And a lot of trans people who were also messaging me to say, hey, I'm really sorry about the hate you're receiving and I want you to know that I support you and this is not the opinion of all trans people. | ||
| So that was really nice to have those kind messages to kind of combat the hate. | ||
| And it was difficult to deal with at first just because it was so unexpected. | ||
| I had no idea the post would get viewed as many times as it did. | ||
| And I had no idea that that many people would be messaging me and leaving comments. | ||
| So it was overwhelming. | ||
| And I dealt with a lot of anxiety that week, mostly because I thought, well, I'm in Israel right now, but what is going to happen when I go back to America? | ||
| Because people were sending me death threats. | ||
| People are telling me I can never go to a skate park again. | ||
| You've ruined your career. | ||
| And I know most of the time when people send stuff like that on the Internet, it's just talk. | ||
| They would never say anything to your face. | ||
| But I was also thinking, like, What if some person who's not in the best mental state takes it out on me and I get hurt because of it or worse? | ||
| So that was really stressful to deal with and luckily I had a good community of people supporting me and encouraging me and I'm so grateful for everyone who was there for me during that time. | ||
| Also, when you know that you're doing the right thing, you don't take all that hate personally, because everyone's trying to shame me, but I didn't feel like I did something I should be ashamed of. | ||
| Do you consider yourself conservative? | ||
| Um, not really. | ||
| I mean, I'm pretty young. | ||
| I'm still kind of finding my place in like political views and I don't consider myself extremely well-versed in all politics, but I think I would consider myself more like moderate. | ||
| But over the past few years, I think I started leaning more towards that end. | ||
| It's weird though, because at this point in the, in cultural politics, we don't even know what right-wing means. | ||
| Yeah, and to me, it's like everybody's labeled me as some right-wing hero, or they accuse me of only talking to right-wing people. | ||
| But I've talked to a lot of different people, and a few of them are right-wing. | ||
| But I also talk to people who are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. | ||
| I did an interview with a guy who, after he did it, he said he wasn't going to post it because I don't think he liked my answers. | ||
| I think he wanted me to look bad, and I actually had a reasonable conversation. | ||
| I don't even remember his name. | ||
| It was for a skateboarding magazine, like Gencom. | ||
| Really? | ||
| They still around, huh? | ||
| Yeah, we did a phone interview. | ||
| I mean, we had a good conversation. | ||
| He clearly disagreed with me, but I don't really have a problem with talking with someone who has a different opinion as long as we're not having a screaming match or they're just attacking me for other things. | ||
| You know, so I've been rollerblading a bit more than skateboarding over the past year or so. | ||
| Part of it is that I'm just like, I don't know what the right word is, but disillusioned with the skateboarding community. | ||
| Actually, that interview was the one I texted you about that the guy was like ragging on you while he was interviewing me and I told you I don't know if he'll even use it and he could try to chop it up to like make me look real bad. | ||
| That's what they do. But people know that. People know that's what they do and people who actually think for themselves | ||
| and don't just take things out of context recognize that. | ||
| So here's the crazy thing about the media is that you know you can say something like I don't think trans people | ||
| should be discriminated against but I do think you can't discriminate against females for the sake of another group. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They can simply say when asked about why they chose to discriminate they expressed disdain for trans people. | ||
| And they can say, that was true? | ||
| That's my opinion of what happened. | ||
| You don't trust the media, man. | ||
| But the thing about the skateboarding community is that I have pros. | ||
| Pro skateboarders. | ||
| Prominent. | ||
| Who will message me all the time? | ||
| They won't speak up. | ||
| I have had the same in my inbox now, and I've had Olympians in my inbox thanking me. | ||
| And their inability and refusal to speak up, it's going to be the end of their careers or their industry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think, you know, it's a simple thing. | ||
| Maybe there needs to be a transgender division. | ||
| I thought that's something that actually could be a possibility in skateboarding because there are a lot of trans people in skateboarding. | ||
| And I think we at least have to try something because we tried Just doing the women's division thing. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| It's not fair. | ||
| So we at least have to try something and in some sports it is it is difficult because you wonder are there gonna be enough competitors, but What's happening now just isn't fair and I don't think women should have to you know, bear the burden and lose the opportunities especially when you see it happening with um When women transition to men they still compete with the women too Well, so let me ask you about this. | ||
| Uh, Leo Baker, uh, formerly Lacey Baker, uh, came out, uh, was one of the top female competitors in the world for a long time in the women's division, came out as transgender and went by he, him pronouns, but kept competing against women in the women's division. | ||
| And so I saw that and I thought, well, why not try and qualify for the men's division if you identify as a man? | ||
| Well, if trans women are doing the women's division because, you know, they are women, then if trans men are men, why aren't they doing the men's division? | ||
| It's because they wouldn't be able to compete because they're at a disadvantage because they were born female. | ||
| So Leo Baker eventually declared themselves to be non-binary, going by they-them pronouns instead of he-him. | ||
| I could be wrong about that, and if I am wrong, I apologize, Leo, because I know a lot of people who know Leo as well. | ||
| My question is... A great skater. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| In all sincerity, why would you come out as trans and not switch to the men's division? | ||
| Well, I think the answer is obvious. | ||
| I think the answer is obvious, but I think it also kind of ruins that argument that they have about, you know, well, trans women are women, so they compete with women. | ||
| Well, I think the fact that they're unwilling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why are trans men competing with women, too? | |
| I believe that happened in NCAA swimming as well. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So in the Leah Thomas story, you had a biological male who transitioned and is now a trans woman, and a biological female who has surgically transitioned, top surgery, to transition into a man but still compete in the women's division. | ||
| It's always women who face the consequences of this. | ||
| The argument was that Isaac Hennig, I believe the name of the trans man was, was not on testosterone, therefore it was okay. | ||
| And it's like, okay, are you saying that testosterone is the determinant factor in what makes someone a man or a woman? | ||
| Why would that be a factor? | ||
| And furthermore, Isaac Hennig underwent top surgery, which is a gender affirmation or whatever you want to call it, alteration of the body, and fat content affects your swimming performance. | ||
| Women tend to have more swimming endurance, but are slower due to higher fat content. | ||
| So fat is buoyant. | ||
| So women in long distance swimming tend to do better than men. | ||
| But in short bursts, speed swimming, not as much. | ||
| So I would contend the physical surgery to transition should have been a qualifying factor. | ||
| So you got to compete against the men now if you're transitioning, if that's the rules we're going by. | ||
| But of course, it's not how it plays out. | ||
| In both skateboarding and in swimming and in many other sports, it's always in one direction. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And women are just expected to deal with it. | ||
| So I think it's pretty shocking to people when somebody says, Hey, I'm not okay with this. | ||
| So where do you, where do you think this will, uh, well, first let me ask you personally, where does your career go after this? | ||
| Are you concerned about not being allowed in contests or being shunned? | ||
| I felt like the reason I could speak up is because I'm an am, I don't have a bunch to lose over this. | ||
| What does am mean? | ||
| So I'm not like on a professional level skateboarding. | ||
| I enter these open divisions and contests and some of them you have to, you know, qualify to be invited to actually come to the finals. | ||
| And I've done a lot of contests where I haven't even placed high enough in the qualifiers to do the contest. | ||
| But these are things I do for fun. | ||
| I don't really seek them out. | ||
| I kind of just do them as I hear about them or as somebody who I skateboard tells, like a friend of mine will tell me there's a contest coming up if I'm in the area. | ||
| I sign up because it's a good time. | ||
| And it has been a really positive thing for me. | ||
| I grew up playing sports. | ||
| I love competitions and sports. | ||
| And I think it's been really good for my confidence, really good for my social life. | ||
| And I just feel like it's been good for my mental health in general. | ||
| But when you throw in this extra element, that all goes away. | ||
| It's not as fun anymore. | ||
| It feels like you're competing for second place. | ||
| It feels wrong, and you feel like you're being told to believe this thing that isn't true, and you know it's not true, and it's so clear, but everyone goes along with it, because nobody wants to hurt anybody's feelings, but... That's not true. | ||
| Well, not everybody goes along with it, but... No, no, I mean, I mean, they absolutely do want to hurt people's feelings. | ||
| Some people probably do. | ||
| They wanted to hurt your feelings. | ||
| Yeah, that's a funny argument to me, that, like, well, the inclusion of trans women in sports is more important than fairness. | ||
| What they're saying is, This person's feelings matter more than everybody else's feelings and screw everybody else's feelings. | ||
| Well, do you think Do you think this has destroyed your chances of a career in skateboarding or what? | ||
| I mean, I've gotten nothing but more opportunities after speaking up There's a lot of people who are really proud of me, which I think is crazy because I just said the truth I don't think I did anything heroic or anything, but I've met awesome people I'm here with you skate in the parks here that never would have happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean maybe for some other reason down the line in the future, but There's a lot of people who skate who are never going to come here. | |
| Yeah, but the way I see it is nobody can ever take skateboarding away from me. | ||
| That was something I was talking to Megan about when I was on her podcast. | ||
| I feel like if I never skated a contest again in my whole life, life would go on, I would still love skateboarding the same way, and chances are I probably won't be skating any Red Bull contests. | ||
| But I don't think this is going to eliminate the possibility of me skating contests anymore. | ||
| In fact, I've had a lot of skate parks reach out to me to tell me that I'm welcome there and that wouldn't happen there. | ||
| You should. | ||
| I've been more interested in spending more time in the future in Israel. | ||
| Where this is not happening. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| It doesn't happen there. | ||
| You need to enter all the Red Bull contests. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They probably wouldn't even let me. | ||
| You probably shouldn't. | ||
| There are people who made really violent, nasty threats and I don't want to find out how serious somebody who doesn't seem like they're that mentally stable is about wanting to kill me or hurt me. | ||
| I think actually the people who have an issue with this should be boycotting these events. | ||
| So people should not be going to Red Bull events if they take issue with it. | ||
| I should take the whole crew of all the women I'm going to meet at the rally for the 50th anniversary of Title IX to come boycott outside the skate park. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Come have a protest. | ||
| I don't know if that's worth my time considering Red Bull just ignores everybody who tries to have a reasonable conversation with them to make something positive happen, but I guess that my opinion doesn't really matter to them. | ||
| We, uh, you know, we're, we're intent on building culture and doing stuff. | ||
| We have our own skateboards. | ||
| You've been riding one. | ||
| Step on Snack and find out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I already shipped it. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We just gave you that. | |
| What are you doing? | ||
| I hate when that happens. | ||
| Every once in a while I get a board and I ship it like that day. | ||
| Yep, yep. | ||
| You know. | ||
| It happens. | ||
| So we're going to be, you know, we're building a new park. | ||
| We have this park. | ||
| We're going to be filming a lot of tricks and bringing people out. | ||
| And I think skateboarding needs an injection of edge. | ||
| It's crazy that what was once the weird outcast punk rock thing to do turned into the corporate keep your mouth shut event. | ||
| It's in the Olympics and this is partly what happens. | ||
| So we're going to change all that. | ||
| You have any final thoughts you want to say on all this? | ||
| I think if there's anybody who's scared to speak up about this, don't be. | ||
| Because there's more people who agree with you than not. | ||
| And the people who dislike you for it, you might be better off not being friends with them anyway. | ||
| I've found out who my true friends are. | ||
| And this has actually brought me more opportunities than I would have had if I hadn't said anything. | ||
| And I think I would still be Not feeling very good and really upset with myself if I hadn't spoken up. | ||
| So yeah, don't be afraid to speak your mind. | ||
| We have free speech. | ||
| Use it. | ||
| Because if we don't, nobody will know how we feel. | ||
| We are going to film a video together and we are going to give you a check covering the amount you should have won so that you get the full amount you would have gotten in first place. | ||
| That tweet was one of the ones that really sent a lot of people to come support me. | ||
| So thank you for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just sitting there and I'm like looking and I'm like, I'll give her the I didn't even know who you were. | |
| And it's not because you're unpopular or anything. | ||
| It's just that I don't really follow YouTube or podcasts. | ||
| I've been traveling so much and I wasn't really listening to a lot of political podcasts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I was like, is this guy serious? | |
| I had a few different friends who had texted me screenshots and they were like, oh my gosh. | ||
| And then when you talked about me that night on Timcast, I had friends text me like, turn on Timcast right now. | ||
| They're talking about you. | ||
| It's in like the middle of the night where I'm at. | ||
| But that was when I started listening. | ||
| I was like, oh my gosh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're standing up for me. | |
| And you talked about the anti-Semitism too, which I appreciate because I don't think I didn't want that to be the big issue, but you can't ignore that, what happened and what's still happening. | ||
| It's occurring still. | ||
| It's been almost a month and every single day I'm getting harassed. | ||
| And it's some people who have more reasonable opinions, some people who are just being completely hateful. | ||
| Some people are telling me to hurt myself or kill myself or really extreme stuff. | ||
| And then there's the people who just come after me for being Jewish. | ||
| I'm like, what does that even have to do with this? | ||
| They want you to hurt. | ||
| That doesn't make me hurt. | ||
| That makes me more proud. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, there are people who think that they control you and target, you know, your innate characteristics. | ||
| Like literal hate speech. | ||
| You know, my attitude is always people are allowed to say it. | ||
| Let them show themselves for who they really are so we can know to avoid them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel so grateful this has happened because I found out who my true friends are, like I said. | ||
| And I also am a firm believer that God sees everything. | ||
| God is watching. | ||
| God will handle it. | ||
| And people can say whatever they want about me, but the truth is still going to come first. | ||
| Right on. | ||
| Where it matters. | ||
| And people can cancel me, but the whole being cancelled thing, or like being cancelled, It's like an internet thing, because in my real life, I still have most of my friends, like all my best friends, they got my back no matter what, unconditionally, even if they didn't agree with me. | ||
| But all of them recognize this is unfair, too. | ||
| And, you know, I still have skateboarding. | ||
| I'm still traveling around. | ||
| I'm still doing all my normal stuff. | ||
| I'm actually doing more stuff and cooler stuff. | ||
| You know, canceling used to be way worse. | ||
| You know, they really would destroy you. | ||
| Well, I think if I had like a job at some woke place where they could just call and get me fired, that'd be messed up. | ||
| And actually, remember, I texted you the day after that big interview that I was staying in an Airbnb in Israel, right? | ||
| I rented out this studio. | ||
| I think it was just a misunderstanding, but my host sent me a request to move out like the next day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I texted, I texted you and I was like, Hey, I'm not sure what's happening and I'm going to try to talk to him, but I think I might be getting kicked out of my home. | ||
| And there was a moment there where I was really scared. | ||
| I was thinking people just got me kicked out of my home. | ||
| And I actually had gotten messages from women who had run like more smaller local just little things they're organizing where they, you know, it said this is for biological women and like had people like calling their jobs trying to get them fired. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it can be bad. | ||
| Canceling definitely can ruin lives. | ||
| Luckily for me, I was in a position where I'm uncancellable, and that remains true still. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But keep trying, because it's interesting. | |
| They had more power maybe like six years ago, but it's been waning because we've been resisting and we've been building out our own infrastructure. | ||
| I don't mean like me here at TimCast, I mean just people in general. | ||
| People in general, and I think people recognize a lot of it's bullshit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you can't believe everything you see on the internet, and you can't just take stuff out of context. | ||
| You gotta look into it yourself. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Taylor, thanks for hanging out. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| It's been a blast. | ||
| It's been really fun. | ||
| I'm glad to be here. | ||
| Thanks for coming, and we're gonna film this other video. | ||
| Thanks for letting me just, like, have fun on the vlog. | ||
| It's been a blast making these silly vlogs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Well, of course, you know. | ||
| And Jamie, Jamie's so fun to work with. | ||
| He's hilarious. | ||
| If you guys haven't, go to youtube.com slash castcastle and watch the videos that Taylor's in, acting and doing bits with Jamie, because Jamie was cancelled and you guys are doing this thing. | ||
| It's really funny. | ||
| We're like the cancelled crew. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're a team. | ||
| Do you want to shout anything out? | ||
| Do you have a following? | ||
| I've got an Instagram page, TaylorMaySilverMan, and then my Twitter, which I'm new to Twitter, is TMSilverMan. | ||
| You can follow me there. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| And for all of you who are watching, thanks for checking out this special Sunday interview that we're doing. | ||
| You can become a member at TimCast.com for our exclusive members-only shows. | ||
| We do the show Monday through Friday at 8 p.m., and then we have the special members-only stuff Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. | ||
| You can follow the show at TimCast IRL. | ||
| You can follow me at TimCast. | ||
| Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you all next time. |