On his show this week, John Oliver decided to spend 45 minutes defending the idea that men — or “trans women,” as he calls them — should play in women’s sports. The trans issue has destroyed the Democratic Party and utterly demolished the Left’s cultural and political credibility. But they can’t let it go. Transgenderism is a religious conviction. They must remain committed to it. Which is disturbing and bizarre and uncomfortable to witness — and extremely fortunate for Republicans. It’s also, let’s be honest, really funny. In fact, John Oliver’s commitment to the transgenderism bit is, by far and away, his funniest routine. It is in fact his only funny routine. It’s the one time when he lives up to his billing as a comedian, if unintentionally.

So today we’re going to pick through Oliver’s arguments for “trans inclusion” in women’s sports. We’ll go through it piece by piece. And in the process we’ll see how utterly vapid and hollow and deceitful John Oliver’s whole schtick is. And how morally and intellectually bankrupt gender ideology is. As one of the most morally and intellectually bankrupt people in all of media, it’s no wonder that Oliver is so attracted to it.

As we’ll see, Oliver trots out all of the standard tropes in his desperate attempt to make gender ideology seem like it isn’t insane. He blabbers for 45 minutes, hitting each talking point one by one, punctuated every five or six minutes with something that, I can only guess, is supposed to approximate a joke. But in this whole long diatribe he never once addresses the core, fundamental argument of the other side. He never once acknowledges, much less makes any attempt to respond to, our actual point. Instead we get all of the tropes. Starting with this one:

So he starts with the old “why are you so obsessed with this” routine, as expected. He then says that this “obsession” by Republicans is the reason why 6 in 10 adults don’t want men in women’s sports. The actual number is more like 8 in 10. But either way, he says that Republicans have waged a relentless propaganda campaign against trans people and that is why so many Americans now agree with them. Oliver has this, of course, completely backwards.

John, let me ask you this. What did the polls on trans athletes say 20 years ago? What about 30 years ago? If the poll numbers today are the result of a recent propaganda push by Republicans, that should be born out by comparing the poll results on the question today to the poll results 30 years ago, right? So what were the polls saying on this question 30 years ago? What do you think, John? Have you checked?

Well, don’t bother. I’ll help you. There were no polls on this question 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago. Organized sports have existed in this country for like 170 years. And yet you’ll find no polls on the topic of “transwomen” in women’s sports, you’ll find no discussion about the subject at all, until very, very recently. Women’s sports in particular have existed in some form or another since the late 1800s. And yet, again, there was no discussion about whether men who think they’re women should be included in women’s sports.

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If someone had conducted a poll in, say, 1950, and asked whether men who identify as women should be able to compete in women’s sports, what do you think the result would have been, John? Do you think you would have found at least 60% who responded in the negative? You’d find a lot more than 60%, wouldn’t you? It would be more like 100%, wouldn’t it? And that’s in spite of the fact that in the 1950s there was precisely no one pushing what you would call anti-trans propaganda. Republicans weren’t talking about the issue at all. And yet everyone agreed — everyone, literally everyone on Earth agreed — that if a thing is called “women’s,” it should only be for biological women.

So what does all of this tell us? Well, it tells us first of all that Republicans and conservatives aren’t the ones who started this conversation. We were all living our lives contently, without having any discussion about transgenderism, or whether men should be in women’s sports or bathrooms. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody was obsessing over it. Until the trans activists, to include yourself, came along and started screaming in our faces about it. You guys brought up this subject. You guys started marching and waving your flags and injecting your propaganda into schools and TV shows and films and everywhere else. Your side started giving castration drugs to children. Your side started listing your pronouns. None of this existed, this entire subject didn’t exist, until you guys brought it up and started obsessing over it.

Those polls you mentioned are not a result of our propaganda but of yours. The fact that there are 40% of Americans according to the poll you mentioned — or 20%, if you’re using an accurate poll — who actually think men should compete in women’s sports is a result of the relentless propaganda from your side. Again: if we’d asked this question 50 years ago, there would have been 100% of people on our side. But the question wasn’t asked. It wasn’t asked because when 100% of people are on one side, it’s not the kind of thing you even think to poll in the first place.

Moving on, Oliver next does the thing he always does, where he finds the weakest and most easily mocked version of the counter argument, and then frames the entire rest of his rant around that one example. Watch:

Now, if you wanted to find an example of someone making the case against men in women’s sports, you have literally thousands of options to choose from. Thousands and thousands of people have made this case on camera. Female athletes, biologists, doctors, highly credentialed scientific experts in any number of related fields. But John sifted through all of that and went with Lance Armstrong, because Lance Armstrong is infamous for cheating in a sport. I’d say about 99.9999% of all the people who have made the case against men in women’s sports are not themselves famous for cheating in a sport, but Oliver went searching for the .0001% who had. And he uses the silly hypothetical offered by Armstrong — Rafael Nadal suddenly transitioning to a woman — as the framing mechanism for the rest of his argument. So Oliver has chosen the absolute weakest version of the opposing argument, offered by the weakest possible spokesman, and that will be the only argument he responds to the whole rest of the way.

Of course, even the weakest version of our argument, offered by the weakest spokesman, is still totally devastating to John’s side. Our weakest argument is made of steel compared to the flimsy, fantasyland nonsense that you hear from the pro-trans side. Armstrong is, in fact, correct. If all it takes for a man to be a woman is to identify as one, then if Nadal identified as one, he would now be a woman, and there’s nothing stopping him from dominating women’s tennis like Shaquille O’Neal in his prime playing basketball against a bunch of nine-year-olds. The point isn’t that Nadal is actually likely to make this transition. It’s that the policy that John Oliver advocates for, and the position he takes, would make that sort of absurdity possible. 

But Oliver is determined to miss the point, which he continues to do here:

Oh, they don’t? Well first of all, John, how do you know that? There are many examples of mediocre male athletes who, after a while of not succeeding against the men, suddenly discover their latent female identity. Lia Thomas is just one of many examples. How do you know that the fact that he could go from the middle of the pack to first by a mile isn’t what motivated him to make the switch? That trans “sports scientist” says that the social cost of transitioning is too high. He says that he personally lost his marriage and family when he transitioned. In other words, he willingly blew up his marriage and family for the sake of living out his fantasy of womanhood. What does that tell us? It tells us that he is extremely selfish. So the argument seems to be that trans identified people would never transition just to succeed in sports — because they’re too selfish for that. But I’m not sure that logic tracks.

And at any rate, none of this matters. None of this is even remotely related to the actual point. The reason for their “transition” is totally irrelevant. It does not matter. It makes no difference. Nothing that John has said to this point — nothing — even comes close to actually addressing our argument. And that trend will continue here:

“It’s not the case that any man is stronger and more athletic than every woman,” says John Oliver. And in saying this, he has expertly knocked down and dismantled an argument that literally no one on Earth, at any point, anywhere, has made. Nobody claims that every man is stronger than every woman. John Oliver himself is proof of that. He would likely lose an arm wrestling match against my 11-year-old daughter. It’s true that scrawny, pathetically weak men do exist in this world. We’re looking at one of them.

But that’s not the point. The point about athletic advantages is that ON AVERAGE men are significantly — not slightly — significantly stronger and faster. This is because men and women are built differently. Women on average have 20% less muscle mass in their legs, smaller fast-twitch muscle fibers, smaller lungs, smaller hearts, shorter legs, much more estrogen and much less testosterone, and a lesser capacity to produce oxygen when they exert themselves. That’s why a team of high school boys could beat the women’s national team in soccer. It’s why the top ten male finishers in nearly every Olympic event always beat the top ten female finishers in the same event. In fact, the top 25 or 50 or 100 male finishers will beat the top 10 females.

It’s why you can find hundreds of examples just like this one. Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, both males, finished first and second in the 55-meter dash at the women’s state indoor track and field championships in Connecticut a few years ago. Miller also finished first in the 300-meter. Miller won the gold with a time of 38.9 seconds. Second place was a full second behind him – a near eternity in track time. But if Miller had raced against the boys in the same event, he would have been two seconds behind the guy who finished in 25th place. 

To reiterate: his “winning” time against the girls would have put him far outside the top 25 in the men’s field. The worst guy on the men’s track team can instantly become the best on the girl’s team. That’s the point. Or at least it’s the point about the athletic advantages. But even that point is not THE point. John Oliver still hasn’t addressed the actual point.

Now, John goes on for a while about the dearth of studies dealing with “trans women” in female sports. He’s perplexed that there haven’t been more studies on the subject. But of course trans women are men, and there is ample scientific evidence and many, many studies demonstrating the physiological differences and athletic advantages enjoyed by men. He wants a study that specifically studies trans women, as if the fact that a man sees himself as a woman will in and of itself fundamentally impact his biology. But that is not the case. Which is why no one has bothered to study it. No credible scientist would ever say, “Hey, we know that men are faster and stronger than women. But what about men who think they’re women. Are they also faster and stronger?”

Their perception of themselves as women does not alter their biology. We don’t need a study to show us that, John. We just need to be not insane.

So what John is really talking about here are men who have undergone a “medical transition.” We’re being told that after “transition,” the physical advantages are diminished, supposedly. Does this mean that John Oliver is saying that only male athletes who’ve taken the drugs should be allowed to compete against women? No, he’s not saying that. At least he doesn’t appear to be saying that. His only real argument in favor of men in women’s sports is that, supposedly, men who’ve taken the transition drugs become weaker and slower. But he actually doesn’t follow that argument through to its conclusion and say that only men who’ve transitioned should compete. So again this whole thing is a red herring.

Also, why are men weaker and slower after transitioning? Why do they have less muscle mass? Well because the drugs are destroying their bodies. John Oliver is, here, proudly demonstrating that medical transition destroys the human body. It has a destructive effect on the physiology of the men who undergo these “treatments.” John seems to have little curiosity about that fact. He doesn’t linger on it or think about it very hard. Instead he just declares, “Look at that! Their bodies have been destroyed! Now they’re just like women!”

He doesn’t see any problem with equating a destroyed male body to a female body. He doesn’t see any problem with giving people supposed medical treatments that are designed to physically harm them. And he doesn’t even really think these treatments are relevant to the question of whether or not a trans woman is actually a woman or not.

That brings us to the argument that John has spent this whole diatribe studiously ignoring. The reason why our side actually opposes men in women’s sports is, as I explained during that hearing in California last week, very simply because men are not women. No matter how great or small their advantage. No matter if they’ve “transitioned” or not. No matter how they self-identify. Men are not women. The fundamental claim of the trans woman — that he is a woman — is false. It is objectively, scientifically, logically, empirically, in every way, and from every angle, false.

If there was a 30-year-old adult who wanted to play in a t-ball league against six-year-olds, we would all — even John Oliver — tell him no. But what if this 30-year-old was really un-athletic? Would that change our mind? What if he was very short, as short as a child? What if this 30-year-old would be only the tenth best t-ball player on the t-ball team? Would we let him play against the six-year-olds? No. Why? Because he’s not six-years-old.

Now what if the 30-year-old thought he was six.? What if he identified as six? What if he spent his whole life and had built his entire personality around the fantasy that he is six? Would we let him play in the six-year-old league in that case? No. In fact, we’d be even LESS accepting of him on the six-year-old team. Because not only is he still not actually six-years-old — he’s also deranged. The fact that he is deranged doesn’t make him six, and it doesn’t make us any more eager to let him play with six-year-olds. It has the exact opposite effect.

The same logic applies to women’s sports. Men are not women. Men who think they are women are still not women, and are, if anything, even less fit to be competing against them. This is the argument John Oliver won’t address. He will talk and talk and talk about the issue, but he won’t go anywhere near the actual point. The point that so-called trans women are not actually women. That’s our whole argument, John. I dare you to spend even five minutes addressing it. You’ve spent plenty of time on this topic. I think it’s time you actually get to the point.