JIM GERAGHTY: Malcolm Gladwell Reaches His Tipping Point on Trans Athletes.
‘Near Unanimity in the Room that Trans Athletes Have No Place in in the Female Category’
It’s rather amazing what can be said out loud, into a microphone, once the political winds change.
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker and one of those rare authors who shaped his own oft-imitated genre. Starting with The Tipping Point, Gladwell used recent academic research to coin phrases and introduce concepts in psychology and sociology into popular culture. (How many people knew he started at the American Spectator?)
Earlier this week, Gladwell appeared on The Real Science of Sport podcast, a program hosted by sports scientist professor Ross Tucker and sports journalist Mike Finch. Gladwell made the remarkable confession that when it comes to advocates of athletes born male participating in women’s sports, he found their arguments unconvincing for a long time — but only felt comfortable publicly saying so recently:
Ross Tucker: Well, Malcolm chaired a session at the Sloan conference. That’s a big event held every year at MIT in Boston. I think it was in 2022. I lose track of time, but he was the chairperson, and I was on a panel of three or four. I forget exactly how many, but—
Malcolm Gladwell: They stacked the panel. They stacked against you, Ross. They put a trans athlete and a trans advocate and you on the panel and I was the moderator. And it was one of those strange situations where I my suspicion is that 90 percent of the people in the audience were on your side, but 5 percent of the audience was willing to admit it.
Tucker: My recollection of it is that everything I said was met with deathly silence, and everything the other two said got cheered.
Gladwell: Well, but the cheers were very — I mean I think there was a hardcore of people who were ideologically committed to the position, but the idea that that — I mean there’s many interesting things to say about that conversation. One was that it was a particular moment which has passed. If we did a replay of that exact panel at the Sloan conference this coming March, it runs in exactly the opposite direction.
And it would be, I suspect, near unanimity in the room that trans athletes have no place in in the female category. I don’t think there’s any question. I just think it was a strange — I mean I felt I mean I was — the reason I’m ashamed of my performance of that panel [is] because I share your position 100 percent, and I was cowed. The idea of saying anything on this issue — I was in I believe in retrospect — in a dishonest way. I was . . . I was objective in a dishonest way.
I let a lot of real howlers pass without comment because I didn’t — and I said to you in an email, there was that moment when — and I forgotten her name she’s wonderful, sorry, I’ve forgotten their name, a very thoughtful person.
They were the trans athlete on the panel and at one point they turned to you, Ross, and they said, “Ross, you have to let us win.” And it was at that moment that I realized this position has gone, this argument has gone to the furthest extreme. What the trans movement is not asking for — they’re not asking for, you know, a place at the table. They’re not asking to be treated with respect and dignity. What they’re asking is for no one to question the considerable physical, physiological advantage they bring to the sport, and no one to question — if they’re gonna win these races by five seconds, suck it up! That’s what they were asking, right?
As J.K. Rowling tweets, “Changing sides years late, and only after you’ve realised the non-elite opposition is winning, isn’t a mark of integrity but of arse-covering:”
