Fireside Chat Ep. 74 — Biological Males Competing in Female Sports | Fireside Chat

Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager. This is my home, my fireplace, my bulldog, should we just veer to Otto for a moment, who is rapidly becoming perhaps America's best well-known, best well-known, oh my God, best known dog. It's not what I'm aiming for. And by the way, he is very humble. When I tell him he's famous, it has no impact. Well, on the other hand, how do I know that? I'm assuming it has no impact, which is what, in fact, it should be for human beings. You know what? I should do an opening on fame because somebody who has it is better equipped to talk about it and just like I can't talk about being super rich, I'm not close, but I could talk about that and why people should not aspire to it. If it happens, fine, but as an end in itself, it's a bad idea. Before I talk to you, by the way, this is completely non-scripted. It's becoming more and more popular, which I'm delighted to learn. Many people who stop me say they watch this. We're now approaching an average of three quarters of a million views each week. I would love it to be millions, not because of the fame, but because of the ideas that I articulate and that I hope more and more people simply get exposed to. Anyway, it's very open. It's completely, as I said, non-scripted. Before I get into my opening remarks and then take your questions, I'd like to remind you, in case it's a reminder, or tell you in case you did not know that this month is fundraising month for Prager University. We don't ask you a lot to help us, but if you think we're doing good, whether it's the We're having an impact, and I think a good and kind and moral impact, an intellectual impact, offering people what they don't get when they go to school, and that is a rational and moral view of the world. In any event, if this touches you, if you think we're doing good, help us. If you send us a dollar, we're touched. If you send us a million dollars, we're touched. We can do more with a million, but you know what? Half of our entire fundraising comes from people online. Half. I'm very proud of that fact, and that's not millionaires who are giving online. So there are many ways. Go to PragerU.com and donate, or call 833-PRAGER-U, or go to my website, DennisPrager.com and click on the banner, but the easiest is obviously go to PragerU.com, and it's tax-deductible if you are an American taxpayer. You're allowed to give us if you're not American, because we touch a lot of non-Americans. Just thought we would share that with you, and it touches us to have so many of you from abroad. I was in Washington, D.C. last week, and I met a number of young Brazilians whom I'd like to say hello to. You guys really touched me. I hope to come to Brazil to speak. He said that PragerU is the most influential conservative idea base in Brazil for young Brazilians, and it's impossible for me to overstate how excited I am by that. Everything that we stand for is international. It is America-based, but that is beside the point. Shakespeare was English-based, but his plays were universal. Beethoven was German-based, but his music is universal. The ideas that I articulate and others articulate at PragerU are for the world. They're either relevant to everyone, or they're not relevant to anyone. Okay, I want to open up with some thoughts on a story that I think just 10 years ago, almost no one, almost no one in the world would have believed would actually take place. Increasingly in high schools now, and in college sports, but especially in high schools, males who transgender to female, but retain their male body, they identify as females, and that is their prerogative, but they are allowed to race in women's races, in girls' races. So they keep winning. In fact, two male-bodied females came in first and second in Connecticut and set records for women's races. And of course, girls didn't get on the team because these two transgendered females made the team. Now, what is so remarkable is, A, Connecticut allows this, and this is a very important subject not so much because of the transgender issue, but to give you an idea of the chokehold that the left has on discourse in the United States and the Western world. Because if you say it's not fair, and any decent human being, just decent, knows it's not fair. You are indecent. I rarely say that. You're not just wrong. You are indecent if you think it is fair for a male body to compete against a female body in a female race. It is, there's something wrong with your moral conscience, okay? I want to be as clear as possible. It is so obviously wrong, and yet to say it is wrong is to be declared a hater. This is, it's perverse. But it gives you an idea, as I point out so often, the chokehold that the left has on decency and on logic. Everyone knows this is the ultimate emperor is naked. The emperor has no clothes. But if everybody says the emperor's clothes are beautiful, then people start believing the naked emperor is really wearing beautiful clothes. That's that famous folk tale. That's the whole point of it. Oh, look at how beautiful the emperor's clothes are. And then there was one boy said, what are you talking about? The emperor's naked. They were not exactly grateful to that young boy, I believe that's the story, for making the revelation. The ability of people to go along with the majority is an ode to human fear. People are afraid. I don't want to say cowardly, even though that's what it amounts to. People don't have courage. A lot of sweet people, a lot of kind people, a lot of generous people, a lot of loyal people, a lot of honest people, but not many courageous people. Courage is the most important quality for goodness to prevail. And it's the least common quality. So that's part of the reason goodness often does not prevail. It is amazing, though, that it takes courage to say that that's not fair. For male bodies to run in a female race, it takes courage. So the girls in the race, they're afraid to speak up. They know they've been cheated. Cheated out of positions on the team and cheated out of winning. Everyone knows they've been cheated. Everyone. But nobody can say it. Example. Martina Navratilova was one of the great tennis stars of the last, oh, about 20 years ago. You can look it up, obviously. Martina Navratilova. And she came out as gay at a time when few people did. She has been a great activist on behalf of gay causes. She has been a hero, or if you will, heroine of the LGBT movement. But she said, you know what? I'm sorry. It's not fair when transgender females, that is male-bodied females, compete in tennis or other sports, excuse me, against women. It's not fair. She was kicked out of all LGBTQ groups. Kicked a lifetime. Gay woman. Lifetime of service. That is how totalitarian the left is. You either agree with us 100% or you are a nothing. Your lifetime service to our cause is of nothing. It's like Stalin dealing with Trotsky. If you don't know what I'm referring to, it's worth looking up. Martina Navratilova has courage. She knows what every single one of you knows. It's utterly unfair for male bodies to compete against female bodies. If male bodies are allowed to compete against female bodies, that ends female sports. Why have female sports? Why did they originate? Why is there female track and female tennis and female skiing and female wrestling and female weightlifting and everything else? Because female bodies are different from male bodies and male bodies are more athletic and more strong and longer legs and whatever the issue might be. That's just the way. Otherwise, if it weren't true, there wouldn't be women's tennis. Just be tennis. So why can a male body play women's tennis? Because the left intimidates people into lying on behalf of their causes. That's why. I connect the dots all the time. It's the left. It's not liberals. Liberals are too afraid to attack the left. But it's the left. If this is not a classic example, if you are not prepared to say this is not fair, then you have been so intimidated that your ability to think clearly has been impaired. This is a dividing line between the decent and the indecent. It is indecent to say let them race. It is indecent. So you will say, well, that means that the transgender females just can't participate in female sports. That's correct. That's what it says. Therefore, what? Those are your two choices. It is, shall we say, binary. Either they're allowed to compete or they're not allowed to compete. Correct. By the way, have you noticed how many transgender males are competing? Not too often, are they? How many female bodies are competing in male sports? Maybe it's happening. I'm not aware of any. The Martina Navratilova case is a perfect example of what happens. And people know what happens. You take on the left, you're ruined. You take on the right, you're not ruined. You're a hero. And the right doesn't act that way. We don't have this we-will-destroy-you-if-you-don't-agree-with-us mentality. We think you're wrong. You think we're wrong. Have a great day. One side really is meaner than the other. I can prove that, and I will in another one of these broadcasts. I'm going to be writing an interesting column. I write a column every week. You can see it at DennisPrager.com, TownHall.com, AmericanGreatness.com, and NationalReview.com, and many other places. I'm going to be writing a column on a question. If your child became a leftist at college, did he or she become kinder as a result? It's a fair question. It's a big metamorphosis. Did it make them a nicer human being? It's another subject. Anyway, may I have the Q&A? It's not fair when male bodies compete against female bodies. A five-year-old knows that, but the five-year-old never went to college and hasn't been poisoned yet to think in such a manner. Okay, Michael23SanDiego, can you talk about Dianne Feinstein being approached by a bunch of school kids about the Green New Deal? I would ask all of you to look on the internet. Dianne Feinstein, what does it say? School kids. That's right. Ten-year-old, mostly girls, visited the senior senator. How old is she now? About 80? I think she's about 80, very close to 80 or 80. Senator Dianne Feinstein, liberal Democrat, not quite fully leftist. She's more liberal than left, but she's a Democrat, and she's, again, about 80. Ten-year-old kids came to her office to demand that she sign on to the Green New Deal, which would, of course, change the entire fabric of our society into a socialist, non-democratic, and impoverished place. But other than that, it's a great idea. You've got to watch this to see how the ten-year-olds speak to a woman eight times their age and a senator of the United States. I have never voted for Dianne Feinstein. I live in California. I would never talk to her like that. And I'm an older guy. I would never talk to a person of her age like that. I wouldn't even talk to a person younger age like that, but let alone older than me, a senator of the United States. These ten-year-old kids, as I said on my radio show, and you should all know I have a national radio show. There's a good chance I'm on in your city, and in any event, there's an app. You can hear me on the internet. You can hear the show anytime, but I do broadcast three hours a day. And I, on my radio show, I called these little kids, these girls, monsters. They are. There's nothing quite as scary as frightening children. That's why horror movies often use children. There's something very scary about scary children. The parents of these children have raised monsters. To speak to, there was no concept of an elder. I mean, it was normal. I mean, I raised my kids. If an older person enters the room, you stand up, okay? Forget I was raised that way. So, well, people always say in their generation, okay, my kids were raised that way. They're raising their kids that way, or at least the one who has kids. But I am convinced that there is a segment of the population that believes as follows. If my child has the right progressive positions, they owe no one respect unless they agree with them. My child believes global warming will destroy the world in 2031. That's what, after all, that's what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. By 2031, life will be essentially extinct. My big question about the left is always, do they believe what they say? Like when they say that college is a rape culture, and then they send their daughter there. I can't believe they believe what they say. But there's a lot of hysteria. But that's the view. My child is right on global warming. Therefore, my child is a wonderful child. How she treats a senator of the United States, how she treats a person who could be her great grandmother, that doesn't matter. Linda, 19, Georgia, if America turned into socialist country, would you leave? I'm very dedicated to America. And my task is to prevent this from happening. I never, this is not a question, interestingly, I've ever even given thought to. My task is to prevent the destruction of America. And that would involve its destruction. If America became socialist, it would cease to be a free country. It would cease to be an affluent country. It would cease to be a good country. It would not be America in anything but geographic name. It would still be a country between Canada and Mexico. And by the way, it wouldn't be that much different. Because the people who would turn it socialist would open its borders. So to a certain extent, it would be unrecognizable. And I guess I don't know what I would do then. All I know is I took a vow at Normandy, looking at 10,000 graves of young Americans who died fighting the Nazis on the northwest beach of France. And I took a vow many years ago, they could die to preserve America and freedom. At least I could live to preserve America and freedom. And that's what I've tried to live by, that vow. Robert in San Antonio, 19 years old, what is your preference of cigars? By the way, I'm not sure I'm legally allowed to tell someone under 21. Oh, I could see the police coming after me. Are you telling a 19-year-old about a preference in cigars? Given that I had my first cigar at 16, fell in love with it, and my father couldn't care less, kept giving me all the cigars I wanted. My dad, God bless him, died at 96. Smoked his last cigar the day before he died. Anyway, my favorite cigars are generally Nicaraguan and strong. And box-pressed rather than just round. But I really like a lot of cigars, and so that's my preference. If you want to send me some, it's the only gift I accept. Every other gift I send back. It's disgusting. My goal is to never buy another cigar. I know this sounds disgusting, and I'm totally prepared to live with that reputation. But it is funny. The truth is a lot of people give me cigars, and I'm very touched by it. It is not my goal to never buy a cigar. That was a joke. But it's really ending up to a certain extent like that. I always buy cigars when I go to cigar lounges in cities. Whenever I arrive at a city, I go to a cigar lounge. And I hope I won't be recognized and just talk to strangers over a cigar. And that is a great form of relaxation for me. I also smoke a pipe. Okay. Nathaniel23, Bend, Oregon. Dennis, how do you convince someone that the Bible is true? Well, you asked me the right question. I'm writing a five-volume answer to your question. If anybody reads my first volume, second volume about to come out, of The Rational Bible, and still doesn't think it's true, I have failed. But I believe if you are open-minded, and you read what I write, read the reviews on Amazon. There are about 600 reviews. People from all faiths and no faith. And see how it affected them. I'll give you one little argument on why I buy the biblical narrative. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is extremely critical of the Hebrews, Israelites, Jews. If Jews wrote it, and it was not ultimately from God, why would they depict themselves so negatively? I've never gotten a coherent answer to that. There is no parallel in world history until the modern time. There's no biblical, no religion's Bible has something similar. If people wrote it, they would have depicted their group as wonderful. The Jews are regularly depicted as pretty, pretty awful. So why would they do that? Just one of my many, many arguments. It's called The Rational Bible. I would pray that you buy it, but I don't bother God with such requests. I'm very, very, very careful about whatever I ask God for. But I really hope you will get it. This is my attempt to make a better world. It's called The Rational Bible. What is our time frame? Oh, good, we could go for here. Barrett, 39. Wow, we have such old viewers? 39? Charlottesville, Virginia, I presume. Do you foresee culture, politics coming back to the center? If so, how? Well, first of all, you have to be honest about who pushed it away from the center. The left did. Everybody says both sides did. It's baloney. In 1962, a liberal court, Supreme Court, ruled that a prayer said by New York State students and schools voluntarily violated the Constitution. The prayer was essentially, we ask you, God, to confer your blessings on us, our teachers, our parents, and our country. That was it. And the liberal activists of the Supreme Court had the audacity to rule that that violated the Constitution. Americans had said prayers like that in schools all through American history. And then when the destructive 60s came in, from which we have never recuperated, they ruled that this somehow violates the U.S. Constitution. Americans have been violating the Constitution for all of its history. And these liberals on the Supreme Court discovered it. And now look at our schools. Kids no longer ask for blessings on their teachers. They curse their teachers. We've gone from blessing our teachers to cursing our teachers in one generation, two generations. What? What is so bad? It's not a Christian prayer. It's not a Jewish prayer. It's not a Muslim prayer. It's not a Buddhist prayer. It's a non-denominational prayer. The kid doesn't want to say it. He or she doesn't have to say it. What's so bad about it? Asking God to bless my teachers, my parents, my country, and myself? All of 10 seconds? That, my friends, is what started it. That is when America got pushed off the center by left-wing decisions on Supreme Courts. And then so much more. To the point where you are breaking the laws of Connecticut if you don't allow a male body to race against female bodies. Tell me, what has the right exactly done to move things far right? What is the right? The right believes what? The right just believes, let's keep government limited. The right wants to conserve what we had. By definition, therefore, it's not pulling the country in another direction. It's the left that has done all the pulling. All righty, everybody. I'll end with this one. Thomas in Marietta, Georgia, 21 years old. Hi, Dennis. Hi, Thomas. I am an aspiring filmmaker and I was wondering what some of your favorite movies are besides the works of Woody Allen. How did he know that I like the works of Woody Allen? I guess I must... Well, I'm sure I obviously said it. He didn't guess it. I think Woody Allen made a lot of very good films. By the way, I think Woody Allen made the most moral film I have ever watched, Crimes and Misdemeanors. And I wrote an essay. I should publish it again. I wrote it many, many years ago. Why I think that. That, he didn't even mean to, but he did. And some of his films are really funny. But I will tell you some of my favorite... I am not a connoisseur. I wish I were. I love movies. I think Groundhog Day is brilliant. Groundhog Day gives me great joy. There is spectacular truth and depth in that movie. And the acting is... Bill Murray is just so perfect in what he does. And Casablanca, a real classic that I love. And I'll tell you, you know what has never left my mind, which is a sign of a good movie? What is the Tom Hanks movie when he's stranded on an island? Castaway. Do you know that I actually think of that movie often? There are movies I have instant non-recall. I don't remember the movie the next day. But Castaway had an impact on me and I don't know why. But it was a powerful film. And film can be uplifting. Film can be entertaining, by the way, is a good thing. What has happened is there's so much emptiness because there's reliance on technical achievement, which I am never dazzled by. I'm dazzled by it technically, but it doesn't dazzle me in terms of, wow, that made it a great movie. Ten Commandments was a great movie, by the way. It's another one. Anyway, I should make a list for whatever it's worth. Anyway, on behalf of Otto the Bulldog and all of us in the Prager House, this is an honor to be with you. And I'll see you next week. Thank you and help Prager U. Thank you for watching. If you'd like to keep these fireside chats free, please do by donating to Prager U.