Unbelievable Moments in Trans Activism: Trevor Noah Platforms a Narcissistic Male Sports Cheat

I truly believe that gender ideology is on its way out, even though I am under no illusion that it will go quickly and quietly (particularly in places like Canada). But the pushback is real and strong and we have had some fantastic wins lately. This is why, more than ever, I think it is important to hold to account the people responsible for supporting and spreading it in the first place, which is what I have been doing with this series.

In June of 2022, Trevor Noah hosted one of the worst trans activists on The Daily Show, providing him with a platform to spout his nonsense. And I don’t want to allow him to live it down.

People in the States or who use a VPN like I did can watch the full, horrifying interview here. I also found this shorter clip on YouTube that gives you a good idea of how the whole thing went.

“Veronica Ivy,” who used to go by Rachel McKinnon, is the picture of a narcissist. Now, that word gets thrown around a lot, but there simply isn’t a better descriptor for this man who believes that he is fully entitled to compete against women simply because he says that he’s “female.”

Of course, I think all men who compete in women’s sports are narcissistic, but McKinnon has the unbelievable gall to consistently go the extra mile.

For example, In 2018, he had a run-in with another male cycling sports cheat, Johnathan Bearden, who McKinnon made look sane by comparison. As reported by USA Today, the two were on the same cycling team until Bearden asked McKinnon to leave over a disagreement about testosterone.

Bearden believed that naturally occurring testosterone gave “trans women” such as himself an unfair advantage in competitions against women and should be blocked. He apparently didn’t think the entire male body was an issue but at least he tried to give some lip service to fairness. (Obviously, I disagree and I think Bearden’s position is stupid).

McKinnon, on the other hand, did not believe that men who wanted to compete against women should have to block their testosterone. In fact, he called it oppressive and a violation of their human rights.

McKinnon went on to steal gold in the 35-44 women’s category at the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship in both 2018 and 2019. At the 2019 event, second-place finisher Dawn Orwick (who had been directly robbed of first place by McKinnon) opted not to put her arm around the cheating man for the photoshoot.

This caused McKinnon to tweet angrily about what a poor sport Orwick was.

Though not active on Twitter anymore, McKinnon had a horribly toxic presence while he was. The examples are too numerous to go through, so I’ll leave you with his infamous wish for cis people to die in a grease fire:

Being the incredibly unpleasant and difficult person that he is, McKinnon proceeded to do the nearly impossible and lost his tenured position at the College of Charleston.

He moved back to Canada and resurfaced in March 2022 at the Western Track Challenge event at the Burnaby Velodrome. Here, McKinnon stood on the podium alongside two women in exceedingly better shape than him.

Instagram / burnabyvelodromeclub

Despite all of this, it was only a couple of months later that Trevor Noah decided McKinnon was someone he ought to fawn over and debase himself for.

The interview was downright embarrassing. Even though Noah is sitting across from a man who has cheated so many women out of competition and podium spots, he begins the segment by talking about what a transphobic world we live in and how all the transphobia means we can’t talk about these important issues.

He then gives McKinnon free rein to spout his solipsistic and self-serving nonsense completely uncontested, including his relentless comparison of “trans women” (men) to intersex women and women of color. It is one of his favorite tactics to say that if men with lady feelings can’t be considered women, then these women can’t either. Everyone but those in the current sacred caste of trans would be slammed for such an offensive comparison.

McKinnon, who, keep in mind, has a Ph.D in philosophy, then insists that he is a biological female because he is a “woman” (“that’s a fact,” he says) and because he is made of biological stuff. As to the question of whether “trans women” have an advantage over “cis women”? “We don’t know,” he says. But it doesn’t matter even if they do.

And it only gets worse from there, with Noah weakly trying to bring up opposing arguments, always making it clear that “some would say” (rather than that he was saying it). Watching him struggle with cognitive dissonance while trying to walk on eggshells and remain deferential to McKinnon was painful.

The one meek point he does try a bit more boldly to bring up and make McKinnon grapple with is why we should maintain men’s and women’s categories at all. His reasoning is ridiculous but it follows perfectly from what McKinnon said. To this, McKinnon responded that if the only reason to remove sex categories is because you don’t think trans women are women, then that’s problematic.

Maybe it’s my morning sickness, but hearing the rubes in the audience clap at McKinnon’s smug statements made me feel quite nauseous.

Watch the interview at your peril! But don’t let it get you down.

Slowly but surely, things are changing, and more sports are starting to wake up and change their rules. It’s unfortunate how far it was allowed to go in the first place and how many more girls and women are going to suffer before it ends. Recently, US President Joe Biden made everything even worse by completely destroying Title IX.

At the same time, in Canada of all places, sport is one of the areas that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is looking at and that federal Conservative party Leader Pierre Pollievre will hopefully be addressing at as soon as Trudeu is booted from office.

Once the gender zealots are removed from power, I really do believe (or, I desperately hope) that things will start to change. It’s just bewildering that it ever got this far.