Joe Rogan doesn’t mind trans athletes competing but minds assertions there aren’t physical advantages

Joe Rogan was once an outspoken opponent of trans athletes being allowed to compete in MMA. Rogan was a notable critic of Trans MMA veteran Fallon Fox and was subsequently called transphobic due to his opinions on Fox.

“She calls herself a woman but… I tend to disagree. And, uh, she, um… she used to be a man but now she has had, she’s a transgender which is (the) official term that means you’ve gone through it, right? And she wants to be able to fight women in MMA. I say no f***ing way,” Rogan said.

“I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick. You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints. You’re a f***ing man. That’s a man, OK? You can’t have… that’s… I don’t care if you don’t have a dick any more…”

“She’s not just huge, she’s got a f***ing man’s face. I mean, you can wear all the lipstick you want. You want to be a woman and you want to take female hormones, you want to get a boob job, that’s all fine. I support your life to live, your right to live as a woman.”

But with the lucrative move to Spotify – he substantially softened his stances explaining that he actually minded that Fox would compete against women without disclosing it. When Alana McLaughlin made her debut he was reluctant to critise and had instead talked about it on a friend’s podcast instead of his own.

During a 90 minute podcast Joe Rogan appeared to have done a 180 and was now completely fine with an MMA fight featuring a trans gender female vs a biological female.

“Well the trans MMA thing was big. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t valid. It was people that don’t want any criticism whatsoever about trans people.”

“And I was like: ‘Look, I don’t have a problem with trans people right I have a problem with someone pretending that they’re a biological woman and fighting women.’.”

“Once you say you’re trans and everybody says okay I’ll fight her –
Fine. I’m fine with that. And in fact MMA is one of the best places for that
Because you know exactly who your opponent is. Unlike like this swimmer. Was it UPenn? Is that what it is? The swimmer that’s like lapping all these biological women, that’s f—-d because they don’t have a choice they have to compete. “

In a recent episode Rogan praised UFC 145lbs competitor Germaine de Randamie who defeated a male who was 40lbs heavier back in 2007 and compared that situation to Trans men competing with women.

Rogan told Aljamain Sterling:

“I don’t mind it if it’s voluntary. Germaine de Randamie is a multiple-time world Muay Thai champion, she’s a fu*king assassin. ”

“She fought a dude,” Rogan said. Anyway, she flatlined a dude with a straight right. But she’s a fu*king straight killer. She’s a straight killer. I would never want to tell Germaine de Randamie that she can’t fight that guy.”
“She can do whatever the fu*k she wants. She’s a badass… So this watch that again, because this dude is teeing off on her, and she’s just she’s trying to fire back and then ding! Her straight right is a goddamn piston.”
“She’s a killer. She flatlined that dude, that’s hilarious. I mean, so I’m 100% for that.”

But the issue is that Fallon Fox, Lia Thomas and company keep insisting that they have no physiological advantages.

 “But what I’m not for is us pretending that someone who’s a biological male doesn’t have advantages, especially when we’re really blurring the lines of like, how long do you have to be?”

“Identify as a female for like, how long? How much hormones do you have to take? People will talk about outliers. There are outliers,” Rogan said. “It’s a good conversation because there are people like Roy Jones Jr. In his prime, he was an outlier. He was so fast. ”

“He had such advantages over the average person just by nature of being born Roy Jones, Jr. But we accept that in the spectrum of males. But the difference between what you’re saying is, that the spectrum of males – a person that is not really training would not be competitive against the males but still would be against the females because it crosses over where it puts you in like a journeyman female pro fighter.”

While it’s safe to say competition days are over for Fallon Fox, Alana Mclaughlin still frequently tweets about looking for an opponent. McLaughlin seems to have been exploited by Combate Global for publicity. For one, her entire fight camp was paid for by the promotion  – which is highly unusual for MMA. For another thing, her opponent has no social media and has not been commenting on the issue, at all.

McLaughlin since lamented how difficult it is to find a woman willing to fight.