Trevor Noah, Malcolm Gladwell and the trans fairytale that won’t die

The trans agenda is now so discredited that it’s easy to imagine it as being on its deathbed. But if a recent encounter between American TV host Trevor Noah and author Malcolm Gladwell is anything to go by, there’s life in the old bunny boiler yet.

Both men are sports fanatics. So when they sat down to chat on Noah’s podcast, What Now?, one issue was bound to loom into view: transwomen competing against actual women.

Noah has long supported men who identify as women competing in women’s sport. Connoisseurs of the debate could therefore be forgiven for expecting sparks to fly, especially since Gladwell expressed regret last year for failing to defend the sex category in sport during a panel discussion in 2022. ‘I’m ashamed of my performance… because I share your position 100 per cent’, Gladwell told Ross Tucker, the decidedly gender-critical host of The Real Science of Sport, in September 2025.

Yet when Noah challenged Gladwell about his apology, the writer put his hand on his forehead and groaned, ‘Oh God!’. ‘Yes! You should put your hand on your head’, said Noah accusingly. ‘I like you as a person, I love your writing … Explain to me what happened there.’

In a vibrant intellectual culture, Gladwell might have confidently pushed back, knowing the vast majority of people – and the science – agree with him. Such, though, is the stranglehold of the trans movement that Gladwell did no such thing. Instead, he recanted his recantation.

Gladwell instead claimed the two sides in the debate about women’s sport are really arguing about two completely different things. Women opposed to trans-identified men in their sport are trying to protect a hard-won gain. Trans activists, meanwhile, are demanding social recognition and civil rights.

Gladwell failed to mention this marvellous insight in his Ross Tucker interview in September. If he had, Tucker would have dismissed it, pointing out that the opposing sides in the debate about women’s sport aren’t arguing about two different things at all.

The two groups have exactly the same aim: to decide who gets to compete in women’s sport. One group wants second-rate male athletes to be able to participate, some of whom are acting out a powerful sexual fetish. The other wants to exclude these men – not because they identify as trans, but because they are men. It’s hardly a complicated argument.

Gladwell then suggested that whichever side won the argument should feel compelled to back the demands made by their opponents. In other words, if women manage to prevent bullying fetishists from invading their sports, they should then bend over backwards to help these same men invade their single-sex spaces, support these men’s access to schools where they can denigrate women in sexualised drag parodies, and applaud their promotion of medical transitions for children. And to think some of us used to believe Malcolm Gladwell was clever.

Even this was not enough for Trevor Noah, though. His main argument involved reminding everyone that the rules of sport are made up anyway. He seemed to think this was some sort of revelation. As if there are people out there who believe God invented the rules of rugby or the Virgin Mary those of lacrosse.

In a comment widely ridiculed online, Noah went on to compare women’s sport in general with the weight categories of boxing. If boxing is able to make space for ‘a man who weighs less than a bag of cement’, said Noah (presumably referring to featherweights), then women’s sport should be able to find space for trans-identified men.

It hardly needs saying that the separate categories in boxing were created to prevent a skilled five-foot-five boxer getting severely injured by a skilled six-foot-four boxer. It’s hard to think of anything that could be more obvious. The lesson from boxing is therefore the opposite of what Noah thinks it is: where one group has an ineradicable physical advantage over another, then they should not compete against them. And since men have exactly that in relation to women, they should not compete against the female sex.

Noah has long been a prime example of the liberal celebrity who loves to proclaim the importance of kindness, but insists this all-important virtue works in only one direction. That is, of course, in favour of the chosen social-justice minority du jour.

His refusal to exercise any critical faculties on the issue of ‘trans rights’ reached its nadir in his interview with the bullying trans activist and cyclist, Veronica Ivy, in 2022. Ivy argued that being born male gives no more advantage in sport than being tall, citing as proof the women’s high jump at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Ivy’s argument rested on the fact that Ruth Beitia, who is 191cm, took the gold medal, while Mirela Demireva, who is 180cm, took the silver. This was true. And no one denies that being taller is an advantage in the high jump.

What Ivy failed to disclose, though, was that the bronze medal was won by Blanka Vlašić, who is taller at 193cm than both the other two women. Height, in other words, was not the determinant Ivy suggested it was.

Ivy was interviewed by Noah in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Those games duly provided further proof that height is not the deciding factor in high jump. The gold medal at Tokyo was won by Mariya Lasitskene (180cm), ahead of silver medalist Nicola Olyslager (186cm). Both were well ahead of ninth-placed Marija Voković, who just happens to be much taller than both of them at 194cm. Height, yet again, wasn’t the determinant.

Meanwhile, biological sex really is a determinant of success in competitive sport. And guess which sport helps prove that: the high jump itself. The women’s high jump world record is 210cm, whereas the men’s is 245cm. The latter was achieved by Javier Sotomayor, who just happens to be the same height (193cm) as the women’s bronze-medal winner at Rio.

Trevor Noah and Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast chat began with an exploration of the enduring influence of fairytales on adults. Ironic or what? These two smug blowhards are living proof some fully-grown adults just can’t let go of certain fairytales, especially ones in which cross-dressing men are the heroes.

Malcolm Clark was LGB Alliance’s head of research from 2019 to 2022. Visit his Substack, The Secret Gender Files, here.