During a recent episode of Stars on Mars, Lance Armstrong voiced his opinion on trans athletes. The cyclist brought up a podcast he did with Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman who doesn't believe trans women should be treated the same as biological women when it comes to sports. They suggested that trans women should not be able to compete in women's sports at all. The controversial take got him a ton of backlash.
In discussing the incident on the TV series, another contestant on the show, Tinashe clapped back. “To me, I think you just have to care about, if you ‘otherize’ people, it’s not good for their mental health,” she explained. In a confessional, the singer also says she “wasn’t really shocked to hear his opinions." "I definitely didn’t think that he should be the spokesperson for that,” she explained.
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Armstrong insisted that he's not trying to exclude trans athletes. “You want to transition? Let’s do it – you have your own category. We’re going to have a whole new division. We’ll celebrate you just like we celebrate everyone else. Let’s go. What’s unfair about that?" he asked. “By the way, I sound like a right-wing lunatic. I’m not,” he explained, “I’m the most liberal person, but from a sporting perspective…”
“You might not agree with me, and I might not agree with you, but that’s ok,” he says in a confessional later, “And there’s a lot of sensitive subjects. It’s not just trans issues and trans in sports, it could be abortion, it could be war, it could be gun violence, anything. Global warming. But if you can’t feel safe to enter into the conversation, then we’ve all lost.” Last month, Armstrong also took the debate to Twitter. "Is there not a world in which one can be supportive of the transgender community and curious about the fairness of Trans athletes in sport yet not be labeled a transphobe or a bigot as we ask questions?," he asked. Many allies and people in the trans community found his comments transphobic, but he doesn't appear to be letting up any time soon.
