British Professor Obliterates Trans Athlete Argument In Two Minutes Flat

It took less than two minutes for British philosophy professor Jon Pike to dismantle the entire argument for including male athletes in women’s sports.

The viral moment happened earlier this month during a panel discussion at the Play the Game 2025 conference in Tampere, Finland. The panel, titled "Who has the right to compete? Exploring the inclusion of transgender athletes in sport," featured five participants: 

• Pike, professor of philosophy at Open University
• Pia Johansen, European Aquatics bureau member
• Roger Pielke, sports governance analyst and professor emeritus at University of Colorado at Boulder
• Joanna Harper, trans-identifying male researcher who specializes in studies of trans athletes
• Grace McKenzie, advisory council member for the Sport & Rights Alliance and transgender rugby player who competed in the women’s division before World Rugby banned males from women’s events

(Play the Game 2025)

As expected, the panel included multiple arguments in favor of allowing males who identify as women to compete in the women’s category. Not doing so, Pielke suggested, means trans athletes will be excluded from sports altogether.

But Jon Pike wasn’t buying it.

"For Roger to stand here and say this is a debate about whether trans athletes are excluded from sport is pernicious. It's misleading," Pike said. "Various people say this is a campaign to drive trans people out of sport. It's nothing of the sort. And I think you all know that. It’s an argument about the appropriateness and fairness of categories."

Pike went on to give a crystal-clear analogy that left the panel silent.

"I am excluded from under-21 football, right? If I wanted to play in under-21 football, despite my boyish good looks, I will not be allowed in. Because I am 60. I am not eligible," he said. "I am, of course, allowed — permitted, have a right — to play football... But there is no plan or proposal here on the table to ban trans people from sport. It’s an argument about categories."

Jon Pike: You Cannot Change Your Sex

McKenzie pushed back, arguing that male athletes undergoing hormone suppression are comparable to able-bodied athletes who become disabled and later join the Paralympics.

"I have a background in organic chemistry. This is a fallacious argument," McKenzie said. "I would encourage you to consider an able-bodied athlete who does become disabled — which is a much more clear comparison to somebody who loses advantage through hormonal transition. 

"Would you deny somebody who experienced an accident where they lost a leg or another limb the right to participate in the Paralympics?"

Pike responded, "No. Obviously not."

"So why would you do the same for a transgender athlete?" McKenzie asked.

"Because you haven’t changed sex," Pike replied.

McKenzie then pivoted to claiming that sex is "debatable," adding: "Incorrect opinions are also fine in the public sphere of debate."

Apparently basic biology is now an "incorrect opinion."

If the name of another panelist from this event, Joanna Harper, rings a bell, it's because Harper is the same researcher featured in John Oliver’s HBO segment earlier this year defending male participation in women’s sports. Harper is also reportedly tied to the alleged Nike study being conducted on trans-identifying youth athletes.

In the end, though, no one on the panel had a rebuttal to Pike's sound logic. Because there isn’t one. The professor didn’t just win the argument. He exposed it for what it is: an unscientific, illogical campaign to erase the boundaries that make sport fair in the first place.

Later, in a post on X, Pike summed things up pretty well: "If anyone *could* actually change sex, I'd have to rethink my position. But they can't. So I won't."