Spiked talks to Zuby about his (her?) world-beating achievement:
Men’s and women’s sporting competitions have historically, with a few exceptions, been separate. But in recent years, it has become more common for trans women (biological males) to compete in women’s events. Trans women have competed against biological women in the top flights of several sports, including athletics, cycling, handball, volleyball and weightlifting. Most famously, Rachel McKinnon, born male, won gold in female track cycling at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
Many argue that male biology confers certain unavoidable advantages and so women could lose out if women’s categories are opened up to biological males. Zuby, a rapper, podcaster and fitness coach, set out to prove this. He has produced several viral videos in which he breaks British women’s weightlifting records while ‘identifying’ as a woman. spiked caught up with him for a chat.
spiked: Why did you decide to identify as a woman to break the women’s deadlift record?
Zuby: I already have a lot of footage of myself working out, including the video of me ‘breaking’ the women’s record. Around the time I posted the video, there were multiple news stories popping up about transgender athletes – technically biological men – competing against biological women. They were winning races and competitions in all kinds of sports. I’d seen this kind of thing springing up over the years, but in a very short period of time it seemed like there were lots of cases
Out of curiosity, I googled what the British women’s powerlifting records actually were and I saw that I could beat all of them. So that video I posted, that wasn’t me lifting my maximum – the women’s record is 215kg and my maximum is 275kg. It’s similar for the bench press. And the women’s squat record was roughly the same as my own personal best. So I tweeted the video:
I keep hearing about how biological men don't have any physical strength advantage over women in 2019…
So watch me DESTROY the British Women's deadlift record without trying.
P.S. I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight. Don't be a bigot. 😂 pic.twitter.com/dYRraHCB42
— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) February 26, 2019
I think that adding ‘PS I identified as a woman… Don’t be a bigot’ is what made it go viral. I just tweeted it out there. At the time I had about 19,000 followers. I knew it would resonate with my audience. I thought they would find it funny and that would be that. But within 10 minutes the video had over 10,000 views – by the time I went to bed, it had over 300,000.
Everything just blew up and I started getting contacted by news organisations across the globe. It was weird on all levels. I tripled my social-media following.
Most people understood the point and found it funny. A very small percentage got upset and angry at me – but none could articulate why. I stoked the fire a bit by then breaking the bench-press record and doing multiple reps.
