New York Times best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell has admitted he misled audiences on the issue of men competing in women’s sports.
In a new interview, Gladwell, who has been a staff writer for liberal outlet The New Yorker since 1996, now says he fully rejects the idea.
On a recent episode of “The Real Science of Sport” podcast, Gladwell said he feels deep regret about the “dishonest” way he handled the panel he hosted at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2022
If it were held today, he said the outcome would be entirely different.
“If we did a replay of that exact panel at the Sloan conference this coming March, it runs in exactly the opposite direction,” Gladwell said.
“And it would be, I suspect, near unanimity in the room that trans athletes have no place in the female category.
“I don’t think there’s any question.”
Gladwell admitted he was “dishonest” during that 2022 event, which featured a trans athlete and a trans advocate, because he was “cowed.”
“I’m ashamed of my performance at that panel because I share your position 100 percent, and I was cowed,” Gladwell said.
“The idea of saying anything on this issue – I was, I believe in retrospect, in a dishonest way, I was objecting in a dishonest way.
“I let a lot of real howlers pass without comment.”
Gladwell said most of the audience at the time disagreed with the activists on stage, but no one was willing to challenge them publicly.
“It was one of those strange situations where my suspicion is that 90 percent of the people in the audience were on your side, but 5 percent of the audience was willing to admit it,” he said.
Gladwell also condemned the demands of trans activists in sports, saying they want total submission to the obvious physical advantage of male athletes.
“What the trans movement is not asking for – they’re not asking for, you know, a place at the table,” he said.
“What they’re asking is for no one to question the considerable physical, physiological advantage they bring to the sport…
“And that when I heard that, I was like, ‘This is nuts.’
“And yet I didn’t say anything.”
WATCH:
🚨 Malcolm Gladwell says “trans athletes have no place in the female category.”
He admits he was cowed into saying that it was ok.
He knows it’s not.
He was bullied into it and he’s ashamed that he gave in.
Good for him. Mad props. pic.twitter.com/GGm1oCiNbv
— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) September 2, 2025
Gladwell’s reversal comes as the issue remains at the center of a national battle.
Meanwhile, blue state governors are clashing with the Trump administration over bans on men competing in women’s sports.
His admission that he was pressured into silence has already sparked a broader conversation.
“Like him or not, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most influential and financially successful journalists of the last 30 years,” journalist Michael Shellenberger said.
“For him to say he was too scared to say men don’t belong in girls’ sports shows both how totalitarian the [mainstream media] is and how chicken s**t MSM journalists are.”
Benjamin Ryan, a contributor to The New York Times, noted that Gladwell’s candor about being “cowed” could itself become a social “tipping point,” the very concept Gladwell popularized.
READ MORE – Elon Musk: ‘Relentless Propaganda’ Is a ‘Major Driver of White Males Becoming Trans’
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