Rapper beats female weightlifting records while ‘identifying as a woman’

Rapper and Oxford graduate rapper, Zuby, stoked the flames of a burning debate when he took to Twitter to demonstrate that male athletes shouldn’t compete alongside women. 

The Southampton native posted a series of videos of himself in a gym apparently ‘destroying’ various female weight-lifting records. 

But he did so whilst ‘identifying as a female’ as a tongue in cheek response to the issue around biologically male athletes taking part in female competition. 

The 32-year-old claimed to have broke the women’s dead-lift record of 238kg ‘without even trying’. 

‘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,’ he tweeted accompanied by a laughing face emoji. 

The rapper’s tweet blew up, amassing nearly 1 millions views, owing to the ongoing debate of the participation of transgender athletes in sport. 

Rapper and Oxford graduate rapper, Zuby, apparently breaking one of several female records

This was the message that accompanied the videos the 32-year-old posted on his Twitter page

Zuby posted this picture on his Instagram of a visit to Oxford University, where he studied

Martina Navratilova, the female tennis legend, is a long-term campaigner for LGBT rights but claims that male athletes ‘self identifying’ as female to compete is unfair. 

The nine-times Wimbledon champion, 62, says she is happy to address transgender athletes by whichever pronoun they desire, but would not be happy to compete against them unless they have fully transitioned. 

Some think this view doesn’t represent or protect trans athletes. 

Zuby, who describes himself as a ‘recreational lifter’, told The Times that the video ‘struck a nerve’. 

He said: ‘It was done in a humorous way, but it made it more real: it showed the fallacies of the arguments on the other side. 

‘I have seen people saying there is no inherent biological strength difference between men and women. I posted it being a bit tongue-in-cheek, showing what I think is the obvious absurdity of their argument.’ 

The rapper was videoed apparently beating three female British weightlifting records in a gym

Following up his initial tweet in which he took on the dead-lift he decided to take on two more records.

‘I’ll take the squat and bench press records too while I’m at it… May as well. To fight bigotry,’ he said. 

He was praised widely and said himself that ‘98%’ of the feedback was positive. 

He shares a similar opinion to the aforementioned Martina Navratilova who has courted controversy since coming out as a lesbian in 1981. 

Navratilova (left)  has claimed transgender women competing in sport have an unfair advantage over other women unless they’ve had surgery, Dr McKinnon (right) is a vocal critic

She received a wave of homophobic abuse and campaigned vehemently for LGBT rights. 

She became the unnoficial spokesman of the fresh debate in December 2018 when she wrote on Twitter: ‘You can’t proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women.’

She was called out by Canadian academic and cycling champion Dr Rachel McKinnon, who is the first transgender woman to win a female world cycling title. 

McKinnon, 35, still has her male anatomy, but has lived as a woman since she was 29.

She accused Navratilova of transphobia and demanded an apology.

The cyclist wrote afterwards: ‘I still can’t believe she said this…to me of all people.’

Czech-born Navratilova said in an opinion piece for The Times that transgender women in sport are ‘cheating’ unless they have irreversible surgery to change their anatomy.

She made a ‘critical distinction’ between transgender women like McKinnon who take hormones and former tennis player Renee Richards who was born Richard Raskind and had gender reassignment surgery.