This piece originally ran in Them.
Butch Ware, the Green Party’s candidate for vice president, sharing the ticket with Dr. Jill Stein, said on a recent podcast appearance that “biological males” should not play on “female sports teams.”
Ware appeared on the YouTube show The Black Channel on October 30 for a lengthy pre-election discussion, during which host Jason Black asked him if he agreed with “the idea of biological males playing in female sports.” (Anti-trans actors often use this phrasing to support the argument that trans girls and women should be banned from participating in women’s sports.)
Ware responded that he didn’t believe “biological males” should play in female sports, and said he thought “it gives an unfair competitive advantage.” Although this is a common right-wing talking point, there is no conclusive evidence in favor of banning trans women and girls from women’s sports, per a 2021 study. In fact, a study from April 2024, funded in part by the International Olympic Committee, found that trans women may face several disadvantages in athletic competition.
Ware went on to say that “the politicization of transgender rights is frankly right-wing talking points that Black folk have been kind of indoctrinated with over the course of time.” He added that the Green Party agenda “has not participated in the culture war between liberal extremists and conservative extremists,” but also added that “the culture of fear, recrimination, whether on ethnic or gender or other sorts of lines, is something that the overall fascist system of white supremacy benefits from.”
Clips from the podcast made the rounds on X over the weekend, with many expressing disappointment in Ware’s comments. On X, lawyer Obaa Boni called the interviewer a “fascist” but maintained that Ware “is completely ill equipped in this fundamental issue of liberation and his answer was very violent.”
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Another clip from the podcast interview also went viral, with many claiming that Ware was speaking out in favor of restrictions on abortion. When asked if there should be limits on abortion, Ware responded that “there should be limits on everything,” and referred to “a lot of the common sense regulations that most Americans agree on” as “something like 16 weeks.”
A national 15-week ban has become a favored “compromise” for the anti-abortion crowd, as The 19th reported last year. Such a ban would undermine abortion access in states where abortion remains legal and accessible and would not restore access to first-trimester abortion in states where abortion is heavily restricted or banned. Additionally, it’s worth noting that one in 13.5 pregnancies is discovered after 12 weeks. In the interview, Ware also said, “I’m very much in favor of defending a woman’s right to choose and if people don’t like abortions, then they should have every right not to have one.”
Ware posted a lengthy thread to X on Saturday to clarify his statements, stating that he is “neither a Pro-life ‘abortion banner’ nor a transphobe.” He claimed that his comments in the interview, which he referred to as “hostile,” “were taken out of context and used to paint me as holding views I fundamentally reject.”
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“In context, I was engaging in what I thought was a discussion of a nuanced policy on Olympic inclusion based on information shared by the IOC, not making a statement against trans inclusion,” he said. Ware added that he remains “committed to the liberation of all marginalized communities,” and said that he prioritizes standing “alongside trans and queer individuals in every fight for equity, including the urgent struggle against violence targeting queer and trans women of color,” apologizing for “the misperception caused by these comments.”
When Them reached out for comment, the Stein campaign's co-press director replied with a link to Ware’s thread on X, saying it serves “as the campaign’s official statement.” Shortly thereafter, the campaign's communications director followed up, saying, “On behalf of the Stein/Ware campaign, we would like to sincerely apologize for the harm caused by the use of a term offensive to our trans family. Trans women are women.”
Stein initially announced that she would be running for president as a Green Party candidate on November 9, 2023, and revealed Ware as her running mate on August 16. Stein’s official campaign site describes Ware, who is an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, as “a lifelong activist and educator specializing in the history of empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution.” His campaign site bio emphasizes that his scholarship has been “in service of the people, especially in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as the George Floyd murder in 2020.”
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