I’m not a big sports person. I was the sort of kid who got picked last, and in spite of parents’ protestations, I just never found myself into athletics. It’s not that I dislike spots, per se, but it all never clicked with me.
In fact, one of the last times I really followed sports was back in my senior year in high school, where my school’s basketball team ended up making it to the California Interscholastic Federation finals.
Along the way, we ended up playing a team that had one player who was something like 6′ 4″ tall. The whole school heard about them in the week before the game, and were worried how well we might do against him and the rest of his team. In the end, however, we won. His height was not an advantage against what was an otherwise solid team that put the work in.
I think of that story when I think of some of the fights against transgender people in sports today. We have seen, over the last decade, a lot of arguments about the supposed unfair advantage transgender athletes — in particular trans women in women’s sports — possess.
The issue has few champions. Even moderate voices feel that perhaps there needs to be some “reasonable compromises” around transgender people in sports, even when we are talking about kids on the playground in elementary schools, long before any real competitions come up.
As a result, this issue is also one that anti-trans voices have focused on, using it for leverage on their whole anti-transgender agenda.
Consider, for example, what is happening right now in Sacramento. After Gavin Newsom used his new podcast to signal his willingness to restrict trans women’s participation in sports, our new Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, has started to dangle funding cuts to California schools not only over sports, but also rules that protect transgender students from being outed by school officials without that student’s consent.
It is worth noting here, too, that the California legislation is now discussing Assembly Bill 89, which seeks to bring California in line with the Trump administration’s views on school athletics under the aforementioned California Interscholastic Federation, prohibiting any student whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls’ interscholastic sports team. Note that it does not require the opposite.
Not to be outdone, of course, is the latest out of the World Athletics Council. Two years ago, they banned those who were assigned male at birth from participating in women’s sports as well. This, apparently, was not far enough for them.
Now, they will require that anyone entering into women’s sports competitions to verify their “biological sex” — a term I should note has little actual utility — though they are not yet entirely sure how these tests will be done. Again, I feel it is important to note that there is no testing planned, nor ban on, transgender men from participating in men’s sports.
Even the International Olympic Committee, who did suggest previously that sex testing simply wasn’t of value, is backing away from this in regards to women’s sports — and just in time, one might assume, for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
One thing that so rarely seems to be discussed regarding women’s sports, especially when one is talking about trans women being a part of it, is that the segregation of women’s sports has more to do with men’s ego, and less with actually uplifting women.
In the 1902 World Figure Skating Championships, when the sport was considered a mens’ sport, a woman — Madge Syers — came in second place. In 1905, the sport was segregated into mens’ and womens’ competitions, with the latter not classed as a “world championship.”
Ninety years later, the Olympics created a women’s category for skeet shooting after Zhang Shan won the gold medal in what had been an open category. These are but two of many examples.
Indeed, the whole argument that trans women cannot compete against women because they had the supposed benefits of having been born male is an inherently misogynist claim. It implied that there is something inherent in maleness that will always outclass a woman, even if the competitor in question is a trans woman.
This advantage, by the way, has been largely disproven: a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, released in 2024, proved that transgender women performed worse than non-transgender women. Tests of lower body strength and lung function were worse for trans women. Trans women have a higher percentage of fat mass and weaker grips. Also, trans womens’ bone density and hemoglobin were roughly identical to non-transgender women. These findings match many other past studies, too.
This is why anti-trans bigots have to cherry-pick from a very small pool of examples. Rather than showing you this supposed onslaught of trans women setting records and pilfering prizes, you hear about Lia Thomas‘ single victory, or about Riley Gaines coming in fifth against one trans woman and several other non-trans competitors. They even pad it out by introducing other non-transgender competitors, like Imane Khelif or Caster Semenya.
Transgender people are just not somehow taking away any prizes and records, not that they shouldn’t have an equal chance at them. No amount of trying to claim this makes it true. This is a fight against specters that don’t exist, all to let men feel superior — and, of course, to harm transgender people.
It’s time to get real about this inherently false issue of transgender women in sports.
Gwen Smith will never threaten any world records. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.