Should Transgender Athletes Participate in Women’s Sports

I thought we were making great progress on attitudes towards transgender people, and protection of their rights, but the recent pushback against allowing transgender people to participate in women’s sports surprises and alarms me. Up until recently, it did seem that a large majority of people now supported the idea that transgender people should be free to express their choice of gender identity. While transgender people certainly do still experience prejudice if not outright hatred for their choice of lifestyle, society has also progressed significantly to the point where a majority of the US population seem to be happy to accept and embrace these choices, adopt the preferred pronouns, and treat transgender people just as they would any other person sharing that chosen gender identity. However, that positive shift seems now to have come to a grinding halt when it comes to the question of women’s sports.

Exclusion from Sports is Harmful and Unfair to Transgender People

Like any other demographic group, many transgender people enjoy athletic pursuits. An essential part of participation for many sports involves being part of a team and competing against other teams.  Athletic programs at schools and colleges are centered around fixtures against rival institutions. Athletes strive to improve their performance, both individually and at a team level, and participation in such activities can be a source of great pride, camaraderie, joy, and physical and mental wellness.

To decide that transgender women are not welcome on women’s teams is thus incredibly hurtful and exclusionary. It is basically telling them that their chosen gender identify is not acceptable after all, and they need to go away and find some other activity with which to amuse themselves. Given the already high levels of mental health issues and depression among transgender people, which is presumably at least partly due to their fears and experiences of social rejection or discrimination, a ban on their being able to pursue what may be their favorite activity, perhaps even their lifelong passion, may be incredibly damaging.

Studies show that social support and inclusive policies, especially regarding youth sports, are critical factors for the mental health of transgender individuals. A paper by the Center for American Progress showed that transgender students in states with inclusive athletic policies were 14% less likely to have considered suicide in the past year than states with no guidance, and students at schools with inclusive policies were less likely to skip school or experience bullying or harassment.

It imperative for the health and wellbeing of transgender people, as well as out of general respect for their right to live their chosen gender identify to the fullest degree possible that we embrace their right to participate in the team categories that match their gender identity.

The establishment of separate events for women in sports dates back to the late 19^th century. The first modern Olympic competition in 1896 excluded women completely, but in 1900 women were able to compete, separately from men, in five sports: tennis, sailing, equestrianism, croquet and golf. The selection of these particular sports reflected societal views at that time about women and gender roles – women were seen as gentler and less competitive than men and these sports were assumed to be less physically demanding and more “appropriate” for women than many other sports.

Performance Differences Between the Biological Sexes

If part of the original motivation for having women compete in separate events from men was to satisfy a now outdated cultural sense of decorum, it also reflected the observed differences in speed, strength and agility between men and women which arise from biological differences in physiology, including muscle mass, bone density, lung capacity, and reaction speeds. Keeping the sexes separate was necessary to encourage women to participate in sports, both to allow them to be competitive, and also, to protect them from the increased risk of injury involved in mixed-sex events, especially in contact sports such as rugby or boxing.

Various other developments boosted participation and empowerment of women in sports, but these were all premised on the idea that women need to be able to participate in separate events from men due to differences in performance between the sexes: in the US, the landmark legislation known as Title IX, which was passed in 1972, mandated equal opportunities for women in education and sports. This forced US colleges to allocate the same financial resources to support separate women’s sports teams and facilities as they did for men’s sports, resulting in a large increase in women’s participation. Another major milestone was the establishment of the Women’s World Cup in 1991, which spurred rapid growth in participation in women’s soccer.

Transgender Women have the Performance Advantages of Biological Men

Transgender women are people whose biological sex is male, but who have elected to express their gender as female. Despite their choice of gender expression, absent some kind of “gender-affirming” therapy, they continue to have the physiological traits of a biological male, which, on average, yield the various advantages in performance I just mentioned. This is why it is generally not fair to cisgender women, that is, people whose gender identify is female and whose biological sex is also female, for transgender women to be able to compete in women’s sports events. The women’s event categories were originally established specifically because of the performance differences between the biological sexes.

Biological Sex is Not Binary

There are a few problems with this rationale. First of all, the idea that biological sex is a clear cut, binary concept is inaccurate. As a paper by the ACLU points out, this is a myth: “MYTH: Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics”, and they quote a Dr. Joshua D. Safer,  “A person’s sex is made up of multiple biological characteristics and they may not all align as typically male or female in a given person.”  In other words, sex is not binary, and consists of a spectrum, where an individual may exhibit some “typically male” characteristics, and not others or some “typically female” characteristics and not others. So trying to use biological sex as a hard criterion for eligibility for a particular activity will lead to problems with people who exhibit some determining traits which are typically male and some other determining traits which are more typically female. Furthermore, even for those people who fall more clearly into either a male or female biological sex category, as Dr. Safer also points out, “A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance.” For any given sport, many people who exhibit the genetic make-up and reproductive anatomy typically associated with females may substantially outperform other people with the genetic make-up and external reproductive anatomy of a male.

Hormone Therapy Eliminates Most Biological Advantages

Even if we were to accept the popular but erroneous idea that biological sex IS binary, the main reason for any systematic differences in performance between biological males and females is due to differences in testosterone levels. Biological males have substantially higher levels than biological women, which is what leads to the performance differences you highlighted. However, these differences in testosterone levels can be altered using hormone suppressions therapies. For many sports, this allows transgender women to lower their testosterone levels and reduce the advantages that they might otherwise have due to their male biological sex. There has been substantial research to support the effectiveness of this approach. A 2023 study featured in the Journal of the Endocrine Society concluded that “Limited evidence suggests that physical performance of nonathletic trans people who have undergone Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy (“GAHT”) for at least 2 years approaches that of cisgender controls.” Another review in 2022 of research in the effects of hormone therapy by Dr. Safer also noted that “the existing literature suggests that treatment to lower testosterone may be sufficient to erase that advantage in at least some athletic activities.”

As a result, various sports bodies set standards to allow transgender women to participate in women’s sports and compete fairly with cisgender biological females. For example, until 2021 the International Olympic Committee regulations stated, “The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition.”

Biological Sex IS Binary

Carpenter, let me respond to each of these points. First, your claim that biological sex is not binary is just wrong. Medical science is clear that there are only two biological sexes, even if many scientific and medical professionals are currently afraid to spell this because of understandable fears about a potentially career-ending “cancel-culture” backlash. This question has become controversial because rejecting the binary nature of biological sex allows one to also reject the idea that there is any important difference between cisgender women and transgender women, as you just attempted to do. However, as Debra Soh points out in her book, “the End of Gender”, biological sex “is defined not by chromosomes or our genitals or hormone profiles, but by gametes, which are mature reproductive cells. There are only two types of gametes: small ones called sperm that are produced by males, and large ones called eggs that are produced by females. There are no intermediate types of gametes between egg and sperm cells. Sex is therefore binary. It is not a spectrum.” A small percentage of people (approximately 1%) are “intersex”, which covers a range of different conditions where the reproductive anatomy is atypical for a person’s sex, but the existence of these “exceptional” conditions doesn’t negate the fundamentally binary nature of biological sex.

Biological Sex and Gender Identity or Expression are Not the Same Thing

The claim that sex is non-binary may also arise due to a confusion or conflation of the idea of biological sex with gender identity or gender expression. Gender identity is how a person feels about their gender in relation to their biological sex. Most people are “cisgender”, which means their feelings of gender match their biological sex. Transgender people, by definition, have a gender identity which is opposite to their biological sex. This may lead to a deep sense of unease or distress, a condition known at gender dysphoria. Gender expression is the way a person presents themselves relative to the typical norms for male or female gender, in terms of things like the way they dress and the mannerisms they use.  As I just explained, biological sex is binary. For gender identify, while controversial, some argue that it is also fundamentally binary – most people, including transgender people, are either male or female in gender, whether their gender matches their biological sex or not. For those people who don’t feel clearly just female or just male, which includes people who feel partly one gender and partly the other, in a range of proportions, people who feel there are neither one nor the other, and also people whose feelings about their gender change over time (“gender fluid”), these identities are all still defined in some way with respect to the female or male gender. Whether that means gender identify is binary or represented by a spectrum of many possibilities is hotly debated, and perhaps at least partly a semantic distinction. However, in the case of gender expression, it seems to be more generally accepted that there IS a continuum or spectrum of possibilities. Other questions that seem to create intense disagreement include whether gender identity is innate (vs socially developed) and whether it can change. Regardless of where you come out on these questions with respect to gender, this doesn’t get away from the fact that biological sex IS binary and that it doesn’t change and that there are significant physical differences between the sexes.

Testosterone Suppression does not Eliminate Male Performance Advantages

You mentioned testosterone levels and research that shows that the performance advantages exhibited by biological males can be addressed by hormone suppression treatments. Testosterone certainly does play an important role in driving the large physiological differences between an average male and an average female. The research that you mentioned also confirms that treatments to suppress testosterone levels can reduce these differences. However, the very same research that you cited also makes it clear that these treatments only partially address the differences between biological sexes. For some performance attributes, a prolonged period of treatment may largely close any gap, but for other attributes, even long-term treatment does not remove the male advantages completely. For example, in the article you cited from the Endocrine Society, the authors explain, “After 2 years of GAHT [Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy – which suppresses testosterone levels or the effects of testosterone], no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.” The same article notes that performance differences between biological males and females are most marked in activities that rely primarily on upper body strength, such as baseball pitching (>50% male advantage) and tennis serving (20% male advantage), and, perhaps not surprisingly, the persistence of performance advantages even after long-term GAHT seem also to be strongest in the upper-body exercise cited in the study (i.e. push-ups).

The GAHT treatments reduce the amount of testosterone circulating during the time of the treatment. However, these treatments don’t generally reduce the testosterone levels all the way down to the ranges that are typical for cisgender women. Normal testosterone levels for biological females range from 0.3 to 2 nanomoles per liter (“nmol/L”). Normal levels for biological males range from 8.3 to 32.9 nmol/L. As you noted, the pre-2021 International Olympic Committee 12 month maximum testosterone level for transgender women athletes was 10nmol/L, which is still significantly higher than the normal ranges for cisgender women.

Insufficient Research available on Elite Transgender Athletes

Another problem is that there seems to be very little research available about differences in performance at elite levels of competition. Much of the research cited above was based on analysis of non-athletic people, or, in one case, a study of military personnel records. At elite levels of athletic competition, where the differences in performance between the biological sexes is more pronounced, GAHT may be more effective at leveling the playing field, but it could also be worse. We apparently just don’t know. And that is why the use of relatively arbitrary testosterone rules for transgender athletes are considered to be insufficient to ensure fairness for cisgender women. The IOC 12 month maximum of 10nmol/L was criticized in the light of the research I just mentioned, showing that significant advantages persist in transgender women even after 2 or 4 years of GAHT. In an attempt to at least partially address these concerns, in 2019 the World Athletics body reduced its cap to 5nmol/L. However, the IOC declined to review its guidelines until after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. At that point, the IOC dropped the testosterone level rules altogether and instead deferred to the governing bodies of individual sports to establish rules appropriate to each sport.

Male Puberty Confers Permanent Performance Advantages

In any case, debates about the permitted number of nanomoles per liter, or the required number of years of treatment may also be missing the bigger point – that the advantages of biological males are not solely tied to the circulating levels of testosterone. There is strong evidence that a large proportion of the differences in performance between biological males and females are driven by the large differences in testosterone levels present during puberty. Once a biological male has passed through puberty with normal male levels of testosterone, permanent relative improvements in various physical attributes are developed, including in skeletal mass, explosive muscle power, and aerobic capacity. A study by Tommy Lundberg in 2021 noted that, “the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.” Another researcher, Joanna Harper, at the University of Loughborough in the UK wrote in a review of relevant research literature that, “values for strength, LBM [lean body mass] and muscle area in transwomen remain above those of cisgender women, even after 36 months of hormone therapy,” leading her to comment (in another article on this topic), “Pretty much any way you slice it, trans women are going to have strength advantages even after hormone therapy. I just don’t see that as anything else but factual.”

Perhaps in response to these findings, in 2024, as the Paris Olympics approached, the IOC updated its rules to exclude from women’s events any transgender woman who had transitioned to become transgender after puberty. Subject to this overall limitation, the IOC still defers to the governing bodies of each sport to determine other rules and so participation rules vary: some sporting bodies, such as World Rugby have an outright ban on transgender women’s participation while some bodies added an age limit for transition. For example, World Aquatics now allows transgender women to compete only if they complete their transition by age 12, or before reaching stage two on the five stage Tanner scale for puberty.  Although some sports do still apply rules based on testosterone levels, the IOC 2024 rule change reflects the scientific consensus that GAHT treatments applied after puberty to control testosterone levels cannot ensure fairness for cisgender women when competing against such transgender women.

Biological Males have Advantages Even Prior to Puberty

While these “transition-before-puberty” rules are a step forward for fairness for cisgender women, they may still not be sufficient. The latest rules still presume two things: first, that the commonly held belief that differences in athletic performance between children of each biological sex prior to puberty are negligible; and second that a transition prior to puberty will prevent any of the advantages that accrue to biological males during the process of puberty from occurring.

The first assumption seems to be just incorrect. There is considerable evidence that biological males still have meaningful performance advantages prior to puberty, even if smaller in degree than the difference post-puberty. Analysis of US school records in swimming and track events show 5-10% differences from age 7 to 12, and research in Europe and Australia showed differences in the 10-20% range for some activities. This is understood to be at least partly due to higher levels of testosterone experienced by biological males in utero before birth, as much as 9 times higher during some phases of pregnancy.

As for the second assumption, there seems to be little research to prove this one way or the other because most research in the field seems to have focused on transgender transitions that occur after puberty. However, unless a hormone treatment was to completely eliminate the male/female disparities in testosterone during puberty, it seems unlikely that it would prevent ALL of the advantages that are gained by biological males during puberty from being realized. And even if testosterone levels were completely normalized to those experienced by biological females during puberty, it is still unclear whether there could be other sex-specific factors which could contribute to performance gains experienced by biological males during the puberty process.

Thus, even limiting transgender women’s participation to those who transition before puberty doesn’t ensure complete fairness, and this is presumably why certain sports bodies, particularly for sports that are very reliant on muscle strength/power, such as rugby, have implemented complete bans for transgender athletes.

Elite Athletes are All Outliers

Well Walrus, you have certainly covered a lot of ground and the data you have highlighted is interesting. However, all of this research on differences in performance between what you call biological males and biological females represent differences between the average values for the large populations of these two groups. Within either category, the variations among members of that group are much larger than these differences between the averages of each group. Athletes who are successful at elite levels perform far, far above the levels of typical non-athlete of the same biological sex. These elite performers generally have physiological differences that make them rare outliers from the general population. For example, the average height of NBA basketball players is 6’6” vs 5’9.5” for the US male population. Cyclists and cross country skiers have much higher “VO2 max” levels (a ratio comparing lung capacity to body size) – an elite cyclist or skier can be as high as 85 to 95 mL/(Kg min) compared to 45mL/(Kg min) for an average male.

For any given sport, while great coaching and dedication to training may be important, there is generally some combination of innate physical and mental attributes which determine a degree of natural aptitude. As anyone who has been cut from a selective high school team (after giving it their all during tryouts) knows all too well, some people just have more natural talent for a given sport than others.

Modern genetic research shows that for almost any physical or mental trait or ability, there is a high degree of genetic heritability, which is to say that it is largely determined at conception through a random combination of the genes of the father and mother – what some people call the “genetic lottery.” Environmental factors (such as the family or school environment a person experienced while growing up) play an often surprisingly small role.

Natural Variation Among Women Already Confers Unfair Advantages

Is it fair that one woman has more incredible eye-hand coordination skills, or endurance, or jumping height, or physical strength than almost all other women? We readily accept these substantial but natural variations in ability as part of life, despite the random nature of the mechanisms by which such traits are assigned. Few people begrudge the swimming champion, or the sprinting medalist her good fortune to have such talent. But the genetic good fortune of these lucky, talented few often does prevent all the just slightly less naturally talented women from winning gold medals or championships or sponsorship deals, no matter how much they may want to, or how hard they may strive and train.

Interestingly, there are a few sports where recognition of the large range of performance levels has led to demarcation of events into sub-categories based on a particular physical trait. In boxing, for example, use of weight categories allows smaller participants to be competitive against people close in body weight to themselves, rather than just allowing the sport to be dominated by the physically largest people. One could imagine this approach being used more widely – one could establish separate basketball events based on height ranges, which would be more inclusive for shorter players. However, this thought experiment quickly runs up against our intuition that most differences in athletic abilities or traits are fair game and those with higher levels should be able to make the most of them. Would we want to segment cycling competitions based on measures of lung capacity, or swimming events based on measure of “wingspan”? As long as an advantage like this is “natural,” by which we mean it was the result of genetics and rigorous training, and wasn’t the result of “artificial” enhancement such as from using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs, we accept it as a normal feature of competition.

Thus, for most sports, in both male and female categories, there is no level playing field and life is already quite unfair. So what difference does it make if a few more people, some of whom may also have certain performance advantages, are allowed to participate, especially if that serves a general desire to be inclusive and compassionate to a group which routinely suffers exclusion or prejudice in other aspects of their lives. Most transgender people, like most cisgender people, do not have extraordinary athletic talents. But for the few who do, why should their outlier performance levels be treated any differently than those of their cisgender elite competitors, who are also extraordinary. We don’t exclude unusually tall cisgender women from women’s basketball competitions even though we know that this will limit the ability of shorter women to compete, so why can’t we allow transgender women who may occasionally also have unusual talents to compete too?

Carpenter, this is a seductive argument, but there are several problems. Your whole point rests on the idea that the differences in performance within each biological sex category are large, and the differences between the two biological sexes are small, so small as to be negligible and thus unimportant. Unfortunately (for your argument), this is patently not true.

Biological Sex IS a Strong Predictor of Elite Athletic Performance

It IS true that the variations within each biological sex category are large, and it is also true, that if we selected one person at random from each biological sex category, their biological sex may not be a great predictor of which person would be the better performer at any particular sport. For instance, it is probable that roughly half of all women (the top half) outperform roughly half of all men (the bottom half) for many sports. But this is irrelevant to the question at hand. If you are comparing the best athletes among biological females to the best athletes among males, the differences are large, and biological sex would be a very strong predictor of performance. For example, the women’s 100 meter track world record holder would not rank in the top 6,000 all time men’s performance, and would not even rank in the top 10 for male US high school performances.

Transgender women, even after undergoing GAHT for several years, continue to have material advantages compared to cisgender women in various traits that are meaningful in many sports. The research data we discussed earlier related to non-athletes, but the residual advantages may be even greater at elite levels. For instance, in swimming, Lia Thomas, a transgender woman on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team, who had adhered to the NCAA testosterone limitations in effect at that time, won the NCAA National Championship in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event in March 2022. Prior to transitioning and joining the women’s team, she had ranked only 65^th in the men’s NCAA division 500 yard freestyle event in the 2018-2019 season.

Only Natural Variations in Athletic Performance Are Fair

I agree that elite athletes in all sports are outliers in terms of performance and usually also in terms of certain physical abilities or characteristics. You argue that, since we don’t consider it unfair for some women to have substantial physical advantages over other women, based on natural variations in abilities and characteristics, we should also not object if a few other individuals (i.e. transgender women) who may also have certain outlier characteristics are allowed to participate.  However, you hit the nail on the head yourself – you noted that these variations are only considered fair if they occur naturally and not due to any artificial enhancement. Women respect and even revere the high performance of other women, no matter how far outside the norm. For example, Katie Ledecky, the US Olympic swimmer, holds the top 20 fastest ever times for the women’s 1500 meter event, and finished 10.33 seconds ahead of the next fastest swimmer in the Paris Olympic final, so no one even came close to keeping up with her. Yet no one thinks that is unfair. On the contrary, she is considered a female hero and icon.

However, the performance of transgender women are not part of the natural variation of performance and abilities among biological women. Noone seriously disputes that, prior to any transitioning treatment such as GAHT, transgender women, who are also biological males, have major advantages. This was the whole reason that the category of women’s sports was established in the first place.

Current Transgender Transition Therapy Approaches Cannot Achieve Fairness

Unfortunately, the science of transgender transition treatments is not yet advanced enough to consistently transform a biological male to eliminate all of these advantages. Furthermore, even if there was a well understood and reliable method to adjust precisely all the performance characteristics of a transgender woman, it is still not clear how one would ensure fairness: for a biological male athlete who wants to transition to become a transgender women, and who has exceptional performance capabilities, would it be fair to require them to undergo therapies that reduce their performance to being similar to an average biological female, if that were actually possible? Why not adjust them to being an exceptional female? But of course, this begs the question – how exceptional would be fair? If they ranked 65^th in their sport as a biological male, should the adjustment be made so that they still rank around 65^th among women athletes, as a transgender female? What if they originally ranked second as a male? And what if the male category in which they ranked second happened to be dominated by a historically extreme performer, like a male Katie Ledecky, but the female category was much more competitive? What then? What about sports, like soccer, where such clear-cut individual rankings don’t exist? There are no clear answers.

This thought experiment shows why any therapeutic approach that purports to reduce the performance advantages of being a biological male for a transitioning transgender woman, even if it were possible to do it effectively across all relevant characteristics, would be necessarily arbitrary in its degree and thus the resulting performance profile wouldn’t meet the intuitive requirement of being part of the natural variation within the biological female category.

To completely overcome this problem there would need to be a comprehensive “biological-sex-change” therapy that could completely undo all the differentiating effects of the male biological development process and transform a biological male in such a way that they would have all the physiological characteristics and abilities that they would have had if they had started off (at the embryonic or perhaps even the conception stage) as a biological female and gone through their entire developmental life as a female. This would include developing any extraordinary abilities that they would have had as a female, as well as all the un-extraordinary abilities. It would also include developing all the typical anatomical characteristics of a biological female, including typical female bone structure and muscle mass and tissue type, and perhaps also typical female reproductive organs. Perhaps this “therapy” would only be possible if the subject’s chromosomal content was also edited (using a technology like CRISPR) to reflect the typical female structure, including having two X chromosomes instead of one X and one Y chromosome. Or perhaps it could be achieved without gene editing such as by reversing and inhibiting the effects of the Y chromosome and amplifying the effects of the single X chromosome. Presumably this process of changing the subject’s sex characteristics would need to also somehow preserve all the non-sex-specific aspects of their identity, simply in order for them to continue to be the same person.

If such a therapy existed, perhaps this would result in a person who has the natural (i.e. randomly assigned by the genetic lottery) traits of a biological female and who could thus compete fairly against other biological females. Indeed such a process would arguably represent a true and full biological sex change, and result in the subject actually becoming a biological female. But of course, this is all hypothetical, since such a therapy is currently impossible, which is why there is currently no means of treating transgender women so that they can fairly compete with biological females. It may be that the advantages of biological males who transition prior to puberty are much more limited, but even in this case, there are still significant differences between the biological sexes, at least partly due to developments that occur for biological males in utero.

Transgender Research DOES Show That GAHT Eliminates Athletic Advantages

Walrus, I don’t agree that transgender men continue to have material advantages if they undergo stringent GAHT treatments for an extended period – the research that would support this claim, including some referenced by you, is pretty murky, and at least one recent meta-review concluded that, “The limited available evidence examining the effect of testosterone suppression as it directly affects trans women’s athletic performance showed no athletic advantage exists after one year of testosterone suppression (Harper, 2015; Roberts et al., 2020; Harper, 2020).”

The Tiny Number of Transgender Athletes is Not a Threat to Women’s Sports

We could continue to go back and forth indefinitely on what the scientific evidence shows or doesn’t show on this point.  However, even if you were completely right that there continue to be meaningful innate differences, the reality is that the number of athletes who are transgender women is very small – literally just a handful! Anna Baeth, director or research at Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ advocacy group, estimates that there are fewer than 40 transgender athletes among the 500,000 athletes that participate in the NCAA, and only a fraction of those are transgender women. She noted that, “the idea that trans women are taking over women’s sport is a pretty outside statement given the number of trans women who are competing in the NCAA.”

In schools, there seems to be an even smaller proportion. Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the ACLU told Newsweek that Save Women’s Sports, an advocacy group working to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports, could only find five transgender athletes competing on girls’ teams in K through 12 school sports.

All the hand-wringing and the aggressive anti-trans advocacy about this issue seems incredibly over-blown when so few athletes are involved. It makes it especially unpleasant for the rare athletes who have elected to participate as transgender women – they are made to feel like pariahs or trouble-makers, when in most cases, they simply want to be able to pursue their passion. Meghan Cortez-Fields, a transgender women swimmer at Ramapo College in New Jersey, told CNN, “Part of gender affirming care, in a sense, is being able to compete on the team of your gender and with fellow people of your gender….It’s such a small minority, but that minority does matter, and they deserve their fair participation as well.”

Denying Transgender Athletes’ Right to Participate in Sports is Inseparable from Being Anti-Trans in General

In April 2024, Athlete Ally sent the NCAA a letter signed by over 400 current and former professional and college athletes, including Megan Rapinoe, retired US national soccer team star, calling on the organization to continue to allow transgender athletes to compete. The letter read, “To deny transgender athletes the fundamental right to be who they are, to access the sport they love, and to receive the proven mental and physical health benefits of sport goes against the very principles of the NCAA’s Constitution…. Every single student should have access to the lifesaving power of sports.”

If we strive as a society to be generally inclusive and compassionate, then why take such a hard line on this one issue that has such a small effect on cisgender women as a group, but can be so hurtful and damaging for the small number of transgender women athletes. Given the importance of sports to so many people as a means of self-expression and often as something essential to their happiness and self fulfillment, you can’t really separate this issue from transgender rights in general. You can’t say, “I believe in transgender rights, except that transgender women should be excluded from sports.” That is like saying, “I am for women’s rights, except they shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

Opposition to Transgender Sports Participation is Often a Cover for General Anti-Trans Bigotry

It is thus hard not to conclude that people who claim to be “merely” opponents of allowing transgender women to participate in sports supposedly on fairness grounds, are actually using this topic as a cover for more general and bigoted anti-trans attitudes. There has recently been a general rise in anti-trans activism, including proposed or actually enacted anti-trans legislation in many states. The ACLU is tracking 574 anti-LGBTQ bills that were introduced in 2024 in the US, and estimates that over 100 have been passed since 2020. Transgender people are fearful, especially since Trump won the Presidential election running on a range of anti-transgender ideas, which served to bolster and normalize general intolerance of transgender people. Proposed legislation to ban transgender athletes is also often coupled with other anti-transgender initiatives such as limitations on the provision of gender-affirming care. As an ACLU lawyer, Chase Strangio, told APNews, “It’s not about Sports. It’s a way to attack trans people.”

Carpenter, I appreciate your compassion and desire to be as inclusive as possible. However, I need to address several of your latest points.

Societal Attitudes have Shifted Towards Tolerance of Transgender People

First, while it may be true that some of Trump’s rhetoric has stoked some anti-trans sentiments in the last few months, it is clear that societal attitudes have shifted significantly in the last five to ten years towards tolerance with respect to transgender people. A Pew survey in May 2022 found that 64% of adult Americans said transgender people should be protected from discrimination in “jobs, housing and public spaces” and another survey in 2019 showed that 62% of adult Americans “say they have become more supportive toward transgender rights compared to their views five years ago.”

A clear majority of adult Americans now support trans people and their rights. However, for many of these people, their desire to be inclusive and compassionate with respect to transgender people runs into a conflict with their separate desire to protect women’s rights. A survey in 2024 (see qu. 22) showed that 69% of US adults believe that transgender women should never or rarely be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

Transgender Participation Has Non-Negligible Costs for Cisgender Athletes

I also understand your point that it exclusionary and distressing for some transgender women to be prevented from participating in sports, and that, if it only makes a small or negligible difference for cisgender women, then, on balance we should lean towards the compassionate and inclusive choice. However, allowing transgender women athletes to participate does have a cost for cisgender women: they lose opportunities to win medals or championships, or to make the cut in tournament events, or to obtain sponsorships, or simply recognition for their hard work and sacrifice. Not to mention the physical danger for women to compete against biological men in certain high-contact sports.

You mentioned some data about the low incidence of transgender women athletes. Some organizations have attempted to track this in more detail, and it does not seem to be negligible. While the number of transgender women athletes may be small, their impact can be substantial. The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group website calculated that when two transgender women athletes competed on a Connecticut High School track team from 2017 to 2020, there were 253 times where a cisgender girl was denied an advancement opportunity or award. Another site has tallied over 3,000 victories by biological males in female competitions as of December 2024.

Supporting Transgender Rights is Not Inconsistent with Opposing Transgender Participation in Sports

To acknowledge the tension between two conflicting moral goals does NOT make one anti-trans in general. As Tommy Lundberg, a researcher on testosterone suppression who I mentioned earlier, told Deutsche Welle, a German News outlet, “I think the transgender issue is very important. But protecting the women’s category in sport is also very important. They have fought long enough to have fair competition in sport.”

The following statement on the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group website reflects many people’s views, “We respect everyone’s right to dress as they please, choose their own names, and conform or not to gender stereotypes. Transgender people must not be discriminated against in housing or employment. But in sport, biological sex matters. Unlike gender identity, sex is immutable. Males cannot transform into females, regardless of whether they choose to embrace or reject gender stereotypes. And females deserve their own space to compete and their own fair chance to win.”

You also made the argument that you can’t be supportive of transgender people without also supporting their right to participate in women’s sports. This thinking is symptomatic of a broader dogma – the tendency for activists to claim that objecting to any demands or preferences of transgender people makes you an anti-trans bigot. Many self-described progressives go even further and declare that anyone who doesn’t accept any and all progressive orthodoxy relating to LGBTQ issues must simply be “anti-LGBTQ.” It is the same with any attempts to develop legislation in this area – any legislation that is deemed to be “anti-LGBTQ” is lumped together (as the ACLU does in the link you just referenced) and anyone who supports any element is deemed to be hateful and bigoted.

This is lazy, intellectually dishonest and offensive. It also seems to demand that people just deny some straight facts that are undeniable about biological sex, which basically amounts to forced speech. Many prominent people whose livelihood depends on their reputations have complied. A notable case was when Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter movie star, felt obliged to state in 2020, in response to statements by JK Rowling defending the rights of women and girls, “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people.”

Fair Participation for Transgender Athletes is Foiled by Current Limitations of Medical Science

In my view, this whole debate arises because of the limitations of current medical science. I believe that a growing majority of people accept that gender dysphoria is a genuine condition, and that, when it is correctly and carefully diagnosed, people should be free to undertake a transition to bring their physical appearance and physiology as closely into alignment with their gender identity as possible  to address this. I wish it were possible for such people, if they chose, to undergo a full “sex-change” transition like the hypothetical therapy I described earlier, whereby they could fully change their biological sex to match their gender identify and truly and fairly erase any innate performance advantage they may have had as a biological male. For people who underwent such a transformation, the objections to their participation in women’s sports would, in my view, then no longer apply. Until that becomes possible, if ever, we cannot satisfy the understandable wishes of transgender athletes without sacrificing the long fought for rights of cisgender women athletes.

Stakes are Lower for School Level Athletic Competition

I would add one caveat – the stakes regarding fairness in women’s sports get higher as one reaches more elite levels in any given sport. One might argue that the role of sports in K through 12 school is, or should be, primarily to foster fitness, team camaraderie and character building, and less about winning. So perhaps at the school level, for many sports, it matters less if a small degree of unfairness is introduced in the name of ensuring that transgender students have the same participation opportunities as cisgender students. This may be especially true in grades where children are pre-pubescent and where any differences between the biological sexes, while measurable, are perhaps small enough and the stakes low enough for it really not to matter. This would have to be considered on a sport-by-sport basis, because there are clearly some sports where even small differences may be crucial and/or potentially dangerous.

For those talented high school athletes looking to be recruited by college team, I would think that the inclusion of a few transgender athletes would also have limited negative effects, since college recruiters would presumably be able to take into account (and discount) the unfair effects that any high-performing transgender athlete may have on the rankings of cisgender athletes in that team or league, as well as observing the absolute performance metrics of the cisgender athletes.

You may be right that tolerance of transgender people has increased slightly over a five or ten year time frame (even though there is also research that shows that it has also declined slightly in the last year or two). But that still leaves a large minority of Americans who are not supportive of basic transgender rights, and the Pew survey you mentioned also showed that 80% of Americans acknowledge that transgender people still experience discrimination. Furthermore, more than half of Americans still think it is actually immoral for people to change their gender, so there is still a lot more progress needed to achieve a truly broad level of tolerance and support. This specific debate about participation in women’s sports seems to come down to a question of how to balance conflicting goals. We evidently have different views on what to prioritize, so let’s leave it at that for now.