Transgender athletes are a red herring
It's a non-problem meant to exclude people from public life.
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Once again, transgender athletes are in the news … despite the fact they don’t even play in the league at the center of the controversy.
This time, Sophie Cunningham of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever set off a firestorm when she was quoted by ESPN as saying, “I also think with that love is truth, [if I’m] being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Cunningham’s comments made her an instant Fox News star and MAGA cause célèbre.
Former NBA players Enes Freedom and Royce White have since declared that they now identify as women for the purposes of playing in the WNBA and will therefore declare for the 2027 draft. This is clearly being done as a trolling stunt meant to either force the WNBA to ban transgender women, or to work their way into the WNBA to prove a point about men being better than women.
Of course, Freedom and White didn’t consider the possibility that the WNBA could require them to do what every other NCAA, olympic, or professional transgender athletes had gone through to play prior to the bans: namely, chemical castration or undergoing gender reassignment surgery (i.e. physical castration plus vaginoplasty). They seemed to assume that transgender athletes could just declare themselves one day and play the next. Somehow, it’s doubtful either would be willing to socially transition and emasculate themselves for a WNBA rookie contract — but that was never the point.
“Men in women’s sports came ravaging through our cities”
None of this discourse happened because there is a new high-profile transgender athlete in the news. In fact, there are no transgender players in the WNBA or on the verge of making the league. Nor is there one in the NCAA, Olympics, or FIFA.
Instead, Republicans are starting a culture war to rile up their base, co-opt Democrats into agreeing with them, and create precedents which push transgender people out of public life altogether.
Trump seemingly cannot go without talking about “men in women’s sports” in every speech he gives, even bringing it up randomly during completely unrelated pressers.
It’s a quick and easy way to score points, because trans people in sports polls very poorly. Democrats are afraid to talk about it because it would force them to explain and use nuance, and as the old adage goes, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
Here are the facts about transgender athletes. First, they were exceptionally rare to begin with, so much so that transgender people were drastically UNDER-represented when they were allowed to compete. There were never enough competing to have any statistically significant effect on high-level women’s sports.
Between 2004 and 2022, almost 30,000 women participated in the Olympics. Two were trans, and they finished last and in 37th place. That works out to .015 percent of competing athletes, when the trans population is roughly .5 percent of the population. If trans people were proportionately represented you would expect there to have been about 150 in the Olympics.
Similarly, there were roughly 226,000 NCAA female athletes in 2022 alone. But over the 11 years that the NCAA allowed transgender athletes to compete, there were only 47 publicly known. In 2024, there were only 10, and many of them were transgender men. Assuming half were trans women, that works out to about .002%. If transgender women were represented proportionally, you’d expect for there to be about 1,100 competing in any given year.
People will point to Lia Thomas, who was the most successful transgender athlete in the past 40 years. She was a very good swimmer as a freshman before transitioning. When she came back after two years of testosterone suppression, she was still very good, but far from unbeatable. Her winning time in the national championships was slower than the winner of the event the previous year, and a good six seconds off of Katie Ledecky’s record. Riley Gaines rose to fame for tying for 5th with her, meaning four other cisgender swimmers beat both Thomas and Gaines.
The WNBA is one of the few leagues where transgender women have not been categorically banned. In its 29 years of its existence, no openly transgender woman has ever played in the league. There have been some that have tried out for WNBA steams, but were ultimately not good enough to even make a practice squad.
In short, the hypothesis that including transgender people will somehow destroy women’s sports has already been field tested for decades, and the evidence is pretty clear: trans athletes are a tiny and under-represented group in the sports they play, and they are far from dominant.
The idea that trans people should have their own separate but equal events has been tested and failed. After World Aquatics Swimming banned transgender women from competing in women’s event,s they created an “open category” for the Berlin World Cup 2023. But all of the “open category” events were cancelled because not a single person signed up for any of them. There simply aren’t enough transgender people, much less ones who are good at sports, to make “get your own league” work.
Ultimately, the gadflies don’t seem to actually understand how being a transgender athlete works. They have no idea that sports leagues enforce strict hormone therapy and testosterone-monitoring rules, preventing men from simply entering women’s teams based on self-identification. The idea that cisgender men would voluntarily undergo chemical castration to try to join the WNBA and make a minuscule rookie salary is farcical on its face.
But all of this is now effectively a moot point. Trans women are banned from just about everything, right down to women’s darts, billiards, and chess tournaments. The only trans girls and women left competing are little kids and high schoolers who will never have a shot at a scholarship or a pro career. None of the various state anti-trans laws distinguish between a kindergartner playing for a participation medal and Lia Thomas. They were designed with one purpose in mind: to punish and exclude transgender people.
Democrats should have the backbone to ask why that kindergartner shouldn’t be allowed to kick at a ball with her friends when nothing is at stake. Or why the trans girl on puberty blockers, who never went through male puberty, is banned from participating. Or why the trans girl who’s terrible at her sport isn’t even allowed to be on the JV team. Or why the trans girl running cross country, whose times count for nothing and who will never get a scholarship, can’t even run alongside her team for the sheer joy of feeling the wind in her hair and the road beneath her feet. Or why trans women can’t compete in sports where there’s no physical contact.
Ideally, Democratic lawmakers would have the cajones to turn the bad faith questions around and talk about how it’s Republicans who are actively working to destroy women’s sports and invade the privacy of girls and women, all in the name of preventing a tiny handful of transgender children from even participating in what amounts to recreational sports. And when we say a handful, we mean that in Utah the sports ban targeted exactly one child in the entire state.
The real threat to women’s sports is Republicans
Democrats should ask why Republicans are pushing for genital inspections of every girl who wants to play sports, all the way down to kindergartners. They should be demanding to know why the Heritage Foundation, which swore up and down that they were banning transgender people to save women’s sports, has issued a policy paper calling to end Title IX and women’s sports. Instead, Heritage wants to steer women into less “demanding” activities like hiking and yoga, and “other athletic opportunities more aligned with average female interests and tendencies,” in order to maximize their “fertility” and womanliness.
Democrats should talk about how right-wingers are offering millions of dollars to try and humiliate WNBA players, or are turning a blind eye towards the rampant sexual abuse of female athletes, 21 percent of whom report being assaulted. Or about how women abusing testosterone (doping) for competitive advantage is far more common than transgender athletes, whose hormone levels were very strictly regulated.
This was never about saving women’s sports. It was always dehumanizing trans people and using them as a societal scapegoat and cudgel against Democrats, who still haven’t figured out how to effectively deal with this non-issue. In the end, this was just one of the first steps towards “eradicating transgenderism,” and most of the country fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
That’s it for this week
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Have a great weekend and we’ll be back with more Monday.
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"Men in women's sports came ravaging through our cities"????? Is the old coot so far gone that he can't remember whether he's slamming immigrants, Black people or trans athletes? As for the world not laughing at us, Mr. President, EVERYONE with the possible exception of J.K. Rowling is laughing at you.
The Democrats have failed in addressing this nonsense. It's an easy argument to disprove and I don't know why they don't develop a quick, fact filled message. There must be some bright young person who can put together a fact sheet, if they're too lazy to educate themselves. Enough of allowing these Heritage Foundation freaks to write an agenda that targets such a small number of people. Maybe the Democrats and the Republikkkans need a quick biology lesson.