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Transcript:
I’ve made many videos on this channel about anti-trans pseudoscience and mythology, like the Cass Report and journalists who think kids want to turn into attack helicopters. I don’t often talk about trans women in sports, because I don’t think there’s usually much to say besides “this is a stupid wedge issue involving a handful of trans people playing a game and literally no one should care about it.” But people do keep caring about it, likely because transphobes know it’s a stupid wedge issue that they can constantly bring up and trick people into thinking they should care about it. And now the Olympics has officially shat the bed on this issue, so okay, let’s talk about it.
I last discussed this back in 2024, when JK Rowling tricked a bunch of bigots into thinking a woman who was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl, and lived in a country where it isn’t even legal to be trans, was actually trans, or just not “woman” enough, because she is really, really good at boxing. And the title of my video was “The Transphobes are Coming for All of Us,” meaning that they weren’t going to “just” make life unbearable for trans women, but for all women, because all of this is rooted in misogyny and there is no way to target trans women without targeting all women.
So, you can imagine how unsurprised I was when I looked into the recent news that “Olympic Committee Bars Transgender Athletes From Women’s Events,” as the New York Times put it. And as I’ve also previously talked about how bad the New York Times is when it comes to trans topics, I was equally unsurprised that this headline (and fairly useless subhead) drastically undersells the situation. In fact, the headline is just straight up wrong: the committee did not actually ban all trans athletes from women’s events. It effectively bans trans women from women’s events (more on that in a minute), and PERMITS trans MEN to compete in women’s events. There is absolutely no mention in this policy of stopping trans men who have taken testosterone from competing against women, which means, for instance, that women assigned female at birth who have never taken testosterone would be forced to wrestle against men like Texas State Champion Mack Beggs, or race actual Olympian Chris Mosier.
How exactly does that “protect women’s sports,” as the transphobes swear these policies do? Simple: it doesn’t, because it was never about that. It was always about punishing women, cis and trans alike, and legislating trans people out of existence.
And this new policy does punish cis women, quite explicitly: the genetic test will weed out cis women with “differences of sexual development,” meaning they have genetic conditions that they likely don’t even know about that MAY give them traits like excess testosterone.
By the way, here’s an essay from the scientist who discovered the gene these tests look for, and then spent twenty years studying, explaining all the reasons why this is a terrible tool for the Olympics to use, like the fact that most women who have it are actually resistant to testosterone, and it’s also a very sensitive test that can easily throw false positives.
But hey, at least this policy stops people who were assigned male at birth who went through male puberty from using the advantages of that puberty against women in women’s sports, right? Well, no, actually, it doesn’t. Going through male puberty absolutely offers people an advantage in certain sports, especially considering that most of the sports humans have made up over the years were specifically made for men to excel at.
But that doesn’t mean that EVERY sport is weighted to cis men’s advantage–there’s sharpshooting and long distance running, for instance, as well as competitions like figure skating and surfing and skateboarding where you can choose whether to prioritize the various moves and tricks that men are better at versus women.
And it also doesn’t mean that trans women, who are taking drugs to NEGATE the effects of male puberty, necessarily keep the advantage in other sports. In 2025, researchers published a systematic review in the British Medical Journal’s Journal of Sports Medicine, in which they found that across 52 studies involving nearly 6,500 subjects, transgender women DID exhibit “higher lean mass than cisgender women, (but) their physical fitness was comparable.” They found that “Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.”
Is it still possible that there are some sports in which trans women have an advantage over cis women? Yes, absolutely! And we should consider that on a case by case basis when we have any evidence to suggest it. But we should consider it in exactly the same way we consider all other advantages a person might have over someone else in a competition: should Michael Phelps have been allowed to compete against swimmers who don’t have his genetic condition that drastically lowers the amount of lactic acid his muscles produce? Should Miguel Induráin have been allowed to race against cyclists who only had the average of 5-6 liters’ lung capacity instead of his stunning 7 liters?
Because right now, cis men are the only athletes who do not need to ever do any invasive tests to determine their natural advantages–only drug tests to determine unnatural advantages. Trans women are taking anti-steroids, essentially, and they’re punished for it. And cis women are punished for any natural genetic or biological advantage that is seen as too “manly.” Cis woman Simone Biles was never punished for being tiny, which gives her a natural advantage in gymnastics, but cis woman Caster Semenya WAS punished because her body produced too much testosterone.
If you’re interested in the misogynistic history and present of screening women for “maleness,” I highly recommend Reo Eveleth’s podcast, Tested, which features athletes, scientists, and historians who discuss the ugly history of women’s sports. But if you’re short on time, you can check out Eveleth’s summary-of-sorts over at Coyote Media. They point to the current day’s similarities to the 100-year old “balance theory,” the idea that it was okay for women to have a little bit of “maleness” to them, but if they had too much, they would become men for all intents and purposes. Regarding Caster Seminya: “Pierre Weiss, the secretary general of World Athletics at the time, told the press: “Yes she is a woman, but maybe not 100%.””
Eveleth also seeks out the actual science that anti-trans advocates cite to support policies like the Olympics just put in place. Like that previously mentioned systematic review, Eveleth was unable to find anything to support the idea that trans women have a blanket physical advantage over cis women.
So, yeah, this is just another update to a century-old way for society to police women’s behaviors, appearance, and success. I feel so bad for the many women this will affect, and especially for the little girls. Because as a reminder, girls as young as 11 compete in the Olympics, and now those children, too, will be put under the microscope to determine if they’re truly “woman” enough. It’s disgusting, and the Olympics staff should be ashamed.
