Trans women are women – yet President Donald Trump has now banned them from participating in women’s sports.
This week, Trump signed an executive order – titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” – whose sole purpose is to ban trans girls and women from engaging in competitive women’s sports at both K-12 schools, and colleges. Amateur and professional sport organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, will be pressured by the U.S. to do the same.
“The radical left has waged an all-out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology,” Trump told members of the press who assembled for the signing, per CNN. “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”
The order’s execution is two-pronged. First, it rolls back directives from President Joe Biden’s administration that required educational entities to allow trans students to participate on sports teams and use facilities that align with their gender identities. Second, it pledges to “promote” these policies and ideologies to other sports governing bodies here and abroad, in a bid to enforce similar compliance in non-educational settings.
The Trump administration warped both the spirit and intent of Title IX, the landmark legislation designed to ensure equal rights for women in sports and education settings, to carry out the order’s mission. After the signing, one White House official told CNN: “If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities.”
Meanwhile, studies have shown that advantages for trans women athletes are negligible to nonexistent. Also, as one study conducted by a cohort of researchers noted: “While trans athletes competing in various sports and athletic events raises interesting considerations of how certain … physiologic factors affect performance, these questions are not exclusive to trans individuals.”
In layman’s terms: Not everyone who swims is built like Olympic record-smasher Michael Phelps. So-called genetic advantage is an individual matter, these experts say – not a gender-based one.
Also, if safety were actually the point … lawmakers wouldn’t be drafting and signing anti-trans legislation in the first place. Because as additional research efforts have shown, all these bills and laws have been proven to do is stoke fear and cause harm. One sobering example: Trans youth are increasingly suicidal in the face of them; many now fear living as their true selves. A second: Trans people are now four times more likely to be victims of violent crimes.
Cisgender women – the individuals Trump claims to want to protect, despite discriminating against and outright harming them, too – get hurt as well. Just ask Imane Khelif, the Algerian woman boxer who made headlines during the 2024 Olympics, and not just for winning gold. Despite being assigned female at birth, she was the subject of a virulent anti-trans campaign.
Yet conservatives continue to draft and sign these laws by the hundreds per year, at all levels of governance, to the ultimate protection of no one. And during the signing of this executive order, Trump even called Khelif a man.
This latest executive order is the fourth anti-trans order signed by Trump since he took back office less than one month ago. The other three orders formally (and inaccurately) defined gender as a male/female binary; restricted gender-affirming care for trans youth; and targeted trans participation in the U.S. military.
Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware – the first openly transgender member of Congress – described these orders as “red meat for the online trolls who are doing his bidding every single day” to NBC News, noting that beyond perpetuating a culture war, they also “have real consequences for people.”
American people who, McBride added, “want a federal government that, one, respects everyone across all of our differences, but also a federal government that’s focused like a laser on lowering costs for workers.” But, she continued frankly, that’s “not what any of the executive actions that this president has put forward will do.” ◼️
