Dr. Susan Cahn
Although the bill faces an uncertain future, the objective of their legislation has already come to fruition on multiple fronts in the few weeks since it was introduced.
On Feb. 5 – on a day designated as National Girls & Women in Sports Day – President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order that calls for canceling federal funding for educational programs that permit trans athletes who were born male to participate in sports programs designed for women and girls.
The order – titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” – prioritizes Title IX enforcement actions against such schools. It argues that schools deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports when they require them to compete against males or to share locker rooms where they’d be in a state of undress in front of males. The administration refers to trans women as males.
The NCAA followed suit the next day with a new policy that “limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”
Republicans – buoyed by a majority of the American public who oppose trans athletes on participating teams that match their gender identity – hailed these developments as a victory for female athletes. But among scholars who study gender and sexuality in sports, there’s a widening belief that these measures could ultimately harm the women and girls they were ostensibly meant to protect.
“To me this will put lots of girls and women under suspicion,” says Dr. Susan K. Cahn, a University at Buffalo history professor and author of several books on gender and sexuality in women’s sports. “It’s a way of policing femininity really,” Cahn says.
To bolster her point, Cahn points to female athletes such as Babe Didrikson Zaharias – an Olympic medalist and championship golfer who dominated during the first half of the 20th century – who was accused of being a man.
More recently, Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold medalist from South Africa, has been subjected to scrutiny and had to undergo testing to determine her gender. She writes about it in great detail in her 2023 autobiography, The Race to Be Myself.
A gynecological exam revealed that Semenya had XY chromosomes, “rather than the typically female XX pairing.” The exam also found that Semenya had “high levels of testosterone, produced by undescended testicles” that she didn’t know she had, according to her book.
“In order to continue racing as a woman, I was told, I needed to have surgery to remove them.” Semenya instead took medication to reduce her testosterone levels.
Cahn says she worries that the new legislative measures could embolden parents and others to demand that a female athlete’s gender be verified if the athlete looks too “boyish” or happens to be very good.
Other scholars say the measures are born of hatred.
Dr. Genny Beemyn
Beemyn says the proposed bill “further marginalizes and demonizes” trans women, who “already face significant othering in society and experience high rates of harassment and discrimination.”
“The Republicans who have been pushing for this ban have never cared about women or women’s sports before now,” Beemyn says. “It will also discourage trans women from participating not just in organized sport, but in any sports activity, denying them the physical and emotional health benefits.”
Dr. Ellen J. Staurowsky, a professor in sports media in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, was also critical of Trump’s executive order.
The executive order “does nothing to advance the interests of girls and women in sport or recognize the history of women’s athletic excellence,” Staurowsky says.
The executive order also fails to call for true compliance with Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding – and does not address “longstanding inequities that have existed for decades,” Staurowsky says.
Among other things, Staurowsky cited figures – from her own research and elsewhere – that show:
• A 200,000 shortfall in athletic participation opportunities afforded to women athletes.
• Women athletes at NCAA schools receive $242 million less in athletic scholarships every year.
• Women athletes do not have access to roughly $750 million in athletic scholarship dollars because they are not afforded athletic participation opportunities proportional to enrollment.
• Only 28% of dollars in NCAA athletic programs are spent on women’s programs.
• Just over 30% of dollars allocated to recruit athletic talent are spent on women.
Trans women constitute an extremely small portion of women athletes at the college level. NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel in December that he was aware of less than 10 transgender athletes who compete in college sports.
Despite claims that there are only a handful of transgender athletes at the college level, their participation – at least from the recent past – is about to draw more scrutiny.
The U.S. Department of Education – now under control of an administration that has said it wants to shut the department down – announced on Feb. 6 that it will investigate two universities where it says transgender athletes have deprived female athletes of a safe and fair environment – in violation of Title IX. It also plans to investigate an athletic association.
According to the department:
• At San Jose State University, “male athlete Blaire Fleming’s dominant performance on the women’s volleyball team, which included reported dangerous strikes directed at opponent’s faces, forced competing teams to forfeit games to protect their female athletes.” The department notes that a lawsuit against SJSU also alleges that the university gave Fleming a scholarship over several female players, then retaliated against those who defended female athletes.
• The University of Pennsylvania gave Lia Thomas, whom the administration identifies as “male,” a roster spot on the Women’s Swimming and Diving team. A former teammate, Paula Scanlan, testified before Congress that she and her teammates were “offered psychological services to attempt to re-educate us to become comfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a male.”
• A girls’ high school basketball team in Massachusetts forfeited a game after a male on the opposing female team reportedly injured three female players. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s handbook states that a “student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”
Cahn, the historian, says that part of the reason the measures to ban trans women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports have gotten traction is because “there is sort of a common sense response” to people who are born male competing in women’s and girls’ sports.
“On average they are stronger. They are bigger and faster,” Cahn says.
Some research, however, is inconclusive. A 2017 review published in Sports Medicine found “no direct or consistent research” to suggest that transgender female individuals have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition. “Therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised,” the review found.
Cahn agrees, saying a more nuanced policy – not a ban – is needed to address any competitive advantages that athletes who were born male may have over those who were born female. She says she thought the NCAA had it right when it required trans athletes to undergo a year of hormone therapy before they could compete on women’s teams.
But Republican lawmakers who are intent on keeping women’s sports exclusively for those who were born female disagree.
“Ignoring the biological differences between men and women is a catastrophe for women,” says U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, a Republican from Florida who is chief sponsor of the House bill. “It destroys a level playing field and makes women second class citizens in their own sports.”
A similar bill is making its way through the United States Senate. Although President Trump signed an executive order that effectively does what the proposed legislation would do, Republicans may still pursue legislation to make the ban more permanent and difficult to reverse than an executive order that – as the Trump administration has demonstrated over the past few weeks – could be undone with the stroke of the president’s pen.
