NCAA bans transgender athletes from women’s sports

February 7, 2025 • 11:16 am

(This is my 29,994th post, so we’ll reach 30,000 by the end of the weekend. I don’t know what to think about that!)

I think we all know now that most Americans, and a majority of individuals in both Democratic and Republican parties, oppose the participation of trans-identified males in women’s sports, presumably on the grounds of their athletic advantages (particularly if they transition after puberty) and because a prohibition represents simple fairness to women. Here’s a CNN tweet giving the data (the NYT article below says that 94% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats don’t think that trans-identified males should compete in women’s sports).

And I guess I’ll have to give the usual disclaimer next: while I didn’t vote for Trump and see him as a narcissist with a personality disorder, I don’t believe that everything he has done or will do is necessary reprehensible. (I have several friends who think that.) For example, the action described in the NYT article below (click to read, or find it (archived here) seems to be a good one, the result of an executive order by Trump.  As the headline says, the NCAA, dealing with college sports, has now excluded transgender athletes (meaning in this case trans-identified men, sometimes called “trans women”) from participating in women’s sports in college.  It does not exclude trans-identified women (aka “trans men”) from men’s sports, though World Rugby has done that to prevent biological women from being injured by more powerful men.

I’ll give a few quotes below from the NYT piece. Of course the NCAA’s decision, and Trump’s order in particular (linked below), has faced the usual pushback: e.g., it’s transphobic, there are very few trans-identified men trying to compete in women’s sports, and so on.  And I do think we need a solution for those trans-identified men who want to compete in sports. That may mean they compete in men’s sports, or even in an “open” category, but surely everyone who wants to do sports deserves a chance to participate. It’s just that for some trans people, that place is not in women’s sports:

 

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An excerpt:

Transgender women will be barred from competing in N.C.A.A. women’s college sports, the sports organization announced on Thursday, a day after President Trump effectively forced the decision by reversing federal policy.

That decision, effective immediately, followed Mr. Trump’s signing of an executive order asking his agencies to withdraw federal funding from educational institutions if they defied him and let transgender girls and women compete.

“We strongly believe that clear, consistent and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” Charlie Baker, the president of the N.C.A.A., said in a statement. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”

The N.C.A.A.’s previous policy on transgender athletes left the decision up to each sport’s national governing body. The rules varied by sport, especially as to how much testosterone could remain in a transgender woman’s blood following hormone therapy. USA Volleyball, for instance, allowed an athlete to compete as a woman even with testosterone levels typical of many men. U.S. Rowing’s limit for college athletes was just one-fourth of volleyball’s.

The new policy limits women’s competition to athletes assigned female at birth, and covers all of the N.C.A.A.’s sports. Appearing before Congress last year, Mr. Baker said that there were fewer than 10 transgender athletes among the 500,000-plus students who play N.C.A.A. sports.

One problem here is the “assigned female at birth” designation. That definition of sex is not in Trump’s EO, which uses the gametic definition of sex, while sex recognized at birth is usually based on looking at genitalia. Thus Imane Khelif , the Tunisian boxer who won the gold medal in the women’s welterweight boxing class in the last Olympics, was recognized as a woman at birth, but was really an XY male with a disorder of sex development, and lived in Tunisia as a post-puberty man, something that would immediately have disqualified Khelif from the Olympics. As you see, the US is also pushing the Olympics to do what the NCAA did.

Some pushback from individuals on the NCAA’s rule.

“It’s like taking a bulldozer to knock down the wrong building,” said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia University Law School and an expert on gender and sexuality law, adding that the policy distracts from the serious problem of girls and women not having equal opportunities in sports.

I’m not sure what she means about distracting from the problem of girls and women not having equal opportunity in sports, that is whataboutery since people are already working on that, and Title IX guarantees it.  The other argumen—that there are too few trans-identified men wanting to compete with women to make it an issue—is a claim that doesn’t hold water, for it is fundamentally unfair, allows one biological mail to work injustice on many women, and, finally, the number of trans people is growing quickly.

There’s also the issue of how to find out if someone is competing unfairly, but given the ways you can study that (cheek swab, etc.), that is not a serious problem:

The order will affect more than transgender athletes, Ms. Goldberg said, adding that it might force women suspected of being transgender to answer invasive personal questions or undergo physical examinations.

What about the Olympics? Right now the IOC has punted on the issue, asking each sport to set its own rules, which itself is unfair and may lead to conflicting results. But the administration also has the Olympics in mind:

Mr. Trump’s executive order, titled “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” is based on the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. Barring transgender girls and women from women’s sports was one of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises.

The order also directs the State Department to demand changes within the International Olympic Committee, which has left eligibility rules up to the global federations that govern different sports.

Finally, there are lawsuits in progress as well as many state rules prohibiting transgender athletes from competing based on their assumed gender identity:

Last March, a group of college athletes sued the N.C.A.A. for allowing [Lia]. Thomas to compete, saying her participation in a women’s event had violated their Title IX rights. And on Tuesday, three University of Pennsylvania female swimmers sued the school, the Ivy League and Harvard University, which hosted the 2022 Ivy League swimming championships. The lawsuit said Ms. Thomas’s participation in those championships and other Ivy League meets was an “illegal social science experiment” and that her competitors were “captive and collateral damage.”

Bill Bock, the swimmers’ lawyer, said in a statement that the institutions named in the suit sought “to impose radical gender ideology on the American college sports landscape.”

Mr. Bock also represents the female volleyball players who sued San Jose State University, the Mountain West Conference and others in November for allowing a transgender woman to play on San Jose’s team. Five volleyball teams boycotted matches last season against the school because of the player.

And:

Twenty-five states have barred transgender athletes from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group that tracks legislation. Some of those laws, however, have been blocked while lawsuits against them make their way through the courts.

The prohibition of cross-sex competition in women’s sports seems to me a good thing, increasing fairness towards women.  That still leaves the problem of how to deal with transgender athletes who want to compete in athletics. I’ve suggested several solutions before, but none of them involve allowing transgender athletes competing in women’s sports—with the exception of those sports in which men have no inherent athletic advantage over women. That may be true of equestrian sports, though I haven’t checked.

61 thoughts on “NCAA bans transgender athletes from women’s sports”

  1. Now they need to rescind every award, title, and record set by Lia Thomas and every other male-bodied person competing in NCAA womens sports.

    1. That is no so clear-cut, sadly. The recipients could claim their medals were awarded according to rules in place at the time.

      Anyone else in the room, though, would have to hold their own nose.

  2. Congratulations on almost reaching 30,000.

    I’ve been reading your website, could it be 10+, maybe 15?, years and have learned a world about biology and evolutionary biology.

    Many more posts!

    2. +1 and academic freedom, first amendment, incursion of ideology on science, atheism (faith vs fact), etc, etc,…. Thanks and wishing you 30,000 more.

    3. I typed “there are 30000” or “how many are there 30000 of” in Google. Amusing to look at the results. There’s something to 30000.

      I suppose WEIT posts will become one more of those things there are 30000 of.

  3. It’s true that, as Professor Goldberg says, “trans” males in women’s sport is a small problem relative to many others. But it’s a big deal mainly imho because it requires everyone participating or observing the problem to deny reality. I sort of hate the repeated Winston Smith “how many fingers” references but it’s an apt metaphor for this moment. There really are only four fingers.

    1. I’ve never understood why the “it’s such a small number, why are you worried about it” line of argument gets any tread at all. Athletes using performance enhancing drugs are rare, so why worry about it? It rarely happens but teams sometimes lie about player eligibility, so why have rules against it? Fixing game or performances rarely happen, why bother regulating it?

      Makes. No. Sense.

      1. The numbers argument is, indeed, silly. Olympic champions only form around .001% of the population (I just invented that statistic incidentally, but it makes the point), but we get incredibly excited when ‘our’ guy wins, or comes second, or whatever.

    2. There are indeed very few transgender woman athletes, but we must retort vociferously that their participation impacts everyone else in the discipline.

      Indeed, as Edward notes above, the impact is just like that of doping.

    3. Rowling had a great long form eXtweet on that and other brainwashing activist praxis….

      I found one :

      x.com/jk_rowling/status/1887472120541679690?s=46

      Hope that made it.

      2. Thanks! Good one — I don’t do either X or Bluesky so that helps me find this wonderful summary. Currently reading Helen Joyce. Don’t recall if it was you or someone else here who put me onto Kathleen Stock.

        1. I definitely have recommended Stock’s book here.

          Joyce’s book is highly valuable as well, they are like the dynamic duo.

          Cheers.

    4. There may be few men competing in women’s sports, but they got a clean sweep of all three medals in the women’s 800m at the Rio Olympics. At least one of the coaches of the women athletes cheated out of a medal was told that he would never work in the field again if he spoke out against the injustice.

      Edited to add that the three men, who included gold medal winner Caster Semenya, had differences of sex development (DSDs) and weren’t transgender.

  4. Definitely a positive development in the interest of fairness. And, perhaps just as important, this will protect biological females from severe injury or even death at the hands of stronger, biological men in sports where there may be physical contact.

  5. Trans-identified men are perfectly welcome to compete in all sports. There is no problem about what to do with (or for) them. They just compete in men’s events along with all the other men. They can identify as women or as sabre-tooth cats for all anyone cares if they contribute to the (men’s) team and make it competitive. If a trans-identified man beats out all his male competitors in a individual sport and makes it to the podium, no one will deny him his medal just because he paints his nails and puts on a dress, heels, and makeup to go clubbing to celebrate after.

    What’s that you say? He wasn’t competitive to begin with and he’s even less so now that he’s taking estrogen and anti-androgens? Well, yes, a medical condition or its treatment (a bad crash in a bicycle race, beta-blockers for high blood pressure) may end one’s dream of an athletic scholarship. That’s life. Not everyone gets to succeed on his own terms. He should find something else he can be good at, good enough at to make a living. That’s all most of us can hope for.

    1. I self-identify as a better footballer than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo put together, and consider it grossly unfair that no top teams recognise this.

    2. Exactly. Trans-identified females who once did well in girls’/women’s sports understand that as soon as they start taking testosterone they’re no longer eligible for the female team, since that would qualify as doping. They also recognize that, even if using cross-sex hormones, they’re unlikely to be competitive in men’s sports. So they find some other athletic outlet which gives them both a physical workout and sense of achievement.

      Trans-identified males seem less willing to do this because apparently many of them have been fed a huge load of propaganda which has fostered a sense of entitlement. They want to win – and they want it counted as a woman’s victory. All compromises are a violation of their “rights” and a knife to their hearts.

      Trump has taken a sword to the gordian knot. This should have been a no-brainer for the Democrats, but instead, drunk on the confusion that this was the next great civil rights issue, they bent over and handed it to the Republicans. They’re allowing the opposition — this one for gawd’s sakes — to look intelligent, wise, and concerned about feminist issues. That’s a Herculean achievement in itself.

      1. Can’t recall where, but I believe one marathon did create an “open” category for all trans-identified runners, with male and female medals, but female identifying trans competitors were adamantly against it, as they wanted to win against biological women, not others like themselves.

          1. Ah! Apparently, transgender competitors were not just in it for “the love of the sport,” or to “prove themselves,” or to be treated fairly. (Their own category? Still could win? And the attendant publicity?) Still not enough.

    3. Goes to show, IMHO – even if they insist and get their (ooops…) way, well, fine we might say, just use the men’s locker rooms.

      But no.

  6. Good. The shame on the organization is that it’s taken an executive order from a president such as this for it to happen.

    1. Indeed. Had the democrats not been so consistently and obstinately stupid in their uncritical support for gender ideology, we probably wouldn’t be dealing with the chaos of Trump and the dismantling of our government. My worry is that the dems will continue to dig in on this nonsense.

      1. What I don’t understand why 1 in 3 Democrats think it is OK for a man with an inherent male advantage can legitimately beat a women at sport.

        Is it misogyny or stupidity that TWAW or an obligation to the party to support whatever the Republicans are against or they have trans people in their family or herd mentality flavored with group think?

        1. That and “trans” was specifically framed as a civil rights issue. In 2014 that paper garbage can Time Magazine even front paged: “Trans: the new civil right” and activist org WPATH reframed trans from the medical to civil rights idea in 2008.

          So people think “Just like gay but today!”
          But it so isn’t just like gay and the higher IQ end of the LGB movement have split off the “T”.
          D.A.
          NYC

          1. I have not seen public L and G people/organizations throwing shade on T, if you know what I mean.

        2. I have started seeing some progressive Democrats admit that transwomen have an unfair physical advantage (they can win at sports) but then go on to say that cis women also have an unfair physical advantage (it’s easier for them to pass as women.)

          Since the second advantage is the greater privilege, they argue, it’s a small recompense for the trans-identified to win all the trophies, if that’s what happens. Society is better if it cares more about the real unfairness.

          1. …?? Did I get this right, “cis” women have an unfair physical advantage over men (“trans women) because it’s easier for them to “pass” as women? ?? not a joke?.(I will have to look this up) ..there’s no way to satirize this stuff — cultural disaster.

            And so I did quick search and found nothing about passing — I’m sure it’s out there — but I did find, as I expect most of us have seen, many links to organizations — that should know better — statements denying male (“trans women”) advantage in sport, and that’s arrant nonsense, but it sure is pervasive — an even greater cultural disaster. No wonder people won’t take real public health advice. No reason to believe anything.

      3. Yep. The woman who runs The Female Category Substack contacted her congresswoman about supporting Trump’s initiative. She responded:

        Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025. I appreciate hearing from you.

        H.R. 28 would open the door to invasive surveillance and physical inspections of young women and girls as a condition of their participation in sports.

        https://www.thefemalecategory.com/p/betty-mccollum-democrat-lies-to-people

        1. She has a point, of the trans industry’s own making. If a man (or a boy’s parents) can change the marker on his birth certificate from M to F, then no female birth certificate from that jurisdiction can be taken at face value as establishing female sex for competition (or for any other purpose.) The feminists (not the trans activists) condemn this as yet another instance of “the policing of women’s bodies” because it’s women, not men, who have to have tests for sex, testosterone doping, etc. etc.) That’s what the Congresswoman is responding to.

          The silver lining is that parents of children and adolescents whom they have trans’ed shout it from the rooftops about how proud they are of their courageous daughter who’s been cleaning up at track meets. Everyone in the school district will be praising the child as a transgirl, thus outing him as being excluded under HR 28. Case closed.

          1. A simple one-off cheek swab taken at the start of entry into the lowest level of competitive sports to screen for sex, with follow up testing in the miniscule number of cases where a simple XX/XY result is insufficient, would sort this out and stop athletes having to confront the issue under the spotlight of media attention (as happened to the two male boxers in the women’s category at the Paris Olympics).

    2. Yeah. I do wish some of the wording in the EO could have been different. But one can hope that a future democratic administration otherwise just leaves it alone so that this battle front goes away. For the for-seeable, there is no way that a democratic presidential candidate will win by even touching the issue.

  7. It is quite true, that the vast majority of rank-and-file Democrats reject men in women’s sports. However… Almost all elected Democrats, see it the other way or won’t talk about it. For a bad example (my favorite), consider Seth Moulton (D-MA). He dared to say “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that”. For that comment, he was called (by a Democrat) a “Nazi Cooperator”. Many elected Democrats privately agreed with him. Only one, Tom Suozzi (D-NY) publicly supported him.

    1. Moulton is the representative for Salem, where they know all about how to conduct a witch hunt for heretics!

      1. Funny note. I am actually from Salem (sort of). My parents met at MST (GE Medium Steam Turbine, which may have been in Lynn).

  8. Contrats on nearly 30K posts. WEIT articles and comments are my favorite thing online. And I spend my whole life online! I prefer it to my own column.
    Keep the message board even though they take a lot of work. I’d still read WEIT without commenting or reading comments of course but they make it more interactive and fun.

    My own editors tell me what a trial it is to moderate comments, because so many people are insane. They’ve mainly abandoned them as a consequence.

    D.A.
    NYC

  9. Not far from these discussions should be the point made by a UN study, which says (in the context of allowing males to compete with women):
    “The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.”
    https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/249/94/pdf/n2424994.pdf

  10. I’ve always felt awkward with all of this. I’ve always been the first to respect and understand those who are trans. I usually don’t care what they are but who they are.

    But biology is still biology.

    1. The “b” word is not allowed in polite company. I am not referring to a former President or a former secretary of transportation. Quote from the official Olympic Portrayal Guidelines. “TERMS TO AVOID: “born male”, “born female”, “biologically male”, “biologically female”, “genetically male”, “genetically female”, “male-to-female (MtF)”, “female-to-male” (FtM)”.

  11. As along-time defender and supporter of Title IX in K12 sports to the point of giving girls equal and fair opportunities on K12 athletics playing fields and gymnasiums, I am pleased to see this policy from the NCAA and hope that all state-level high school leagues will quickly follow. I think that I understand that these transgirls identify as female in their hearts and minds. So we might simply consider that when competing against boys, we consider the league to be coed as many schools do, I think, to give both boys and girls the opportunity to compete when they lack the resources to support separate teams. When resources are available, there would be a separate girls team, but transgirls would compete on a boys team just as they do in a coed league.

    1. Could you elaborate on “when competing against boys we consider the league to be coed”, Jim? I’ve been struggling with this all afternoon. When you say “boys” are you referring to boys identifying as girls playing on girls’ teams? Or boys identifying as girls playing on boys’ teams because there is no girls’ team in that sport at that school? (I’m going to spot you on “transgirl” but I’m going to call him a him to be clear that he’s a boy.)

      There’s a dangling modifier there. In “when competing against boys, we. . .”, who is doing the competing against boys? Not “we” surely, the outside observers. Is it girls competing against boys, like in a traditional co-ed league? Or one boy who identifies as a girl (a “transgirl”) competing against boys? Since coed leagues have different rules from single-sex sports, particularly in number of players of each sex who can be on the court at once if you are keeping score for wins-losses standings, the one team in the county with a transgirl will force every all-girl team to play coed rules when they play his team….and will those other teams be able to sub in a boy of their own to match up with him?

      Or do you mean that if the transgirl (i.e., a boy) is playing on a boys’ team (because the county follows the exec order format), the other all-boys teams have to play by co-ed rules when they play his team, but by boys rules in all their other games? A big ask for contact sports like football, rugby, hockey, and even lacrosse. Or does a single transgirl athlete force the entire sports league to play all their games by co-ed rules even in games between teams that have no trans players in either sex division? Won’t that make him feel “special”!

      I think it matters if we say the transgirl sincerely identifies as female in his heart and mind but add, but he is still a boy in his body. Do you see any unfairness in simply telling him that if he’s not good enough to make the boys’ team, life sucks sometimes? After all, that’s what my coaches told me many years ago. You have a right to try out but you didn’t make the cut. Do something else.

      1. Sorry for my confusing syntax, but the issue is confusing in its nature and I am not smart enough to tease out the correct wording, Leslie. I think what I mean by coed is that the original boys’ sport continues on, such as when little girls played on my grandson’s little league team…just team members only identifiable by the pony tail sticking out of their batting helmets. These self-identified transgirls are treated as any other girl who wants to join a “boys” team. And yes some may not make the team…such is the nature of competitive sports.

  12. it’s unfortunate that the quite reasonable desire to prevent discrimination against trans people has become conflated with this idea that feeling like you are the opposite sex literally turns you into that sex. it is not necessary to deny biology to assert the right to non-discrimination.

    I remember long ago, when I was in college, I heard people assert that the differences in test scores between women and men in math in science must be the result of sexism. One impetus behind this assertion was that differences in test scores were used to discriminate against women in scientific fields, just as differences in strength have been used to exclude women from fire fighting or police work. The discrimination was wrong. Indeed, although the sexes are more sexually dimorphic in height and strength, there is considerable overlap and even more overlap in e.g., SAT scores.

    Neither actual differences or differences as a result of long term discrimination should be a basis for further discrimination. How to deal with differences is a matter of rational policy that aims to give men and women equal opportunity to succeed.

    Similarly, being trans should not be a basis for discrimination per se, for example, whether trans people can serve in the military. If they can shoot the gun, lift the pack and run the course, they can be in the infantry. Which barracks they inhabit is a matter of working out the details.

    In the matter of sports, I think restricting participation of trans women in women’s sports is completely reasonable. We can make an effort to sculpt some avenue for participation, but not one where some folks have an unfair advantage.

    The whole Trumpian edict would be more palatable to me if it weren’t clear that the motivation is less about fairness to women, but more about owning the libs (and probably some real animus toward trans and gay people).

    1. Your last paragraph — exactly, in the same camp for very different reasons.

      “I don’t hate you. I just don’t agree with the way you’re twisting science, being unfair to biological women, and influencing kids to believe changing sex is a routine option. (Your terribly oppressed shtick is also unattractive). It is the Republicans who just hate you.”

  13. Have the Democrats introduced legislation they support to remove males from female sports? Of course, not. Would K. Harris have taken any action to keep men out of women’s sports? Of course, not.

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