Banning transgender women from the Olympics is pandering to bigots
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, ITALY - FEBRUARY 20: A general view of the Olympic Rings near the Curling Stadium during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic on February 20, 2026 in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy. (Photo by Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images) | Getty Images The International Olympic Committee (IOC) convened in Lucerne, Switzerland on Thursday to formally ban transgender women from the games, starting with Los Angeles 2028 . It’s a pandering move to align the IOC with President Trump’s “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order , which bans trans women from competing in women’s sports, labeling it as an “all-out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology,” from the “radical left.
” To be extremely clear: There is no threat to women’s sport from transgender athletes. There never has been. It’s been a culture war paper tiger promulgated by grifters like Riley Gaines to pay the bills, because there’s no money in competitive swimming unless you have Olympic-level talent — which Gaines never did, failing to medal in any NCAA Championship.
Zero transgender women competed in the Paris Olympics in 2024. Moreover, while the 202o/21 Tokyo Games had one openly transgender and one non-binary athlete compete, neither medaled — finishing 14th and 20th in their respective sports. This aligns with numerous peer-reviewed studies which show that there is no scientific evidence that supports transgender women having an athletic advantage, and in fact may be a hindrance to overall athletic performance — as was posited in one 2022 study.
“It is also possible that a person with larger stature from a typical male puberty but with smaller muscle mass due to a testosterone-lowering regimen might suffer an athletic disadvantage. ” The study goes on to say that testosterone levels are an established driver for athletic success, but notes that the IOC already had mechanisms in place to test for maintained testosterone levels over time. This ensured that athletes, regardless of gender identity, would be on an even playing field when it came to testosterone testing.
The study does acknowledge that a larger overall stature caused by a typical male puberty could impact some sports, however in the case of the 2020/21 games the competing athletes were in weightlifting and skateboarding, individual events where stature does not have an impact. That is the crux of the issue, and why the IOC is wrong for electing to tackle an issue that was never present in the first case. It’s a decision rooted in the unscientific bigotry of activist groups, not a functional problem that has ever occurred at the Olympics, while also going against scientific findings.
Continue to the original source for the full article.