I'm a WNBA player. Don't use athletes like me to exclude trans women.

I have played basketball for as long as I can remember. The game shaped who I am, gave me opportunities to travel, forge lifelong friendships, and use my platform to advocate for others. Now that spotlight has turned on my teammates and me – not to celebrate our sport, but to police who belongs.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently announced a binding policy requiring every woman who seeks to compete in the Olympics to undergo sex verification testing . After years of dedication and preparation, the final hurdle to represent your country should not be proving to a panel of strangers that you are the woman you say you are. This invasive policy effectively bars transgender women and many athletes with intersex variations from competing.

Sex testing of women is not new – it traces back decades and was only formally changed after sustained pressure from medical groups, athletes’ advocates, and the IOC’s own Athletes’ Commission following the 1996 Games. In 2021, the IOC released a framework asserting there is no automatic competitive advantage based on "sex variations, physical appearance, and/or transgender status. " This new mandate abandons that ground-breaking and collaborative framework, ignores established medical and human-rights guidance, and rejects the science that says physical appearance, chromosomes or individual traits do not determine athletic performance or success.

A trans athlete won. Her peers cheered – and exposed the truth. | Opinion Singling out trans women creates scapegoats, not safety The IOC has a documented history of refusing to actually protect women in elite sports, and their current invocation of protection does anything but.