Washington (AFP) – American transgender women will no longer be able to compete in women's events at the Olympics and Paralympics after a recent policy change by the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC).
A new note on the USOPC website regarding the participation of transgender athletes in sports says: "As of July 21, 2025, please refer to the USOPC athlete safety policy."
The policy update, following US President Donald Trump's "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" executive order, was added to the USOPC Athlete Safety Policy on its website as a new subsection entitled "Additional Requirements."
"The USOPC is committed to protecting opportunities for athletes participating in sport," the addition reads.
"The USOPC will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities... to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201 (Trump's order) and the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act."
The Stevens Act, adopted in 1988, provides a means of handling eligibility disputes for Olympic sports and other amateur events.
A memo to Team USA from USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland and president Gene Sykes on Tuesday obtained by ABC News and ESPN made reference to Trump's February executive order, saying: "As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations."
Trump's executive order threatens to remove federal funds from any school or institution allowing transgender girls to play on girls' teams, claiming that would violate Title IX rules giving US women equal sport opportunities.
The order requires immediate enforcement against institutions that deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms.
"Our revised policy emphasizes the importance of ensuring fair and safe competition environments for women," ESPN quoted the USOPC letter to governing bodies as saying.
"All National Governing Bodies are required to update their applicable policies in alignment."
ESPN also said the officials noted the USOPC "has engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials" in the wake of Trump's executive order.
The move comes as Los Angeles awaits a host role for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) also altered its policy for transgender athlete participation to limit women's sports competitors to athletes assigned female at birth after Trump's executive order.
Name one transfem Olympian that this ruling protects against. Which of those girls are out there stealing medals?
Like, imagine an athlete so dedicated to trying to win that they spend years paying stupid amounts of money to go to a psychologist, go on HRT, get surgery, and deal with unbelievable amounts of stigma on top of the training you also would need to do in order to get almost no advantage (or possibly negative advantage) instead of just buying steroids.
Imagine being stupid enough to believe that.
This theoretical scenario about transitioning just to win medals seems like a strawman argument. And the question of "who is stealing medals" is loaded.
...But let me back up a bit to where we probably agree.
Of course these athletes don't want to take steroids, because.. these are not the type of people who want to do that.
I'd like to believe that trans athletes do want to win, AND that they have good intentions. (not trying to steal medals).
Let's put ourselves in their shoes - these athletes get to participate in the sport they love at a high level, and their transition is affirmed. So this is the best of both worlds for them.
If it turns out there is still an advantage left over, however small or large, I don't think the althetes would want to acknowledge it for fear of their opportunities being taken away. This is understandable, no?
As it turns out, estrogen doesn't overwrite absolutely everything. Skeletal structure (taller, longer arms), lung capacity, and heart size for example... these can all give an athletic advantage.
I think these are important to consider.
See, the thing is, I disagree. No one would take the years it takes to transition for the unknown potential advantage. We do not know what amount of advantage or disadvantage transitioning would give, and the evidence we currently have says that there isn't a statistical advantage.
These policies don't even protect cis-women. Women born with hormonal abnormalities or genetic advantages are directly impacted. These are seen as beneficial in male competitors (Michael Phelps is a genetic lottery winner and should probably be in his own league), but if a woman happened to benefit by having naturally higher testosterone production, height, or skeletal structure, should she be excluded from competing against women? Then the only difference between that hypothetical trans athlete and cis athlete is... That they are trans.
Most of this issue is really due to how we segregate sports. We arbitrarily use gender/sex because there are genetic and cultural differences that mostly correlate to difference in outcomes. There are better ways to segregate sports (ala weight classes in boxing) that would more fairly match opponents, but we don't do these. Why? Mostly laziness, somewhat historical systems of oppression.
So, no, I don't agree. When you can find a trans athlete that transitioned for am advantage, I will acknowledge your point.
Let me clarify a bit - that's exactly what we agree on: that no one transitions for the advantage. Cause that would just be ridiculous. So no, I can't provide you an athlete who transitioned for that reason...
but that doesn't make my concerns invalid, because it doesn't all rest on that point. People can have good intentions and still cause a result that is unfair (but not because they wanted it to be unfair). That's why I see the hypothetical scenario as a strawman/diversion.
I might respond to the rest later, but I wanted to at least get this out for now.
Your argument is that these are unfair, but I pointed out the exact scenario you are saying is unfair. You can argue that any biological difference a trans woman has compared to a cis woman is unfair, but does that mean a cis woman who has all of those things is also unfair? And if the answer is no, then... Why is there even a problem?
These aren't inherently unfair. They are perceived to be unfair because of how we segregate these sports and because we automatically just assume trans women are stronger, better, faster, etc than cis women, which isn't true. Again, the statistics we have show that cis and trans athletes have a statistical advantage in a wide variety of sports and activities between 7% to -13%.
Like, we see similar outcomes for trans men, and these concerned people do not give a shit about those athletes. You would think trans men would absolutely fail compared to men, given how poor these people think female athletes compare, but they don't. They do just as well compared to their cis counterparts.
Hell, several sports are starting to have women with results similar to men. Sure, a lot of weight and strength-based sports still see substantial differences, but many stamina- and speed-based sports are becoming quite competitive. This is why cultural differences also matter. A lot of our sports and health science is geared towards male athletes, and we treat female sports and competitors as lesser, from how we fund them to how we train them.
Part 1
Ima preface this by saying what anyone does with their life and their individual pursuit of happiness is their fuckin right and I will never stop fighting for your ability to do so... now the dreaded "with that being said..."
So I'm not going to spend a ton of time going through every story and source because there is so much toxic shit sources around this topic so I am going to keep the list simple and only guna list widely known sources of stories about athletes winning for Olympic sports. The list itself is pulled from a shitty source so fuck citing that source, I will only provide the sources for the articles each story was pulled from. I took tons of time to get the links formatted and checking the stories and sources so if the vernacular used in the actual list is not universally appropriate, please just disregard and read the story being linked. The linked sources for each story, I think are all applauding the trans athlete. *not Olympic athletes, just sports that are in the Olympics as far as I know.
Women’s basketball – A 50-year-old, 6-foot-6-inch man, who played on a college men’s team 30 years prior, played on a women’s junior college basketball team.
Women’s handball – A male athlete, who formerly played on an NCAA Division III women’s soccer team, now plays for Team USA Women’s Beach Handball.
Women’s bodybuilding – A male who had competed in men’s bodybuilding in the past started competing as a woman.
Women’s cricket – A male athlete competed on a women’s cricket team in England, and another male athlete previously did so in Australia.
Women’s cross country – A male runner competed on an NCAA Division I women’s cross country team and was named the conference’s “Women’s Athlete of the Week.” Running seems to be a talent where the gap between men and women is wider, even though I thought it was one of the sports where women had faster world record times than men but like I said not trying to spend tons of time researching cases because there are tooo many toxic as fuck sources for every good source. Including the story about the transgender runner who broke two women’s track and field records for New York college
Women’s cycling – A male athlete won gold in the women’s 200-meter sprint in both the 2018 and 2019 Masters Track Cycling World Championships. Another male cyclist first competed in the women’s category in 2017.
Women’s mountain biking – A male athlete who previously competed in the men’s open division won back-to-back national championships in the women’s elite division in 2018 and 2019.
Women’s power lifting – A male power-lifter competed as a female and broke several records before being disqualified.
Women’s skateboarding – A 29-year-old male athlete competed in a women’s street skateboarding competition in New York City and beat out a 13-year-old girl for first place.
Women’s surfing – A male athlete who previously won a Western Australia state surfing championship in the men’s division competed in the women’s division in 2022 and won two women’s state championships.
Women’s swimming – A male swimmer who competed on the men’s team for three years began competing on the women’s team and won a 2022 NCAA Championship in the 500-yard freestyle event. Another male swimmer competed on the men’s team for three years before competing on the women’s team and recording the fastest women’s times in three events at the 2019 Missouri Valley Conference Championships as an exhibition swimmer.
Women’s track and field – Two male athletes dominated girls’ high school competitions in Connecticut. A male athlete won first place in the women’s mile race at an NCAA Division I conference championship. And another male college athlete won the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Division II women’s national championships. As well as the story of Ada Gallagher who set new records at Track Championship. This doesn't even seem possible: trans high school track star sparks fury after winning girls’ triple jump by staggering 8 feet](https://www.aol.com/trans-high-school-track-star-174914172.html)
UN Report on balance of medals won by females vs females *If I read this correctly, it is fucking terrifying the UN could be so dysfunctional that a report done by a single person and no peer reviews or fact checking is able to get this much attention much-less even be released to the media by the UN.
To anyone reading this, know that this guy is just posting Gish Gallop and misunderstanding the assignment.
The question was which transfem Olympians this ruling protects against. As in, people who are switching from MtF to gain a competitive advantage by abusing the rules to steal medals?
The very first example this guy cites is a 50yo MtF who joined some tiny school basketball team... to play basketball. Even in the game cited she played poorly and their team lost. They are not a competitive team in any sense.
OP is purposely trying to pad out a list to make something a problem that isn't. Somewhat ironic because thats basically the whole trans athlete issue summed up.
Do you not think a cis-female 52-year old former athlete and ex-Navy could play college basketball as well or better than Gabrielle Ludwig? Mission College didn't go to playoffs the one year that Gabrielle Ludwig played 30 minutes a game.
Do you... Do you think older women are shit at basketball?
Part 2
Despite what tinfoil hat fans might yell at the refs, sports are one of the few areas left that holds competitive equality as its governing body. Yes there are always the FIFA's, NCAA's, and sports-book gambling to fuel plenty of corruption surrounding sports but the rules that are made and the bodies that govern them are built around keeping the game fair to all competitors. Even in the most toxic of sports communities, I have not heard anyone say anything remotely close to your assumption of:
I'm sorry but no real person from either side of politics is thinking that. Everyone who knows a lick about any sport understands they are individuals changing their born sex who also are really good at a sport. I have to explain this to my grandfather all the time: what ever Fox News or any other 24hr network news station tells you the masses are saying/thinking/doing IS NEVER AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF THE REAL WORLD OR REAL PEOPLE. IT IS WHAT THEY, AS GIANTS IN THE ENTERTAINMEMT INDUSTRY, KNOW WILL GENERATE THE MOST VIEWS. But that is it. A fucking idiot would be able to understand people aren't cutting dicks off to win at a women's sport and thats not meant to be a joke. Its also why there isn't an issue with male athletes protesting the female=>male trans athletes having an unfair advantage.
Unless you are playing one of the big 4 as a male, you likely are not making enough money playing the pro or pro-am sport to not need a full time job no matter what you play, how good you are or what is between your taint and asshole. Anyone who has an opinion on this topic is either a current/former female athlete/coach or the family member of a female athlete.
Also, if you go through that list, consider the amount of non-trans athletes each one of those stories are crossing with. Most of the stories talk of championships and records being broke, so I'm just going to go off that. In high school sports that means at the lowest winning tier the trans athlete beat out everyone in their school competing for the chance to rep their school/start on the team. At the county level multiply that by number of schools in that county, so idk like 10 to 20. At regionals were talking multiple counties with multiple schools and albeit they aren't directly competing and losing to the trans athlete but every athlete who fell short of being the champion tracks who they lost to, who that person they lost to, then went on to win or lose to, etc. etc. etc. At a state level like New York State, you are talking thousands and thousands of public schools. So to your request to "name one transfem," if that one transfem set a new world record then that is all it takes to have just about everyone who plays the competing sport up in arms.
Every one of which with a student who played the sport that the trans athlete championed will keep that loss far longer than any other loss in their career. Every athlete knows the circumstances surrounding a loss never justify the loss but that doesn't mean a loss with any whiff of an asterisk or unfair playing conditions will stick with them waaaaaaay longer.
What I'd like to see people understand is, this is not any different from any rule change or other medically related sporting governance issue. They are going to get it wrong a couple times, it is going to seem like it will take forever for anything to get fixed because most sports don't to have one season with rule 1 the the following season with rule 1 version 2. They will always try to not make any changes so they can have more then 1 season to look at for making any subsequent changes to another season. It really is prolly not getting settled all that differently from how diabetic athletes and to a lesser degree ADHD athletes were shelved until they started improving the rules surrounding the TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemptions). Its where my vote stands. Transgenders receiving treatments to transition seem to be a reliable 3% of population regardless of the country. So treat each case independently with a Medical Exemption Request and adapt the TUE reqs:
I know Lemmy as a community is not going to be friendly with this stance and all I can hope is for the internet, if not for just this one time, could understand that its OK to discuss something without either party wishing ill towards anyone. I understand this is but a fraction of the policy changes made by Trump's admin that threaten anyone not white and sticking dick in vag but only naturally born vags. That doesn't mean I have to agree unilaterally one way or the other for every topic tho.
Part 1: Ima preface this by saying what anyone does with their life and their individual pursuit of happiness is their fuckin right and I will never stop fighting for your ability to do so... now the dreaded "with that being said..."
So I'm not going to spend a ton of time going through every story and source because there is so much toxic shit sources around this topic so I am going to keep the list simple and only guna list widely known sources of stories about athletes winning for Olympic sports. The list itself is pulled from a shitty source so fuck citing that source, I will only provide the sources for the articles each story was pulled from. I took tons of time to get the links formatted and checking the stories and sources so if the vernacular used in the actual list is not universally appropriate, please just disregard and read the story being linked. The linked sources for each story, I think are all applauding the trans athlete. *not Olympic athletes, just sports that are in the Olympics as far as I know.
Women’s basketball – A 50-year-old, 6-foot-6-inch man, who played on a college men’s team 30 years prior, played on a women’s junior college basketball team.
Women’s handball – A male athlete, who formerly played on an NCAA Division III women’s soccer team, now plays for Team USA Women’s Beach Handball.
Women’s bodybuilding – A male who had competed in men’s bodybuilding in the past started competing as a woman.
Women’s cricket – A male athlete competed on a women’s cricket team in England, and another male athlete previously did so in Australia.
Women’s cross country – A male runner competed on an NCAA Division I women’s cross country team and was named the conference’s “Women’s Athlete of the Week.” Running seems to be a talent where the gap between men and women is wider, even though I thought it was one of the sports where women had faster world record times than men but like I said not trying to spend tons of time researching cases because there are tooo many toxic as fuck sources for every good source. Including the story about the transgender runner who broke two women’s track and field records for New York college
Women’s cycling – A male athlete won gold in the women’s 200-meter sprint in both the 2018 and 2019 Masters Track Cycling World Championships. Another male cyclist first competed in the women’s category in 2017.
Women’s mountain biking – A male athlete who previously competed in the men’s open division won back-to-back national championships in the women’s elite division in 2018 and 2019.
Women’s power lifting – A male power-lifter competed as a female and broke several records before being disqualified.
Women’s skateboarding – A 29-year-old male athlete competed in a women’s street skateboarding competition in New York City and beat out a 13-year-old girl for first place.
Women’s surfing – A male athlete who previously won a Western Australia state surfing championship in the men’s division competed in the women’s division in 2022 and won two women’s state championships.
Women’s swimming – A male swimmer who competed on the men’s team for three years began competing on the women’s team and won a 2022 NCAA Championship in the 500-yard freestyle event. Another male swimmer competed on the men’s team for three years before competing on the women’s team and recording the fastest women’s times in three events at the 2019 Missouri Valley Conference Championships as an exhibition swimmer.
Women’s track and field – Two male athletes dominated girls’ high school competitions in Connecticut. A male athlete won first place in the women’s mile race at an NCAA Division I conference championship. And another male college athlete won the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Division II women’s national championships. As well as the story of Ada Gallagher who set new records at Track Championship. This doesn't even seem possible: trans high school track star sparks fury after winning girls’ triple jump by staggering 8 feet](https://www.aol.com/trans-high-school-track-star-174914172.html)
UN Report on balance of medals won by females vs females *If I read this correctly, it is fucking terrifying the UN could be so dysfunctional that a report done by a single person and no peer reviews or fact checking is able to get this much attention much-less even be released to the media by the UN.