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.
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.