Transgender athletes respond to Olympics' ban on trans women

Transgender athletes have shared their thoughts on the Olympics banning transgender women from competing in women's categories.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the decision today after an 18-month consultation phase. The ban will go into effect in time for the 2028 Los Angeles summer games.

The decision follows an almost-30 year ban on Olympic sex testing. The practice, which began for women in the 1930s, was done away with in 1996 after being deemed ineffective by the IOC.

"The thing about these tests is that it's never done on the men's side," explained trans hockey player and Heated Rivalry guest star Harrison Browne in an Instagram reel. "The athletic advantage that a man holds over another man because of what their body is naturally able to produce is never questioned."

"The biggest example of what we can point to is Michael Phelps. He is scientifically proven to have a biological advantage over his swimming peers, and yet those advantages are celebrated rather than capped."

 

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The ban would also bar intersex individuals from competing in the Olympics.

"The chromosomes that your body has, it's not just male, female," Browne continued. "It is a huge spectrum and there's a lot of grey areas. That's why sex testing was done away with, because these results and disqualifying of athletes was seen as arbitrary."

"Trans women are not an issue. What is an issue is the policing of women's bodies and the surveillance, and the whistle blowing effect of this moral panic around trans athletes."

During the 2024 summer Olympics, boxer Imane Khelif was targeted for failing an unspecified sex test, though she was born a cisgender female.

Trans non-binary Olympian Nikki Hiltz took to their Instagram story to comment on the decision.

"I don't know who needs to hear this but ZERO trans women competed in the Paris Olympics," they wrote. "Only ONE trans woman weightlifter competed in Tokyo 2021 and she did not win a medal. Can we please stop obsessing over trans people? And idk maybe focus our time, energy, and resources into real problems women's sports face?"

In 2021, transgender woman Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand became the first trans Olympian to compete in a category that did not correspond to their assigned sex at birth. She was the fourth oldest weightlifter to compete at the Olympics and placed last in her group.

Transgender triathlete and 8-time member of Team USA Chris Mosier also condemned the decision, calling sex testing a "horrific practice".

"It's absolutely outrageous that the IOC would institute a ban on trans athletes under the guise of protecting fairness for women in sports, while simultaneously putting all women in harm's way by forcing them to do this genetic testing," he said in an Instagram reel.

"If we really cared about fairness in women's sports, we wouldn't police people's bodies. We would build better sporting systems. We would invest money into women's sports. We would give equal opportunities and equal rights and equal access to women's sports, but that's not what this is about."

"This is about politics, and this is about fear, and this is about controlling people's bodies."

 

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"Banning trans women in women's sports doesn't make sports more safe, it makes it less safe for everyone."

A 2022 study found that transgender women had no marked advantages over their cisgender counterparts in elite sport.