A very cis man takes a stab at something he almost certainly, definitely shouldn’t
Photo by Ted Eytan/Creative Commons
“Protect women’s sports.”
What does that mean?
No, legitimately, what does that mean? I’m trying to be nice.
See, I’m trying not to associate this movement with a moron like Enes Kanter, who I and apparently the rest of the world have decided we can dead-name (valid, honestly).
But I keep hearing things about equitable opportunity for women and keeping sports “fair.”
Who in the blue hell said sports were fair?
Try telling football players who have had to cover the likes of Randy Moss or tackle someone like Derrick Henry that this is supposed to be fair. Is guarding Victor Wembenyama fair? Try telling the plumbers who were dealing with Wilt Chamberlain that the sport was fair.
You wanna talk about women’s sports? Katie Ledecky in her prime could go on a two week bender and still kick 99.9% of swimmers’ asses. Serena Williams went on one of the most dominant runs any athlete has ever been on and I didn’t hear a peep about fairness.
Fair ain’t got a damn thing to do with sports.
Sure, we have rules. Rules are not about fairness. They are about regulation so we can watch something that resembles athletic competition so governing bodies have something to sell. They may aspire to fairness, but they don’t actually produce it.
More importantly, using the term “fairness” to govern over biology and to exclude passionate and talented athletes is patently absurd.
How would science even handle this?
Let’s get into biology and anatomy. What is a woman?
I swear this isn’t a stupid gotcha question. I may just be dumb but how are we going to define it? In order to legislate around who is or isn’t a woman, you have to have a definition that we all agree includes all women.
There isn’t one, at least not one that I could find. We have indicators based around reproductive organs, physical features, genetics, etc. But we lack categorization that would include, without a shadow of a doubt, 100 percent of women in the binary sense that we are after.
This is what feels so freaking dumb about this part of the debate. In order to have it, we have to set a definition in an area where we continue to discover that one does not scientifically exist. We need the science to work here or else the whole thing becomes about feelings. I am not in the business of regulating based on feelings.
Where’s the data that shows transgender athletes will be better at sports?
The fairness debate, as dumb as I may find it, hinges on the idea that people who are assigned female at birth are somehow less predisposed to athletics than those who were assigned male.
But we’re not even scientifically sure that exists. A 2026 meta-analysis published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded the following when comparing trans women who underwent gender-affirming hormonal therapy and cis women (emphasis mine):
“While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.”
That’s not even getting to what I find to be the most absurd part of this. You see the part where it says “current evidence is mostly low certainty”? People in favor of barring transgender athletes will point to that as a sign that the data is flawed. And they’re probably right about that because there’s so much about transgender athletes that we don’t know. There’s barely any studies about this that look specifically at athletes.
You know how we’d get more data? If we stopped trying to litigate biology and let transgender athletes compete. Even then, I’m not sure we’d get enough data to actually figure it out.
Where are the transgender athletes I’m supposed to be concerned about?
There are not enough transgender athletes for anyone, let alone a grifting jackass like Kanter, to get worked up about.
NCAA president Charlie Baker testified in front of Congress that he knew of less than ten trans athletes of the over half a million student-athletes competing nationwide. TEN! Do you understand the uselessness of creating a set of rules governing TEN athletes?
Time for a little data. According to a report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, approximately one percent of the United States population aged 13 and older identify as transgender. For specifically youths aged 13 to 17, that number is an estimated 3.3%.
This debate has largely centered around the WNBA in recent months. So let’s take a peek at some women’s basketball data.
An analysis conducted by the NCAA examining the percentage of players that play beyond high school found that only 4.7 percent of women’s high school basketball players make it to the NCAA. Only 1.4 percent make it to Division I or Division II, respectively. For Division III, it’s slightly higher at 1.9%. That same analysis found less than one percent of NCAA players make it to the WNBA. In terms of total professional basketball leagues, that number jumps up to 9.1 percent.
Do you get where this is going? In the grand tapestry of professional basketball players, we’re talking about a miniscule thread. This supposed issue isn’t anywhere close to being relevant to our state of play.
This debate is against our sports cultural ethos.
You know what happened when I played sports against people who were better than me? Stronger than me? Faster than me?
I got told to get better, to find a way. I didn’t do that, that’s why I’m a writer and not playing in the NFL. Far from the only reason, but you’re smart enough to get the point.
Newsflash, sports are about much more than just your physical make-up.
I’m not denying the importance of athletic potential. I am an NFL Draft buff, I understand how latent athletic ability is a key indicator in success. But it isn’t the entire game. My Anthony Richardson priors are crying.
Besides, we don’t have a data-backed, scientific rationale that there’s any advantage for a transgender woman undergoing gender-affirming care.
In order for a transgender woman to get to the point where they could make it to the pros, they will have had to train their asses off. Learn a diverse enough skill-set or develop a couple skills that are in the 99th percentile of the human population so they’d even get a look from a professional league. All of that in a world where entirely too many people want to see them fail.
Just being tall doesn’t make you good at basketball. Hard work and dedication to the craft makes you good at basketball. And if a transgender woman was athletic, dedicated, and skilled to the level that they could play in the pros, why would any team pass on that athlete?
This conversation is far from over. We need more information. In the meantime, if you’re a young athlete who happens upon this, I hope you have one takeaway.
It doesn’t matter what your gender identity is. Get fucking good.
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