Transgender athletes are still being discriminated in the United States

In recent weeks, the public debate in the USA, both in sport and in other areas, has increasingly focussed on transgender athletes. Attention to the issue has been reawakened by the initial impact of legislation championed by Donald Trump on the campaign trail and signed into law shortly after his return to the White House, namely the executive order signed in February enforcing a reinterpretation of Title IX, the federal law intended to guarantee equal educational opportunity without discrimination on the basis of sex.

In the name of “the need to defend women's sports,” this reinterpretation of Title IX became an instrument of exclusion, imposing a binary gender concept and excluding trans women from high school and university sports programmes. The decree was accompanied by the threat that all institutions that did not comply would have their public education funding cancelled. And soon, in this tense climate, the first frictions arose.

The Maine case

It was against this backdrop that the tug-of-war between the Trump administration and the state of Maine, one of the few remaining states with an inclusive policy, determined not to give in to Washington's pressure, developed. Janet Mills and Sarah Forster, governor and attorney general, have spoken of an attack on civil rights and asserted their legislative authority, promising litigation. The response from the White House was not long in coming: accusations of violating Title IX and “seriously endangering women's sports” and a dispute that has moved to courtrooms since 16 April. The Maine case is the latest act in a cultural clash that has rocked the United States for years and for which sports lends itself as the arena of confrontation. A space in which every athlete and every decision becomes a symbol of something, a flag that is waved or torn down, even in the face of a very complex issue in terms of sports ethics.

When we started talking about bodies

To understand how this came about, it makes sense to look back at a few events from the last decade. It started in 2017 on the athletics tracks in Connecticut, where two transgender sprinters - Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller - drew attention to themselves in high school competitions, attracting the first simplifications and provoking opposition across the political spectrum. Then, in 2019, the first NCAA (Division II) title for a trans student, CeCé Telfer, made the news; the Franklin Pierce University hurdler spoke after the awards ceremony of “a victory not just for me, but for everyone who believes in inclusion and equality”. And so, in an atmosphere of growing conflict in 2022, the point of no return was reached: the case of Lia Thomas. A swimmer and student at the University of Pennsylvania with a competitive background in men's swimming, Thomas won the national university title in the 500-yard freestyle three years ago. Her face appeared in every national newspaper, raising the tone of the debate to an untenable intensity and polarising public opinion.

On one side were those calling for everyone's right to compete according to their gender identity as an expression of broader civil rights protections and the LGBTQ+ community; on the other side were those who picked up the ball to fear the “end of women's sports” (#SaveWomensSports), riding the divisive cases and fuelling the war against what Trump calls the “tyranny of awakening” and the left's “obsession with gender fluid” CeCé Telfer will say: “There's one thing Trump should explain: why he decided to completely erase us from society when we've done nothing wrong.”

New cases in the NCAA

Since then, the debate has definitely overflowed the sports levees, as confirmed by the birth of ICONS, an organization “for the defense of the category of women,” or the visibility gained by Riley Gaines, former swimmer and spokesperson for the anti-inclusion cause; and on the opposite front, the efforts of athlete and activist Schuyler Bailar, the aforementioned Lia Thomas, and so many associations fighting for the protection of an increasingly exposed minority, first and foremost at the regulatory level.

In April 2024, more than 400 faces of American collegiate and professional sports-including Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and Brianna Turner-signed a letter addressed to the NCAA Board of Governors. Inside is a strong exhortation to protect transgender rights and individuals at universities. “The time is now for the NCAA and the national athletic community,” Rapinoe commented, ”to speak up and affirm that sports should be for everyone, including transgender people. To my fellow cisgender athletes, I say: it is time to say loud and clear that the bans presented as protecting women's sports do not speak for us, and do nothing to protect us. Denying the freedom to be authentic and to participate in the sport you love goes against the principles of Olympism, which affirm sport as a human right.” In the past three years, however, twenty-five Republican-led states have passed restrictive laws. And in Democratic circles, every attempt by the progressive wing to open a more balanced debate has foundered, whether during Joe Biden's tenure or under Kamala Harris's agenda. And so, as bans multiply and barricades rise, we move further and further away from finding answers that look to people and scientific knowledge before ideological alignments.

The growing exposure of politics recently has emerged not only in the Maine controversy but also in the Blaire Fleming case. The transgender student and volleyball player at San Jose State University has suffered the same fate as Lia Thomas: embodying, in spite of herself, a clash of exaggerated tones, exposing herself to all the transphobic attributes she carries and reducing herself to a political and media target. And if the background noise-including gossip, instrumentalization, and boycotts of other universities has engulfed the team's sports season, the first victim of it all has been Fleming herself, as shines through all too clearly in her testimony confided to the New York Times.

Public opinion and polarization

All these cases sharply bring into focus the limits of the debate, and especially of the way it is handled by politics and addressed by the media. In 2024, we observed a similar dynamic in Italy, with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, although this was a case related to testosterone regulations and DSD (Disorders of Sexual Development) norms, not the transgender issue. During the Olympic Games in Paris, the rhetoric surrounding her encounters followed the same drift: media controversy, political meddling, oversimplification and sometimes shameless misinformation; all in general disregard for the sensitivity of the athlete, and leaving little room for constructive elements. That is, for understanding the specific case, the differences between each individual and context, the regulatory complexities, and the scale of the phenomenon. In the United States, slogans such as “Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports” find fertile ground in public opinion.

According to a recent Ipsos/NYT poll, 79 percent of Americans support limiting the participation of transgender female athletes, and the percentage remains high even among Democrats (67 percent); it drops dramatically, however, among the under-30s, where support for inclusive policies is in the majority. Data that highlight a generational divide, even before the political one. The underlying problem is that this ideological war, fought on the sports field, has emptied the debate of its real critical issues. Which are not few, indeed, but it is as if we have stopped at the previous step: taking them in, understanding them, and then trying to dissolve them. Talking only about protection and bans in fact fuels a sterile dichotomy of yes and no, black and white, where instead we would need the courage and flexibility to move between nuances, and the will to put sports ethics and biological criteria -still being studied within the scientific community- at the center of the debate, without simplification and forcing. Because a perfect solution does not exist, and an acceptable, humane and just balance point can only be found by moving out of the logic of confrontation.