Why "Protecting Girls' Sports" Is the Perfect Political Wedge Issue
Trans people aren’t undermining women and girls. Conservative politicians are!
Buckle up, buckaroos. This topic gets people REAL riled up.
Let’s talk about trans kids in sports—specifically, trans kids in girls’ sports. The current administration is suspending $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania.
Why? Trans athletes—even though UPenn doesn’t currently have any transgender athletes, according to reporting. The funding is being pulled because the school followed NCAA rules and allowed trans athlete Lia Thomas, who graduated in 2022, to compete in swimming tournaments. That’s right; university funding is being pulled over an athlete who competed three years ago and—whatever your feeling about the rules—abided by them.
Emotions run high on this topic, but I wanted to tackle it for that exact reason. The media gives very little context around trans athletes, so in this piece, I plan to give you that grounding. I also want to explore why this issue is such a useful tool in the culture wars.
Trans Athletes in Girls’ Sports: The Fears
First, some context: In a recent study, 300,000 teens (ages 13 to 17) identified as transgender; that’s 0.5% of the US population. But remember, as Newsweek points out, not all transgender people identify as women—and many don’t participate in team sports.
Privacy laws make it hard to pinpoint the exact number of trans women participating in sports, but one expert said in that same 2023 Newsweek article that even a conservative organization lobbying against trans people in sports had identified only five athletes on girls’ sports teams in grades K-12. The president of the NCAA says he’s aware of “less than ten” transgender athletes playing college sports.
In other words, the numbers are tiny at best. However, many people would argue that trans kids playing girls’ sports hurts girls—either physically or financially.
But when I googled, I could find only two reported injuries. One was Payton McNabb, who, in 2022, was hit in the head by a volleyball spiked by a trans player. She suffered a concussion, brain bleed, and whiplash and later said that she still experiences partial paralysis. McNabb has become something of an anti-trans activist and was honored during Trump’s latest Congressional address.
The second injury was during a field hockey game in Massachusetts. A female player was hospitalized after being hit in the face (presumably with the ball and not a stick, after reading about the incident) by a trans player on the opposing team.
I’m sorry those injuries happened. Both incidents sound extremely painful.
But let’s put it in perspective: my husband played high school sports and had multiple concussions and many other injuries. His sister, an equally avid athlete, totally destroyed her knees playing soccer.
With sports come injuries. Even I, a total non-athlete, got hurt—and I’m not just talking about the way my very nice gym teacher, fumbling for something positive to say, would laud my “team spirit!” I was only good at one sport: field hockey. (Even my gym teacher said, without her usual note of kind pity, “Wow, I think you found your sport.”) However, my school didn’t have a team when I attended, so I only played in gym class. It was no joke: even at that level, I was constantly covered in goose eggs and bruises and remember barely escaping an accidental stick to the face.
Indulge me in one last anecdote: my daughter’s gym class was playing basketball about two months ago when one kid’s femur snapped in half (literally!!) during a collision with another boy. He missed weeks of school.
I’m not cavalierly dismissing concerns about injuries. I’m just saying that the number of trans players is tiny and the number of injuries is even smaller.
By all means, let’s debate ways to make everyone safer. I personally believe you can accomplish that without banning trans athletes—I found this BBC article to be a surprisingly nuanced and civilized discussion on the subject.
However, if we’re being honest, it’s not just about injuries. There’s also the concern that female athletes might be outperformed by trans athletes. That’s probably happened, although it’s hard to pinpoint exact numbers. In one highly publicized case, Lia Thomas “became the first trans woman to win an NCAA swimming championship in 2022.” A trans high school athlete in Maine won a medal in pole vaulting, while another athlete in Texas won in several track and field events. But, in another case, Chelsea Mitchell, a cisgender female high school athlete who had sued to ban trans athletes, beat a trans competitor she’d lost to repeatedly. There’s really no telling.
It seems like there’s very little reliable scholarship on how many cis girls are losing to trans athletes. A UN report was widely touted in the media because 600 female athletes worldwide supposedly lost medals to trans competitors. The citation supporting this was supplied by an anti-trans athlete organization and I haven’t been able to find their sources. (Even the organization’s dedicated page on the topic doesn’t link to a study or report.)
Next, let’s tackle financial fears. There’s a lot of talk that trans athletes are depriving cisgender girls and women of college scholarships and/or spots in professional sports. Again, there are no good numbers on this. Four cisgender athletes sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), saying they were skipped for potential scholarships—but the suit was dismissed because “the plaintiffs’ claim that the CIAC policy put them at a competitive disadvantage was unfounded.” However, the case is being appealed.
There’s Always Someone Taking Your Fair Share
Here’s my take, for what it’s worth: The US, as I have previously mentioned, is a culture of scarcity. As the wealth gap grows, we’re all competing for crumbs. This is especially true when it comes to the increasingly divisive and politically polarized topic of higher education.
Anger over costs is certainly understandable. College tuition has skyrocketed in the United States, with private colleges likely to soon surpass the $100,000 annual mark. Student loan debt is currently about $1.74 trillion—and most of that debt is carried by women, particularly minority women.
What’s interesting is that, from a conservative point of view, there’s a push-pull going on: Republicans no longer feel that college campuses are on the right course, yet they’re irate about cisgender female athletes possibly being denied scholarships. Now, one could argue that these issues tie together, and conservatives feel (at least in part) that colleges are on the wrong track because they are allowing trans athletes to participate. That’s possible, but when you look at all the other conservative complaints about colleges, it seems a little disingenuous to claim that—as JD Vance did—“universities are the enemy” while fighting to get women scholarships.
This brings me to another point: “Protect girls in sports” has become a rallying cry for the right. It’s a very effective slogan, as it seems to have spoken to a segment of self-proclaimed feminists, usually women who grew up during the Second Wave. (Look at JK Rowling, for instance.)
Here’s the thing: even if you truly believe trans girls playing in high school and college sports is a problem, the numbers show it affects a small percentage of athletes.
But trans people are not the ones systematically undermining women’s rights. Conservative politicians are—and many Democratic elected officials have not been pushing back hard enough (if at all).
Conservative politicians are wielding the cudgel of trans athletes in sports to create fear and animosity, especially when it’s positioned as girls and women being “cheated” of scholarships and medals by trans athletes.
Look at The Shiny Object Over There!
As everyone screams about “protecting women,” we’re losing rights we gained in the 1970s.
Let’s start with Dobbs, which overturned Roe v Wade. Some people will just shrug and say, “States’ rights”—but men’s rights aren’t determined by geography. Women have died due to abortion bans. Maternity units are shuttering. (Dobbs isn’t the only reason for this, but it plays a role.)
As KFF Health News writes:
“While all 20 states with abortion bans or early gestational limits have exceptions for when the pregnant person’s life is in danger, six states do not have exceptions for when the pregnant person’s health is at risk, 10 states have no rape/incest exceptions, and 13 states have no fatal fetal anomaly exceptions.”
And then there’s Project 2025. It uses thinly veiled language referencing fetal personhood (“Goal #1” under the Department of Health and Human Services) and is against all abortion. (p. 450)
Trump has disclaimed Project 2025, but according to the Project 2025 Tracker, one-third of the objectives have already been completed. Health and Human Services has barely been touched yet, and that is the department that will have the most effect on policies for women, girls, and trans people.
What do I mean? Well, Project 2025 wants women to move away from traditional contraception:
“CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed “rhythm” or “calendar” methods.”
Please note: it’s unclear which FABMs they mean, but take it from someone who used these methods to become pregnant—it takes a lot of work and care to do this effectively. Plus, these methods don’t work well for people who don’t have a regular, predictable period.
And, of course, Project 2025 lists trans athletes as a priority in the foreword (p. 6):
“Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists”
Why “Protecting Girls’ Sports” Is Such an Effective Slogan
I don’t think there’s any neat and tidy solution that will make everyone happy when it comes to trans athletes.
But here’s the thing: conservative politicians don’t really care about “protecting girls’ sports.” That slogan is a useful political tool because it hits right at the intersection of many supposedly hot-button issues—gender, universities, our culture of scarcity, disrespect for blue-collar work, etc.
If you’re a middle-class person who doesn’t want to see your kid laden down by debt, you’re going to get irate if someone tells you that a trans athlete is cheating your daughter out of a college scholarship.
Who are you going to blame? The trans athlete, of course, along with the Department of Education, the NCAA, those “liberal academics,” and all the goddamn “wokes” who think trans athletes should compete.
Whatever any of us believe in terms of trans athletes, we must be aware that it’s one of the most polarizing social topics—and despite the very, very small number of trans college athletes, it is a topic guaranteed to whip up emotions.
If you care about equality for women and girls, I’d urge you to take a deep breath and realize that you’re being emotionally manipulated by conflict entrepreneurs who are working on undermining women’s rights on a very large scale.
I’ll say it again: trans people aren’t undermining women and girls. Conservative politicians are. Don’t fall for it.