Trump Is Right—Men Have No Place in Women’s Sports

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) announced this week that biological men will be banned from participating in women’s events at the 2028 LA Olympic Games. The new eligibility criteria restrict the women’s category to those born female. Sport-specific bodies will now have to bring their rules in line with this. USA Fencing, for example, has already updated its criteria to exclude transgender ‘women’ and ‘non-binary’ athletes from competing against women. 

This change comes months after President Donald Trump, as one of his first executive orders back in February, declared that he would prevent any transgender athletes from coming to LA in 2028—even going so far as to order the Department of Homeland Security to “reject any and all visa applications made by men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying as women athletes.” At the same time, his “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” federal order forbids transgender athletes from entering female events in schools and colleges, under the threat of the educational facilities being stripped of federal funding. Signing the order, Trump declared that “the war on women’s sports is over.” 

While this is a monumental step towards victory, the war is unfortunately not over just yet. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) still does not have a uniform transgender policy—although its new president, Kirsty Coventry, has signalled that she intends to “protect the female category.” Currently, each sporting body has the freedom to decide its own rules. Some, like World Athletics, have chosen to bar anyone who has been through male puberty. Others, like World Triathlon, place a limit on testosterone levels.

What will it take for the rest of the world to recognise how dangerous it is to let men into women’s sports? Last year, at the Paris Olympic, global audiences watched in horror as Algerian boxer Imane Khelif stepped into the ring with Italy’s Angela Carini, despite the many questions about Khelif’s gender. During their match, which lasted less than a minute, Khelif broke Carini’s nose. It was later revealed that Khelif had been ruled ineligible to compete in a previous competition by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in 2023 after failing a sex test that found him to be biologically male. Incredibly, during the same Olympic Games, another boxer with a question mark over his gender was allowed to fight against women. Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting had also failed the IBA’s sex test. 

It’s a miracle that none of the female boxers were seriously injured, which can’t be said for all sports. The risk is very real. One study from the University of Utah found that men can punch up to 163% harder than women. The most obvious danger comes from sports with physical contact. In 2014, Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender mixed martial artist, fractured the skull of his female opponent, Tamikka Brent, during a match. Videos regularly surface on social media of trans-identifying men fighting women in contact sports. In one such clip, a 135 lb woman can be seen taking on a 200 lb man with braids in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu match. In this case, the female fighter won. But for many women, the danger of facing a male opponent simply isn’t worth it, leading them to forfeit matches and hand men the win by default. 

Even in non-contact sports, women still aren’t safe. The fact remains that men can’t only punch much harder than women can, but put more physical force behind other athletic moves as well. This was demonstrated brutally in the case of Payton McNabb, a promising high school volleyball player from the U.S. who had her career cut short after being struck in the face by a ball spiked by a transgender opponent. The impact was so brutal that she was left with a traumatic brain injury and partial paralysis. 

Even where women aren’t in immediate danger, they deserve a fair shot at winning in their own sports. Watching mediocre men like swimmer Lia Thomas or cyclist Emily Bridges snatch victory away from actual women—many of whom have dedicated their lives to training and preparing for these competitions—is infuriating and heartbreaking. We saw the logical conclusion of this earlier this year, when the final match of a women’s pool championship in the UK was played entirely by men. The two finalists had defeated their female opponents and were left to play off against each other—which must have come as a bit of a disappointment for them both. 

And even when they don’t win, the inclusion of trans athletes will always mean pushing deserving women out of the competitions. Take Laurel Hubbard, the hulking great male-born weightlifter chosen to represent New Zealand at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Or Italian runner Valentina Petrillo at last year’s Paralympic Games. For every man who gets selected for a women’s event, a female athlete loses out on a chance she worked much harder for. 

The fact that we’ve gotten to this point at all is frankly absurd. Surely no one can look at these transgender athletes—tall, broad-shouldered, some of them with five-o-clock shadow—and argue that they have zero physical benefits. In virtually every sport, having longer legs, a greater wingspan, and more lung capacity will give men huge advantages over women. 

So yes, Trump’s ban at the Olympics is a win worth celebrating. But we still have a long way to the finish line, when any woman and girl, anywhere, can feel that every sport is safe and fair for her. That will require consistent rules across federations, as well as the courage to actually enforce them. Hopefully, the move to effectively ban men from female events at the highest level in 2028 will be the push sporting bodies need towards action. 

Women’s sport does not exist to validate men’s identities. It exists to give women a level playing field and to celebrate their achievements. And it is something that women have fought tooth and nail to have equal access to. Ironically, it is now seen as ‘progressive’ to take that opportunity away and give it to men instead. 

Trans ‘inclusion’ always comes at the price of excluding women. In sports, in politics, in bathrooms, women are told to move over and make space for men who have the gall to ‘identify’ their way into these spaces. Enough is enough. It’s time to say, without flinching, that men do not belong in women’s spaces.