40 Bogus Rationales for Allowing Males into Female Sports
In Chronological Order, Complete with Counter-Arguments
Greetings, friends, and welcome, newcomers!
I’m teaching a one-session class for writers:
Introduction to Substack:
How to Share Your Writing, Find an Audience, and Get Paid
When: Thursday, July 10, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Where: Zoom
Price: Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild Members: $60; Non-Members $75
Learn More and Register Here: The class is a “go”; spaces still available.
“But there aren’t very many” is popular.
So is, “What’s the harm?”
For the past three years, I’ve been taking notes, documenting the ever-changing justifications for allowing trans-identified male athletes into women’s sports and locker rooms. I’ve listed most of these rationales below, in very-approximate chronological order. The theme throughout: What men want must take precedence over what women want.
Why the long list? Because no argument sticks. The spaghetti keeps sliding down the wall of common sense and fundamental fairness.
I’m sharing them to show how, collectively, they reveal the absurdity and desperation of the claim, along with deep-seated disrespect or even contempt for girls and women.
Note: In response to reader input, I have reformatted the footnotes to appear after each entry. That’s why some comments refer to footnotes.
It isn’t happening.
Two thousand, one hundred, and sixty-three female athletes have uploaded their data into the SheWon.org website, documenting the loss of almost 3,000 medals, trophies, scholarships, or other opportunities due to male competitors in the female category (as of May 22, 2025). How many other women do not know about this site, know but did not take this action, or are otherwise unaccounted for there?
There aren’t very many.
“One is too many.” – Kim Jones, cofounder, ICONS. HeCheated.org has documented 13,000+ incidents (as of May 22, 2025) of males competing in female sports – affecting, on average, more than 200 girls or women per event, plus parents and community members. Plus: the overall morale for female athletes who understand that the female category is no longer protected. Also, no one says “there aren’t very many” about performance-enhancing drug users.
It doesn’t matter.
It matters to girls and women, who are protesting via lawsuits, boycotts, speeches, editorials, and more.
What’s the harm?
When males enter female sports and spaces, damage is done to girls’ and women’s athletic experiences, physical safety, dignity, privacy, and belief that the world could be a fair place for us.
Women should be kind and inclusive and sensitive to “transwomen’s” (men’s) feelings.
No. The purpose of all categories is to exclude: by age, weight, disability, or sex — to make things fair. If men value inclusion, they should be kind and inclusive of feminine males and welcome them into the male category, where they belong, along with all the other males.
“Transwomen” (males who want to pass as women) are psychologically vulnerable and might hurt themselves if they don’t get what they want.
That’s emotional blackmail. Girls and women are not responsible for the mental health of men.
“Transwomen” (males who want to pass as women) could not tolerate competing against boys or men.
This excuse is exposed by pointing out that women who want to pass as men (“transmen”) compete against other women in the women’s category — because they’re female and could not keep up with men. If women can do it, so can men.
I’m an ally.
Please consider becoming an ally for girls and women, whose rights are being trampled on by the trans movement, which favors males.
Who even cares about sports?
Here’s why the sports conflict is so emotional to trans allies, and why they continue to resist in the face of legal and policy changes to the contrary. “If trans girls are really boys when they’re playing sports, then they would also be considered boys in the bathroom, boys in medical offices…” writes trans activist Julia Serano. Right. It’s the first domino, and it’s falling under pressure from common sense.
Who even cares about girls or women’s sports?
Transgender athlete bans are unfair.
They’re not bans. They just insist males play in the male category, which was designed for them.
You’re transphobic.
Name-calling is not working.
You’re TERFS (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists).
Fine.
“Transwomen” (males) don’t have a performance advantage, or not a significant one.
Every “transwoman and transgirl” (male) doesn’t win every time.
That’s not what performance advantage means.
If this were a problem, they would be dominating every sport in the Olympics.
Athletes who take performance-enhancing drugs don’t win all the time either, yet everyone agrees they should be disqualified.
After males lower their testosterone levels to “the female range,” they should be able to compete in the female category.
The female range is up to 2.4 nanomoles per liter. The male range is between 10 and 35 nanomoles per liter, with zero overlap between the two. Most of the rules requiring males to lower their testosterone only require them to drop it to 5 or 10 nanomoles per liter, which is still more than double the top of the female range. Even when males lower their testosterone to 2.5 n/ml, that does not erase their other male advantages: height, weight, hand size, foot size, bone density, strength, power, heart size, lung size, and more.
After lowering their testosterone levels, “transwomen” (men) are so hormonally depleted that they now have a disadvantage when competing against women.
Untrue – and women do not want to compete against weakened or mediocre male athletes.
Okay, but then transgender or non-binary athletes need their own category.
When there is a separate category for transgender or non-binary athletes, the men still win.
Okay, maybe at the elite level, but not in high school.
Don’t girls have rights to fair sports — as boys do? We protect boys from having to compete against older boys or men, or those who take performance-enhancing drugs. Why not offer girls the same fair experience?
Some males born are assigned female at birth so therefore sex is a social construct and not binary but a spectrum.
There are only two sexes. People who born with genetic anomalies are the exceptions that prove the rule. Currently there are 112 gender identities listed on Wikipedia and more than 4,000 on Wiki Gender, including catgender, meowgender, feline gender, catnipgender, and mewgender, all defined in terms of affinity for cats. This should not be mistaken for science, nor for sex, nor for sports relevance.
“Transwomen” (men) shouldn’t have to lower their testosterone or have surgery or defend their performance advantage or anything else. They’re women if they say they are.
No. The word women is already taken.
Restrictions on the female category will lead to genital inspections.
It’s called a cheek swab - with a q-tip in the mouth. Like other DNA tests. Genitals are irrelevant.
Why do you care so much about a person’s genitals?
We don’t. We only care about male performance advantage.
Gender is self-defined. Anyone’s declaration of their gender, even a two-year-old’s, should be treated as sacred – and the same as sex.
That’s called magical thinking. Sex is not self-defined. Nor is age. Certain realities are just facts of life.
What is a woman?
This one is a taunt, not a question. It’s not a mystery, and not up for debate. Adult human female.
We should reorganize sports based on things that matter like height or arm length.
We don’t need reinvention proposals from people who do not understand the basics of sports, as all athletes learn from experience.
Sex is the most important determinant of athletic performance, all other things (age, disability) being equal.
Look at Michael Phelps!
There’s nothing unfair about tall, strong men competing against other men of any size. This is called a competition advantage, philosopher Jon Pike explains. Category advantages, by contrast, “are those advantages that we control for by creating categories.” A motor bike has a category advantage over a mountain bike. Therefore, those competitors compete in different categories (or sports).
Volleyball? Who cares?
Girls and women care.
Surely men have no advantage in fencing, billiards, or darts.
Physical size and upper-body strength are factors in all of those sports.
Your concerns are trivial because they only involve girls and women.
Your misogyny is showing.
You’re racist because Black women do not fit White women’s definition of femininity.
You’re using sexist stereotypes and the threat of racism to distract from the real issue: women’s rights.
“Transgender women” (males) would never hurt girls or women in restrooms or locker rooms.
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Data, males are responsible for 97 percent of murder, non-negligent manslaughter, and rape; and 96 percent of pedophilia. According to RAINN, 9 out of every 10 victims of rape are female. Women have no way to know who the dangerous men are – and deserve dignity and privacy, along with safety.
A longitudinal, quantitative study by Swedish researchers found that post-operative males who identify as transgender had criminal-conviction rates that were comparable to male controls. In other words, sex reassignment did not decrease men’s risk for criminal convictions. Males who identify as transgender are not dangerous to females because of their gender identity; they are dangerous because they are male.
See also “Now It's Personal: Trans Sex Offender Exposes Himself in My Locker Room.”
What are you going to do, police the restrooms? Women can already be raped in restrooms and locker rooms because there’s no lock on the door.
Culturally, yes. We already do. Women need to regain the right to confront any man, explain to him that he’s in the wrong place, and demand that he leave.
“Transwomen” (males)would be endangered in the men’s room (so women need to protect them).
To acknowledge male fears of male violence is to admit that males can be violent, and therefore women are justified in wanting all males out of female locker rooms. If men are afraid of other men, they can use a family changing room – or teach men not to discriminate against men who wear dresses.
“Transwomen” (males) are women.
If trans activists can change the meaning of “woman” to include men who want to pose as women, we will have reached the end of a common language, the end of common sense, and the end of laws that protect girls and women.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) explains it this way: “When we say women, that word always includes trans women. A trans woman’s gender identity doesn’t define or caveat her womanhood, it simply describes her journey to womanhood.” These men who have “journeyed to womanhood” must, according to trans advocates, be granted all women’s rights, including access to women’s sports competitions and locker rooms. Which nullifies all women’s rights.
The men themselves know they are not women, as the 51-year-old Paralympian Valentina Petrillo admitted in a recent documentary: “You can see I’m a man.” Males who think of themselves as women “are not under any illusions about their chromosomes or what their bodies look like or what sex it said on their birth certificate,” admits trans ally and Current Affairs founder Nathan J. Robinson.
Just no. Women are people. We are not a category that men can opt into.
“I refuse to be the bigger person.” — Alana McLaughlin, male fighter who insists on competing against women in mixed martial arts
“I will keep playing until they drag me off the pitch.” - Fae Fulconis, male soccer (football) player, objecting to new female-only Football Association rules in the U.K. based on the U.K. Supreme Court ruling that only women are women.
If you see a TERF, punch ‘em in the F’ing face.
Reminder: Introduction to Substack: How to Share Your Writing, Find an Audience, and Get Paid
Learn More and Register Here: The class is a “go”; spaces still available.
What did I miss? Thoughts? I’m always curious.
See also:
related stories in #SaveWomensSports.
related lists in #FastFacts.
Gavin Newsom made a variant of the “let’s declare women responsible for men’s feelings” argument (argument # six) immediately after acknowledging that males in the female category is in fact unfair to females. They just cut to the chase with new bad arguments containing moral commands when the old bad arguments about the facts are exposed as false. The idea ultimately being defended: these male’s feelings matter more than females’ feelings, more than fairness to females, more than the safety of females, in fact, more than reality itself.
After my daughter was sent flying in soccer by a unit of a 17 yr old boy:
‘Your daughter is very small’
Me: that’s why she plays girls soccer. Duh.