Gender Ambiguity, Transgenderism and Women's Sport

With the 2024 Summer Olympics currently taking place in Paris, you may find the following list of essays useful. These are pieces we’ve published on the topic of trans-identified men or intersex athletes competing against biological women in sport, a topic we first covered in 2019 when most publications were too afraid to touch it.

The articles below explore the implications of men competing against women in professional sport.

Sex Differences, Gender, and Competitive Sport

What are the physiological and anatomical differences between men and women that affect performance?

QuilletteAndrew Langford

Male Bodies Don’t Belong in Female Football

‘This nagging feeling that she had an unfair advantage arose every time we hit each other in practice. For me, it was like hitting a brick wall.’

QuilletteKate Miechkowski

Confronting a New Threat to Female Athletics

The movement for trans inclusion now begins in youth sports, where many leagues have no restrictions beyond self-identification.

QuilletteJulian Vigo

Standing Up to the Gender Ideologues: a Quillette Editorial

Once you sweep aside all the glitter showers, animated unicorns, and rainbow emojis, that is ultimately what gender supremacism is truly about.

QuilletteQuillette

Accommodating Trans Athletes Without Rejecting the Reality of Human Biology

As recent studies have shown, these advantages generally don’t go away simply because an athlete has changed their pronouns and hormone chemistry. At the highest levels, the difference between male and female world records typically hovers around 10 percent.

QuilletteQuillette

Gender, Sex, and Powerlifting

With a biologically male athlete poised to break a Canadian women’s record, it’s time for the sport’s leaders to acknowledge the reality of sexual dimorphism.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

Disc Golf’s Lia Thomas Moment

As a biologically male player continues a meteoric rise on the female circuit, women are starting to speak out.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

Ignoring Biological Reality Puts Female Hockey Players at Risk

A frightening injury at an NHL-sponsored transgender tournament in Wisconsin reminds us why women’s leagues should remain sex-protected spaces.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

The Damage Caused by Trans ‘Inclusion’ In Female Athletics: a Massachusetts Case Study

A single biologically male high-school student has invaded female categories in at least four different sports—negatively affecting hundreds of girls and women in the process.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

A Victory for Female Athletes Everywhere

When we are told that 46, XY males with DSD who identify as female are simply “women with hyperandrogenism,” or “women with high T,” we aren’t fooled.

QuilletteDoriane Lambelet Coleman