Those who read my blog know that there are certain points on which I am intransigent, and foremost among them is the transgender question. For me, there is no question that men, masquerading as women, should be included in women’s sports categories. I have expressed this view repeatedly in writing on this blog. I have publicly praised Lord Sebastian for his courageous decision to ban transwomen from women’s sports. I rejoiced when the President of the United States signed Executive Order 14201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” to end what I call “transgender insanity”. As I have written time and again, women fought hard to gain access to sports — and we should not let mediocre men spoil the integrity of those sports.
Unfortunately, many people, especially those whom we might call enlightened progressives, are campaigning for the inclusion of men in women’s sports, using the fallacious argument that gender, not sex, should determine eligibility. And there are many misguided women among them! The situation was further aggravated when the IOC, much like Pontius Pilate, chose to wash its hands of the transgender eligibility issue. Before the Paris 2024 Olympics, it abandoned a unified policy and adopted a framework that left such decisions to individual sports federations. As a result, two biologically male athletes were allowed to compete in women’s boxing.
It is important to note that the regulatory landscape of boxing was particularly complex at that time. One year before the Games, the sport was still under the authority of the International Boxing Association (IBA). However, after governance failures led to its suspension in 2019, the IOC formally decertified the IBA in June 2023 and took over the organization of Olympic qualifiers and the event itself. Although the IBA had previously disqualified Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting over eligibility concerns, the IOC permitted both to compete in Paris—with predictable controversy following. Since 2025, the IOC has recognized the newly established World Boxing federation as the sport’s international governing body. One of the first measures of WB was the announcement of systematic testing for the SRY gene as part of eligibility screening. Still, Khelif who, in a February 2026 article in l'Equipe, confirmed that she has the SRY gene, is planning to participate in the 2028, Los Angeles, Olympics. But since the WR is screening for the gene, Khelif will not even be allowed to take part in the qualifiers. Imane Khelif is not transgender: she is male. (I find the last sentence somewhat bizarre, but since Khelif has a female phenotype and maintains that she is a woman I will, as a courtesy, use the female pronoun).
I do not know whether the IOC, after the outcry following the Paris boxing scandal and profiting from the change of presidency will change their cowardly stance. To tell the truth, I am not overly optimistic, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The main reason I am revisiting the transgender question is that there are regularly published supposedly scientific papers advocating for the inclusion of transgender men in women’s sports. The IOC’s 2021 Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non‑Discrimination already adopts a “no presumption of advantage” principle, rejecting blanket testosterone thresholds for transgender athletes. These assumptions tend to downplay the lasting effects of male puberty on strength, muscle mass, and overall physiology. Testosterone suppression does reduce muscle mass and strength and brings hemoglobin levels into the female range. However, the biomechanical and performance advantages acquired during male puberty are not fully eliminated. Despite this, the IOC chose to prioritize inclusion, effectively allowing biologically male athletes to compete against women. This time, a new publication brought to my attention in Ross Tucker’s podcast prompted me to write on the topic again. (If you follow my blog, you will already know who Ross Tucker is.)
The paper in question was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine under the title “Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta‑analysis.” What was flabbergasting was their conclusion:
While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass [my addition: which is a proxy for muscle] than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence ...[omitted]... does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
It is one of those dubious studies, on transgender individuals, published in the last three or four years, that have been co‑opted into debates about elite sport. Ross Tucker thoroughly dismantles it: the article takes weak primary studies, applies technically sound statistics for credibility, and produces an outcome that, in practice, means very little. Yet this does not stop the authors from claiming that “the current data do not justify blanket bans”. The problem lies in the studies used as the basis for this meta‑analysis. A typical pitfall is to compare men who identify as women to elite women athletes. But this is not the correct way to conduct the comparison. In a marathon, the top 30 men are about 10–12% faster than the top 30 women. However, when one moves further back in the field, there are many men who are slower and weaker than many women. In a local race, perhaps 30%, or even 50%, of the men are beaten by the first woman. The best women are excellent athletes in the human race. The same logic applies to age categories. The best junior sprinter is often faster than most adult men. Does this mean that being young is not a disadvantage? Should we then allow adult athletes to compete in junior categories on the grounds that they “feel young”?
Tucker insists that if we are to require studies to be robust and have good scientific integrity, one of the prerequisites is that they consider comparable slices of the male and female populations. Overlooking this, the conclusion can easily be that males are similar to females. He finishes by expressing the hope that the next time we speak about transgender athletes, it will be to report that the IOC has finally aligned its policies with the reality of biology and sport. Amen to this.
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