The culture war over trans athletes extended to the Paris Olympics when Imane Khelif was falsely claimed to be transgender. This claim arose because Khelif won her boxing match in 46 seconds by hitting her opponent so hard that she had to withdraw from the match. The claim might have been made as a cynical attack of opportunity to get the transgender culture war in the international spotlight. As there were no transgender athletes in the Paris Olympics, they had to be imagined. Or it might have been the result of the sexist view that an Olympic level woman athlete could not be strong enough to win a match in one punch. While sorting this out would be interesting, my philosophical concern is with two common factors that are used to fuel the trans culture war. These are the misconception that an athlete can simply declare their gender and a misconception or misunderstanding of the claim that men are stronger than women.

If it were true that a male athlete could simply declare themselves a female athlete, then this would be unfair. However, this is not true. Ben Shapiro wanted to make a documentary about having male basketball players declare themselves to be women so they could play against women’s teams, but he found out that this is not how it works. He ended up making the comedy Lady Ballers instead and reality undercuts its entire political premise. Sports governing bodies, such as the NCAA, have long had strict rules in place for transgender athletes and athletes cannot simply pick their gender and compete. But even if someone knows this, they might argue that allowing trans athletes to compete would be unfair because “men are stronger than women.”

The general claim that men are stronger than women is true, but it is commonly misunderstood. Some take it as meaning that almost any man will be stronger than almost any woman. For example, Lady Ballers is based on the idea that washed up former high school basketball players led by their former coach can easily beat world class women’s basketball teams.  This leads to the concern that trans athletes would unfairly steal places in competitions because men are stronger than women. For example, it might be worried that a trans athlete could unfairly win the mile and steal the win from the second-place runner. But is this something we should worry about? To answer this, we need to consider relative athletic performance. I will use the mile as an example.

Hobbs Kessler of Skyline Highschool ran a 3:57 mile, setting the high school record. The men’s record holder for the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj who ran 3:43 in 1999. The women’s record holder is Faith Kipyegon who ran a 4:07 in 2023. While this might be taken as showing that men are faster than women, we need to be more precise. These numbers show that elite male runners are faster than elite female runners. But it also shows just how good an elite female athlete can be: the overwhelming majority of men, even trained milers, cannot run a 4:07 mile. I was an All-Conference college cross country runner, and I could not run a 4:07 mile. This means that a trans athlete would need to be a very good athlete to compete against good non-trans female athletes, even if it was (contrary to fact) assumed that the transition to meet the requirements to compete would result in no loss of performance. As the number of trans athletes is incredibly low and the number of male athletes who would be good enough to beat top female athletes is relatively low, the odds of a really good male athlete deciding to transition to compete is extremely low. But it could be argued, the odds are not zero and this means that some woman could be “robbed” of a place.

Similar concerns have been expressed about women who perform exceptionally well in sports and have high testosterone levels, despite the link being disproven. The fact that male athletes are not subject to such “performance policing” suggests that sexism is at work here, that women who perform exceptionally well are looked at with suspicion of being men. This sexism also seems to play a role in the concerns expressed about trans athletes, that women athletes are weak and must be protected.

People also express concern that trans athletes might “steal” slots on teams. Many teams have limited numbers of athletes that are allowed, such as the number of runners who can compete as varsity in cross country. To “steal” a slot, a trans athlete would just need to be better than the worst athlete who would have made the team. This is a much lower bar than “stealing” places and it is more likely to occur. Of course, the worst athlete who would have made the team could also have been displaced if someone slightly better had showed up to try out, so the likelihood that a trans athlete will “steal” a spot is far less likely than the chance someone else could show up and “steal” that spot, perhaps deciding to try out on a whim, because they just moved to the area, or picked that college. As such, this fear of trans “theft” is overblown.