The Modern Anti-Trans Hate Movement

Since 2015, the modern anti-trans hate movement has been using our community as a scape-goat to rile up the conservative U.S. minority.

It Wasn't Always This Way

In 1952, Christine Jorgensen became one of the first to publicly receive gender-affirming medical care. By all accounts, she was welcomed into society and even idealized. This sort of gender-affirming care didn't enter into political discourse until the late 1960s.

actress christine jorgensen in black and white photograph

Glendale church sign reading anti-trans bathroom bills are legalized segregation

Glendale United Methodost Church Sign. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Rise of the Anti-Trans Hate Movement

Starting in 2015, conservative politicians began to push anti-trans rhetoric focusing on bathroom access; and began to support "bathroom bills"; measures designed to force people to use bathroom facilities associated with their sex identified at birth. Why this sudden focus? Because they want evangelicals to vote and they failed in their attempts to deny rights to all LGBTQIA+ people.

The Exaggeration Campaign

As shown on translegislation.com, the GOP has been "testing the waters" to see what works. Conservatives failed to rally evangelicals against all LGBTQIA+ people, so they targeted a smaller, more vulnerable minority. Their goal is to separate Transgender rights from Queer rights.

In 2019 they started to diversify, grasping for topics to stir up anxiety and hate; spreading out into healthcare and sports. In 2020, they started to claim that we were "groomers", falsely accusing the queer community and especially transgender people of child grooming; dialing up both their hateful transphobia and homophobia. This was aided by the creation of hate-groups like Libs of TikTok.

students gathered to protest in palm harbor florida

Student protest Palm Harbor FL by Ted Shackelford. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

bar chart tracking the rise of anti-trans bills in the U.S. from 2015 to 2025; showing the vast surge in legislation

Sourced from translegislation.com.

Modern Day

With their attacks on the larger LGBTQIA+ community they learned that if we become too accepted, too supported, they lose their voter base. They've been hitting every issue to see what works and they've decided to focus on sports.

The GOP began to target anywhere they saw trans and queer representation - especially enacting anti-LGBTQIA+ curriculum laws and targeting trans students.

The GOP targets trans women playing in women's sports because they think it's a topic few people care about. However, the goal is to get the votes to deny our other rights, and to deny further LGBTQIA+ rights.

Now they've moved on to demonize transgender healthcare as "mutilation" and "sterilization". On May 1st, 2025, the Trump HHS released a heavily biased non-scientific report called Treatment for Pediatric Dysphoria, pushing false claims that children are getting surgical gender affirming care and supporting conversion therapy.

The Trump administration and his clearly biased Supreme Court have focused hard on denying our rights. On June 18, 2025 the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination based on "gender dysphoria" is allowable and does not count as sex discrimination.

Why Sports Matter

The U.S. Constitution guarantees everyone the unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If transgender athletes aren't allowed to participate in sports, they are denied their happiness (pursuits that bring them joy) and their lives (as they lose their source of livelihood). If transgender children are denied the right to participate in sports at school, they are similarly denied their rights to life and happiness. Furthermore, such outright disdain and unfair treatment will only exacerbate the ongoing crisis of transgender suicide.

This campaign against transgender athletes isn't even based on legitimate concerns; it serves only as fuel to rile up their voter base.

According to the National Women's Law Center, the anti-trans sports campaigns are based on several lies that we'll counter here:

Trans women do not have an unfair advantage in sports. Years of data on transgender girls and women athletes shows no dominance in sports performance over cisgender women.
Trans athletes do not take opportunities away from cisgender athletes. There are very few transgender athletes! In fact, states that enact transphobic sports policies show a decrease in girls playing school sports.
Trans athletes in locker rooms do not endanger cisgender women. In fact, the rampant transphobia has caused several accounts of cisgender women being attacked because people assumed they were transgender.

Why do sports matter?

Denying people equal opportunity is against the U.S. Constitution.
School and professional sports provide a multitude of opportunities including:
- Scholarships
- Self-esteem and accomplishment
- Respect
If they are successful in infringing our rights in this way, it will only open the door for them to argue for further infringements. Sports is only their current focus. They see it as an easy target.
By erasing and ostracizing transgender people, they make us targets of hate and disdain. Between 2013 and 2019, hate crimes against trans people increased by 587%. Between 2017 and 2021, the U.S. murder rate of transgender people nearly doubled.

John Oliver on Trans Athletes (Video)

Despite what topics they target, know that this is always their objective:

"Texas Bill Would Make Identifying as Transgender a Felony Punishable by Jail", NBC News.

The Data on Inclusion in Sports

There are numerous studies supporting the inclusion of Transgender men and women in professional sports. Studies even indicate that transgender women may have certain disadvantages compared to cisgender women. Other studies suggest the possibility of advantages in certain, specific, professional sports. However, the data suggests that there is a fairly even playing field for school-level, non-professional sports when teen-age transgender girls are on Gender Affirming Hormone Treatment (GAHT).

While there is also data on the performance of transgender men in sports, this focuses on transgender women due to the focus on prohibiting transgender women from participating in women's sports.

The study "Transgender Women and Competitive Sports: Considerations from Endocrinology" (2025) examined 136 studies analyzing areas such as body composition, bone health, muscle strength, and aerobic capacity. They found that GAHT can achieve a significant reduction in the effects of male hormones on various physiological parameters (p. 8).
"Sports and Performance in the Transgender Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis" (2021) analyzed four studies and found that testosterone suppression in transgender women correlated with a decrease in strength, hemoglobin, and hematocrit measurements and seemed to be linked to sports performance (p. 642). Two of the studies analyzed also showed a decrease in muscle strength for transgender women, along with reductions in hemoglobin and hematocrit levels that would reduce effectiveness in endurance sports (p. 643-644).
"Effect of Gender Affirming Hormones on Athletic Performance in Transwomen and Transmen: Implications for Sporting Organisations and Legislators" (2021) reviewed fitness tests and medical records for 75 transgender people in the U.S. Air Force and found that after two years of feminizing hormones, there was no push-up or sit-up performance differences between transgender and cisgender women.
In "Strength, Power and Aerobic Capacity of Transgender Athletes: A Cross-Sectional Study" (2024), researchers noted that transgender women have decreased lung function and performed worse on the countermovement jump compared to cisgender women. Also, when normalized for body weight, transgender women's cardiovascular fitness was lower than that of cisgender women (p. 596).
The doctoral thesis "Effects of Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy on Exercise Performance in Transgender Athletes" performed three experimental studies.
- Examination of a transgender female cyclist: Noted that aerobic capacity decreased ~15% within 3 months of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) and then another 15-20% within 12-18 months. Upper body strength also decreased between 15-30% after 18 months on GAHT (p. 154-155).
- Surveyed changes in a cohort of 9 transgender women athletes competing in sports noted that their race times increased by 15%, though there was less impact on sprints (p. 155).
- A cross-sectional study comparing strength, explosiveness, and aerobic performance found that when results were normalized to body mass, there were no differences in performance between cisgender and transgender women. Additionally, there were no significant differences in maximal oxygen uptake between cisgender and transgender women (p. 156).
The article "Performance in Transgender Females Versus Cisgender Males and Females" (2020) noted that transgender female subjects performed more closely to cisgender females than cisgender males in exercise performance (p. 73).
The doctoral thesis "Transgender Athletes in Sport: A Conceptual Decision-Making Framework Enabled by Athlete Laboratory Performance Data" (2024) found that transgender women have both lower lung performance and lower anaerobic power performance than cisgender women (p. 215).