2024 could be the year of women’s sports. There are countless incredible stories of women competing – from Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese catapulting women’s basketball into the spotlight to Olympians Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky breaking records in Paris. With the increased attention on women’s sports, some are once again asking where transgender athletes fit into that picture.

Proponents of transgender-exclusive sports policies argue that the government should step in and ban transgender athletes from competition. These bans would represent a new and significant government overreach, especially when the vast majority of sports are not played at the Olympic level. In fact, these measures would primarily affect people like students who play on teams with their friends, youth in after-school programs, and those who play club sports in public parks on summer weekends.

Transgender-exclusive sports bans like the one in Idaho could require young athletes to undergo genital exams if their gender is “questioned.” It’s not hard to see how these measures could also be weaponized against cisgender athletes.

Already, it’s been far too common for pundits, social media influencers, and even parents of athletes to claim that cisgender women must be secretly transgender because of their athletic achievements. These findings make it clear that these policies don’t just harm transgender people: cisgender women suffer as well.

Proponents of trans exclusion policies compare men’s running and swimming times to women’s, but these kinds of arguments rely on deeply flawed logic. It’s important to remember that when transgender women participate in women’s sports competitions, they must meet strict medical requirements to participate, such as prolonged hormone replacement therapy. When transgender people take hormones, their bodies change. For example, according to several studies, transgender women lose muscle mass and strength after prolonged hormone replacement therapy.

That’s why it’s incredibly inaccurate to use times and results from men’s sports when talking about transgender athletes. Transgender athletes in sports policy aren’t allowing men to compete against women – they’re allowing women to compete against women. Transgender women are women.

Furthermore, inflammatory anecdotes about trans women injuring cisgender athletes are therefore a misrepresentation of the facts. It is impossible to claim that sports injuries are due to the presence of transgender women, because sports injuries happen whether or not transgender women are present—especially in contact sports.

After meeting strict requirements—such as maintaining suppressed testosterone levels—transgender women can compete in professional and elite sports such as the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the Olympics, and more. The requirements trans athletes must meet to participate are often imperfect; cisgender women have been barred from participating in the Olympics due to unexpected test results, such as naturally high testosterone levels. This phenomenon is an important example of how defining gender is not as simple as many think.

Trans women also make up an extremely small percentage of female athletes. When Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox vetoed a ban on trans women in school sports, he noted that at the time, only one trans female athlete competed in girls’ sports in his entire state. Although the NWSL allows trans female athletes to compete, there is only one openly nonbinary player on the NWSL’s active roster.

If trans women have such an obvious advantage in sports, why aren’t the sports leagues that allow them full of transgender players?

Cait Smith is Director of LGBTQI+ Policy at the

Center for American Progress

(americanprogress.org), a liberal research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC