Trump’s Latest Anti-Trans Executive Order Shows That Sports Are Never Just Sports

The first two weeks of Trump 2.0 have been a whirling swirl of venomous prejudice, but one neon throughline of the discombobulating frenzy is an attack on the transgender community. The Trump administration is brazenly attempting to drive trans people out of existence through the denial of education, the ability to get medical care, to travel on a passport, to serve in the military. Trump even cooked up an executive order denying federal funds to schools that allow trans athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports. This is nothing short of an attempt to evict trans people from civic life. This is what banishment looks like.

Sport has played a pivotal role in this grim persecution. Howls of alleged unfairness in the sphere of sport swiftly transmogrified into the unabashed hate that simmers just beneath the legalese in Trump’s executive order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The executive order drips with fear and hyperbole. “The erasure of sex in language and policy,” it claims, “has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.” (If only it were that easy!) The order narrowly defines sex in a way that nixes trans and nonbinary people out of existence.

U.S.-based trans journalist Sydney Bauer told us, “For these political leaders, the goal is to create a segment of society where our civil rights are not needed to be protected so they can advance it to all other areas, despite court rulings increasingly affirming all aspects of trans people’s lives are protected by the 14th Amendment.” She added, “If my gender identity is challenged when I step on a sports field, the goal is for it to be challenged—and forcibly detransitioned—in public life.”

Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.

Athletes and sports administrators set the stage for this confected moral panic. Long before Trump’s executive orders, they engaged in blatant fearmongering, painting trans women athletes as cheaters and even predators. NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines has made transphobia an integral part of her brand. Even tennis icon Martina Navratilova has long viewed trans women athletes as “cheats.” The anodyne-sounding “Protect Women’s Sports” has become the right-wing dog whistle for trans exclusion. The haters’ transphobia even extended to athletes who were not in fact trans. During the Paris 2024 Olympics, a slew of celebrities—from JK Rowling to Elon Musk—mislabeled the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as trans, ginning up malicious attacks against her.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a seemingly inclusive framework for trans athletes in 2021. But the IOC punted ultimate responsibility to international sports federations, many of which chose to exclude athletes, despite a lack of scientific evidence. Next month, the IOC will select a new president. One frontrunner, Lord Sebastian Coe, has openly opined that trans athletes threaten sport. Other candidates have adopted equally, if not more draconian stances.

Taken together, this steady flow of anti-trans bigotry in sport was the gateway to full-throttle demonization under Trump.

Let’s be clear: The endgame of trans demonization is death. Not only social death, but actual death. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports. If this bill becomes a law, it will cost human lives. Recent research found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased the rates of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth.

Sport was the Trojan Horse used to attack trans people in all walks of life. But the machine is still revving, scanning for targets. Just as the right-wing hate machine didn’t stop with “Protecting Women’s Sports,” transphobia will hurt cisgender women who don’t conform to a narrow, Eurocentric version of womanhood. The Trump administration’s attempt to distill the meaning of “woman” into chromosomes or hormone levels echoes the sexism of the past. Sports have long used sex to control, steamrolling the diversity among women deemed “too masculine.” Ultimately, attacks on transgender people harm all women, especially women of color. Just ask Caster Semenya. Or Dutee Chand. Now the Trump administration is widening the onslaught.

Sadie Shreiner, a trans athlete currently competing in the NCAA, pointed out to us that the Trump administration’s decision to squelch research about transgender individuals is meant “to eradicate our historical and scientific existence.” She added, “This was never about trans athletics, science, or ‘fairness’, it has always been about oppression. They’ll attack me all the same whether I’m on or off the track.”

Across the world, hate mongers are reading Trump’s anti-trans cue card. Travers, a sociologist specializing in trans inclusion at Simon Fraser University, told us, “The anti-trans moral panic that has been fostered in the United States and the United Kingdom has definitely breathed life into anti-trans initiatives in Canada.” Anti-trans groups purporting to “protect women” have also emerged in recent years in Japan. They not only deny trans people their rights, but also their very existence through a discourse directly imported from U.S. politics.

Sports are never just sports. The ongoing moral panic around trans people explodes the erroneous notion that sports and politics are separate endeavors. Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.

Chris Mosier, the first trans athlete to represent Team USA (in duathlon and triathlon), posted on Bluesky: “We will fight. We will take care of each other. We will continue to exist, long after this administration is done.” Harrison Browne, the first transgender professional hockey player, appearing on Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports podcast, urged for “debunking these myths of trans women and their participation.” Trans-rights advocacy groups are kicking into gear. Travers, the sociologist, said that the moment demands “Immediate resistance, legal resistance, public resistance, refusal to go along. But I also think it’s really important to play the long game,” building bona fide solidarity in the nooks and crannies of society.

There’s no question that when it comes to the possibility of trans banishment, we’re experiencing a five-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck moment. We have a fight on our hands. It’s time to link elbows and stand together on the right side of history.