"Claims that trans participation will lead to the death of women's sports are alarmist and unfounded" (Infobase). "Trans rights should not come at the expense of hard-working female athletes." (Infobase). Should trans women be allowed to play in women's sports? Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete brought this argument to the surface after her recent victory at her university swimming competition. This argument has many people divided., many people saying trans women should be allowed and others saying the opposite.
Supporters say, "Claims that trans participation will lead to the death of women's sports are alarmist and unfounded." (Infobase). Lia Thomas is not the only trans athlete out there but is the athlete that is most used to justify not letting trans women into women’s sports. Laurel Hubbard is a trans woman, and she competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and did not win a medal. (Infobase). Although Laurel did in fact go through male puberty she has no advantages over her cis opponents and teammates because Laurel Hubbard claimed "I can no longer lift the weights that I lifted as a man. I was shocked at how big the difference is. Without testosterone, I'm much weaker, by all measures, I'm not stronger or faster than my female peers." (Infobase). Additionally, Athletes have advantages over each other but how come those aren’t deemed unfair? For example, in fencing, 40% of the best players are left-handed while only 10% of the world population is left-handed. (Roan and Falkingham). We don't really know if trans women actually have any advantages, but we do know trans women do have some disadvantages like being larger but with reduced muscle mass and less aerobic ability.  The research on trans women's 'advantages' in sports has only recently begun and sports governing bodies should try their best with the data we currently have since just flat out banning trans women is quite unreasonable. Once a trans woman reduces their testosterone for at least 12 months they should be able to join since at that point there is a significant decrease in strength and athletic ability.
What about making a trans section for sports? Creating a separate section of sports for trans athletes seems like a good idea at first but would there even be enough athletes to make a team? If you make a trans section there would be three different sections of sports two of which are for cis athletes. Cis people make up 95.9 percent of humanity whereas trans people take up 4.1 percent. There are many more cis people than trans people in the world and how many trans atheletes are there? There would not be nearly enough athletes to make a trans section of sports so it would be much more practical just to let athletes participate in the sport they're most comfortable in.  Trans women are women and should be treated as such.
Meanwhile, opposers say "Trans rights should not come at the expense of hard-working female athletes." (Infobase). Female athletes work hard to get where they are and their efforts should not be diminished for transgender women’s comfort. “The whole point of women's sports is to make sure there is no male advantage but as soon as trans women start participating, they have an unfair advantage." (Roan and Falkingham).
During puberty, males have increased muscle mass and bone density, their skeleton changes shape, and their heart and lungs increase in size. These are all large contributors to good athletic performance, and it’s not fair to the cis athletes who do not have such advantages. Lowering testosterone levels does lower some of these advantages, but it doesn’t eliminate all of them. (Roan and Falkingham).
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a cisgender female athlete, swam on the US national swimming team for nine years. During a competition, there were swimmers from East Germany who were found to be cheating with steroids, and these swimmers ended up with shockingly similar results as Lia Thomas (Guest editorial). Since there isn't much evidence for estrogen and testosterone supressers making a difference, there should be a no trans women policy in women's sports. In the future, there could potentially be a trans sector of sports but there wouldn't be many athletes to participate and the world just isn't ready for that since there are still many countries where it's illegal to be a part of the LGBTQ community. (Roan and Falkingham).
After doing my research on this issue I would have to agree with the supporters. Trans women are women and deserve to be treated as such. Banning trans women from women's sports actually threatens all female athletes. In order to exclude trans women, you need to know which of them is trans and contrary to popular belief you can’t know just by looking at them. Even if you could, you can’t tell them to leave because they look like they're trans because that's called profiling and is illegal in lots of places. To find out if an athlete is trans you have to test them and what level are you going to test them against in the first place? Are you going to say that they're too tall? Too masculine? Too strong? Too fast? Are you going to say they have too much testosterone? Because some women naturally have higher levels of testosterone than others. This creates a box of what a female athlete is and now all female athletes have to conform to that box or they risk being kicked out from participating in the sport they love.

In conclusion, whether or not trans women should be allowed to participate in women's sports is a big controversy at the moment but is something that should be more widely talked about. People have very different opinions but both conservatives and liberals have strong arguments like conservatives ask about whether or not it’s fair for the cis athletes if a biological male participates, and in response, liberals say it is in fact fair. but for now, we will have to wait and see what the future of women's sports holds.