In the last 20 years there have been 50 peer reviewed scientific studies examining over 6099 trans athletes asking whether trans women have an advantage in sports over cisgender women. None of these studies have shown any advantage, yet ignorant people continue to claim that “common sense” insists this is true.

Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis

New Study Once Again Shows Trans Women Have No Physical Advantage Over Cis Athletes

The critical error of most transphobes is in thinking that transgender women are just men making a choice.

But there are now 30+ years of biological research showing that trans women are biologically distinct from cisgender men. Neurologically, trans women have brain structures that closely match cisgender women. Frontal cortex thickness and neuron density matches that of cisgender women. Multiple structures in the hypothalamus match those of cisgender women.

A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality

Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus

A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity

There are other signs as well. Well over 90% of cisgender men have ring fingers longer than their index fingers. Cisgender women have index fingers as long as their ring finger or longer. Most trans women have female index to ring finger ratios, not male ratios.

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and transgender identity: new original data and a meta-analysis

There are physical things that men generally cannot do but women can. Trans women can often do those actions but cisgender men almost never can. These “tricks” rely on women having a lower center of gravity than men, usually due to more combined muscle/fat mass in the lower body. After several years on HRT many trans women can do these tricks too, because they’ve acquired female proportions, not male proportions.

The US Air Force discovered that, even before starting HRT, trans women performed 18%-30% lower on average than cisgender men. They also showed that after 2-4 years of Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT), that trans women showed no advantages over cisgender women in lower body strength, or in run speeds and only a tiny advantage in upper body strength.

The goal of the study was to determine when transgender Air Force service members, both MTF and FTM, should begin to be tested on the scale that matches their gender identity and not the scale that matches assigned sex at birth. It gave a definitive answer to that and showed that after 2 years of GAHT they should be tested on the same scale as their gender identity, and that after 4 years or GAHT, any remaining advantages they saw early on were gone or nearly gone.

Fit Transitioning: When Can Transgender Airmen Fitness Test in Their Affirmed Gender?

A British study showed that trans women, after 2+ years of GAHT, had decreases in VO2 Max (amount of oxygen reaching the muscles) that matched the VO2 Max levels of cisgender women.

Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study

Over and over again, science tells us that transgender women are biologically distinct from cisgender men. It tells us that, except for genitalia, they are biologically more like women than men.

I recently saw one discussion where a pro-trans advocate answered the question “What is a woman?” from a medical perspective. Her response was that a woman is any individual born with a neurological template that more closely matches the average female neurological template and that a man is any individual whose neurological template more closely matches the average male neurological template. And that’s a scientifically correct answer that is grounded in the research that has been accomplished over the last 31+ years. (Zhou et al. discovered the initial BSTc differences in the hypothalamus in 1995, which opened the floodgates for transgender neurological research.)

I’ll accept a call for more scientific research into this question but right now, today, in 2026, there is NO DATA that supports the claim that trans women have an unfair advantage over cisgender women in sports. I’ll even accept a call for each sport to study the issue, scientifically, as to whether trans women can play that sport. Would more research help? Yes. And perhaps sport by sport rules would alleviate concerns.

But if you claim otherwise, that trans women have some inherent “advantage”, you are a scientifically illiterate bigot and your opinion is garbage unworthy of serious consideration.