California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has the ethics of a diamondback rattlesnake and shares its ruthless calculation when attacking the vulnerable. First, it was unhoused people; now it’s trans-feminine athletes. “Greasy” Gavin’s new podcast—the banally named This is Gavin Newsom—produced the buzz he was hoping for with his recent guest, the thirtysomething “youth leader” of fascistic Trumpism, Charlie Kirk. (Newsom’s next pod guest was Steve Bannon. A séance with Adolf Eichmann may be on tap for episode three.) Kirk boasted that Trump had used the specter of transgender athletes to scare voters into joining the GOP camp. Newsom then lashed out, but not at Kirk. The governor claimed to be all for trans rights, but then agreed that trans-feminine athletes should not be on the playing field and that the issue may have cost the Democrats the 2024 election. He claimed to “revere” sports and has two daughters whom he feels he must protect. (“Protecting women” is nothing new as a far-right canard. Misogynists have been “protecting [white] women” as a justification for everything from enslavement to segregation to trying to keep lesbians out of sports.) Newsom then credited Kirk with “weaponizing” this issue.

“Greasy” Gavin wants to be president so badly. We can all see it sweating from his pores. He sees polls about how, thanks to GOP demonization, support for banning trans-feminine athletes has turned on its head in recent years. He is signaling that instead of fighting this poll trend, Democrats should succumb to it. The ripple effect of his comments were immediate. California Senator Adam Schiff, who has previously supported science and inclusion in women’s sports, struck a different note on the Sunday news shows. When asked about Newsom’s comments, he said that he was confident that “local communities” can decide best how to ensure that sports are “safe” and “fair.” Both of those words, “safe” and “fair,” are dog whistles that the inclusion of trans-feminine athletes is both unsafe and unfair.

Current Issue

April 2025 Issue

Newsom’s comments mark a new and more pernicious stage in a struggle where trans athletes, particularly trans-feminine athletes, are rapidly losing ground. Yet, for an issue so obsessed over by the media, few outlets have actually listened to what trans-feminine athletes have to say. Hacks like Fox News’s professional haircut Will Cain will interview welfare embezzler Brett Favre about trans-women but not a trans athlete actually affected by Trump’s executive orders. Keeping trans competitors unheard is a conscious act of dehumanization. While all trans athletes are affected by this onslaught, it is clear that trans-feminine athletes in particular are in the eye of the storm. Last week, I wrote a piece featuring the words of trans athletes and trans advocates, but I did not feature any trans-feminine voices. That was not for lack of trying, but trans women in my circle did not feel comfortable speaking at that moment. Fortunately, I was able this week to break out and speak specifically to trans-feminine athletes about their situation.

It’s an honor to present their voices here:

Sadie Schreiner

A former NCAA Division III track and field runner, 200 and 400 meters, with the Rochester Institute of Technology

The moment we are in is devastating. I lost my ability to compete with my team, at leagues, at regionals, and at nationals, even though I qualified to compete. The NCAA refuses to allow me to race, without any discussion or investigation. They just ban me. In order to compete, I have to travel to Toronto or to Maine, going on these four- to nine-hour drives every weekend just to get some version of a meet in. And it’s never in a competitive space, because I’m prohibited from competing in any collegiate race, even as an unattached athlete thanks to Trump’s executive order. The NCAA actually had very progressive views on trans athletes for quite a few years, and then they took this immediate about-face because of Trump’s executive order. This about-face clearly says that the NCAA doesn’t care about the results of their science. They, for a long time, were the people who led the research on trans athletes.

Last year, when the NAIA [National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics] banned trans athletes, there was a lot of discussion in the NCAA about it doing the same. But its sports science department pleaded for it to stay with the guidelines that it currently had, because that’s what the science backed. And it did. So to make a decision so quickly and without any discussion from the science department reveals it as purely political and discriminatory. It’s not based on their own research or science.

It’s also true that I’ve never spoken with a single member of the NCAA’s board of governors even though their policy affects me and maybe just four or five other athletes. They say that I have a biological advantage, which is false. As research continues to show, if anything, trans women are at a disadvantage. Our hormonal makeup is not anywhere near a biological cis-man’s. Our biology has been completely rewired. Our testosterone is gone. It’s been replaced with estrogen, and this destroys our preexisting system and decreases our performance. You can look at my times. I went from running a 50 [seconds] in the 400 meters when I was 17, 18 years old and now as a 20-, 21-year-old athlete, I’m running a 55 or 56 at what should be the peak of my athletic career. And now I’m slower than I was when I was in eighth grade. For people who say that they are with us in every way but sports, I want to be clear: If you’re not with trans people in sports, you’re not with trans people in general. What is also always left out is that I was incredibly supported by my team, which the NCAA would have seen if it ever talked to any of us. My coaches and my athletic directors also support me relentlessly. But now that I can’t compete, even if I’m training with the team, it’s no longer like I’m a member. I work out by myself now. I compete by myself. I drive myself to meets where my coaches don’t come. And when I do have any conversations with my old teammates, it’s a lot of crying.

CeCé Telfer

A former NCAA Division II champion hurdler whom USA Track and Field ruled was ineligible after making the US Olympic track and field trials in 2021

In moments like these, we must show up and stand strong more than ever. The constant flood of news and social media can make it harder to stay grounded, but that’s exactly why we have to trust the process, the movement, and, most importantly, ourselves. Right now, it’s about survival—taking it one day, one step at a time. But simply showing up is proof that we belong—that I belong. And that? That’s real power. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I am willing to sit down with the leaders at the IOC, World Athletics, the USOPC, NCAA, USA Track & Field, and even the president of the United States to ensure that they hear directly from a trans female athlete. But despite everything, not one invitation.

Karleigh Webb

A former player with the Women’s Football Alliance team, the Connecticut Ambush, and a reporter for Outsports, the oldest sports website centered around LGBTQ athletes and issues

The professional transphobes are using sports to sell legalized discrimination. It’s ridiculous, and it’s wrong. This was never about safety or fairness. And the safety and fairness for transgender Americans isn’t even in the discussion. It’s bad enough that people like Donald Trump and Tommy Tuberville [a Republican senator from Alabama and former Auburn University football coach], who have never cared about women’s sports or any women’s issue, are making these decrees, but the football league I play in has a 15-year track record that shows that this fear that the Republicans and professional transphobes are selling is nonsense. Why are they preemptively complying? Why is the NCAA doing the same? There is no medical, scientific, or competitive reason for a blanket ban. None. I have done everything by the regulations that have been placed before me. I believe that I should get fair treatment, and that my rights as an American should not be abridged because I am trans. Whether it’s these assaults of trans people wanting to play a sports, a classy congresswoman being demeaned in a committee meeting, or the violent rhetoric of professional transphobes and the politician they fund, transgender Americans are being told to ride Jim Crow and no American should stand for going back to those times in 2025.

From Webb’s March 7 article in Outsports: “Within two weeks, the anti-trans hysteria reached my sport and my league. The Women’s Football Alliance changed their bylaws. The 20 or so transgender women among the league’s 57 teams would not be allowed to play in the 2025 season, except in areas that have antidiscrimination laws that protect transgender people. Getting a text message from the owner of my Connecticut Ambush team, notifying me of the changes, hit me hard. I excused myself from dinner with friends, went to the bathroom and sobbed.”

Juniper Simonis

A five-time Women’s Flat Track Derby Association world champion with the Rose City Rollers

In sports, as in life, fairness is a fallacy and a false promise that distracts from the injustice at the heart of trans exclusion. The nature of this “debate” is one where the vast majority (cis people) set the terms and dictate the rights of a very small minority (trans people, and in particular trans-women athletes). And unfortunately, we find ourselves stuck fighting against faulty logic for scraps of inclusion and getting left behind by political actors afraid to support the marginalized. Point-blank, trans women are women. Thus, trans women athletes belong in women’s sports.

I’m not going to lie. After working for the inclusion of trans athletes in sports for over a dozen years, and having faced multiple formal and countless informal challenges to my gender and my right to compete, I am tired. And perhaps now more than ever in this fight, I am scared. The shift in trajectory from progress to regress has been alarming. We’re losing allies at a rapid clip, and many former accomplices are staying quiet, lest they risk their own rights. But the reality is no one, no matter how powerful they are or think they are, can executive order or legislate trans people or even trans athletes out of existence. We will always exist. If we have to live stealth to survive, so be it. Roller derby is indeed a particularly trans inclusive sport, but that’s required an immense effort by trans and cis athletes over multiple decades and taking out the trash is an ongoing daily chore. My teammates, league mates, and even opponents are incredibly supportive both on and off the track, and I consider myself lucky to have found this community when I did.

Austin Killips

The first transgender woman cyclist to win a professional road stage race sanctioned by the sport’s international governing body, the Union Cycliste International

The government wields an infinite amount of extrajudicial power. That’s why there are no stop-guards to protect Mahmoud Khalil from ICE agents raiding the home that he shares with his wife and unborn child. There are legal measures to deploy after the fact, but in the moment, being deemed someone outside the ever-shifting confines of what a legal resident or citizen should be, means you are subject to the whims of our government; a government that flouts law and due process at every turn.

When I raced the 2024 Tour Divide, a route that runs from Banff, Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, it took me two attempts. That adds up to four border crossings: four times that I relied on being a legible human in the eyes of the government imbued with the rights and privileges that my citizenship conferred. Now that my body of work as an athlete exists as a justification for our State Department’s new draconian policy to deny entry to “men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes,” I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I tried to cross those borders on my soul-searching traverse from Canada to New Mexico today. What would my passport do for me? How long is it until I cease to be legible by the state?

Natalie Ryan

A professional disc golfer and the 2021 Female Professional Open Distance Champion

How does it feel right now? “Terrifying” is the easiest word to use. I am very worried, especially being in a smaller sport, about being met with violence on the course. And I really did not feel like I needed to worry about that last year. There is a mountain of information about why we should have inclusion. So many people seem to think that we are different from any other woman. And the reality of it is that we’re not. We just might look a little different here and there, and some people want to try and separate us for that. I challenged them to try and learn why that’s not OK. I say to those folks that if you start to erode some of the rights that some of the women have, then you’re eventually going to erode all of the rights that all women have. For the cisgender women athletes trying to get us off the field, come talk to us. Actually get to know us. They have this idea in their mind of who we really are, why we’re here, and why we want to play. And they run with it without ever actually talking to us or getting to know us. They do not understand exactly why it is that we play. Because for the most part, it’s the same reason why anyone plays a sport. We love the game. I get to go and see so many beautiful parks all around the country, all over the world. And there’s just nothing better.

Sydney Bauer

Competitive rower and sports reporter who has covered multiple Olympic games

Sports saved my life. I wouldn’t be here today without the teams that I’ve competed on in the past. Being a rower has given me space to learn who I am, and being able to continue competing after transitioning has been a dream come true. So far, US Rowing has done a great job of crafting a policy for trans and nonbinary rowers to feel safe at the masters level, and World Rowing has not wholesale banned trans-feminine athletes from elite competition. Knowing that could change at any moment is stressful, but I approach each day as another chance to get better and continue to practice the sport I love. That does not mean I’m going to give any of my competitors an inch on the erg [a rowing machine] or on the water, and I would hope they would treat me the same way.

Sports should be for everyone to participate in, and there’s no way to make elite competition entirely fair for everyone. I am lucky that I get to row multiple times a week on possibly the nicest body of water in the country and that affords me opportunities most clubs could only dream of. That advantage is solely based on where I live and not my transition journey. I just wish people understood just how many factors go into the margins for elite success. Wherever you are, just know you’ve got me in your corner for any sport you want to pick up.