Editor's Notes: What the Trans Sports Debate Is Really About

It feels a certain kind of way to be told that my participation in sports is conditional on me always losing.

Samantha Hancox-Li
31 May 2026 — 3 min read

The New York Times has once again determined that a trans girl winning a sporting event is national news. The girl in this case is AB Hernandez, and the event is a California state track and field championship, where—it is possible—Ms. Hernandez may win at the high jump. If she does, then under rules changes Donald Trump intimidated California into adopting, then she won't "really" have won, and will share the top spot on the podium with the second-place winner. Ms. Hernandez is of course on a regime of hormone replacement therapy, has been for the required time, etc. etc. etc., but nevertheless: this little "separate but equal" celebration, just for her.

There are 43 separate events in track and field alone. This means that, in a given year, spread across fifty states, there are perhaps 2,150 gold medals awarded. According to recent data, approximately 3.3% of Americans aged 13–17 identify as transgender; projecting adult data onto that group, that means approximately 1.1% of these teenagers are trans women. So if trans women competed in and won at sports at exactly equivalent rates to cis women, we should expect perhaps 21 trans women to be winning gold medals at the state level, every year, in track and field alone—and this is not even counting the innumerable other sports and competitions across America, which would increase that number substantially. This of course is not happening: rather, it is an event so rare that the New York Times thinks it is national news. By the numbers one might conclude that cis women possess a unfair advantage over trans women.

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/editors-notes-3/