The ‘trans’ question: Do we agree to disagree?

Human rights activists are up in arms over the latest International Olympics Committee (IOC) policy that requires mandatory gene testing for athletes competing in women’s events.

The ban on transgender athletes in women’s events touches on legal and moral issues that the science-backed IOC decision seems not to satisfy.

Inclusivity is a perennial issue that has touched on many aspects, from physical disability to sexual preference, yet as the world today becomes ever open to differences, the more it behooves us to determine where we really stand on these matters.

When the pageant world was disrupted by the inclusion of transgender candidates, the show, as they say, went on — though debates continue to ripple across communities.

And so Spain’s Angela Ponce became the first openly transgender woman to compete in 2018.

In the United States, Kataluna Enriquez was the first transgender woman to compete in Miss USA. A few other countries followed suit: Miss Germany (Saskia von Bargen) and Miss South Africa (Lehlogonolo Machaba). However, these rules have continued to be opposed and appealed, with arguments circling around biological considerations, as well as religious and moral points.

The Miss Universe Organization, considered a major influential pageant body, made the groundbreaking decision to adopt inclusive policies that allow transgender contestants to join the “beauty and brains” competition.

But what about brawn? In the world of sports, it is a different matter.

The IOC, now headed by former athlete Kirsty Coventry, established “a working group to examine scientific, medical and legal developments” in September 2025. The group, IOC reported, concluded that the “male sex provides a performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power and endurance.”

In Coventry’s words: “In all the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”

She said that “a strong consensus” was also revealed in a survey of “more than 1,100 Olympic athletes” who agreed that “fairness and safety in the female category required clear, science-based eligibility rules and that protecting the female category was a common priority.”

It is likely that feminists and equal rightists will protest that last input, which could be taken to imply that “protection” imputes weakness in the female gender. The debate then rolls into another space altogether, and the question of transgender issues against the IOC policy remains perennially open, like a wound that never heals.

The world has changed by leaps and bounds. Today’s wars are taking us back to the middle ages, even as artificial intelligence is quietly making many aspects of our lives obsolete. Yet still we choose to wrangle over gender dysphoria which only keeps us stuck with unanswerable questions of right and wrong.