NCAA Trans Policy Allows Men With Male Level Testosterone In Women's Sports

Filled with inconsistencies and pseudo-science, and absurdly unfair, they're hoping no one reads it

Trans-identified male sprinter Sadie Schreiner set several school records in indoor and outdoor track in this, his first season on the women’s team at Rochester Institute of Technology. Schreiner also qualified for the DIII National meet where he was awarded All-American honors in the 200 meters and 400 meters. Schreiner’s times in both events would have earned him last place in the men’s races.

Schreiner was following NCAA rules. What exactly are those rules? As of 2022, NCAA track & field’s trans inclusion rules were hatched by USA Track & Field. Abandoning promises to protect the women’s category, USATF used the thoroughly debunked testosterone-suppression-will-make-a-man-into-a-woman protocol, and then went one step further, seemingly for the sake of cruelty—USATF chose to set the testosterone threshold for trans-identified males at 10nmol/liter, WHICH IS FIRMLY IN THE HEALTHY MALE RANGE!! That’s more than ten times the average testosterone level of women. If a woman added testosterone to reach 10nmol/liter, she would be banned for doping. Let’s get this straight—thanks to NCAA and USATF, Schreiner was able to compete with a MALE BODY (larger heart, larger lungs, greater blood volume, more lean muscle, longer limbs, narrower hips) AND A MALE LEVEL OF TESTOSTERONE IN THE FEMALE CATEGORY. Them’s fairness according to the NCAA.

The entire 38-page NCAA Transgender Handbook, along with 2022 updates and sport-by-sport policies is available online. The original 2011 Handbook, basically unchanged today, is a manifesto of ideological non-science nonsense from the Office of Inclusion, authoritarian, discriminatory, and profoundly harmful to women, women’s rights, and women’s sports. As the saying goes, these are features of the policy, not bugs. Never forget that the behemoth NCAA, one of the largest sports organizations in the world, fought Title IX bitterly for a decade. The NCAA has latched onto transgender inclusion, which is always male inclusion in female sports, as a convenient way to appear virtuous while continuing their campaign of misogyny.

It’s clear the NCAA is banking on no one actually reading this stuff. I did. Buckle up—this affliction is tin hat crazy. As a bonus, we find out how the good folks at USATF have been able to continue to discriminate against women here in the US now that the international arm of the sport, World Athletics, has gone all evidence-based and fair to women.

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Crafting trans inclusion policy is different from any other form of policymaking. Normally, experts and stakeholders representing various constituencies gather for discussion. Arguments are made, facts presented, and usually compromises made to arrive at a fair and just policy. That’s not how trans inclusion policy has been made. In academia, in the corporate world, at the International Olympic Committee, and the NCAA, any stakeholders or experts who have not sworn allegiance to gender ideology are aggressively excluded from the conversation, while the entire decision-making team is made up of utterly compromised radical ideologues.

Back in 2009 when we were all troublingly clear on binary sex and its impact on sports, the NCAA searched the corners of the globe and the very, shall we say, experimental fringes of academia to find their trans policymaking team. From authors to medical directors to science consultants to DEI folks to activists and legal advice, they rounded up a remarkably ideologically biased group. Does Women’s Sports Foundation count as a women’s rights group? Not unless you include women with penises. Which was, after all, the aim of this policy. The NCAA could have enlisted any of a number of biology, physiology experts, or heaven forbid, women’s rights organizations, in the making of their trans policy, but tellingly, they saw rationality, other scientific views, and balanced discussion as a threat to their goal. Rather than making a fair policy, one that acknowledged other athletes’ rights, these ideologues crafted a ludicrously one-sided, fact-free monument to special privileges for trans-identified males.

The NCAA chose for medical advice Eric Vilain, R. Nick Gorton, and Lori Kohler.

In this podcast with Lance Armstrong, Vilain wonders why we celebrate Usain Bolt winning over male competitors by 3%, but we say it’s unfair that Caster Semenya beat female competitors by 2%. Vilain, in his defense of Semenya, fails to mention that Bolt is a once-in-a-lifetime athlete racing in his correct sex category, while Semenya, a male with a Disorder of Sexual Development, is a fairly mediocre athlete who became an Olympic gold medalist by racing in the wrong sex category. While DSD and trans-identified males are different, this is the logic Vilain used to include trans-identified males in women’s sports.

Vilain is quoted in the Handbook: “Research suggests that androgen deprivation and cross sex hormone treatment in male-to-female transsexuals reduces muscle mass; accordingly, one year of hormone therapy is an appropriate transitional time before a male-to-female student-athlete competes on a women’s team.”

Testosterone suppression as a means of eliminating male advantage has been thoroughly discredited via many reviews and studies, and is the reason large international organizations like World Aquatics, World Athletics, World Rugby, and UCI (cycling) have rejected this idea as inherently unfair to women. Vilain’s quote is also factually incorrect; even Joanna Harper’s 2021 systematic review, which was meant to support the idea of testosterone suppression as a solution, concluded that after 36 months of hormone treatment, trans-identified males have more lean body mass, muscle area, and strength than women.

Transgender health care provider R.Nick Gorton has this vague quote in the NCAA Handbook: “Transgender student-athletes fall within the spectrum of physical traits found in athletes of their transitioned gender, allowing them to compete fairly and equitably.”

Spectrum of physical traits? Does this mean trans athletes have two arms and two legs like non-trans athletes, so all’s fair? The Handbook says, ”The assumption that all male-bodied people are taller, stronger, and more highly skilled in a sport than all female-bodied people is not accurate.” I don’t know anyone who makes that assumption, but regardless, the authors do not explain the persistent 10% - 12% performance gap between equally matched (say, world record holders) men and women. Also, saying that there are big, strong women and small, weak men seems to argue for no sex categories. Yet the Handbook is adamant that a trans-identified male must have a women’s category to trans into. Dr. Gorton has since taken down this social media account, which, if nothing else, lacks professionalism:

Dr. Lori Kohler was the NCAA’s third medical advisor. Her only ideological credentials seem to be that she graduated from med school in Oregon, and practised family medicine in San Francisco.

The awkwardly named Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports (CSMAS) was and is crucial in making the NCAA’s trans inclusion policy. There are 22 people on that committee currently. One is endocrinologist Dr. Brad Anawalt, who falsely claims there is very little science that shows that trans-identified men on hormone treatment retain sports advantage. (I wrote a separate post about the exchange I tried to have with Dr. Anawalt). In the same article, Anawalt then says, “The scientific data we have indicates that the muscle mass in a typical trans woman who went through puberty remains higher than the muscle mass of a typical cis female for at least one to three years.” So, very little science, admits hormone treatment does not affect things like height, heart size, lung size, muscle mass, admits males may retain a strength advantage, but still advocates for men in women’s sport after one year of testosterone suppression. Huh? Anawalt has written that even if the science was “crystal clear” that trans-identified males had an advantage, there would still be controversy around this topic. Because social justice. Apparently Dr. Anawalt believes women must accept unfairness to honor the beliefs of men who identify as women. To give an idea how radical Anawalt is, to really make a man into a woman, or rather, a boy into a eunuch, he suggests starting puberty blockers at about 12 years old. “We presume if puberty blockers prevent pubertal body changes, most if not all of the advantage would be removed. These blockers are fully reversible and pause puberty development to give the transgender youth more time and maturity to make a more permanent decision.” Again, Anawalt is willfully, dangerously misinformed, but was apparently chosen for this committee for his commitment to ideology over science or integrity.

Another CSMAS member is psychiatrist Jack Turban, one of the loudest proponents of “gender-affirming care” for youth, even as European countries pull back from this experimental treatment. Although Turban is a psychiatrist, this does not stop him from venturing into biology where he posits that sex is a nonhierarchical mix of chromosomes, external genitalia, internal sex organs, hormones, and neurological sex. Since none of those factors matters more than the other in determining sex, then abracadabra! if you change one of them, you can actually change sex! You see the exciting applications for trans-identified men who want to compete in women’s sports! If you can’t actually change sex, you just change the definition of sex, and Bob’s your uncle! The CSMAS must have been wowed by Turban’s white board presentation of this theory, because they appropriated word-for-word his creative definition of biological sex in the appendix of the Handbook:

The physical characteristics typically used to assign a person’s gender at birth, such as chromosomes, hormones, internal and external genitalia and reproductive organs. Given the potential variation in all of these, biological sex must be seen as a spectrum or range of possibilities rather than a binary set of two options

This is, of course, BS. By this definition, women who’ve had hysterectomies would be unpleasantly surprised to discover that they’ve become male. Colin Wright, working in his area of expertise, patiently explained the sex binary, which impacts sports categories and our species’ survival.

The other 20 members of the CSMAS are coaches, athletic directors, medical directors, sports lawyers, and two student-athletes, both male. I called and emailed almost everybody on that roster, and they either did not respond, or declined to talk about the policymaking process. Bill Bock, who resigned from a different NCAA committee over what he saw as violation of female athletes’ rights, reminded me that these people are NCAA employees. “They work on college campuses where [trans] activists hold sway. If you were to speak up, that would follow you, and put your job in jeopardy. It’s a tenuous position given that dynamic.” In other words, they are bullied and silenced by fear into complicity.

Those are some of the major players behind the policy. Now let’s go through the Trans Inclusion Handbook.

Under the initial heading What Does Transgender Mean, we’re told

“It is important that all people recognize and respect the transgender person’s identification as a man or a woman.”

All people must believe an idea in someone else’s head? All people must subscribe to someone else’s belief system? All people must play along. This is the foundation on which this policy is built—all people must recognize gender identity ideology. The authors assumed it was necessary to use eye-wateringly totalitarian language, all pointedly uni-directional, to make this brand of fairness and inclusion work.

Under the heading Why Must We Address Transgender Issues in College Athletics Programs, we’re told it’s because of inclusion, a civil rights issue similar to including people of color, women (ha), people with disabilities, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Of course including these groups does not infringe on the rights of others. The Handbook doesn’t mention that including trans-identified men in women’s sports does indeed take rights away from women—right to fairness, to have a female category, to privacy in locker rooms. (See creative definition of sex, below).

There are many pages devoted to special treatment of trans athletes—they must be accommodated with private changing and shower facilities in the locker room of their choice if they want it, but are not in any way required to use private spaces; best practices for coaches, administrators, media, other athletes, but no best practices required of trans athletes; threats about what will happen if trans athletes are not accommodated in every regard, but no protocol for lodging complaints against trans athletes; basically, transgender athletes can do whatever they want all the time.

These lists of demands were interspersed with the stories of two transgender athletes. Interestingly, both were women who identified as male but chose to continue to compete on the women’s team, without using testosterone, because of course, that would be cheating. Keelin Godsey said this of her experience: “When I came out to the team, I wasn’t met with the fear and hate that I was expecting. In fact, it was the complete opposite. My team was awesome.”

Kye Allums had a similarly accepting reception: “Once I made the difficult decision to tell my coaches, the rest of my teammates, and my family, I received nothing but support from them, which has been irreplaceable. With the love and respect of the people around me, I no longer feel like I have to choose between being true to myself and staying in school playing the sport I love.”

So, they were warmly accepted and respected by heir teammates, without a NCAA commandment. No controversy. No unfairness. An utterly positive experience, win-win. It’s as if identifying however you wish but competing on the team that matches your sex is an easy solution to inclusion.

The authors of the Handbook could have given these heartwarming examples and said there you go, have at it. But they kept banging on as if that solution simply would not work for males who identify as female. Or has not been well received by same. Since, 14 years after they started, they are still stuck on the idea of making a male athlete into a facsimile of a female one via a cocktail of hormones, it seems they don’t put much credence in the simple, inclusive, fair idea of athletes competing in their sex category.

On that note, the inclusion policy itself is brief, though they did their best to make it confusing.

1. A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who has received a medical exception for treatment with testosterone for diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for purposes of NCAA competition may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing that team status to a mixed team.

2. A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.

Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender. • A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men’s or women’s team. • A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.

A couple things to note: a trans-identified woman can get a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) to use testosterone, but they make clear it’s only for dysphoria, not for performance enhancement, although of course it enhances performance regardless of why you take it. Why were they not worried about a doped female competing unfairly on a men’s team? Because the folks on the CSMAS know that women cannot chemically enhance their physiology enough to close the male-female performance gap. Just like they know that suppressing testosterone does not eliminate male advantage. Did I mention that Dr. Anawalt on the CSMAS is also a member of US Anti-Doping committee for Therapeutic Use Exemptions? Handy.

But wowser, trans-identified males got off with one calendar year of testosterone suppression. T suppression to what level? Not specified. How often is this level tested? Not specified. Who is monitoring these T levels? Dunno. This is essentially a pinky swear. Did you suppress your T? Yup, I did. Right, you’re in. This version was in effect from 2010 through 2022, during the time both Cece Telfer and Lia Thomas won national championships in the female category. When it was reported that these athletes were “following the rules,” anyone who scratched the surface would discover there were no real rules. A note from a general practitioner saying the athlete had been prescribed birth control pills would have done the trick.

Two things happened in 2022 to urge the NCAA to update their trans policy. One was the public relations debacle that followed Lia Thomas’ win. And the other was that the International Olympic Committee punted the responsibility for the international level trans policy to each sport’s governing organization. Of course, Richard Budgett, IOC medical director, set the expectations for what that policy should be by intoning, “everyone agrees a trans woman is a woman.” Copying their mentor in misogyny, the NCAA shunted their trans policy off to each sport’s national governing body. For Track & Field and Cross Country, the NCAA was confident they could count on USA Track & Field to be every bit as opaque and ideologically compromised as they were.

And now, a look at USATF, because track is a major NCAA sport, it’s the organization I’m most familiar with, and the one that’s responsible for the unfairness example, up top, Sadie Schreiner.

Here’s the governing hierarchy in running: the IOC encompasses all Olympic sports, including track, World Athletics governs international track and cross country, and USATF is the US branch. The local office doesn’t have to follow HQ’s policies, but they often do. Back in 2015 when the IOC was still making the trans inclusion rules for all sports (see my post N=8 for that amazing story of non-science), World Athletics was on board, with the IOC-determined testosterone limit at 10nmol/liter. As I’ve mentioned before, this is in the healthy male range, which is 10nmol/liter to 35nmol/liter, and more than ten times the testosterone range for women, which is .5nmol/liter to 1.7nmol/liter. At the time, testosterone was seen as the main driver of the sex gap in sports performance, so suppressing male testosterone was the fix. BUT IF THE GOAL WAS TO ALLOW MALES TO COMPETE FAIRLY IN THE FEMALE CATEGORY, WHY would the IOC set that testosterone threshold in the MALE range, instead of in the FEMALE range? It makes no sense. The performance enhancing qualities of testostosterone are well known: One can only conclude the IOC knew this was unfair but hoped no one would notice. The media has been very cooperative in that regard—if it’s an IOC rule, it must be right and goes unquestioned.

As data showing testosterone suppression did not eliminate male advantage continued to pile up, World Athletics lowered their testosterone threshold from 10nmol/liter to 5nmol/liter to 2.5, before, in 2023, “protecting the integrity of the female category” by excluding anyone who had been through male puberty.

U.S. track fans have openly wondered what USATF CEO Max Siegel actually does to earn his obscene salary (Max made $3.8 million in 2021). Or any of the nameless overpaid people warming chairs at USATF. The answer is—as little as possible, ha! Since 2015, USATF’s entire transgender inclusion policy has been covered in seven words—”…requires that certain medical benchmarks be achieved…” Goodness, that’s….worthless. But spurred by World Athletics’ uncalled-for fairness to women, USATF leapt into action.

I emailed USATF communications director Aarti Parekh the day after World Athletics’ announcement to ask if USATF planned to follow World Athletics’ sex-based policy. I got the following boilerplate which she had not even bothered to freshen up, as it still parroted the lie about balancing fairness with inclusion which World Athletics had outrighted rejected:

Following the recent updates from World Athletics regarding their Transgender and DSD policy, USATF is working to make the appropriate modifications to our policy language to stay in compliance with our international federation rules. USATF acknowledges and respects World Athletics’ decision on transgender participation. We recognize the complexity of this issue and the importance of balancing fair competition with inclusivity. While we strive to maintain a level playing field for all athletes, USATF remains committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment that encourages sportsmanship and respect for all.

I pressed for more specifics. Here are my questions and Parekh’s answers:

Will USATF exclude male-to-female trans athletes who have gone through male puberty from national championships, Olympic Trials, USATF prize/award places, or any other USATF races? 

A: World Athletics’ ruling on transgender athlete participation in the female classification includes all World Rankings events, which are listed in the World Athletics calendar. USATF will comply with World Athletics’ rules as they relate to these events. 

Will USATF abandon its previous testosterone suppression protocol? 

A: USATF’s prior policy complied with World Athletics requirements.  USATF is working on an update to our policy which we will share in due course, but USATF will continue to comply with World Athletics requirements.

This email exchange was more than a year ago. Though Parekh promised to send me USATF’s updated trans inclusion policy, I’ve received nothing, and USATF’s website remains unchanged. We see from Parekh’s reply above that USATF promised to comply with World Athletics requirements (no trans-identified males who have been through male puberty), or at least (is it a policy to not give a straight answer if you work at USATF?) they would comply with the calendar of top level events she linked to. On that calendar is 2024 NCAA Track & Field Nationals, so one would assume that trans-identified males who had been through male puberty would be excluded from the female category at that meet. The one at which Sadie Schreiner, who has been through male puberty, became a two-time All American. One would assume wrong. Because this is USATF we’re talking about.

Making things fair for women is a tough one for USATF; their heart is not in it. In this regard they are simpatico with the NCAA. So when in 2022, the NCAA decided to let each sport work with its national organization to come up with a trans policy, they knew they could count on their friends at USATF to draft something truly misogynistic for NCAA track & field. And they were right!

Their promise to comply with World Athletics’ policy out the window, some nameless group at USATF worked with the NCAA’s Committee for Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, no doubt with heavy input from Dr. Brad Anawalt and Jack Turban. They used studies in which the trans-identified male participants had reduced their testosterone to at or below a normal level for women to justify inclusion in the women’s category, BUT THEN, PRESTO CHANGE-O, ACTUALLY ALLOWED TRANS-IDENTIFIED MALES TO HAVE 10NMOL/LITER OF TESTOSTERONE! More than ten times the amount in their supporting data! They could have protected the female category as they had promised to. They could have set the testosterone limit at 2.5nmol/liter which would have at least been in the normal women’s range. No, USATF skipped over 5nmol/liter which has long been rejected as unfair to women and chose 10nmol/liter, in the normal male range. Immoral? Check! Unethical? Check! Unfair? You betcha! And did they get away with this disgraceful deceit? Why, yes, they did.

Not only did the CSMAS recommend that USATF ignore the sex-based international policy they had promised to uphold, they made similarly grossly unfair recommendations to other national governing bodies. Of the ten women’s spring sports, seven set T limits of 10nmol/liter, one has a limit of 5nmol/liter, and two have limits of 2.5nmol/liter. Of the 11 winter sports, eight have T limits of 10nmol/liter, two have thresholds of 5nmol/liter, and one (rifle) has not set a T limit. Of the six fall sports, five have T limits of 10nmol/liter, one has a limit of 2.5nmol/liter. There are no NCAA women’s teams that exclude trans-identified males. The vast majority of NCAA sports allow trans-identified men to compete on women’s teams with a physiologically male body and a normal male level of testosterone. That’s fairness according to the NCAA.

The report from the CSMAS December 2023 meeting indicates they decided to extend the trans inclusion guidelines, including the debunked, blatantly unfair testosterone suppression protocol, through 2025. This, it was noted, would “provide notice and clarity to [trans] student-athletes regarding requirements for 2024-25 academic year.” There was no mention of the impact of this policy on female athletes. In fact, in appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, NCAA President Charlie Baker said, “The NCAA has never studied the harm of its policy allowing males identifying as women to participate and compete on women’s teams.”