By Tiffany Williams –
There are moments when America needs to have difficult conversations.
There are questions about fairness in sports that deserve serious discussion. There are questions about biology, eligibility and competition that athletic organizations have been forced to confront.
I understand those conversations from a perspective that is both professional and personal.
I am a journalist.
I am a sports reporter.
And I am a transgender woman.
So when politicians, commentators and others talk about transgender women in sports, they are not discussing some distant group of people I have never met or some abstract political issue that has nothing to do with my life.
They are talking about people like me.
And that is why I believe there is another question America needs to ask just as seriously as it asks questions about fairness:
How big is the issue we are actually talking about?
Because when the numbers are placed alongside the intensity of the national debate, the difference is striking.
The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated in 2025 that approximately 2.8 million Americans age 13 and older identify as transgender, representing about 1% of the U.S. population age 13 and older. Among adults, approximately 2.1 million people, or 0.8% of U.S. adults, identify as transgender.
The estimate for adult transgender women is smaller still: approximately 698,500 people, representing 32.7% of transgender adults. Compared with the entire U.S. population, that works out to roughly 0.2% of Americans.
Now consider college athletics.
In December 2024, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified that he knew of fewer than 10 openly transgender athletes among approximately 510,000 NCAA athletes.
And those fewer than 10 were transgender athletes generally.
They were not exclusively transgender women.
Think about that for a moment.
Fewer than 10.
Out of approximately 510,000 NCAA athletes.
Whatever someone believes the rules governing transgender participation in women’s athletics should be, those numbers matter because they establish the scale of what is actually happening.
There is no evidence of a large-scale influx of transgender women into collegiate or major professional women’s sports.
Available participation numbers instead show something extraordinarily rare.
And that raises a question that has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore.
Show me the mass influx.
Where are the hundreds of transgender women supposedly overwhelming women’s professional basketball?
They’re not there.
Where are the hundreds supposedly taking over professional women’s soccer?
They’re not there.
Where are the thousands supposedly flooding college athletic programs?
They’re not there.
The NCAA president himself told Congress that fewer than 10 openly transgender athletes were participating among approximately 510,000 athletes, and that number wasn’t even limited to transgender women.
That doesn’t mean individual cases don’t exist.
They do.
Those individual cases can produce legitimate disagreements. Athletic organizations can establish eligibility requirements. Female athletes can raise concerns about competitive fairness, and those concerns deserve to be heard.
I cover sports.
I understand why competitive fairness matters.
I understand why rules matter.
I understand why women’s athletics deserve to be protected.
But individual cases are not the same thing as a mass movement.
A handful of athletes is not evidence that hundreds of thousands of transgender women are storming women’s athletics.
And that’s where I believe this conversation has lost perspective.
Let’s stop trying to manufacture the impression that hundreds of thousands of transgender women are storming women’s athletics when the participation numbers don’t remotely demonstrate that.
America has other problems demanding our attention.
Families are struggling to afford groceries. People working full-time jobs still cannot afford rent. Veterans are sleeping on streets. Communities are dealing with gun violence, addiction, homelessness, struggling schools, deteriorating infrastructure and a mental health system that can leave people waiting until a crisis before receiving help.
Those problems affect millions of Americans.
Yet an extraordinarily small population of transgender athletes has become one of the loudest political conversations in the country.
That doesn’t mean women’s sports should have no rules.
It doesn’t mean biological differences should be ignored.
And it doesn’t mean every disagreement over transgender participation is motivated by hatred or prejudice.
It means the response should be proportional to the evidence.
If eligibility rules are necessary, establish them. Let athletic organizations, athletes, scientists, medical experts and other appropriate stakeholders work through those questions using evidence.
But there is a difference between establishing rules for an uncommon situation and convincing Americans that they are witnessing a national emergency.
Where is this massive wave?
Where are the hundreds of transgender women taking over professional women’s basketball?
They’re not there.
Where are the hundreds taking over professional women’s soccer?
They’re not there.
Where are the thousands flooding college athletic programs across America?
They’re not there.
Individual cases have existed and can be debated on their individual facts.
But individual cases are not an invasion.
A handful of athletes is not a national emergency.
And perhaps that is where Americans who disagree on virtually everything else can find some common ground.
Because public opinion surrounding transgender Americans is more complicated than the loudest political rhetoric sometimes suggests.
Pew Research Center surveyed 3,589 U.S. adults from April 7 through April 13, 2025, using its nationally representative American Trends Panel.
That survey found 77% of American adults believed transgender people experience at least some discrimination in American society.
Even among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 63% said transgender people experience at least some discrimination.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the number was 91%.
Another Pew survey from February 2025 found 56% of Americans favored laws or policies protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing and public spaces. Only 16% opposed those protections.
At the same time, Americans expressed very different feelings about athletics.
In Pew’s November 2025 survey, 73% of U.S. adults said they were “not too” or “not at all” comfortable with transgender athletes competing on teams that don’t match their sex at birth.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, that figure reached 91%.
Those findings matter together.
They show that Americans can have concerns about transgender participation in sports without necessarily believing transgender people should face discrimination throughout the rest of society.
That distinction deserves far more attention.
Someone can believe women’s sports require eligibility rules while also believing a transgender person shouldn’t lose a job or an apartment simply because they are transgender.
Someone can recognize biological differences while recognizing another person’s dignity.
Someone can disagree with a policy without treating an entire group of Americans as an enemy.
We can protect women’s sports without demonizing transgender women.
We can recognize biological differences without treating transgender Americans as enemies.
We can have difficult conversations about fairness without humiliating people.
And we can disagree about policy without creating fear about an entire group of Americans.
That is the conversation I want us to have.
Because transgender Americans are more than a political argument.
We are people going to work.
We are journalists.
We are sports reporters.
We are teachers, nurses, business owners, neighbors and friends.
We are people paying rent and mortgages.
We are people buying groceries.
We are people sitting beside everyone else in restaurants, classrooms, workplaces and communities across America.
And in my case, I am a transgender woman who spends part of my life covering the very sports that have become central to this national argument.
I walk into arenas as a journalist.
I sit on press row.
I cover professional athletes.
I report the scores, the statistics, the wins and the losses.
And being transgender does not suddenly make me an athlete trying to take somebody else’s roster spot.
That is an important distinction because the overwhelming majority of transgender women will never play professional or collegiate sports.
Yet sometimes it feels as though our entire existence has been compressed into this one political debate.
We’re talked about as athletes even when we’re not athletes.
We’re discussed as a threat to women’s sports when almost none of us are participating in elite women’s sports.
We’re turned into statistics, arguments and campaign issues while the ordinary reality of our lives disappears from the conversation.
I am one of those statistics.
But I am also a journalist.
I am a sports reporter.
I am a neighbor.
I am an American.
And I believe we can protect women’s athletics without making transgender women feel as though our very existence is something America needs protection from.
Those are two very different things.
So perhaps America should ask whether the volume of this debate bears any resemblance to its actual scale.
Let’s talk about families deciding between groceries and electricity.
Let’s talk about workers putting in 40 or 50 hours and still struggling to afford an apartment.
Let’s talk about homeless veterans.
Let’s talk about people waiting months for mental health treatment.
Let’s talk about fentanyl.
Let’s talk about violent crime.
Let’s talk about struggling schools.
Let’s talk about rebuilding American infrastructure.
Let’s talk about health care costs.
Let’s talk about the issues affecting millions upon millions of Americans.
And when an actual issue involving transgender participation in sports arises, address it.
Address it fairly.
Address it rationally.
Address the individual facts.
Have rules.
Have standards.
Listen to female athletes.
Listen to scientists and medical experts.
And have the difficult conversations when those conversations are necessary.
But don’t take an extraordinarily rare situation and use it to define hundreds of thousands of transgender women who have absolutely nothing to do with collegiate or professional athletics.
Don’t tell America there is an invasion when the numbers don’t show one.
Don’t turn transgender women into the face of a national sports crisis when the documented participation numbers don’t remotely support that scale.
And don’t forget that behind every statistic being thrown around in this political argument is an actual human being.
People like me.
We aren’t a political slogan.
We aren’t a campaign commercial.
We aren’t an invasion.
We are Americans.
And we should be able to disagree about sports policy without turning one another into enemies.
That’s not solving a problem.
That’s manufacturing one.