Men Should not Beat up on Women in Sports – or Anywhere

Aren’t you confused sometimes about some of the terms for sexual identity? If we say Mbappe dated a trans woman, it means he dated a biological man who decided to be a woman.

So let’s look at this phenomenon, where a few men claim they are women and want to be treated as such. We want to determine what is fair when these “men” effectively want to compete against biological women.

When we strip away the political noise and focus strictly on the physical science and hormones, we get to the truth of what is right vs what is wrong – we can then decide on what is fair (protecting the biological category of female sports.

Note that this discussion can be used as a general guideline for any physical interaction between men and women everywhere – men should not beat up on women anywhere. For women that are violent, we have no defense for you, you are setting up yourself for some serious hurt.

From a physiological and bio-mechanical standpoint, human development creates distinct structural differences that do not fully disappear, even after years of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Male Puberty and the “Legacy” Advantage

The primary source of competitive divergence happens during male puberty, driven by a massive surge in endogenous testosterone (which increases up to 20-fold). This hormone acts as a powerful anabolic agent, fundamentally altering the architecture of the human body.

While suppression of testosterone (using estrogen and anti-androgens) reduces certain attributes, sports science studies indicate that it does not completely erase the structural changes gained during male development.

Muscle Mass and Strength

• The Biological Baseline: On average, biological males possess roughly 40% more skeletal muscle mass and significantly greater upper-body strength than biological females.
• The Impact of HRT: Studies tracking transgender women undergoing testosterone suppression show that while they experience a modest decrease in muscle mass and volume (typically around 5% to 10% after 12–24 months), they retain a significant portion of their pre-transition muscle mass and strength advantages over cisgender women (born female).

Bone Density and Pelvic Anatomy

• Skeletal Structure: Biological males develop longer, denser bones, which provide a mechanical advantage. Longer limbs act as longer levers, translating to greater torque, stride length, and leverage in swimming, throwing, and sprinting.
• Pelvic Angle (The Q-Angle): Female puberty alters the pelvis, widening it to allow for childbirth. This wider pelvic structure changes the “Q-angle”—the angle at which the femur meets the tibia at the knee. A wider Q-angle reduces running efficiency and increases the risk of lower-limb injuries (like ACL tears). Male pelvic anatomy remains narrow and vertically aligned, optimize for linear running efficiency and power transfer. Testosterone suppression cannot alter or reverse these established skeletal structures.

Cardiorespiratory Capacity

• Heart and Lung Size: Biological males develop larger hearts (specifically the left ventricle) and larger lung volumes relative to body size. This allows for a higher stroke volume (more blood pumped per beat).
• Hemoglobin Levels: High testosterone levels stimulate the production of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to muscles. While HRT successfully drops a trans woman’s hemoglobin levels to the typical female reference range within months, the physical size of the heart, lungs, and airways remains unchanged.

Reproductive Trajectory vs. Athletic Preparation

The unique biological trajectory of biological women highlights a deeply rooted reality in sports science. From puberty onward, the female body manages a complex, energy-intensive monthly endocrine cycle designed to prepare for potential reproduction.

• The Energy Cost: The menstrual cycle involves fluctuating levels of estrogen and progesterone, which can impact joint laxity, glycogen storage, metabolic rate, and recovery times.
• The Physical Toll: Pregnancy, childbirth, and post-partum recovery introduce profound anatomical and physiological adaptations—including permanent changes to pelvic floor mechanics, ribcage expansion, and core muscle separation (diastasis recti).

For female athletes, training and competing must constantly be calibrated around these intense biological realities, creating a unique developmental and physical baseline that is exclusive to the biological female experience.

The Core Dilemma in Sports Governing

This data is precisely why international sports governing bodies (like World Athletics, World Aquatics, and the International Cycling Union) have shifted their policies over the last few years.

Previously, sports organizations allowed trans women to compete if their testosterone was suppressed below a certain threshold (e.g., 5 nmol/L) for 12 months. However, as longitudinal sports science data trickled in, it became clear that mitigation is not elimination. Lowering testosterone reduces performance capacity (athletes get slower and lose some power), but it does not erase the structural, skeletal, and architectural advantages gained during male development.

As a result, many elite sports federations have moved away from the “testosterone suppression” model, instead ruling that anyone who has gone through any stage of male puberty is ineligible for the female category, prioritizing competitive fairness and safety above absolute inclusion.

Women’s Rights

Women were historically oppressed because of their biology (reproduction, physical size). Therefore, “Woman” must remain a protected legal and social category based strictly on sex to ensure safety, fairness, and fair representation.

Someone benefiting from male privilege for decades before “transitioning” highlights how this unfairness is multi-layered:

• The Shared Experience of Girlhood: Growing up as a girl means navigating the world under the physical realities of a female body—navigating puberty, the onset of the menstrual cycle, the cultural sexualization of young girls, and the unique vulnerabilities associated with female reproductive anatomy.
• The Structural Advantages: A person who lives as a man into adulthood does not experience those specific vulnerabilities during their developmental years. Statistically and socially, they navigate career building, wealth accumulation, and safety with the baseline advantages that come with being perceived as a man.
• The Material Reality of Motherhood: For many women, the defining feature of womanhood is inextricably linked to the immense physical, emotional, and biological labor of carrying and birthing children.

When a person transitions later in life after bypassing these specific, grueling milestones, it can feel to biological women as though the definition of “woman” is being reduced to a aesthetic style or a set of stereotypes, entirely detached from the heavy material cost of female biology.

Combat Sports and the Inherent Unfairness

The physical reality of human biology is absolute, and in a high-stakes combat sport like boxing, the consequences of ignoring that reality are severe, not theoretical.

Let’s look directly at the mechanics of why combat and contact sports require separate biological categories to ensure basic physical safety.

The Physics of the Male Blow

When a person goes through male puberty, the structural differences that develop aren’t just about running faster or jumping higher; they completely alter the physics of human impact.

• Punching Power: Biomechanical studies show that biological males, on average, possess over 160% greater punching power than biological females. This disparity is the largest sex difference in human performance ever recorded—far greater than the gap in running speed or lifting capacity. This power comes from a combination of greater upper-body muscle mass, denser bone structures in the arms and shoulders, and faster muscle fiber recruitment.
• Bone Mass and Facial Architecture: Male skulls and facial bones develop thicker, denser cortical bone during puberty. This provides a structural shield against impact. Biological females have thinner, lighter skull architectures, making them significantly more vulnerable to concussions, orbital fractures, and severe traumatic brain injury when subjected to male-level impact forces.

Why Weight Classes Aren’t Enough

A common argument is that sports can simply use weight classes to keep things fair. But in contact and combat sports, a biological male and a biological female who weigh exactly the same (e.g., 135 lbs) do not possess the same physical capabilities:

Because of these factors, matching a trans woman against a cisgender woman based purely on weight does not create a level playing field. The underlying structural framework of the body remains fundamentally different.

The Ethical Duty of Sports Governing Bodies

In sports like swimming or track, an unfair biological advantage results in a broken record or a lost medal—a deep injustice to female athletes who have trained their entire lives.

In boxing, MMA, and rugby, an unfair biological advantage becomes an immediate safety hazard. The primary mandate of any sports regulatory body is to protect the physical well-being of its competitors.

This is why sports scientists and international combat federations have increasingly drawn a hard line. When the data clearly shows that medical testosterone suppression cannot erase the skeletal mass, bone density, and structural advantages gained during male development, allowing that mismatch in a ring violates the most basic rule of sports: the right to safe competition.

The Right to Be Female – Safety, Privacy, and Comfort

Let’s expand this debate from elite sports into public spaces—like restrooms, locker rooms, correctional facilities, domestic violence and disaster shelters—where the conversation shifts from physical safety in competition to personal safety, privacy, and psychological comfort in daily life.

For the vast majority of biological women, these spaces have historically been sex-segregated for specific, foundational reasons rooted in vulnerability and privacy.

The Purpose of Sex-Segregated Spaces

The establishment of separate spaces for men and women wasn’t an arbitrary cultural choice; it was a hard-won social boundary designed to address distinct physical realities:

• Privacy and Modesty: Restrooms and locker rooms are spaces where individuals are in various states of undress. For women, privacy from the male gaze is a baseline expectation of dignity and comfort.
• Vulnerability and Safety: Because of average differences in physical size and strength, separate spaces create a boundary that protects women from potential male aggression or harassment in confined, unmonitored areas.
• Dignity and Boundaries: For many women—particularly those who have experienced male violence, assault, or trauma—the presence of an individual with male anatomy or male physical characteristics in a vulnerable space can trigger severe psychological distress, destroying the sense of safety the space was created to provide.

The Practical Reality vs. The Political Noise

In the media, this issue is often represented by highly visible, stylized, or dramatic public performances (like drag). However, in everyday civic and legal management, the friction is much more practical and relates directly to the definition of sex:

• Self-Identification Policies: In several jurisdictions, policies have shifted toward “self-identification,” meaning access to sex-segregated spaces is determined by a person’s stated gender identity rather than their biological sex or medical status.
• The Unintended Consequence: When the boundary of a space is based purely on self-declared identity rather than biological sex, it becomes impossible to enforce any boundary at all. This opens a loophole that could be exploited by bad actors—predatory men who can use the lack of gatekeeping to gain access to vulnerable women and children.

Back To Basics

Gene-culture coevolution: This is the reality that human culture, technology, and social structures can move so incredibly fast that they can completely override, distort, or bypass our deep evolutionary programming.

The fundamental directive of any organism is to pass its genetic material to the next generation. Anything that reduces an organism’s likelihood to reproduce is, by definition, a dead end for those specific genetic lines.

Humans are unique because we don’t just pass down genes; we pass down memes (ideas, cultural practices, and social behaviors). And today, our cultural environment—supercharged by algorithms and digital connectivity—is powerful enough to actively countermand our biological directives.

Cultural Transmission Outpacing Natural Selection

In the wild, if a genetic trait or behavioral tendency causes an animal to not mate or reproduce, natural selection eliminates it from the gene pool within a few generations. But human culture changes at exponential speeds, while biological evolution takes thousands of years.

• The Mismatch Theory: Evolutionary psychologists call this “evolutionary mismatch.” Our brains evolved in small, hunter-gatherer tribes where social belonging was a matter of literal survival. We are hardwired to look at what the tribe is doing, copy high-status behaviors, and seek social approval.
• The Digital Megaphone: In the past, the “tribe” was 50 people. Today, the tribe is the internet. Social media and AI algorithms are designed to find highly emotional, novel, or distinct identities and amplify them because they drive engagement. When a behavior or identity is heavily rewarded with social status, visibility, and community online, our ancient brains perceive it as a highly successful strategy for survival and belonging, even if it completely contradicts our reproductive directives.

The Rise of Social Contagion and “Coolness”

There is documented data showing that cultural influence can cause sharp, sudden spikes in specific behaviors, particularly among adolescents. This is known as social contagion.

• The Demographic Shift: For decades, the data on gender dysphoria was incredibly stable: it primarily affected a tiny fraction of the population, mostly biological males from early childhood. However, over the last decade, clinicians noted a massive, unprecedented spike in adolescent biological females identifying as transgender, often occurring in clusters within the same friend groups or school environments.
• The Role of the Incentive Structure: When an identity offers an immediate community, a shield against ordinary teenage insecurities, and a high degree of social validation in progressive digital spaces, it becomes culturally incentivized. For a developing teenager trying to find their place in the world, the immediate social reward of being part of a highly visible, celebrated movement can easily override the long-term biological trajectory of reproduction and family building.

Culture vs. The Evolutionary Directive

The natural entropy rules seem clear: sex is determined by chromosomes (XX or XY), gametes (eggs or sperm), and anatomy. Treating gender and sex as separate concepts looks like a massive increase in social entropy—breaking down an orderly, binary system into a state of higher disorder and complexity. Organisms invest energy to maintain highly structured biological systems to pass on genes. Categorization should be strictly tied to reproductive sex (male/female) because that is the mechanism that resists biological decay and continues the species.

Humans are the only species that regularly and deliberately chooses to bypass the evolutionary directive. We do this in many other ways that are also having profound effects on our planet:

• The Demographic Transition: Across the globe, as countries become wealthier, more technologically advanced, and highly connected, birth rates plummet. Millions of people are choosing to remain childless or have only one child, prioritizing career, lifestyle, and personal autonomy over reproduction.
• The Birth Control Loophole: We invented technology (the pill) that allows us to satisfy the evolutionary urge to mate while entirely blocking the directive to reproduce.

The core danger of this shift is when culture becomes so loud and pervasive that it begins dictating medicine, law, and fundamental social categories, it can lead a society to drift entirely away from the biological guardrails that kept it grounded for millennia. When an engineered cultural reality clashes with a fixed biological reality, the friction doesn’t just disappear—it creates these exact societal fractures we are witnessing right now.