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The former first lady singled out transgender athletes in her new book, Melania: A Memoir.
Despite claiming to “fully support the LGBTQIA+ community” in her new book, Melania: A Memoir, the former first lady took the time to single out transgender athletes, arguing for their exclusion from sports and claiming that the group is responsible for the current "divisions" in the U.S.
“Today, some groups attempt to impose their ideologies on everyone, deepening the divisions in our society,” Melania Trump wrote. “One example is the ongoing debate over trans inclusion in sports, specifically when male-born athletes, who identify as female, compete against women.
Trump claimed that "male bodies generally have physical advantages: muscle strength, height, bone density and lung capacity, that can affect fairness in competition, even at high-school level." This is not entirely accurate in regards to transgender women and girls — a 2021 study in the National Library of Medicine found that taking testosterone-blocking hormones eliminates many of the physical differences between cisgender and transgender women.
While trans women can retain a slight advantage of strength for up to three years after beginning hormones, the gap further closes the longer they receive regular doses. If they transition before puberty, trans women's "advantage" becomes nonexistent, as the Women's Sports Foundation explains: "The effects of taking female hormones negate any strength and muscular advantage that testosterone may have provided."
A more recent study funded by the International Olympic Committee also undercut the notion that trans women have an advantage over cisgender women in sports, finding that trans women are less similar to cis men than anti-trans voices claim. While trans women in the study had greater hand-grip strength than cis women, they had lesser jumping ability than both cis women and cis men, plus lower lung function and cardiovascular fitness than cis women.
There are only 34 trans athletes that have openly competed in U.S. college sports, according to the ACLU of Ohio, though Trump asserted the amount does not matter, no matter how minuscule, as she claimed that these athletes are somehow taking opportunities from cisgender women.
“Some argue that the number of trans athletes is low but even one can upset the balance in a female league or tournament due to these physical advantages," she continued. "High-school athletes often dedicate years to training with the hope of being recruited by universities. Seeing that dream collapse is an unnecessary and avoidable consequence.”
Trump does not seem as concerned with transgender boys, a group she does not bring up once, whom are often assumed wrongly incapable of competing with their cis males peers. The notion that male athletes will beat female athletes by default is not just harmful to trans people, according to the Human Rights Campaign, but also "a sexist assumption" about women athletes.
