This is how access to sports benefits trans and non-binary youth.
Trans and non-binary youth have always played sports. These benefits and advantages affect their emotional and mental health.
Share
MEXICO CITY, Mexico. Trans and non-binary youth play sports for the same reasons as cis people. However, over the past five years, anti-rights politicians in general, and U.S. President Donald Trump in particular, have increased their false narratives and rhetoric to legitimize policies that violate the human rights of trans and non-binary people. This includes their participation in sports.
The false narrative of an alleged "unfair advantage" is what anti-rights politicians use to push through laws and regulatory changes. They seek to exclude trans and non-binary children and youth from school sports, from elementary to university. But in the vast majority of cases, these policies primarily exclude trans girls and women.
These laws not only seek to remove trans youth from the sporting arena. They also deny them the benefits of playing sports for their mental and physical health, educationally, and socially.
In elite sports, we also see these same bans in some federations. Athletics is one of the most restrictive, despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluding in 2021 that "there is no scientific consensus on how testosterone affects athletic performance. It is unclear what role it plays in measuring an unfair advantage, because performance is measured differently in each sport."
In this explainer, we seek to answer: How does sports benefit trans and non-binary youth? How do anti-trans policies affect girls and women, trans and cisgender athletes? What is the situation where these laws already exist? And what are we seeing in Latin America?
The United Nations (UN) recognizes sport as a human right and considers that access to physical activity should occur "without any discrimination" or based on "ethnic criteria, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political opinion, or any other factor."
Access to sports benefits the mental health of trans and non-binary youth.
In Latin America, there is no data on the perceptions and experiences of trans and non-binary children and youth in sports. Research in countries in the Global North on trans youth and their experiences in sports sheds some light on the benefits of access to sports for this population.
The Trevor Project, a 2021 study, emphasizes the positive reasons LGBT+ youth participate in sports. These include connecting with friends and teammates , the opportunity to stay healthy , and the right to have fun .
The results also showed that for some trans and non-binary youth, sports provide support when faced with stressors, such as school pressure or tension surrounding discrimination based on their gender identity. Furthermore, it supports their mental health and distracts them from negative thoughts. This same finding can be seen in numerous other studies that discuss the general benefits of sports for trans and cisgender youth.
One young man told the Trevor Project that sports “help me deal with gender dysphoria and depression .” Another said, “Sports are a good way to distract myself from negative thoughts .
The 2023 report on LGBT youth found that trans and non-binary high school students who are athletes “reported better grades, lower levels of depression, and were less likely to feel unsafe at school than those who did not play sports.”
The effects on mental health in children and youth
Despite scientific evidence supporting the mental health benefits of trans youth participation in sports, there is a wave of prohibitions and false narratives. This has repercussions for their mental health.
A 2021 survey and report by The Trevor Project
- 79% of trans and non-binary youth felt their gender identity was a factor that affected their participation in sports. The main barriers were sports uniforms and their relationship to dysphoria, and the fact that sports are categorized by gender in a binary way.
- 55% said that news stories with alarmist and negative narratives about the participation of trans athletes have influenced them to not feel part of practicing the sport they enjoy.
- Only 32% of LGBT+ youth reported having ever participated in a school or community sports team or league; compared to 6 in 10 who said they had never participated for fear of exclusion or some type of violence.
"I probably wouldn't be allowed on the boys' team because I'm trans (neither my parents nor the school allow it). And even if I were allowed, I'd be at high risk of being bullied," one transgender youth told the Trevor Project survey.
Anti-trans policies against girls and women, trans and cisgender
Sports bans are putting trans and non-binary people, especially girls and women, at risk. They also put cis girls and women of school age who are athletes.
Trans girls and young women aren't the only ones under surveillance. Following the avalanche of anti-trans policies in sports in the United States, cases of young cisgender athletes experiencing harassment and being falsely accused of being trans have been reported. This was the case with Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Just like World Athletics' "sex tests" for elite athletes, today in countries like the United States, transgender and cisgender girls, young women, and athletes are at risk of invasive practices that violate their safety and privacy.
An example happened to the California university volleyball team , who had to hire security personnel to protect a player accused of being trans.
This same thing happened in Utah with a high school athlete who had to request police protection after a public official in that state spread false information about her, accusing her of being trans.
A 2022 study found that transgender high school youth in the United States reported interest in playing sports while also citing concerns about bullying and stigma.
These practices are not new. Human Rights Watch has documented how for decades the international athletics federation, World Athletics, “has applied arbitrary tests based on gender stereotypes and the use of flawed scientific data that lack scientific and ethical rigor and violate human rights.”
Those who legislate using false arguments about an alleged "unfair advantage" for trans athletes in women's sports, which lack scientific evidence , are not actually guaranteeing decent conditions for young women athletes to pursue their sporting pursuits free of barriers.
Today, girls and women athletes around the world face barriers in sports that have nothing to do with the inclusion of trans women or trans and non-binary people in public life.
The lack of public policies, lack of facilities, unequal pay, harassment by coaches, and scientific research with sexist, racist, and binary biases prevent us from understanding the real needs of trans and cisgender women athletes.
What is happening in the United States and the United Kingdom with the participation of trans athletes at the school level?
Trans and non-binary youth have always participated in sports. What is new are the increasingly aggressive and misleading narratives that anti-rights politicians are using to legitimize moral panics regarding the participation of trans women and girls in sports, particularly.
However, in the last three years, at least 164 policies have been promoted that seek to deny access to sports, particularly to girls and women competing at the school level: from primary school to university. From 2023 to 2025, there was a 318% increase in the creation of initiatives and proposed laws, related to sports alone.
While these bills began to be promoted at the state level, and the first such law was passed in Idaho , under the new Donald Trump administration, he signed an executive order withholding funding for federal education programs that allow trans girls and women to compete in women's sports. The House of Representatives then voted to ban trans girls and women from participating in women's sports at the high school level. The NCAA, the governing body for college athletics, soon banned trans students from competing in women's sports.
In the United Kingdom, anti-trans stances by politicians and powerful figures are neither new nor recent. However, this year the Supreme Court declared that trans women "do not meet the definition of women under equality laws." And this already has implications for sports teams.
The Scottish and English football associations have already modified their participation policies, and starting in June 2025, trans women who play competitive football will not be allowed to participate in women's teams.
What's happening in Latin America?
While there have been no explicit attempts to legislate in our region, the fascist governments of Argentine President Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador have all hinted at the anti-trans policies and narratives maintained by Donald Trump and his administration.
In Argentina, there is no formal ban on the participation of trans athletes. But public statements by Javier Milei and the decree amending the gender identity law —which has been in place since 2012 and is a world pioneer—reflect his government's restrictive stance in denying the human rights of trans people.
Nayib Bukele has also not issued a reform or decree explicitly against transgender participation in sports. But in a meeting with Donald Trump, he called the participation of transgender women in sports "violence ."
Furthermore, in 2019, it eliminated the Secretariat of Social Inclusion , which was responsible for implementing policies against discrimination against LGBTI+ people. And in 2024, it announced the elimination of the gender perspective in educational content.
Latin America is, for now, a contested terrain in this regard. On the one hand, trans activists continue to push for greater recognition, justice, and inclusive public policies; on the other, far-right political sectors and trans-exclusionary feminists use false information, almost always instrumentalizing trans children and youth, to try to hinder the rights achieved through civil society organizations and activists.
Juntes Narramos is a project by Malvestida , Volcánicas , GirlUp , Balance and Presentes to strengthen and amplify the voices of youth through narratives of diversity..
We are Present
We are committed to a type of journalism that delves deeply into the realm of the world and offers in-depth research, combined with new technologies and narrative formats. We want the protagonists, their stories, and their struggles to be present.
SUPPORT US
FOLLOW US
Related Notes
We Are Present
This and other stories don't usually make the media's attention. Together, we can make them known.