Transgender Activism Corrupting History

After the International Olympics Committee (IOC) announced the decision to limit participation in women’s sports to biological females on March 26, 2026, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) wasted little time in responding to the decision on social media, reflecting opposition to the decision. That afternoon, the OAH created a social media post that linked to a blog entitled “Doing Trans History Despite It All,” written by Myra Billund-Phibbs, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota specializing in transgender history.

Upon reading the blog, I had more questions than answers as a historian myself. The blog had nothing to do with athletic competition; it did not defend the fairness of biological men competing in women’s athletic events, and it argued that many within the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) community saw trans activists as being “too loud, too out-there, too threatening to their political aims.” Instead, the heart of the blog could be interpreted as an anti-right wing/anti-Trump message despite the confession that many who seemingly lean left (at least socially) are also critical of trans activism.

In the shared blog, Billund-Phibbs decries efforts from the Trump administration and the coinciding “right-wing backlash” to weaken anti-discrimination cases, remove civil rights (in Iowa), and censor historical narratives that promote queer and trans issues within the National Parks System. In posting this blog in response to the IOC’s announcement, the OAH missed the mark by simply discussing the challenges in studying transgender history rather than addressing the issue at hand – fairness and women’s rights in athletic competition.

Had the OAH truly wanted to address historical issues pertaining to transgender participation in athletic competition, it would not have been difficult to find evidence in recent history to discuss the effects of biological male participation in girls’ and women’s sports. A United Nations report from 2024 claimed biological males had won hundreds of medals while competing as females, while a 2025 study from Concerned Women of America (CWA) found that nearly 2000 medals had been awarded to transgender girls and women from the mid-1980s through 2025. As a matter of fact, just last year, transgender girls won track-and-field state championships in Maine (pole vault, 400 and 1600 meter), California (triple jump), Washington (400 meter), and Oregon (200 and 400 meter). Furthermore, these accolades do not include the triumphs of transgender girls in high school team sports, which include a dominating transgender fast-pitch softball player in Minnesota – a team that won a state championship thanks in large part to said pitcher.

Not only did the blog fail to address the issue of biological males competing in female sports, but the article also blamed the right wing and Trump for the alleged fears and concerns of transgender community members. This contention is dubious since later in the same essay, the author claims that many gay and lesbians also failed to support transgender activists. In fact, in 2025, an NBC News Poll indicated that 75% of Americans did not believe trans women should be allowed to compete in female sports. Moreover, a Gallup Poll from June of 2025 claimed that over 70% of Independents believed transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender. Additionally, a Pew Research Poll from 2025 showed only 15% of US adults oppose the requirement that trans athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, meaning 85% of adults either favored the requirement or were relatively indifferent. Also, polling reveals that nearly half of all Democrats oppose allowing trans women to compete in women’s sports. Certainly, evidence indicates that the defense of women in athletic competition is not a right-wing issue, nor is it a Trump issue, but instead it is an issue for which the American people at large feel strongly. It is not difficult to see the potential (or real) problems of allowing biological males to compete in female sports, along with how the practice undermines Title IX and other civil rights legislation that was meant to protect and promote girls and women.

Instead of directly addressing the issue of biological males competing in women’s events at the next Olympic games, the OAH seeks to promote a narrative that biological males should be accepted as females, while condemning those who disagree, labelling them as right-wing bigots who wish to whitewash history. Indeed, one of the main purposes of Title IX was to prohibit sex-based discrimination to ensure equal treatment for male and female student-athletes, yet the OAH seems perfectly content to see women lose to biological men in athletic competition by the scores, if not by the hundreds, and we may just be at the tip of the iceberg. The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted research in 2023 that indicated over 3% of America’s youth population identified as transgender, as compared to less than 0.4% for adults over the age of 35, representing an 800% growth rate in the number of trans-identifying individuals over the past two or three decades. If the rate continues to rise at a rapid rate, the potential growth in trans women participating in women’s sports could truly be detrimental to girls’ and women’s sports. For an organization that insists on protecting historical accuracy, the OAH is destroying historical truth in favor of left-wing propaganda.