I'm a WNBA player. Don't use athletes like me to exclude trans women.
In over 15 years of organized basketball, I've played with and against people who are transgender and undoubtedly people with intersex variations, and I've never experienced any unfair advantages.
I have played basketball for as long as I can remember. The game shaped who I am, gave me opportunities to travel, forge lifelong friendships, and use my platform to advocate for others. Now that spotlight has turned on my teammates and me – not to celebrate our sport, but to police who belongs.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently announced a binding policy requiring every woman who seeks to compete in the Olympics to undergo sex verification testing. After years of dedication and preparation, the final hurdle to represent your country should not be proving to a panel of strangers that you are the woman you say you are.
This invasive policy effectively bars transgender women and many athletes with intersex variations from competing.
Sex testing of women is not new – it traces back decades and was only formally changed after sustained pressure from medical groups, athletes’ advocates, and the IOC’s own Athletes’ Commission following the 1996 Games.
In 2021, the IOC released a framework asserting there is no automatic competitive advantage based on "sex variations, physical appearance, and/or transgender status."
This new mandate abandons that ground-breaking and collaborative framework, ignores established medical and human-rights guidance, and rejects the science that says physical appearance, chromosomes or individual traits do not determine athletic performance or success.
Singling out trans women creates scapegoats, not safety
The IOC has a documented history of refusing to actually protect women in elite sports, and their current invocation of protection does anything but.
Policies that single out transgender women and athletes with intersex variations do not protect women’s sports. They manufacture a scapegoat while the real challenges to women’s sports go unaddressed: unequal funding, limited access to training and facilities, pay disparities, male-dominated leadership, gender-based violence and harassment across race, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Focusing on who should be allowed to call themselves a woman distracts from the structural inequities that actually limit women’s opportunities.
This policy also invites unequal scrutiny for women who already face heightened suspicion; Black and Brown athletes and competitors from the Global South will be unfairly targeted.
In more than 15 years of organized basketball, I’ve played with and against people who are transgender and undoubtedly people with intersex variations, and I've never experienced any unfair advantages. I saw these players as my fellow athletes, not my enemies. We cannot choose our genes or chromosomes, but we can choose how hard we work, how we treat one another and whether we protect the dignity of every athlete.
Recently, I spent nearly 10 days at the bargaining table with the WNBA Players Association and leadership from the WNBA negotiating a historic collective bargaining agreement to advance the professional environment that elite women athletes deserve: higher baseline salaries, meaningful revenue sharing, improved travel and health protections, and family-first roster policies.
These are the issues that will strengthen our sport – not invasive scrutiny or manufactured controversies.
Sport matters because it mirrors our best values: hard work, teamwork, resilience and the chance for everyone to belong. The IOC’s gender policy puts women’s bodies under new surveillance and sets a dangerous precedent that could spill into health care, education and beyond.
Do not use the names of women athletes to target, shame or exclude transgender women. Transgender women are women. Women with intersex variations are women. I welcome these women – and all women – onto my teams.
If we really want to protect the integrity of sport, let’s invest in fairness, opportunity and safety for every athlete. Let’s build a future where sport belongs to everyone.
Brianna Turner is a 2019 first-round draft pick and has played for the Phoenix Mercury, Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever. She has been an outspoken ally for social and racial justice and for LGBTQ+ athletes, including specifically in support of transgender women in women’s sports.