Sports have had barriers broken many times throughout history, and without hesitation, the accomplishments have been celebrated. For some reason, transgender women, also known as biological men, have been welcomed into women’s sports both in the United States and abroad in the same manner: as a glass-breaking moment in sports lore.

As President Trump's executive order aimed at keeping women’s sports for women — and women only — works its way throughout U.S. athletic systems, women seem to be closer than ever to getting back to fair competition.

However, once the country is on the other side, there will likely be as much denial as there has been throughout the ordeal, which to its core is a denial of reality and biological truth.

Blaze News has investigated and continues to investigate the phenomenon of men in women’s athletics and can now provide an (unfortunately) expansive list of instances where men have invaded the female divisions of sport.

Please note that some of these athletes have competed against women for multiple years, with their most recent competition listed.

United States

May 2025: Ana Caldas, a male who has gone by both the names "Hugo" and "Hannah," won five events at a women's swimming competition in San Antonio, Texas.

Caldas competed in the women's 45-49 category and won the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, 50-yard breaststroke, 100-yard breaststroke, and the 100-yard individual medley. Caldas won three of the races by at least three seconds.

In Minnesota, also in May, a 6' male athlete was the starting pitcher in the season opener for a women's softball team. The 17-year-old allegedly hid his real gender from his team and was revealed through investigative journalists to have had his sex changed on his birth certificate shortly after turning 9 years old.

The male pitched a shutout with 14 strikeouts and also hit a double.

April 2025: A group of four high school girls from Oregon refused to participate against a male in track and field. The male named, "Liaa" Rose, won girls' high jump with a jump height of 4'10" and beat 18 girls he competed against.

Sophia Carpenter said she and three other females forfeited the competition after learning they would be competing against a boy.

Rose had already won a girls' high jump competition earlier in the month, despite having finished dead last in the boys' division at the same tournament a year prior.

A male athlete named Annika Rose Suchoski inspired a protest after competing in a women’s fencing event in California. The 6' 40-year-old was participating in the women’s division for the second straight year.

Suchoski made headlines in 2024 after coming in second in a women's fencing tournament just six months after taking up the sport, the Daily Mail reported.

That same month, a woman walked off a disc golf tournament platform in Nashville, Tennessee, after learning a male athlete would be competing in the women’s division.

Abigail Wilson faked an initial throw before she revealed she was abandoning the competition in protest of Natalie Ryan, a male who believes he is female.

Also in April 2025, Stephanie Turner of the Fencing Academy of Philadelphia forfeited a match just before she was set to take on a male fencer at a women’s tournament in Maryland.

Turner was matched against Wagner College's Redmond Sullivan, who approached the female and declared he was supported by the board of directors and was allowed to participate against women.

Turner said she knew this and forfeited anyway.

It was soon revealed that Sullivan had won two out of six competitions since entering female competitions but had only ever reached third place as a male.

March 2025: A high school male athlete won the girls’ 400-meter varsity race by more than seven seconds.

Aayden “Ada” Gallagher, an 11th-grade sprinter from McDaniel High School in Portland, also won the girls’ 200-meter race.

Gallagher won both races in 2024, as well, in addition to winning the girls’ 200-meter at the Oregon state finals in 2024.

February 2025: A male high school athlete in Maine took third place in girls’ Nordic skiing at the state championships.

The boy, named Soren Stark-Chessa, secured enough points on his own to ensure his school placed third overall.

Stark-Chessa was accused of cheating in 2023 when he placed fifth in girls’ cross-country running after having previously being ranked 172nd as a boy.

Also in February, a boy from Maine’s Greely High School won first place in girls’ pole vault at the Maine Indoor Track Meet. The 10th-grader previously competed against boys as John before competing against girls under the name Katie.

John/Katie jumped 11 feet, a height that would have placed him in 10th against the males at the same competition.

January 2025: A male basketball player dominated girls and almost outscored the entire competition on his own. Henry Hanlon scored 29 points to lead San Francisco Waldorf High School to a 59-53 victory over Jewish Community High School.

January also saw a male college athlete set facility records at Brockport’s Rust Buster, a track and field event in New York. Camden Schreiner, who goes by "Sadie," set records by winning the women's 200-meter dash in 24.50 seconds and the women's 400-meter dash in 55.91 seconds. The times were also program records, according to his school, the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Schreiner made headlines in January 2024 after breaking school records for the women's 200-meter and 300-meter sprints and placing first in the 4x400-meter relay. He earned a Liberty League Women's Track & Field Performer of the Week award, according to KATV.

November 2024: Two female cross-country runners from Martin Luther King High School said they wore T-shirts that read "Save Girls' Sports" on the front and "It's Common Sense. XX ≠ XY" on the back to protest a male athlete participating in female athletics at their school.

Kaitlyn and Taylor said Taylor had been bumped from the cross-country team in order to make room for the boy, who did not have to regularly attend practices or meet eligibility requirements for the varsity team. When the girls wore the pro-women shirts, they were told by their athletics director that wearing the shirts around a transgender athlete was akin to wearing a swastika around a Jewish student.

October 2024: A Catholic high school girls' soccer team in New Hampshire refused to play a game against a team with a boy on it. Bishop Brady High School refused to play against Kearsage Regional High School for having a male athlete, a violation of state law.

The male athlete named Maelle Jacques played goalkeeper on the girls’ soccer team and previously won the state championship for girls’ high jump in February 2024.

September 2024: In another high-profile instance, San Jose State University utilized a 6'1" male athlete named Brayden “Blaire” Fleming to lead the women’s volleyball team to their best season in program history.

Fleming may have caused a national movement, spawning protests and forfeits from multiple teams, and even his own teammate spoke out against him.

July 2024: In what has become a rather famous story, a 17-year-old female volleyball player suffered paralysis and brain damage after getting hit in the face with the ball by a male player.

Payton McNabb had brain damage and paralysis on her right side and also had trouble walking for some time.

October 2023: Several female athletes dropped out of a women’s jiu-jitsu tournament after they were slated to compete against males who identify as female.

Two women had previously competed against a male named Cordelia Gregory, one of several men reportedly competing in women's jiu-jitsu tournaments under the North American Grappling Association.

Toward the end of the month, NAGA officially changed its policy to remove men from women's competitions and gave them the option to compete against other men or not compete at all.

August 2023: In an exception to the rule, a transgender athlete dropped out of a competition in women’s tennis in Wyoming, but claimed it was due to a safety risk. Brooklyn Ross (a male) began identifying as a woman around 2017 and then played college tennis starting in 2019.

Ross admitted there were no direct threats to him.

March 2023: A high school basketball coach from Massachusetts admitted to having a “secret weapon” on the girls’ team, referring to a 6'3" male named Addie Ruter.

Ruter dominated the playoffs and was referred to as a girl despite obvious physical advantages that allowed him to garner at least five double-doubles in the playoffs.

February 2023: The varsity girls' basketball team at a Christian high school in Vermont forfeited a match against a team with a male athlete.

Mid Vermont Christian School refused to play against Dorset in the first round of the Vermont Division IV girls' varsity tournament after the team learned that one member of the other team is actually a male.

The team soon took the state to court after the school was banned from state-wide athletic activities as a result of the refusal to play.

May 2019: College athlete Cece Telfer won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national NCAA title.

The New Hampshire male vowed to return years later and mocked female athletes as he said he was going to take “all the records.”

International

April 2025: Two men met in the final of a women’s billiards tournament in England. Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith, both males, beat four women each to reach the finals of the 32-player tournament.

Under the English Pool Association, in order for a male to play in the female category, the athlete must have "declared that her gender identity is female."

Unsurprisingly, the two have met in competition before.

January 2025: A transgender college basketball player was captured on video flattening female athletes and was later revealed to have broken multiple women’s records in Canada.

Harriette Mackenzie, a 6'2'' male basketball player in his third year in women’s athletics, knocked over at least six women in a physically dominating display.

Mackenzie held records in women’s basketball in the following categories: most single-season total rebounds (212), offensive rebounds in a season (86), rebounds per game (10.6), total free throws made in a season (90), playoff points in a single game (22), and double-doubles in a season (10).

August 2024: An Australian soccer team that featured five males won the league without losing a single match.

The team is called the Flying Bats and was described as soccer club for "self-identified women and non-binary people.”

The team scored 61 goals with just six against and amassed a 14-0 record. The team made headlines earlier in the season with a 10-0 victory in which one of the male players scored six goals.

July 2024: The Summer Olympics in Paris were rocked by two biological males competing, and winning gold, in women’s boxing.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) both were disqualified from competitions in 2023, but won against women in the 66 kg and the 57 kg categories at the Olympics, respectively.

Khelif, who has refused to come to terms with testing, was revealed by examiners in November 2024 to have testicles, a penis, and XY chromosomes. The medical technicians who revealed this were in agreement with the International Boxing Association and the World Boxing Organization, which had both previously claimed that Khelif was born a man.

May 2024: A British female dart thrower refused to compete against a male athlete in a tournament.

Deta Hedman refused to participate in a match against male Noa-Lynn van Leuven in the Denmark Open tournament. Van Leuven was actually the defending champion from 2023.

April 2024: A male won a professional women’s golf tournament in Australia and called it a “special” feeling.

42-year-old Breanna Gill first started playing in women’s tournaments in 2015 and began winning them in 2018.

The LPGA Tour added a rule against almost all males by the end of the year and declared that anyone who had gone through male puberty is unable to compete against women.

August 2023: A 40-year-old man set an unofficial women’s world record at a women’s powerlifting event in Western Canada.

Anne Andres, 40, won the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship by lifting a combined score of 1,317 pounds, far more than the second-place finisher, a woman, SuJan Gil, who lifted 854 pounds.

It was reported at the time that Andres set a new Canadian women's national record and an unofficial women's world record.

December 2022: A transgender hockey player injured in a woman in a tournament.

The National Hockey League promoted the "Team Trans Draft Tournament," which resulted in a player reportedly named Mason "(he/him/his),” concussing a female player. One attendee cited an "enormous difference" in player size.

March 2021: A male volleyball player was named a “pioneer” in women’s volleyball and given an award.

Tiffany Abreu, a man, was heralded as standing up to “anti-transgender hate” and was applauded for wanting to compete as a woman in the Olympics.

Lia Thomas

With honorable mention, William “Lia” Thomas cannot be forgotten. The male swimmer’s success against women was unparalleled and led him to win NCAA championship races despite being ranked 554th in the 200-meter freestyle as a man. He placed fifth in the nation against women.

Thomas was the poster child for the advantages males have over women, as well as the example most have turned to when showcasing that women have been shut down when trying to stand up for themselves.

Some swimmers were told they may have psychological problems because they had issues with competing against, or changing in the same room as, a man. Others said they were bumped into by Thomas with his genitals in the locker room.

Straight denial from governing bodies like the NCAA and even politicians did not help women in their plight.

One NCAA executive pleaded ignorance over the ordeal, while NCAA President Charlie Baker said he was simply following federal law and societal norms by letting men compete against women in their sports.

Democrat Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) suggested the issue wasn't important at all when he pointed to just “10 or fewer” transgender athletes in the NCAA out of 510,000 normal athletes.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) declared in March 2025 that the issue was not an issue at all and sarcastically asked constituents to “find the little trans child” who is ruining people’s lives.

This opposition is normal for women, whether it is being told they “shouldn’t be talking” for the male athlete or being abandoned by their universities.

“People have legitimately blacklisted me for being outspoken about men in women’s sports and spaces,” said writer Natasha Biase, who writes about women’s issues. “But this isn’t because most people are genuinely passionate about trans rights. It’s because people feel like it’s the empathetic thing to say so they can avoid any type of conflict.”

“A lot of people say it’s not happening … that they are obliterating women in sports,” she added.

Former gymnast and entrepreneur Jennifer Sey agreed, saying gender ideologues and trans activists try to control language by insisting that “trans women are women.”

“They feel justified threatening me and my employees with violence.

Both women agreed that much of the sentiment is pushed by social media and educational institutions and said that some women will not stop standing up for biological reality, “no matter how loud and bullying the angry minority is.”