The IOC's 2026 framework explicitly includes safety alongside fairness and integrity as a justification for protecting the female category.
Critics respond that safety policies must be based on the characteristics of individual sports rather than assumptions applied universally.
This disagreement reinforces the importance of avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.
What About Athletes With Differences in Sex Development?
Another complicated part of the debate involves athletes with differences in sex development, commonly referred to as DSD.
These athletes are not necessarily transgender.
Some are born with variations in sex characteristics that can affect chromosomes, reproductive anatomy or hormone levels.
The case of South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has become one of the most prominent examples of the legal and sporting controversy surrounding DSD regulations.
The IOC's 2026 policy also affects certain athletes with DSD conditions, demonstrating that the policy debate extends beyond transgender participation.
This distinction matters because discussions about transgender athletes and DSD athletes are sometimes combined even though the underlying circumstances can be very different.
A serious discussion of women's sports therefore needs to recognize the diversity of cases involved.
Navratilova’s Broader Argument
At the heart of Navratilova's position is a relatively simple principle: women's sports exist as a separate category because biological differences matter.
From this perspective, allowing athletes who have experienced male puberty into women's elite competition could undermine the reason the category was created in the first place.
Navratilova has also emphasized that supporting transgender people's personal freedoms does not necessarily require accepting every eligibility rule in competitive sport.
In other words, she separates questions of personal identity from questions of sporting classification.
That distinction is increasingly reflected in international policy.
The IOC's new framework, for example, establishes specific eligibility rules for Olympic competition while explicitly stating that the policy does not apply to recreational sport.
This suggests that future debates may become more focused on context rather than attempting to establish a single rule for every aspect of life.
Why the Debate Is Unlikely to Disappear
The controversy surrounding women's sports is unlikely to disappear simply because major organizations introduce new regulations.
Sport evolves through rules, technology and scientific understanding.
The debate over transgender participation is now part of that evolution.
On one side are athletes, sports officials and advocates who believe female categories must remain biologically meaningful to protect competitive opportunities developed over generations.
On the other are transgender advocates, human-rights organizations and others who argue that exclusionary rules can harm transgender athletes and that policies should be designed with greater attention to individual circumstances.
There is also a third group: people who support the preservation of women's competitive categories but are uncomfortable with broad genetic testing or rhetoric that can encourage hostility toward transgender people.
The reactions of athletes such as Coco Gauff demonstrate that this position exists within professional sport itself.