A survey of 1,000 Americans found support for transgender sports bans was highest among respondents with the most sexist views of women

A new survey of 1,000 American adults complicates one of the most common arguments in the debate over transgender athletes.

The strongest supporters of sports bans are not the people who admire women most. They are the people who hold the most hostile views about women.

The survey, conducted by political scientists who study public opinion toward transgender Americans, asked respondents about a bill prohibiting transgender youth from joining school sports teams that match their gender identity. About half supported it. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has admitted that his wife Melania calls his trans athlete jokes 'unpresidential.'

The researchers then tested whether that support tracked admiration for women, as supporters of bans often suggest. It did not, and the clearest gap came from a measure of hostile sexism.

Respondents were asked how much they agreed with three statements: that women seek to gain power by getting control over men, that women are too easily offended, and that women exaggerate problems they have at work.

Among the least sexist respondents, 28 percent supported a ban, while among the most sexist, 79 percent did.

A second measure, a 0-to-100 “feeling thermometer” that researchers have used for decades to gauge attitudes toward groups, showed a smaller difference. Among respondents with the warmest feelings toward women, 45 percent supported restrictions, compared with 58 percent among those with the coldest.

Title IX, the law that requires schools receiving federal funding to give women and girls equal athletic opportunities, produced another split.

Of Title IX supporters, 43 percent backed restrictions, while 70 percent of Title IX opponents did.

When Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports at federally funded schools in February 2025, he said, “We will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls.”

WNBA star Sophie Cunningham offered a similar rationale in a July 2026 ESPN profile. “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” she said.

Relatively few transgender athletes compete at the high school or college level, yet 27 states have passed laws since 2020 banning them from teams that match their gender identity.

Cunningham’s comments have been part of a wider controversy this year. She has been a polarizing figure in the WNBA since the ESPN profile, and the debate has followed the league into the playoffs.