Gymnast MyKayla Skinner Calls For A Transgender Ban — Why Her Message Is Misguided

-TOKYO,JAPAN July 24, 2021: USAs Mykayla Skinner competes on the beam in the womens team qualifying at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (Wally Skalij /Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Former U.S. gymnast and Olympic silver medalist MyKayla Skinner has rejoined the global conversation surrounding transgender athlete participation in sports.

In a Dec. 2 interview with The Daily Wire, an American conservative media outlet founded by Ben Shapiro, Skinner called for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to formally ban transgender participants.

“It shouldn’t even be an issue. I couldn’t imagine having to compete against a male and getting medals stripped,” Skinner told Daily Wire reporter Lynden Blake. “Especially having a daughter, she’s gonna be raised in this next generation, and I want her to have an even playing field like I had. Like we all had on the (2020) Olympic team.”

Skinner first joined the hotbed conversation in June 2025, reacting to the online feud between anti-trans conservative activist Riley Gaines and seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. When Skinner witnessed Biles’ interaction with Gaines last June, she was “heartbroken” and felt compelled to speak out in support of the conservative activist.

“When that happened, I thought: ‘You know what? It’s time for me to stand up and support Riley,’” Skinner said.

Since the June 2025 spar with Biles, Skinner has aligned her public interests with anti-trans advocacy. In October, she partnered with XX-XY Athletics, an athletic apparel brand founded by former U.S. elite gymnast Jennifer Sey.

The company prides itself on being “the only brand standing up for female athletes and the protection of women’s sports.” Skinner’s demand for “even playing field” is rooted in the widespread anxiety among female athletes about unfair competition.

Brands are “selling out women for wokeness,” the company claims.

Though the former gymnasts continue to campaign for the sexual segregation of transgender athletes, their comments on their own sport, gymnastics, are ironic.

Skinner discussed the gendered reality in an opinion piece with Fox News. “In Olympic gymnastics, women do not compete on the rings. Why? Because men are stronger than women, and events are designed around physiological realities. It’s that simple.”

It’s actually not that simple.

The fact is: artistic gymnastics is a heavily gendered sport and exceptionally inaccessible to transgender athletes as a result. Many researchers accordingly label the sport of gymnastics as “sex segregated.” Why? Men’s and women’s gymnastics – despite their shared ‘gymnastic’ umbrella – are fundamentally different sports.

Experts argue the distinction began with aesthetics, not “physiological realities.”

Women’s Gymnastics Events As ‘Pedestals’

As in most Olympic disciplines, only men were permitted to compete in gymnastics at an Olympic game. Making its debut as an Olympic sport held 1896, gymnastics has evolved dramatically over the last century.

The IOC would not officially add floor exercise until 1930 and vault in 1934. Bizarrely, the all-around title used to include track and field events, swimming, weightlifting, and potentially rope climbing (FIG).

Women first entered the equation at the 1928 Olympics, competing on an event reminiscent to today’s floor exercise. The 1934 World Championships marked the first participation of both genders as a world event.

“Despite men and women having trained the same things side by side…segregation of sexes on the events was there from the beginning,” the FIG shares.

Dr. Georgia Cervin, a former New Zealand national team member and researcher, reports that women trained on the same events as men. “As late as the interwar era, women practiced Parallel Bars, Rings, Horizontal Bar and Pommel Horse.”

However, the sport’s governing bodies acted to separate the genders due to “stereotypes,” Cervin added. While the men’s events served to showcase the stereotypically male traits: strength and power, women’s gymnastics events would serve as pedestals: vessels for women to be observed by spectators.

Picture this: a 16 foot-long suspended plank, hoisted four feet above the ground, under a spotlight and on display for a crowd of thousands (I’m describing the women’s balance beam). “Secondary sources suggest that both of these apparatuses promoted a style of movement where women ‘’posed’ on the apparatus, to be observed in their grace and beauty,” Cervin said.

The imposed adaptations in women’s events reinforced stereotypes of women as “weaker” and “smaller” while simultaneously avoiding “any invitation of direct comparison between the performances of men and women.”

Just like that, women’s gymnastics was born. Though its origins were steeped in heavily stereotypical undertones, Cervin argues that these foundations inadvertently helped the sport gain legitimacy faster than competing women’s sports.

“The IOC accepted Women’s Artistic Gymnastics because it was one of the few sports considered appropriate for women,” Cervin said.

“This was because it emphasized feminine traits like passivity, grace and beauty. The FIG thus promoted apparatuses and performances that demonstrated the feminine character of the sport.”

As a result, two different sports of gymnastics came to fruition. Due to their foundations, men’s and women’s gymnastics became inherently different “For better or worse, women were classed apart, and their apparatus destined to be different than men,” the International Gymnastics Federation states.

These categorical differences led to logical differing physiological requirements for each sport – after all, serving a volleyball requires a different skillset than competing a tumbling pass. The International Society of Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS) has long documented the fundamental physiological split that makes MAG and WAG two distinct disciplines.

For example, research led by Jürgen Krug of the Universität Leipzig found that, on the high bar apparatus, men endure forces of up to 6-7 times their body weight, compared to 4-5 times body weight for women (on the uneven bars).

Further, transgender athlete participation in gymnastics has not affected the sport on an Olympic or elite level throughout its storied history. Why? Most men’s and women’s gymnastics events are categorically different. Essentially, an athlete transitioning to compete in the gendered counterpart would have to learn a new sport.

Two Sports, One Label

Today, Men’s Artistic gymnasts (MAG) compete on six events, while women’s artistic gymnasts (WAG) compete on four. Though both categories include vault and floor exercise, the two disciplines are fundamentally different in their composition.

MAG: Vault, Parallel Bars, High Bar, Pommel Horse, Still Rings, Floor Exercise

WAG: Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam, Floor Exercise

DeVeau’s School of Gymnastics, a U.S. training facility that has produced an Olympian and numerous elite athletes, describes the gymnastics events on their gym website. Though both men and women compete on floor – take note of the differences:

• Men’s Floor Exercise: “Athletes perform a routine that combines powerful tumbling passes with strength elements.”
• Women’s Floor Exercise: “Women’s floor routines blend tumbling passes with dance and choreography, showcasing artistry and athleticism.”

Men’s gymnastic disciplines focus almost entirely on immense strength, power, and agility, while women’s events combine strength with balance, artistry, and showmanship. Concurrently, Texas A&M University School of Law describes the sport as a sport in which “individuals perform optional and prescribed acrobatic feats.”

The prescriptions are often very different for the male and female categories.

Recent political moves by the Trump Administration also prohibit transgender participation at the highest levels. On July 21, 2025, the USOPC altered its “athlete safety policy,” effectively banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

The USOPC’s move to change the policy was an effort to “ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent” with President Trump’s executive order from earlier that year. The USOPC then sent a letter to national governing bodies – including USA Gymnastics – notifying them of the need to change their policies “to comply with federal expectations.”

Thus, because of gymnastics’ highly gendered foundations and USA Gymnastics’ adherence to USOPC guidelines, transgender athlete participation at the elite level is incredibly rare. Despite Skinner and Sey’s many concerns for their sport, their fears pertaining to the sport of gymnastics are largely misguided.

NAIGC As A Safe Haven

Conversely, transgender athletes compete freely at the club level in the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs (NAIGC). The organizational motto, “For the Love of the Sport,” highlights the commitment to “expanding opportunities for adult gymnastics and pushing the boundaries of the sport.”

The NAIGC is open to gymnasts of age 17 and above (there’s no age limit), and “any single competitor, regardless of gender identity, is able to compete on a selection of apparatus from among those disciplines.” Associated Press reporter Will Graves highlighted the NAIGC and its diverse competitors in a feature in early 2025.

“(We want) people to be able to continue doing gymnastics into adulthood in a way that feels comfortable and safe and supportive for them,” the NAIGC’s director of operations told Graves. At the core of athletic participation – for any and all athletes – is the love of their sport. For the NAIGC’s athletes, this reality is the bottom line. It’s not about winning or defeating their competitors.

As for Skinner and Sey’s concerns, NAIGC athletes think the reaction is overblown. After all, “we deserve to be in the sports that we love.”

“Certain people want to convince people that this is a big issue and people are losing their (minds),” a 49-year-old NAIGC athlete said. “But it’s not like that. Other groups can be uptight about that if they want. But in this group, it’s about the love of the sport.

“If you love the sport, then do the sport and have fun, no matter who you are.”