Fencing Is the Latest Sport Caught in the Transgender Athlete Debate

A forfeited match and a viral video. An angry knock on the door. Death threats. An avalanche of political pressure, leading to a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in Washington.

The niche sport of fencing is usually not one that elicits fevered emotion beyond the thrust and parry of its matches. But it has become the latest sporting flashpoint following President Trump’s executive order in February to block transgender athletes from competing in girl’s and women’s sports events.

Athletes have been affected at the youth, high school and college level, but the cultural firestorm has extended to all levels and types of competition, including Olympic sports.

The Trump administration is seeking to restrict who will be eligible to compete in women’s events at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which will include fencing competition. It has ordered American consulates to deny visas to transgender athletes who seek to enter the United States for sports events.

Fencing has been under a rare and uncomfortable spotlight since a usually low-key regional tournament called the Cherry Blossom Open was held in College Park, Md., on March 30. In a match featuring midlevel fencers who are not Olympic caliber, Stephanie Turner, 31, removed her mask, took a knee in protest, and declined to participate against her transgender opponent, Red Sullivan, 19. A video of the moment went viral.

According to Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Turner said at the time: “I respect you a lot, but this is a women’s event. I am a woman and you’re a man. I will not fence you.”

Ms. Turner, who lives in suburban Philadelphia, was disqualified from the tournament for refusing to compete against an eligible opponent. Ms. Sullivan had competed for Wagner College on Staten Island until February, when the N.C.A.A. complied immediately with Mr. Trump’s executive order. Competing independently at the Cherry Blossom event, she placed 24th among 39 participants.

Amid the fallout from the episode, U.S.A. Fencing, the sport’s national governing body, finds itself at the center of an increasingly combustible debate about inclusivity and fair play. The March incident has become politicized in conservative circles and has been argued about more with reflexive intensity than with evidence supported by science. There has been relatively little research regarding transgender athletes, and almost none about transgender athletes in fencing.

Phil Andrews, the chief executive of U.S.A. Fencing, said that shortly after the incident, he opened his front door in Denver to encounter a man who complained to him vociferously about transgender female athletes participating in women’s sports.

“He wanted to make it known that I was the scum of the earth and a disgrace to humanity,” Mr. Andrews said in a phone interview. Matters got worse, he said, when he started to receive death threats by email and phone calls.

The Trump administration and the attorney general of Texas said they would investigate the fencing incident. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, also chimed in. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia and the chairwoman of a House subcommittee on government efficiency, has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

In announcing the hearing, Ms. Greene claimed without substantiation that “radical leftists pushing to let biological men compete against women are destroying fair competition and putting female athletes in physical danger.”

The board of directors of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee discussed the issue last month, but responded vaguely during a teleconference with reporters. Gene Sykes, the board chairman, said that it would work to make sure that “women have a fair and safe competitive environment.”

The U.S.O.P.C. is facing immense scrutiny itself regarding the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The Trump administration has called on the International Olympic Committee to ensure that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined “according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”

Ms. Turner has been called the Rosa Parks of fencing by her lawyer. She was also awarded $5,000 as a “courage award” by a sports apparel company that opposes transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. But Ms. Turner has also faced blowback from critics. She has announced that she is stepping away from the sport for the moment.

She had previously said in interviews with conservative news organizations that she felt she was at a physical disadvantage competing against a transgender woman.

Yet a week before the Maryland competition, Ms. Turner participated in a mixed-gender fencing tournament in Swarthmore, Pa. According to results posted by fencingtracker.com, Ms. Turner defeated four male fencers in the foil category and finished eighth among 32 competitors. A person familiar with her fencing history said that Ms. Turner has a career record of 7-7 against male fencers.

“Her argument has incredible holes in it,” Ms. Sullivan said in one of several phone interviews.

Some critics of Ms. Turner’s have called her protest performative and hypocritical. But her Washington-based lawyer, Charles Wang, said in an interview that it if a woman decides to participate in a mixed-gender competition “that’s free will; but you can’t force them to fence a man.”

Since 2021, transgender athletes in Olympic sports have faced differing rules established by each international sports governing body. Swimming and track and field, for instance, effectively prohibit the participation in elite women’s events of competitors who experienced puberty as males.

Fencing’s international governing body has no rule governing transgender athletes. In the United States, fencers are generally permitted to participate according to their gender identity, though at the upper levels, transgender athletes seeking to compete in women’s events must first undergo testosterone suppression for at least a year.

On April 18, U.S.A. Fencing said it was willing to change its policy to require that athletes compete according to their biological sex if eligibility rules continue to grow more restrictive. Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, elected in March as the first female president of the I.O.C., has discussed a possible blanket ban of transgender athletes from women’s sports.

A 2023 study conducted at the University of Hertfordshire in England acknowledged that there was no current research regarding elite transgender fencers. But the authors said the literature suggests “an unfair retained physiological advantage” of lean mass, strength, power and stature for transgender athletes who experience male puberty and then participate in women’s fencing competitions. The study said more research was necessary.

A more general 2024 study, funded by the International Olympic Committee, contradicted one of the leading arguments made by anti-trans activists.

One of the study’s authors, Yannis Pitsiladis, a member of the I.O.C.’s health, medicine and science committee, said when the study was published that its results showed that transgender female athletes who have suppressed their testosterone levels are physiologically and hormonally “not the same as biological men.”

U.S.A. Fencing says there are fewer than 50 athletes who identify as transgender among the roughly 40,000 members registered with the federation. Especially at local and regional levels, male and female fencers frequently train with and compete against one another.

Fencing is about tactics and strategy more than merely height, reach and strength, officials note. Lee Kiefer of the United States, a two-time Olympic champion in women’s foil fencing, is only 5 foot 4 inches tall. All told, American women designated female at birth defeat transgender women in a majority of bouts, and also win a majority of their contests against men, according to the federation.

Ms. Sullivan competed as a man in her freshman season at Wagner College while taking hormone suppressants, and as a woman for the university this school year until the N.C.A.A. ban. Before Ms. Turner’s protest, Ms. Sullivan said, no one had ever expressed concerns to her about fairness or safety.

“It’s laughable to think trans athletes have an unfair advantage,” Ms. Sullivan said, adding, “I lose to 70-year-olds and to 12-year-olds who haven’t gone through puberty.”