Don’t believe President Donald Trump’s so-called intention of a recent executive order that aim to "protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports" by keeping transgender athletes out of them. That’s at least the takeaway from many, including U.S. soccer legend Megan Rapinoe, the 2012 London Olympics gold medalist. ‘Don’t tell me it’s about the rights of women’s sports,’ Rapinoe said to Goal.com’s Mundial, per The Daily Mail. ‘That is totally disingenuous to say that.’" Simply, Trump and his administration do not recognize the transgender community and only indentify “men” and “women” as the USA’s genders. Trump has targeted and banned transgender military members and issued the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order in February, which does not allow transgender women to complete in women’s sports and threatens to pull funding from educational institutions for not adhering to the policy. The NCAA followed suit a day later, barring transgender women from competing in women’s sports. The order allows transgender men to practice, but not compete with, men’s teams. “I think it’s just really cruel,” Rapinoe said. “You know, if you strip it all back, it’s just kind of cruel and depraved. This isn’t an issue and you aren’t going to be able to Executive Order trans people out of existence. “We’ve just gone through a very long period over ten years of really needing to fight just to get to a baseline of, like, equal rights and non-discriminatory behavior, and when people stop just s***ting on women’s sports. I think we are sort of at that moment.” According to a 2022 study by Pew Center, trans adults represent 0.6% of all adults. A 2022 Williams Institute study said that among youths between 13 and 17, 1.4% identify as transgender. Extrapolate those numbers to athletes and the reality is that much fewer than 1% of the U.S. population is a trans athlete. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.