Why Is the WTA Requiring Players to Undergo Genetic Sex Screening?

Last week, Ben Rothenberg broke the story that the WTA will require players to undergo genetic sex screening to maintain their eligibility, prompting several questions that were sent to the tennis mailbag. Context matters. The WTA’s policy went into effect on July 21, and will require players to submit to a one-time screening for the SRY gene to participate on tour. This can be done via saliva, cheek swab or blood sample. The WTA policy states: “‘Biological male’ means an individual who, regardless of their legal sex or gender identity, has an SRY gene and therefore has or previously had testes or streak testes.”

This is essentially the same policy the International Olympic Committee has adopted going forward, so any player with Olympic ambitions was going to submit to this anyway. (And, it was impressed upon me, this is a one-time screening, so tennis players won’t have to go through this again for the Olympics.) The WTA, however, is the first major women’s sports league to go here.

The SRY gene is a sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome that provides instructions for making a protein involved in initiating male sex development. It’s worth noting that Andrew Sinclair, a professor at the University of Melbourne, who discovered the gene in 1990, is against the type of genetic testing put forth by the IOC and WTA. He argues that these genetic sex tests rely on an overly simplistic understanding of the gene and that the SRY screening isn’t “cut-and-dried.”

This obviously resides squarely in the larger, heated transgender sports discussion, an active front in the culture wars. So, at least in the eyes of the public, this policy will be equated with taking/rejecting a political and social stand.

My thoughts? First, this is a nuanced issue that is singularly ill-suited for social media and these binary times. A vote for Column A and you lose half the room, the vitriol flows, and you get told you are a fascist grifter. Inevitably: I’ve lost all respect for you. A vote for Column B and you lose the other half of the room, the vitriol flows, and you get told you are an irredeemable leftist. Inevitably: I’ve lost all respect for you.

Who needs this? Why subject yourself to this? And yet, if you opt out of the chat, you cede the public square to the mob and the incivility that has infected public discourse in 2026.

So, I’ll wade in. I am out of my depth on the science here. But the people I consult and respect—the South African sports science expert Ross Tucker ranks high on my list—have convinced me that athletes who were assigned male at birth have irreversible competitive advantages. Sex is not gender. And studies show that some physical traits may remain even after gender-affirming hormone therapy.

In sports—and I want to pause—in sports. Again, this is specified and confined to sports: physical, athletic competition. This is not to be co-opted to an erosion of human rights. In sports, fair competition is the fundamental building block, and the very premise. Without fairness and integrity of competition, there is no foundation. As such, I have little objection to non-invasive genetic sex screening. Put another way: Do I think it was fair that Lia Thomas should have been competing as a women’s collegiate swimmer? I do not. This undercuts fairness. Full stop.

Do I care about her choice of pronoun? I do not. Should she be her true self and live absent discrimination? Absolutely. Should we be able to differentiate between sports and life, just as we should be able to differentiate between sex and gender? Yes. But should she have been competing as a collegiate female swimmer? In my opinion, no.

But it should also be evident that bad faith actors have hijacked this nuanced topic for cynical purposes. It’s a losing political issue for one side, and a winner for the other side. As a result, it has not only taken on wildly outsized importance relative to the number of those impacted; it has also been completely weaponized. This has been a hot-button issue in state elections—in states that have virtually no known transgender athletes. It has been ruled on by the Supreme Court. It’s also often a gateway to homophobia, transphobia and general mean-spiritedness.

Which brings us to the WTA. In the spirit of fairness, I have no issue with the policy. More importantly, I have also been told that this spring and summer, multiple players asked the WTA to articulate this policy. And no active players have publicly condemned or criticized it, now that it’s been announced.

However, I would like more information on what prompted this policy. An overarching question I have yet to see addressed: Why? The WTA states that the purpose of the policy is “to preserve the integrity of women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition conditions for all players participating in WTA Tournaments.”

But why announce this now, in the middle of the season? What were the motivations here? A friend noted that it came a week before the Washington, D.C., event, at a time when the (cash-strapped) tour will be relocating its event to the U.S. and will want to stay out of political crosshairs. I have also been told this is conspiracy theory nonsense, and that this was in the works for months. This is where women’s sports are headed, and the WTA knew this would be a distraction, so it wanted to wait until after Wimbledon. And, again, this was encouraged by players.

Despite the press release acknowledging this is a sensitive issue, there was no mention of an inciting event that may have prompted this. I know of zero trans players on tour since Renée Richards (who has views on trans athletes that do not align as you might think). I know of no trans tennis players at a high level. When current players, Aryna Sabalenka most notably, have commented on this issue, their views seem purely hypothetical, based on no actual examples, much less threats to fair competition. There may be male college tennis players thinking, opportunistically, about transitioning to pickleball careers. I cannot imagine there are male college players thinking, opportunistically, about transitioning to WTA careers.

If the WTA wants to get ahead of a controversy or lawsuits, or to establish policy preemptively, it is entitled to do so. If it wants to set policy before it becomes an Imane Khelif mess of a situation—where the Algerian boxer, who was assigned female at birth, filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against World Boxing’s decision requiring her to submit to genetic sex testing in order to compete—fine. If that’s the motivation, so be it. If it wants to be responsive to the concerns of the players, great. If the WTA simply wants to curry favor with state legislatures and even the president—“anticipatory obedience,” as a friend suggested—that’s less fine. What a pity and moral failure that would be.

All of which is to say: I’m O.K. with the “what,” the substance of the policy itself. We should seek more context and clarity on the “why.” And we should be appropriately skeptical until we get more context.

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