In December of 2024, for the second year in a row, a male Irish dancer who identifies as a transgender girl has won the title of Southern Regional Champion, beating out nearly 100 girls and indirectly depriving a young woman of the opportunity to compete at the World Championships.

As an internationally competitive Irish dancer, I have been appalled at the introduction of men into women’s sports across the globe in the last several years, and specifically, at the effects of this practice upon my own sport. Despite recent victories such as the defeat in federal court of the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to legally expand the definition of sex in Title IX to include the nebulous concept of “gender identity,” which would have punished states for barring biological males from women’s sports, many female athletes are still forced to yield their spaces to boys and men.

In recent months, I have watched young women diligently balance AP classes, cross-training, and other sports with rigorous dance classes, frequent travel to competitions, and acute mental pressure that accompany athletes everywhere, only to have to compete against individuals with physiological advantages. These girls all train in the hope of qualifying for the World Irish Dancing Championships, a feat attained by a mere 1%. The World Championships are often termed our “Olympics,” and for good reason. While a normal resting heart rate for adults ranges between 60 to 100 beats per minute (BPM), the stamina required to compete in three champion-length rounds means our resting heart rates are often near 40bpm. Our complex rhythms must be unfailingly precise; we require the flexibility to kick well above our heads, and we must possess the explosive power to jump and freeze in midair, even while wearing heavy, fiberglass shoes. Some of us commute several hours to dance class, and in my case, as just one example, I delayed attending my first-choice university in order to secure a qualification.

After all this sacrifice, girls are then made to compete against individuals who, according to the National Library of Medicine, possess superior lung capacity, denser bones, and significantly greater muscle mass even after estrogen therapy. As of 2022, International Olympic Committee regulations require biological males wishing to compete as females to undergo “hormone therapy” to maintain testosterone levels “below 10 nmol/L (nanomoles per liter) for one year.” It is crucial to note here that this standard is patently unfair: The female range for testosterone is “<1 nmol/L.” Furthermore, the National Library cites multiple studies demonstrating hormone therapy’s “limited success” with one study revealing that although male-to-female trans individuals’ testosterone levels “decreased significantly,” “nearly all” failed to reach female levels.

Additionally, current testosterone levels are a faulty metric to begin with: Male exposure to “testosterone secreted before birth … and postnatally … has driven permanent effects.” Females have “10-12%” smaller lung capacity and heart size “85% that of males.” Further studies reveal that male-to-female trans-identifying individuals experience “no bone mass loss” after “28-63 months of estrogen therapy,” and lose just “5-10%” of what can be a “50-75%” muscle mass advantage, an effect which evidence indicates could be “mitigated” by exercise. The implications of these findings upon policy for a highly aerobic, plyometric sport such as Irish dance ought to be self-evident.

Already, in the U.S., England, and Scotland, girls have been deprived of titles, World Qualifications, World Medalist status, and other honors. And now, this past December, we had to watch a boy win another female regional title. Anyone who was present or has seen the videos of that moment knows how discouraged his female competitors and their parents and teachers were.

One mother I spoke to asked to remain anonymous and expressed her frustration. Her daughter has competed in Irish dancing for eight years. She says this issue is “a biological thing,” citing the example of her 11-year-old son who has already overtaken his highly-ranked 15-year-old sister’s best cross-country runtime. Regarding dance, she says: “There’s a lot of disappointment from the girls feeling like there’s nothing that they can do training wise.”

“There were a bunch of girls that have retired … and have cited this as the cause of why they were retiring. In particular, two girls that are on the podium … almost every year.”

It is not only parents who see injustice in this practice. One dancer, who competes at the North American level, talked to me about not just her own but also her competitors’ sadness on the changes to their competition: “We work all year for this championship … and we expect it to be just a girl’s competition.” She says the biological males “tend to be more aggressive, dominant, and take over the stage,” and deprive her competition of opportunities like “getting a recall or a national qualification.” “The majority of us girls feel that disappointment and disagree with” the policy. She concludes, “Awards for me used to be the absolute highlight of Oireachtas … but this year, when the boy won the championship title for the second time … my gut dropped.” Another highly-ranked dancer in the competition concurs, recalling that awards “felt pretty awkward.”

They were not alone in their displeasure, with the first dancer noting that “many of us” and “lots of the audience” did not applaud. What used to be “a fun vibe” of “friendship and girlhood backstage” has shifted to one in which “everyone is now on edge.”

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In addition to a physical advantage, boys dancing against girls poses a greater risk for female injuries. Power and swift motion are key components of Irish dancing, and we usually compete two or three dancers at once. Despite our best efforts, differing choreographic floor patterns and an impulse to retain the front of the stage or lose points for timidity sometimes cause collisions.

An anonymous male World Qualifier, talking to me about his in-studio training, said that “aggression is a very big difference between how I dance” compared with “girls at the studio,” continuing to say that “boys will take the front of the stage more definitively,” than girls, who have cause to fear accidental collisions with boys. He speaks strictly out of a sense of fairness, stating that if “a biological male who identifies as a female competed in the male competition, I would have no problem with that.”

It is past time to end this open discrimination against our girls. Given the obvious evidence demonstrating the physical advantages of boys over girls, and the widespread recognition of injustice among the dance community, it ought to be very clear that our girls deserve their own competitions. Although many of the parents, dancers, and instructors who have spoken out on this topic have chosen to remain anonymous, fearing ended careers or vitriolic tirades against personal character, those of us who wish to protect our girls do not ascribe to such “cancel culture.” We do not call for ostracization or exclusion based upon differing beliefs; dancing is a joy which is and should be accessible to everyone. Just never at the cost of young women’s dreams.

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Emily Claire Boulet has Irish danced competitively for the past nine years. She is currently pursuing a B.A. in English with a concentration in Business Administration at the University of Dallas.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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‘My Gut Dropped’: Trans-Identifying Dancer Wins Female Irish Dancing Competition. Again.