I've watched this argument for years, and here is what I finally noticed: the two sides aren't actually disagreeing. They're not even having the same conversation.
One side talks in the language of biology — testosterone, muscle mass, bone density, the measurable advantages of male puberty. The other side talks in the language of identity and dignity — who a person is, what it costs a kid to be told she doesn't belong. Each side hears the other's vocabulary as an attack on its own. So the biology side thinks the identity side is denying science, and the identity side thinks the biology side is denying people. They are talking straight past each other, and politicians on both ends love it that way, because a fight nobody can win is a fight you can fundraise off forever.
So let me offer something neither side has to surrender its language to accept.
Rename the category
Right now, sports have a "women's" category and a "men's" category. But look at what the "men's" category actually is in practice: it's the category with no eligibility restriction. Anyone can compete in it. It's already open. The only thing the word "men's" does is force a transgender woman who wants to compete there to accept a label that denies who she is — and that label is the whole reason the identity side digs in.
So stop calling it "men's." Call it what it is: the Open category.
Watch what that one word does. The women's category stays protected — eligibility tied to female biology, which is the thing the biology side actually cares about and the thing fair competition genuinely requires at the elite level. And the Open category is open to everyone — a transgender woman competes there without ever being told she's a man, and without being grouped with cis women. The conservative gets what he's been asking for: no biological males in women's sports. The liberal gets what she's been asking for: a trans woman never has to identify as a man to play, and she isn't shoved into a category built on someone else's biology. Nobody had to lose the argument. The argument just stopped mattering.
Then decide the hard edges by age, stakes, and sport — not from the Capitol
Renaming the category solves most of it, not all of it, so here's the rest of my position. The remaining questions — a nine-year-old's rec league, a high-school JV team, a Division I scholarship — are genuinely different, and one blanket state law can't get all of them right.
- Youth and recreational sports default to inclusion, because the point of a kid's soccer league is participation, not the podium. Nobody's scholarship rides on second grade.
- Elite and scholarship-stakes competition follows the sport-specific, science-based eligibility rules of each sport's own governing body — the people who actually know the physiology of their sport — rather than a legislature writing one rule for swimming and shot put alike.
Politicians legislating locker rooms from the Capitol is how you get it wrong in both directions at once.
The honest concession
Here's the part I owe both sides. To the identity side: the Open category is not perfect equality — a trans woman who wanted to compete as a woman against women doesn't get that, and I understand why that stings. To the biology side: "Open" doesn't settle every edge case, and some governing bodies will draw eligibility lines you think are too loose. I'm not claiming a clean solution to every scenario. I'm claiming that a single word change and a tiered approach resolve the vast majority of the fight, and leave the genuinely hard residual cases to the people best equipped to decide them — sport by sport, with evidence.
What I'd actually do
Adopt "Open category" language in Minnesota's public school and public college athletic policies. It costs nothing and defuses most of the conflict on day one.
Protect the women's category with biology-based eligibility at the competitive level, as the sport's governing body defines it.
Tier by age and stakes. Inclusion by default for kids' and rec sports; governing-body standards where real stakes exist. Keep the Legislature out of the details.
Two sides talking past each other for a decade, and the exit was hiding in plain sight: the category was already open. Just say so.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
This is a policy position. The observation that the men's category in most sports carries no eligibility restriction, and therefore functions as an open category, is a description of standard competition rules. Several sports governing bodies have moved toward explicit "open" or "open/female" category structures (British Triathlon adopted an open category alongside a protected female category in 2022, and other federations have followed); the specifics of each body's eligibility rules vary by sport and are set by those bodies, not by this campaign. The physiological literature on the effects of male puberty on athletic performance is extensive and is the basis for elite-level eligibility rules.
The governing-body precedents are characterized generally from widely reported policy changes and should be confirmed against each federation's current rules before being cited as specific authority. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.