This year, the Women's Tennis Association became the first major women's sports league to require genetic testing of its athletes.

Every woman who wants to compete must now submit to a DNA test, specifically a screening for the SRY gene, to prove her eligibility. 

No men's league has an equivalent rule.

The other problem: this test doesn't do what the WTA claims. Andrew Sinclair, the scientist who discovered the SRY gene, has written plainly that using it to determine biological sex "is wrong because all it tells you is whether or not the gene is present." It cannot show whether testosterone is produced, whether the body can use it, or how the gene actually functions, according to Sinclair's 2025 article for the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.

The women most likely to be harmed by this policy aren't transgender athletes — there are no known transgender women on the WTA Tour. They are intersex cisgender women: women born female, who have lived their entire lives as women, and many of whom have never been told they have a chromosomal variation. Women with conditions like Swyer Syndrome or Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome could fail this test and then be forced to submit to additional screening, hand over medical records, and involve their physician — just to keep competing in the sport they've trained for their entire lives.

Requiring women to prove their genetics to compete is an invasion of privacy that no athlete should face. Sign the petition to demand the WTA repeal this policy and restore every woman athlete's right to compete without surrendering her medical information.