In this interview, 12‑year‑old nationally‑ranked jiu‑jitsu competitor Ilana shares her experiences and evolving views on transgender athletes competing in female divisions. She explains her background in international tournaments, then outlines her perception that trans women retain physiological advantages from male puberty, which she believes creates unfair competition. Ilana recounts hearing about trans participation mainly from other sports (track, swimming) and notes that jiu‑jitsu currently lacks a separate trans bracket. She raises safety and privacy concerns, citing a school incident where a boy identifying as a girl used the girls’ bathroom, and expresses unease about potential threats to female athletes. When asked about discrimination, she distinguishes between general anti‑discrimination (e.g., race, marriage) and what she sees as unfair gender‑based competition rules. Ilana discusses who should set participation policies, favoring sport‑specific leagues or tournament organizers over government intervention, while acknowledging the need to listen to public opinion. She admits uncertainty about hormone testing and verification, noting the technical and ethical complexities of distinguishing natal females from transitioned athletes. Finally, she describes how she might handle a suspected trans competitor in a match—by asking directly and possibly removing the athlete to protect fairness. The interview concludes with a light‑hearted sign‑off.
Chapters
All right, well, it's good to be in touch, Ilana. We've both been traveling and busy in tournaments, and it's been a while. Um, but yeah, I guess the question that I am first curious about is you are, uh, well, I want to call you a world-class athlete. Maybe I should call you a nationally ranked athlete. How What's, what's a legitimate description of your achievement as an athlete?
Uh, nationally ranked is pretty accurate because I've competed all over the world in national tournaments, I guess. Um, so yeah, I guess you could just call it that.
Got it. Um, and so you mentioned you're somewhat familiar with the issue of transgender athletes. Tell me what you know about that issue.
Well, everything I've heard so far has been about, um, or most of the things I've heard so far has been about transgender boys— or not transgender girls, like I think that means males transing into females— and then competing in female, um, sports and having a very clearly unfair dominant advantage because of their original male status, and so they've got like bigger, bigger bodies, stronger muscles, more testosterone, even though like they've somewhat transed into a woman. And it's not very fair because they have all those advantages, and so, you know, they win every time. And I feel like, I don't know why they do it, maybe it's because like they're not as good as other boys in their boys' sports, So they want to like downsize to girls in order to win, and that's completely unfair, and they should leave the girls to biological girls, in my opinion. I've never had to fight against a boy turning into a girl. I've only fought boys just for the fun of it. Like, boys be boys. I'm not gonna do that as much anymore because I'm older and puberty and stuff like that. And so especially at my age and older, um, like the difference between boys and girls is huge. So if you have a male turning into a female, the difference would still be huge. Like, I don't know what process they do, estrogen or whatever, but it doesn't change much. Um, so I've heard a lot of stories from women and girls talking about how they've been like undermined or overpowered by the boys in their competitions and sports and stuff. And trying to raise awareness for it. But I know that there's a very strong, like, trans community who supports the boys going into female sports. I think— I'm not too sure about that, but that's what I've heard. I'm learning more too.
Got it. Sounds like you have a strong opinion. Is this an active issue in your sport, or you only hear about it from other sports?
I've actually only heard about it from other sports. I've never heard, like, Actually, no, no, I've heard of jiu-jitsu matches where there's like trans boys and girls brackets. Um, I guess the reason why I first said other sports, because, because I've heard about it online more, um, like in track and running and swimming. I forget the names now, but that trans man who entered into the, to some really big swimming competition, I'm not sure, um But I'm sure it's happened in a lot of other sports that I haven't heard about too. Maybe it just didn't like make media.
And on the jiu-jitsu side, when you said, was there a separate trans category in jiu-jitsu, or were there trans within female jiu-jitsu?
That were trans within female jiu-jitsu. I don't think there's a trans bracket yet. I don't think it's that big.
So given, given your sense First of all, do you have any idea why people thought this might be an appropriate or fair thing to do?
Um, one thought is it could have been a selfish decision, like maybe if the boys weren't like the cream of the crop when it comes to boy sports, because I know that since there's so many more boys in sports, it could be extremely competitive. Like maybe they were feeling like, um, defeated by the boys and then made this selfish move to move into the girls because they know it'd be easier and less competition and things like that. And that's true, the girls' brackets tend to be a lot smaller than boys', um, and that makes it easier, especially if you've got like the boy body and stuff like that. Um, but Yeah, I'm not entirely— why? They probably could be a lot of reasons, but that's one.
Got it. Um, have you heard of the argument that certain people identify, uh, in certain ways? No. So there's a whole— people can identify as gay, lesbian, trans, and so forth. Are you familiar with those arguments at all?
Yeah, and I don't really have a problem with people identifying as gay or lesbian and stuff like that. Um, I have— or my, my opinion is more focused on those who are identifying as the opposite sex, just because it puts me and other girls in a lot of danger if men or boys are identifying as girls or women. For example, back in school, um, there was this kid who was identifying as a girl— or a boy who was identifying as a girl— and he would go into the girls' bathrooms. And the teachers would not stop them because that would be judging him or discriminating him or whatever. And it kind of made the girls uncomfortable. Oh no, no, he didn't identify as a boy, it was a they/them or whatever. But I've heard of cases where boys identified as girls, not they/thems, and it made it a little worse. And I guess it's not as worse as like actually transitioning into a girl or woman. I don't really know how that works. But I guess you could kind of treat it like the same thing because I know they like— I've heard of them telling people like they can't judge or discriminate or something because they're— they identify and like, that's it. I don't really know a lot about that topic though, and I'm trying not to judge too much. But just when it comes to like the safety of me, then, you know, I try to pay attention.
The safety of you?
Yes.
Got it. Makes sense to care about the safety of you. So what do you make of the notion that we should not discriminate Is that a general thing? Is that always a good thing? What do you— what is the case against discriminating against people?
Um, to be honest, I think I should start at the fact that I actually don't really know what discriminate means. I've never looked it up. Maybe I should know by now, like, by, like, context and everything, but I'm assuming it means, like, judging or separation, like, um, whites and blacks and things like that, how we used to do that. Um, I don't really— I mean, in my little secluded world, because I don't like have a lot of social media, I don't go on it a lot, I don't know how we discriminate against them. It's like maybe we don't let them do the things they want to because they identify as something or whatever. But I mean, I don't think you should discriminate against people, but maybe telling them that It's not okay for a boy to go into a girls' bracket. Should not be counted as discriminating, or maybe that a boy shouldn't go into girls' bathrooms. I don't know.
Got it. Just to kind of back up a little bit on the discrimination. So it used to be the case, really not that long ago, that in some states in the United States, it was not legal for Black people and white people to get married. It was actually illegal. Um, do you think that that is, uh, that we should let, let states prevent Black and white people from getting married or not?
No, I don't think so. I don't see that. I don't think you should prevent anyone from getting married or anything like that. Um, that's discrimination, right?
That discrimination.
Oh, I don't think that's right. Um, the only thing that I don't think is right in this case is letting, uh, the opposite gender going into other people's sports, because I honestly don't really know a lot besides that. I just think that's weird and unfair. But I for sure think that we don't— that we shouldn't discriminate against people for choices like marriage or, yeah, stuff like that.
Okay, and so also employment is another category that, um, do you think that employers should be able to pick which employees they want and not hire which other employees they want to hire?
I think that's a little more complicated because in some ways I do think so. Like, maybe— I don't mean to like be overly general about this, but my thoughts were that maybe a frail, uh, skinny small woman, maybe you shouldn't do a construction job or maybe some of the more dangerous things that men do. I think that maybe the employer should be able to pick and choose a little bit when it comes to that. But I feel like in like tech industry and other things that are kind of co-ed, then maybe it should— like the choosing should just be about their skills and not their gender, uh, beauty, or anything like that.
Got it. So to try to create a general rule, um, what I think I'm hearing from you is that in cases where there might be a rationale for setting rules about who can participate— well, I guess with that, some of this gets into private versus the state. Do you think that the government should say who can participate in a job, or the employers be the ones who get to say who can, who can be hired in a job?
Um, I don't see why the government has to decide that. Um, I guess if— I mean, the employer, I'm assuming, is like the boss or the one hiring someone else. So I'm assuming they know best for the company or the job or whatever they're hiring people for. Uh, maybe that's not the case. The entire time, but I guess that makes the most sense to me right now.
Got it. And then in the case of transgender athletes, you know, there are different levels. You could have the government making rules, you could have leagues. I don't know how your sports are organized, but sometimes there are leagues, and then below that there are particular tournaments. What level of decision-making should decide if transgender athlete is allowed to compete in a competition?
Um, well, for the people organizing everything, it depends. Like, um, they're like certain companies or leagues, I guess, um, control their own organizations and leagues because there's a bunch of different ones for jiu-jitsu. And then I'm actually not sure who runs wrestling because I know there's USA Wrestling and then like different leagues in different states and stuff. But when it comes to the more local tournaments, or the ones that aren't controlled by like the government or anything, I guess it's— I mean, since they're owned and not operated by the government, I guess it should be up to them. But I think that they should also listen to the public and, um, think about whatever they're saying. And it could be mixed, like maybe people were like, oh yeah, it's okay for boys to enter girls tournaments, like there's nothing wrong with that. 'Totally fair.' But maybe others are like, 'No, that's not fair. You can't do that.' So you've got to listen, I think. And, um, all right. And I know for my sport, like, a lot of the officials and stuff in the leagues have done jiu-jitsu before, so they kind of know what it's like. So maybe that'll impact their decision, hopefully. Uh, but I guess it should be up to them.
And one of the, I think, tricky things is You know, if somebody has actually transitioned to being female, then you're not supposed to call them boys anymore. So how do you differentiate between two girls in a tournament, one of whom has transitioned, the other of whom was nataly female? And nataly means born female. How do you distinguish that?
Do you mean physically?
Um, well, this gets into all sorts of issues. Um, yeah, and then actually even at the Olympics, sometimes they're tests, and there are situations where people have been given hormone tests. And you can imagine, yeah, if it's controversial and somebody says they're female and somebody else says, I don't think so, yeah, should we allow people just to say they're female? Should the cases be adjudicated by the governing body. How do you have any idea how that should be addressed?
Not really, because then you'd have to test everybody, even if they were telling the truth. My understanding is that it's kind of only a small minority of people that are doing this, right? It's not like a big thing.
I'm not sure. Yeah, in general. And it does get surprisingly technical because there are some they're called intersex cases where they're actually a little bit ambiguous from a biological standpoint. And there was a famous case of a boxer who won as a female and one of the leagues— Oh yeah. —described her as a female and then later another league described her as a male. And so it actually became a very kind of technical discussion.
I think I remember hearing about that. Yeah, boxer.
What would, what would you do if there was a competitor in a jiu-jitsu match that you thought, um, that you didn't think belonged there due to gender reasons?
Well, if I was organizing it, I guess I would ask them, but then they would probably be like very flustered and offended maybe. I don't know if that's how they, um, those people tend to react. But I check, like maybe if it was a transgender girl, I'd ask, hey, are you a biological girl? Because you can't be in this bracket if you're not. I'm not really sure how they responded. I don't know if that's been done before, but I'd try to get them out of the bracket, even if it's a small one, because I don't think it's fair to the girls that are competing.
It might be interesting to dig into some of the legal disputes around this. Because it has been so incredibly controversial. But with that, we've already gone much longer than usual. And really, I hope you have a fantastic— you know, it's funny, I never say good luck in your tournaments because so much of it is not luck. It's grit, preparation, and so forth. So what's the appropriate way to wish you a good match? Simply, May your mind be serene and focused or something like that.
Yeah, something like that. Like, may you make the best food to— I don't know. I really don't know. But thank you anyways. You're welcome.
