The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.
The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.
Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.
However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.
The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.
So we cant compete if we have ever had testosterone in our blood, even though cis women also have blood testosterone and can undergo testosterone related hormonal puberty if they have certain conditions, and also we are not allowed to transition before the age of 16 which would mean we had undergone some measure of testosterone hormonal puberty. Also, the concept of “male puberty” is awfully ill-defined isnt it. Have cis women with PCOS gone through “male puberty” ? What specifically constitutes “male puberty”? What hormonal levels are necessary to qualify for “male puberty”? Can Cis men with hormonal deficiency disorders compete in womens sports? To what end does this ruling “protect women’s sports”? This does nothing in a sport that has 1 single trans female athlete except specifically ban her from competing under some misguided notion of “fairness”. I’d love to see them describe how excluding anyone is meant to protect anything, let alone fairness. When will height categories be instituted? When will we make wingspan brackets? How exactly is this competition meant to be fair to begin with?
So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization. Nice. Just say that then. No woman is going to accept being forced to compete in a men’s category, so all you have done is single out and exclude one group of women based on their status as transgender. Creating an “open” bracket does nothing either, as there are probably only 1 or 2 trans athletes who would be competing in this organization anyway.
In the womens side of things, yes. The mens side is still open, always has been. And they were very clear and open on that.
But she isn’t a man, so whatever is happening on the mens side isn’t fucking relevant, is it?
She isn’t a man, but her body is at least partially male. That’s the definition of trans.
Unfortunately, no amount of medical interventions are able to completely transform a person’s body to be exactly the same as a person who was born with a body of the opposite sex.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/
That article says there’s no such thing as fully discreet categories of male and female. True!
So we either have to separate athletes into two separate categories of biological male and female that applies to 99% of people in order to give biological females a chance to compete at all, -OR- we have to say that since the biological male/female categorization system doesn’t apply to 100% of people then there is no basis for separate male/female sports and everyone just competes in a single event, in which case the only people who get to be on the team will wind up being close to 100% cis or trans males, with essentially no females ever getting to do professional sports.
Yeah, I think this is something that people continously fail to realize, sports have been split by sex/gender so that sport events aren’t dominated by one sex/gender. If you’re drawing lines to protect one group you’ve opened up the can of worms about where that line is drawn.
You linked to an opinion piece by a transgender person, you should mention that.
There is a definite bias there, which is to be expected, but they have links to back up some of what they say.
Is this not like most competitions where the “men’s” category is actually “open” and there is just a separate women’s category?
Not touching the main debate, just curious about this one part.
Play victim harder, daddy!
World Aquatics insists it is doing all it can be inclusive and has introduced an “open” category for transgender swimmers. However, plans to debut it at the Berlin World Cup last October were cancelled after no entries were received for any of the 50m and 100m races across all strokes, which were due to take place alongside male and female races.
“Separate but equal” where have I heard that before… 🤔
So you’re saying there shouldn’t be separate males and females events, there should only be a single all-entrants event
False dichotomy, no? Moving away from gender segregation doesn’t mean one giant pool. There are non-discriminatory ways to create fairness, possibly even more so. Weight classes and other physical separations might be a good start. I just can’t believe that “men and women” are the two ideal categories for fairness and I think if it wasn’t just for the tradition of doing it forever, we would be doing something smarter.
World Aquatics insists it is doing all it can be inclusive and has introduced an “open” category for black swimmers. However, plans to debut it at the Berlin World Cup last October were cancelled after no entries were received for any of the 50m and 100m races across all strokes, which were due to take place alongside white races.
Phrenologists had a lot to say about all the “physical differences” of the races also. Trans people have just exposed a glaring hole in the way we segregate sports. Maybe instead of appealing to tradition, we can find a better way to introduce fairness into sports?
Why wouldn’t a woman compete in a men’s category?
The categories are gender segregated. It’s not that no woman would ever do so or want to; it’s that banning a woman from women’s sports is saying that she’s not a woman. That’s the very point of the category to begin with. Forcing a woman to compete in men’s category is declaring her to be a man, which is something the overwhelming majority of women would not stand for.
Recall the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya. She was very much declared not to be a woman by an international sporting organization.
You’re not arguing in good faith by having something so absolute as:
What would you classify banning her from women’s swimming but not from swimming in general if not insinuating that she’s not a woman? I don’t think it’s the one you replied to that’s arguing in bad faith…
The categories are sex segregated, not gender segregated. The names of the competitions are from a time when most people didn’t know there was a difference between man/male and woman/female. So when it’s called like “men’s sprint” the actual meaning is “male’s sprint”. If you wanted to make the official names of the competitions to be called “male’s” and “female’s” instead of “men’s” and “women’s” then I would totally try to help you in that movement
Sex and gender are effectively the same thing for this conversation. We consistently refer to female athletes as women and the terms are entirely interchangeable here. Sex is also a socially constructed category based around certain anatomies and characteristics. Gender is assigned the same way sex is. Sex is not the hardline objective reality it’s being treated as here. Women with CAIS are not forbidden from “female sports”. Similarly, women with PCOS who have high T are not banned from “female sports”.
I’m not male. No part of me is male. My legal sex has been changed. If we’re separating people into male and female, I’m placed into the female group.
You’re directly contradicting the argument that every trans activist has been making for decades by saying that sex and gender are “effectively the same thing”. Is that really what you want to be doing here?
It’s objectively the truth that sex is another class category created by humans to sort people and enforce a hierarchy of sex. That argument (trans women are male women) was adopted to appeal to cisgender people.
I’m female, I am a woman. I’m not male. My legal sex is female.
This is patently false. It was a category to distinguish between two observable variations of human. The category of man/woman existed in the annals of history far beyond what we know today. Before we were humans, we knew instinctively what a man/woman was. You see these systems in herding species already. Don’t give me this “we created this division just so we could dunk on others” bullcrap.
But there are more than 2 observable variations of humans.
There have also been many cultures with more 2 than sexes/genders (the difference is literally 0 prior to the 50s).
And animals have genitals but they do not have conceptions of sex. They don’t abstract categories from physical attributes they just recognize and respond to the bodies around them.
So what do you call a baby that has a penis but isn’t old enough to tell you whether they are a boy or a girl?
A baby. Are it’s genitals relevant somehow?
What if a women wanted to compete?
How is it ok for one gender, in your view, but not ok for the other?
To compete with men? Afaik most organizations do not have rules explicity banning women from men’s sports. Not sure what you’re talking about.
I’m asking because you brought it up.
I’m genuinely not sure what you’re asking. Your comment doesn’t make sense.
I answered the question you asked initially in my second comment.
Lmao ok then. Guess this conversation is over. Good luck out there I guess.
Not sure how you not making sense is my fault exactly, but okay.
Not sure why this is being down-voted. Most organizations do not have rules saying women can’t compete in men’s sports.
Maybe cross that made up bridge when you get to it? So far this hasn’t happened and is only being imagined as a strawman to argue in favour of this transphobic discrimination.
There aren’t any women at all that want to compete? Interesting. Guess that’s why OP is so sure of themselves.
So are you OK with forcing a trans man to compete against men in sports?
I mean where else would you want them to compete? Are there trans men out there demanding to compete in women’s sports? If sports is sex or gender segregated than yeah they should compete with men.
Trans people can still enjoy sports and compete on other levels as well as be a part of it in many other ways. Competing in sports for sure isn’t a healthy path to gender selfactualization. Not only because of the public resistance to change in established categories.