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”.
I know I’m gonna catch heat for this, but sex-segregated physical competitions is one of the very few places where trans women shouldn’t be treated the same. Women’s sports competitions aren’t segregated by gender, they’re segregated by sex. Trans women are women in gender, but their body isn’t a biologically female body. That’s the exact definition of transgender - when your body’s biological sex doesn’t match your sense of gender. So by definition, trans women don’t have a biologically female body.
The whole point of sex-segregated sports is for people with female bodies to be able to have a fair competition, instead of them not even getting a chance to compete at all because if they had to compete against biological males then almost 100% of females wouldn’t even make the team. This is the whole reason why sports competitions are segregated by sex.
TLDR trans women should always be treated as women - except for sex-segregated physical competitions
On HRT, trans women have similar muscle mass to cis women. They do not have an advantage.
Is it all about muscle mass? What about bone structure? Lung capacity? Heart size/volume? Stuff like that?
I’m not a doctor.
I mean, it’s testable. On average, how do trans women compare to cis women in some particular sport? From my knowledge, when actually competing, trans women on hrt do not, in fact, do significantly better than cis women.
Dude, hormone blockers exist. They don’t have any advantages if they’re on hormones/ hormone blockers.
Edit: I’ll die on this hill. Enjoy being evil the future.
My understanding is that’s true for muscle mass. However, if they transition after puberty like Lia Thomas did, height and wingspan will remain; both of which confer huge advantages in swimming. Apparently that’s a major reason why Michael Phelps did so well, his arm span is ridiculous.
Are there no cis women with large wing spans or abnormal height, though? Are they still allowed to compete? Why would trans women specifically be excluded for that?
While outliers exist, this has to do with averages. On average men are taller than women, and this difference usually manifests between the ages of 12-15. This confers an advantage. However, for trans athletes who transition before puberty it’s far less cut and dry and there’s a good case to be made for inclusion.
So again why are cisgender women who are above average allowed to compete but transgender women are CATEGORICALLY not allowed to compete even if we’re within the average for all women?
Because athletic associations decided long ago to segregate athletics by sex to account for this average difference, even though some women are taller and stronger than men.
So it’s just a ban on trans women from sports, just because with no actual logic or ethical rationale behind it. Even though it is literally not fair, and the justification provided for it is “fairness”. Gotcha.
It’s literally the most logical and ethical rationale that could be achieved. The ethical and logical rationale is that sexual dimorphism exists, and we understand it quite succinctly.
They are separated by sex, because people are separated by sex characteristics.
Since Gender no longer refers to sex, it only refers to perceived place in society, it has no place being used as a metric for sports.
Literally the only reason we have a separate category of women’s sports is because, on average, women are physically weaker than men. If both sexes could compete against each other, women would barely exist in elite sports. If that wasn’t the case, there’d be no justification for excluding cis men from women’s sports. After all, being male is “just another advantage” like being tall, right?
On average, cis women are physically weaker than trans women also, and so the same logic applies.
The only equitable solution I can see is a third category of trans sports, where trans people compete against each other
That site could use a little more proof reading.
Kind of a contradiction in that trans women aren’t female bit lol. Very much depends on how you define that and how you measure it.
The categories are also not called female categories, they’re called women’s categories, which is effectively the same thing in this conversation. Female is a loose category encompassing people with many typed of bodies and many hormonal levels and many degrees of feminization and masculinization. This is effectively excluding one group of women specifically and ignoring all other groups that have advantages.
this is not correct, on average trans women don’t perform any better at competitive sports than cis women
check the results section of this review paper for more info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10641525/
The thing that really sucks is that tran women are gonna get absolutely dominated by cis men. HRT for long enough really does so so much to the body (hence why most sports allow trans people who have transitioned to compete). Tho trans men also would have insane advantage overs cis women if they competed together
Maybe there isn’t any good solution. But what you are saying leads to a conclusion that there is no place in sports for trans people. Then again, these conversations always fall apart when we talk about cis people with abnormal hormone profiles.
End of the day, a lot of competitive sports come down to genetics. There isn’t much room for someone with disadvantagious genetics to become the best in the world. For me, I don’t see much difference in a trans woman who’s transitioned being world class in swimming and a tall ass cis woman dominating in basketball. Especially when we don’t see trans people sweeping in competitions as a wider trend
There is a place for trans people in sport. Male, female, trans. Done.
I really don’t think there are enough trans people competing at the highest levels to sustain that though.
The problem is that fundamentally there are differences within the genders that favour one competitor over another.
Take Michael Phelps – “Michael Phelps’s height, wingspan, and large hands and feet give him an advantage in swimming. His body also produces less lactic acid than his rivals, which shortens his recovery time.” According to that he should have been disqualified from competing as his body was fundamentally different from his competitors.Yet he was glorified for his achievements even though he had an edge nobody else had.
Herein lies the biggest issue … trans people are disqualified for the simple reason nobody in power wants to deal with them, so the anti-trans movement wins again.
Stop labeling people anti-trans just because they disagree with you about the mechanics of a zero-sum competition situation. The majority of people here are PRO-TRANS, and ALSO pro-women. We all just want the system that provides the most fairness in a situation where there’s no way for it to be completely fair to everyone.
If there are 10 seats on a team, every spot taken by a person means that a different person doesn’t get that spot. So we as a caring society have to decide who CAN get that seat, and also who CAN’T get that seat. It all comes down to whether or not women born with biologically male bodies have a physical advantage over women born with biologically female bodies. At the very minimum, people who went through male puberty have a physical advantage over people who didn’t go through male puberty.
Can you define male puberty though? Like qualitatively in specific terms and with specific language?
Being pro trans is being pro women. Excluding some women from women’s sports would be discriminatory to those women. In this case those women are transgender, and they are being excluded because they are transgender. Which would be opposed to their right to participate, a right we recognize for all other women and girls. That would be anti trans, in this specific context. It doesn’t mean you oppose all of trans rights, but you’re actively supporting the exclusion of trans people from professional athletics.
Where did the person you are replying to say that they couldn’t compete in male professional athletics?
Preventing trans women from competing in women’s sports is a ban on trans women in sports. Trans women do not have testosterone levels anywhere near cis male levels. And none of us are going to degrade ourselves by being categorized as men.
If you would make trans women compete against men then you’re saying trans women aren’t women. It’s as simple as that.
Where do trans men compete?
You are saying it would be degrading to have a trans woman compete against men, but a trans man is not allowed to compete against anyone because they are taking a banned substance to transition. Which is more degrading?
True! Yes trans men should be allowed to compete in men’s categories. I think they are strictly speaking so long as their T levels aren’t abnormally high (same as all men).
Trans women have been allowed in the Olympics for 20 years now. There have been zero trans medalists. If this advantage actually exists, why aren’t they winning?
If i had to guess I’d say it’s simply numbers. Compared to the rest of the population, trans people are extremely rare, and so there likely just haven’t been enough trans people to have been there yet.
Of it was simply numbers, there would have been a trans gold medalist by now. Trans people make up 1-3% of the population. Over the span of 20 years and hundreds of competitions each year, surely a group that supposedly physically dominates the gender group they are in would at least have gotten one gold medal.