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”.
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
I really don’t think there are enough trans people competing at the highest levels to sustain that though.
That sounds like a more ideal compromise, though I am not sure if even that is without its own set of issues.
Basically, athletic performance falls on the same gradient as masculinity. The more masculine your body is, the more capable you are as an athlete on average. If you are a trans woman taking T blockers/estrogen supplements, your body becomes more feminine, but in turn you lose much of that athletic capability.
So hypothetically, if I am a trans woman and an athlete, where I am paid based on how well I do, am I incentivised to not take T blockers/estrogen supplements, or take them in more limited doses, in order to be a more capable athlete? Basically, am I forced to compromise my gender identity for a better paycheck?
We could force every trans athlete to undergo lab work before every match to make sure their T levels are within a certain threshold, but then is that someone’s fault if their body is not being as responsive to the medication they’re taking, and now they’re out a job? Not to mention how that would basically force their medical history to be public knowledge.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable inviting these sorts of scenarios to occur, to be honest.
Trans people get the lab work you’re talking about done regularly anyway, because it’s part of ensuring their levels are safe and correct.
You’re voting for exclusion (trans competitions will never happen) because you’re uncomfortable with trans people having to do something that is already part of their daily lives
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.
I think you make a valid point that someone could be trying to find fairness in a difficult situation without being anti-trans.
On the other hand, it’s sports. Which is not driven by fairness, but by money. I don’t give a shit either way, as far as I am concerned dope everyone up the gills and modify everyone into super humans, it is just silly sports. But I am not the person paying or advertising.
And that is all that matters. Will the advertisers put in money, and will people pay to watch. Currently, the society of those groups of people say no.
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.
Your comment history is rife with “biologically male/biologically female” bullshit.
Sit down.
