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 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.
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
So any woman stronger than the average for women ought to also be excluded then? Again, why is it specific that trans women be excluded?
There are not and likely will not be anywhere near enough trans people to occupy a single category at a single event. Refusing to allow trans women to compete as women, like every other woman, is a de facto ban on transgender women participating in sporting events. Transgender women are women, just like tall women are women and women with large lung capacity are women. Why should trans women be excluded for being above average but other women who are above average shouldn’t be?
Because by nature of their transition, they don’t fit in a single cleanly defined category. We should just change the definition to say: Those with XX chromosomal pairs. Because you can’t change those. Nice and simple. Anyone with double-X chromosomes, good deal. Anyone with XY - goes into the “open” category - which is by default, the ones usually with mostly men in them.
So would a cisgender man with De la Chapelle syndrome, who has XX chromosomes, be required to compete with cis women? Would a person with XY chromosomes whose body was assigned female at birth due to Swyer syndrome or complete androgen insensitivity be required to compete against cis men?
Or would you just disqualify anyone who has any intersex characteristics, which are about as common as having red hair?
So cis women with CAIS (XY) are out too then.
No, not any woman stronger than the average for women, because by definition the leading woman will always be stronger than other women.
At the same time, plenty of cis men are weaker than the average female athlete, but we don’t let them compete.
We exclude all males as a category, including former males, because on average they have an unfair advantage. Attempting to make exceptions based on individual performance isn’t feasible.
Effectively, women’s sports are like amateur vs pro competition. You don’t let an ex pro play in an amateur match, even if they’re not as strong as they once were.
So de facto banning some women from any kind of professional sporting competition is acceptable because it’s too much work to include them? Why is that acceptable to you? And why is it necessary to couch these concepts in discussions about fairness when you yourself admit they are not fair? Excluding female people from female categories seems counterproductive to any attempts at providing level playing fields for women and girls in professional athletics.
Also there are other groups of women that are on average more physically capable then the average for women as a whole. Should they also be excluded?
Level playing fields for women and girls aren’t served by allowing competition from people who haven’t always been female. Its not fair on cis women to have to compete against people who’ve had advantages from going through puberty while male.
The purpose of women’s sport isn’t to be inclusive of women, its to be exclusive of men. And its not that it’s too much work to include some trans women on the basis of ability, it’s that it’s just impossible. Do they include only those who aren’t likely to win? Maybe some that can win, but not by too much? What about a champion male who’s recently transitioned and would shatter the world record, making it unattainable for any cis woman for years to come, maybe ever? There’s no way of making those judgements, no matter how much work is done.
Its the same principle as banning performance enhancing drugs. Some clean athletes might beat some drug using athletes, but we don’t try to figure that out, we just ban drugs. And puberty as a male is getting a few years if hormone-induced muscle gain that isn’t fully lost even post-transition, even on hormone blocking drugs.
Trans women are not male.
The bar for entry is and has always been several years of sustained hormone therapy with normal estrogen and testosterone levels. And even that is far too restrictive.
What about groups of cisgender women who are above the physical average for women as a whole? Why is the proposal to ban transgender women and not other groups/classes of women based on them being on par above average? I mean is it fair for women from South Korea to compete against women from the Netherlands? Should women from the Netherlands be banned from competition? They have an average advantage, so it’s unfair to the rest of the women that they’re allowed at all.
Your essential argument has to be that transgender women are not women. There is no other argument for excluding trans women that adequately explains why it’s necessary for trans women to be excluded and not anyone else.
I’m not sure where the disconnect is happening. It’s been explained to you over and over but you loop back.
The two categories exist to provide women a fair chance to compete in a category of their own. We don’t establish categories based on outliers, but on averages. On average male athletes will always outperform female athletes. There is no way around this fact. It’s not a matter of too much work to include females. There is no work to be had if we wanted to ensure fair odds. Most of the trans community agrees with this assessment. It’s not that hot of a take.
No they don’t…
I tried googling for some statistics regarding trans people’s opinions on this matter and I didn’t find anything, is there a poll either of you has seen that indicates this or is this the general consensus among trans people you know?
No poll. But I’m a trans athlete that has been active in trans communities for nearly a decade.
I have no numbers, but I think it’s safe to say I’d be aware if most of my own community was against my participation.
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.
Intersex people exist and the variation of people assigned one sex or the other is damn near infinite so no, the assertion that sex is binary is really only ever used to exclude transgender people and intersex people from rights and to assert that there is a biological basis for assigned gender roles. Sex is dimorphic because we choose to describe it that way, we could just as easily have more sexes just by creating more categories based on aspects of human physiology.
And I’m female, so the only ethical rationale would be that I would compete with other people that we consider female.
If I’m born crippled, I can’t compete in the Olympics. It happens. We can only produce the closest thing to fair that we all agree on. It’s not to exclude transgender people, it’s simply that the exclusion just happens to exist based on how we determine eligibility.
So yeah it isn’t fair, so we can stop saying that excluding trans women is about fairness then.