World swimming bans transgender athletes from women’s events

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FILE - University of Pennsylvania athlete Lia Thomas prepares for the 500 meter freestyle at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships, March 17, 2022, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. World swimming’s governing body has adopted new rules for transgender athletes, only permitting swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events. FINA members voted 71.5% in favor of the new “gender inclusion policy” at the organization’s extraordinary general congress on Sunday, June 19, 2022. Thomas made history in the United States as the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — World swimming’s governing body has effectively banned transgender women from competing in women’s events, starting Monday.

FINA members widely adopted a new “gender inclusion policy” on Sunday that only permits swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events. The organization also proposed an “open competition category.”

“This is not saying that people are encouraged to transition by the age of 12. It’s what the scientists are saying, that if you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” James Pearce, who is the spokesperson for FINA president Husain Al-Musallam, told The Associated Press.

“They’re not saying everyone should transition by age 11, that’s ridiculous. You can’t transition by that age in most countries and hopefully you wouldn’t be encouraged to. Basically, what they’re saying is that it is not feasible for people who have transitioned to compete without having an advantage.”

Pearce confirmed there are currently no transgender women competing in elite levels of swimming.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health just lowered its recommended minimum age for starting gender transition hormone treatment to 14 and some surgeries to 15 or 17.

FINA’s new 24-page policy also proposed a new “open competition” category. The organization said it was setting up “a new working group that will spend the next six months looking at the most effective ways to set up this new category.”

Pearce told the AP that the open competition would most likely mean more events, but those details still need to be worked out.

“No one quite knows how this is going to work. And we need to include a lot of different people, including transgender athletes, to work out how it would work,” he said. “So there are no details of how that would work. The open category is something that will start being discussed tomorrow.”

The members voted 71.5% in favor at the organization’s extraordinary general congress after hearing presentations from three specialist groups — an athlete group, a science and medicine group and a legal and human rights group — that had been working together to form the policy following recommendations given by the International Olympic Committee last November .

The IOC urged shifting the focus from individual testosterone levels and calling for evidence to prove when a performance advantage existed.

FINA’s “deeply discriminatory, harmful, unscientific” new policy is “not in line with (the IOC’s) framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations,” Anne Lieberman of Athlete Ally, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ athletes, said in a statement .

“The eligibility criteria for the women’s category as it is laid out in the policy (will) police the bodies of all women, and will not be enforceable without seriously violating the privacy and human rights of any athlete looking to compete in the women’s category,” Lieberman said.

FINA said it recognizes “that some individuals and groups may be uncomfortable with the use of medical and scientific terminology related to sex and sex-linked traits (but) some use of sensitive terminology is needed to be precise about the sex characteristics that justify separate competition categories.”

Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later. FINA policy on men's and women's competition

In March, Lia Thomas made history in the United States as the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship, the 500-yard freestyle.

Thomas said last month on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she was aiming to become an Olympic swimmer. She also disputed those who say she has an unfair biological edge that ruins the integrity of women’s athletics, saying “trans women are not a threat to women’s sports.”

Thomas didn’t immediately respond to a message left with the University of Pennsylvania seeking comment.

Dr. Alireza Hamidian Jahromi, co-director of the Gender Affirmation Surgery Center at Temple University Hospitals in Philadelphia, said 12 is an arbitrary age.

“Where did that 12 come from?” he said. “Is that a specific age that everybody is supposed to have passed through puberty, because it may not be the case.”

Age of puberty varies for different people, he said.

Hamidian Jahromi said the transition involves three stages: social, medical involving hormones and surgical. “Which of these three do they mean? Should the patient have undergone surgery by that time, which is almost impossible,” he said.

Other sports have also been examining their rules around transgender athletes.

On Thursday, cycling’s governing body updated its eligibility rules for transgender athletes with stricter limits that will force riders to wait longer before they can compete.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) increased the transition period on low testosterone to two years, and lowered the maximum accepted level of testosterone. The previous transition period was 12 months but the UCI said recent scientific studies show that “the awaited adaptations in muscle mass and muscle strength/power” among athletes who have made a transition from male to female takes at least two years.

AP journalist Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

FireTyme on June 19th, 2022 at 19:56 UTC »

it’s Fina that banned it, but it’s the governing instance for swimming world wide, national level/olympic level can decide for their own but will probably adopt the same stance.

i’ll just copy my reply on a different thread about the same topic tbh;

as a swimming coach who has been following this for a while it was bound to happen. with fina world swimming championships going on at the moment the discussion was at an all time high.

It is for MTF athletes who transitioned after puberty competing in womens division, if you transitioned before the age of 12 you are alright to compete no matter what born gender too. this rule will probably get more nuanced over the years allowing people who transitioned at an older age but took puberty blockers as a teen, but we'll see.

i think its a reasonable stance. an open division or combined swimming like the stuff ISL has been doing and the mixed medley races popping up in the olympics is what allows trans athletes that transitioned after puberty to compete. Its hard to disprove you arent advantaged like Lia Thomas and you cant blame the athlete for taking advantage if its within regulation.

You'll probs see this regulation be pulled through on a national level and the olympic committtee soon. Its not an ideal solution, but i do think its reasonable.

bobface222 on June 19th, 2022 at 19:45 UTC »

Here's one of the better pieces of literature on the subject that tackles the issue of transgender athletes in exhaustive detail.

It's very long but the science doesn't lend itself well to convenient and snappy observations. The end includes a summary for the TLDR crowd.

Fairness in sport, particularly on the issue of gender, has been a point of confusion and contention for as long as governing bodies have been making the rules for athletic contests. Increasing awareness and visibility of individuals who do not neatly fall into men’s or women’s divisions have exacerbated these concerns. Particular scrutiny has been applied to those who wish to compete as women. Most of the discussion here will focus on that division, since the men’s divisions have been spared this level of examination and controversy.

There has never been a “golden age” when this was simple. In the past, women were simply excluded from sport. As barriers to participation have slowly fallen, questions about who qualifies as a woman for competitive purposes have been raised and unsuccessfully addressed multiple times. Lest an appeal to a more straightforward time be made, we do not, nor have we ever, had an agreed-upon definition of what defines a man or a woman that can be applied to all humans. There is no specific biological characteristic, nor set of characteristics, including genital structures, reproductive organs, or chromosomal arrangement, that can adequately answer this question for this purpose. While most humans can be comfortably grouped into either the men’s or women’s divisions, there are others that cannot. Given that participation in sport is a widely shared and enjoyable undertaking with multiple biological, psychological, and social benefits, finding ways to maximize inclusion while preserving fairness is challenging.

Alas, there are no clear answers. Lacking a consistent way to define men and women hamstrings the proceedings from the outset. When examining the performance differences between men’s and women’s divisions, confounders in the data abound. Teasing out the physiological and psychosocial components of the differences we observe is not yet possible. Even the role of testosterone, which is one of the mostly widely utilized performance enhancing drugs and thought to be the primary arbiter of the gender gap in sports, becomes less clear when looking at the research. Lastly, there is a paucity of research into how athletic performance changes when an individual transitions between genders. This handwringing is not simply an equivocation. A scientific consensus does not yet exist regarding the differences between genders, let alone how to define those genders. Because of this uncertainty, rules and policies that encourage inclusion of transgender athletes represent the best balance among the imperfect choices available. Specifically, allowing male-to-female transgender athletes to compete in the division of their choice within sport should not be considered prima facie disadvantageous to other women competitors, though this will need to be considered on a sport-by-sport basis. This situation could potentially change or be clarified with further research and we would adjust our recommendations if such findings became available. For now, developing clear and equitable division eligibility policies and subsequently, allowing transgender athletes to compete in the appropriate division is prudent.

SophiaHuffC on June 19th, 2022 at 19:35 UTC »

Misleading title

Swimmers who have had "male puberty suppressed beginning at Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later, and they have since continuously maintained their testosterone levels in serum (or plasma) below 2.5 nmol/L." are also allowed to compete in women's races. that pretty much is in line with most competitions.