Category: Women’s Sport

No major sport has had officials brave enough to tackle the divisive issue of transgender participation — until now.

Swimming's world governing body (FINA) has voted to effectively ban transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races.

The new policy requires transgender competitors to have completed their transition by the age of 12 in order to be able to compete in women's competitions.

A statement from FINA said that male-to-female transgender athletes will be eligible to compete only if "they can establish to FINA's comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later".

[Source:  SkyNews]

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Full Story Here

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FINA will explore creating an Open Category for Transwomen (biological males).

Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ athletic advocacy group, responded to the announcement and said the eligibility criteria is "discriminatory".

They posted on Twitter: "[It] is discriminatory, harmful, unscientific and not in line with the 2021 IOC principles. If we truly want to protect women's sports, we must include all women."

[Source: SkyNews]

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Finally, some sanity on behalf of women competitive swimmers. Hopefully other sports will find the courage too. Australian Rules Football, your turn!

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Hannah Mouncey, who transitioned at age 26, is 6ft 2 in and weighs 220lb. Mouncey is a biological male but participates in a female Australian Rules Football league and pulverizes female players on the field. A picture is worth more than words.

Is this fair? Or is there an intrinsic injustice of pitting one sort of sexed body against another very different sort?

I’m with the real girls on this one. And against the body deniers among us.

The Body Deniers Among Us

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Madison DeBos of Southern Utah University has written an op-ed.

Madison is a long distance specialist. Top 10 in the 1,500m and 5K as a collegiate Junior. And she has seen a few important changes during her career.

One day at practice during my freshman year, our coach told us that another team in our conference had an athlete who had previously competed on the men’s team who now identified as female and would be competing against us. This biological male runner had posted the same time in the 1,500-meter as the fastest woman in the world in that event — 3:50. Now, it was my teammates and I who were being forced to compete against someone who had already broken the female record. 

Here’s another quote:

At the indoor Big Sky Championships in 2020, I started the distance medley relay for our team, and the biological male runner anchored the relay for the University of Montana. That’s when we heard the athlete’s coach say something no one expected to hear: "Slow down." 

Slow down to give the appearance of a fair fight, I suppose. But we watched as this athlete went on to take first place in the mile — replacing a female runner on the podium. 

When you show up at a conference meet and see a biological male athlete towering over you, way more muscular and with a completely different build than any female on the starting blocks, it is at first surprising. Then, quickly, disheartening and even heartbreaking. How do I stand a chance, despite my nearly two decades of training for this moment?

Entire Op-Ed is here.

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