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
So we cant compete if we have ever had testosterone in our blood, even though cis women also have blood testosterone and can undergo testosterone related hormonal puberty if they have certain conditions, and also we are not allowed to transition before the age of 16 which would mean we had undergone some measure of testosterone hormonal puberty. Also, the concept of “male puberty” is awfully ill-defined isnt it. Have cis women with PCOS gone through “male puberty” ? What specifically constitutes “male puberty”? What hormonal levels are necessary to qualify for “male puberty”? Can Cis men with hormonal deficiency disorders compete in womens sports? To what end does this ruling “protect women’s sports”? This does nothing in a sport that has 1 single trans female athlete except specifically ban her from competing under some misguided notion of “fairness”. I’d love to see them describe how excluding anyone is meant to protect anything, let alone fairness. When will height categories be instituted? When will we make wingspan brackets? How exactly is this competition meant to be fair to begin with?
So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization. Nice. Just say that then. No woman is going to accept being forced to compete in a men’s category, so all you have done is single out and exclude one group of women based on their status as transgender. Creating an “open” bracket does nothing either, as there are probably only 1 or 2 trans athletes who would be competing in this organization anyway.
So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization.
In the womens side of things, yes. The mens side is still open, always has been. And they were very clear and open on that.
Obviously the solution is to have a separate trans Olympics.
/S
Or send them to the mens side, which is ironically is open to everyone.
I’m scared to reply, but is this not a plausible outcome? She is still a she, but could she compete on the men’s team?
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I’m not 100% sure about every sports organization on the planet, but generally speaking the men’s divisions are open to women and nonbinary people. I can’t seem to find much in the olympic rulebook, and it also doesn’t seem to have been tested or ruled on.
