Fina stops transgender swimmers from competing in women's elite events

I think there will be a trickle down effect. If the top of the sport has said no then grassroots will have more confidence they are backed up.

I'm slightly amazed!

I follow a sport where this is true (athletes are often small and slight), and there are still absolutely vast sex differences between male and female athletes.

This is fantastic news. Remember that USA Powerlifting did the same, and there were the usual TRA toddler tantrums before it faded to nothing. Other sporting organisations need to take note, it’s a relatively small number of people stamping their feet on Twitter. If only the UCI would take note. I look forward to the day they do, to see “sporting patriarchy in action” 🤣🤣

""Can't see how they can stop them . They are now women . That's the whole point isn't it ? By not letting them compete in womens events that's like saying they are not real women ? God what a crazy world we live in .""

I'm not sure if this was a sarcastic post or not, it's sometimes difficult to tell over t'internet.
If you ARE being serious, how are they "now women"? What made them women? The name change? The swimsuit? The long hair?
The truth is (as you know) they are not women, not now, never have been, never will be.
Because a woman is an adult human female, and female is a BIOLOGICAL descriptor and a factual objectifiable measureable thing. It means XX chromosomes.
Men are not women, no matter the inner feelings.
I agree with you on one point however. It IS a crazy world we live in. It's crazy we have gotten to the point where this had to be legislated. It should have been stopped in it's tracks on day one.
Today I feel like a little common sense has returned to the world. Hopefully it will have a snowball effect in every other area of life.
Today, we verified that trans women are NOT women.
(as we all knew).

Finally it’s feels like the tide has turned, hopefully the other bodies will follow suit soon

Great news

Just a question- this ruling only covers elite events.
What do we think the impact will be on other levels of swimming?
Why can they not cover all levels with this?

Perhaps the tide of twaw bollocks ( and it is bollocks when 98% of these 'women' still have them) is beginning to turn.

Thank you FINA for having the courage to stand up for women in sport!

Fantastic news. Well done FINA. Women's sport is for women.

How bizarre!!! the IOC created this issue by pushing the decision down to the sports organisations to start with. Because they wouldn’t follow the science and allowed this to become too politically based.

The IOC should not react negatively at all. Because it ducked the decision in the first place.

Does she think the IOC will insist on FINA changing the ruling?

Has that mum forgotten that she gave birth to a male child. She did not have a girl baby.

Fantastic news, feels like the tide is finally beginning to turn!

They aren't real women. Lia still has absolutely everything men have. He just has long hair

So...let me get this right...according to FINA transwomen can't swim with the women because they are not actually women!

And they are using actual verifiable science to prove this point!

The only thing I can say to to that:

BLOODY BRILLIANT🏊

This is such good news.

For all practical purposes, this is really good news.

Would I have preferred them to have said no males in female sports, irrespective of testosterone, or lack of puberty, yes of course. I would like them to have addressed the ideology head-on. And said that women's sports for women.

But they are clearly not willing to do that.

This is a compromise on ideological grounds, but on practical grounds, not really.

Women's swimming is now for women.

Yes, you’d have a risk assessment. Which would identify that people with female bodies taking part in a physical contact sport with male bodies could be at higher risk of injury.

The organisation could exclude on the basis of unacceptable risk (and have to justify that in the face of accusations of transphobia or bigotry) or they require participants to sign off on accepting the risk.

Have you never had to sign a waiver when taking part in dangerous sport?

Brilliant. Am glad the tide is turning and people are realising that female sport is in danger instead of screaming 'TERF" everytime a female sportswoman speaks. It got ridiculous when Martina Navratilova was attacked for supporting women in sports. Great work by Sharron Davies and other women swimmers

Also agree there might be some pushback from male athletes who wish to be known as best Men's athlete and not best Open athlete (or however it would be phrased).

Ha ha, yes.

The Sport patriarchy is alive and kicking.... It'll be interesting to see how the IOC responds.

Telling males to fuck off out of female sport is exactly the opposite of the patriarchy.

Water polo gets pretty physical, so requiring a female wanting to compete with males to sign an assumption of risk means that they have to understand and accept any additional risks from voluntarily taking part in a dangerous activity.

Would the body or organisation not still have a responsibility in this situation? They would be allowing this risky situation.

Is the Open category going to be in addition to Men's or is it Female/Open?

If it's the latter then Thomas won't win anything against the best male swimmers and quite likely wouldn't make the cut for the Olympics because Thomas was only a middling swimmer in the male category.

If Open becomes a third category then presumably the same will happen. Much better male athletes than Thomas will enter and it will end up being a defacto 2nd Men's category. Unless Open has a criteria that ring fences somehow.

I'm unsure how it will work in practice because without any ring fencing sporting wins naturally default to young men aged roughly 18-35 and nobody can change that. For a male person who identifies as a transwoman to win in an Open category that any male can enter into presumably they'd already have to be in the top of elite swimming and not be on any medication.

Open could I suppose be ring fenced to people with either DSD's or the range of gender identities that people hold but even doing that means it will effectively become another form of male category.

Yes, Bridges won medals in February competing in the male category.

Yet according to Bridge’s mother, Bridges is way off their previous male performance levels.

It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?