Telegraph: Exclusive: World Athletics set to allow transgender athletes to compete against women under new rules

This is not women's sport. As soon as there is one man in it, it becomes mixed sex.

The same goes for prisons, refuges, hospital wards, the lot. None of these have women only spaces. They have men's spaces and mixed sex spaces. What the actual fuck is wrong with the absolute fools who make these decisions?

There is no compromise to be had. Women's spaces are for women and men need to GTF out!

Usual tactics aren't working on him! I do feel like there's a mood change.

I am the least sporty person ever and rarely watch sport.

I am devastated that a generation of women will be damaged by decisions like this and don't understand how it can be allowed. The only silver lining is that it will soon become apparent what the consequences for women's sport is going to be and I foresee a very rapid backtracking in the future (hopefully). Once biological men start winning everything, breaking records all over the place and relegating women to last place, I can't see how it can continue. Sadly many talented young women will suffer in the meantime.

I think it is time to cut the include before proof to exclude crap.

I think it is time to actually take a protect fairness until proven that there is no advantage route.

Re CAIS my view as a grassroots level athlete is that inclusion has to be guided by the evidence on whether there's a material performance benefit. If you have CAIS probably you do look phenotypically female and certainly would have had female socialisation - but we also shouldn't be starting from the point of view that anyone who does not fit into the category "standard man" gets to go in with the women. If the evidence didn't show overrepresentation of CAIS I'd be supportive of inclusion, if it did I'd probably think that a specialist category would be the right approach. If female sport is supposed to be about celebrating and exploring the limits of female performance then it cannot be right to include people who are not starting from the position of category: female. I do recognise the difficulty though and I don't think that all of the same ethical principles apply around CAIS as with other examples of male DSD and certainly with MTF trans athletes.

Yes, the study of the Atlanta Olympics found 3 athletes with CAIS out of approx 3000 athletes tested, so a rate of 1:1000 compared to a population rate of 1:20000 or 1:60000 depending on different sources.

So it would suggest that it’s over represented as a condition but hard to know from just 3 athletes. That’s why sex verification with chromosomes on all elite athletes should be compulsory.

It may be that CAIS proffers no advantage, but maybe those 3 athletes were the entire high jump podium, or all swimming gold medalists, or middle distance medalists, which should prompt a discussion about skeletal advantages.

I think there already are some older studies that suggest CAIS is overrepresented in elite female sport but the problem is that the data isn't collected properly any more.

@Helleofabore
I also agree that CAIS women are a genuinely grey area because they haven't been through male puberty, but ultimately they are male - on average significantly stronger and taller than women though not as dramatically so as men who have gone through puberty. Height and strength are generally advantageous in sport. And the menstrual cycle does not disrupt their training - no hours missed because of pain, no relaxin secreted to loosen their ligaments and increase the risk of soft tissue injury.

@IaminRome
😀

Yes

I suspect that it will be rare DSDs that would qualify for a DSD category. As I said, CAIS would be one. Not because they are 'disabled' but they don't process testosterone so they cannot compete against males and if the studies start to show that there are advantages (such as height) then they may no longer qualify for the female category.

However, I suspect that research would start showing that those with other DSDs actually can compete with males equally and there is absolutely no reason they cannot.

And there is no way that one group of males should be included because they are 'trans' above any other male who has had to make choices about their medical treatments. There was never a case for them to be included outside some models of philosophical thinking and the call for kindness.

@BellaAmorosa oh wow well said. I'd been of the opinion that third/fourth categories were the best option, but yes, why should we create something special for them, when there's already somewhere they can compete.

Competitive sport by it's nature excludes loads of people - I've always been too short to be an exemplary netball player, for instance. I recognise that competitive netballing is not going to be for me - I don't insist on their being a separate category for 5'4 women 😂

I agree, @Helleofabore, there will never be any data or studies which show us that men are or have become women.

I profoundly disagree with all the suggestions of a third, category for male or female people who claim a special identity. Sport categories exist to recognise and compensate for overwhelming performance advantages like age, disability and (biggest of all) sex. They exclude classes of people, not individuals. Having a special identity is entirely irrelevant to athletic performance, so there is no need to create a special category to recognise it. Most males with gender dysphoria or claiming special identities and virtually all females with the same issues compete in their sex/age/disability/weight, etc class. As they should. We should not entertain the idea that we need special categories for factors irrelevant to athletic performance.

Same applies to men with DSDs - unless their specific condition is disabling, in which case a category could be carved out in disabled sport, but I suspect the numbers would not stack up. Why on earth should we have a special category or separate recording of results for males like Semenya, Seyni and Masilingi who have gone through normal male puberty? What's to stop them competing in the male category? Nothing.

There are a million heartwarming stories out there about women and men who overcame serious or life-threatening illnesses and conditions to excel at sport.
The whole of disabled sport showcases athletes who are living with conditions or injuries which do affect their performance. That is why we exclude from disabled sport athletes who do not face the same challenges. Basically, from a sport perspective, there's nothing special about people with special identities and we shouldn't pretend there is.

In some events transwomen could be separately listed within the open category, so still recognised for exceptional performance within the category - particularly in individual events like athletics and swimming.

In a way I hope sport might help a drift towards a genuine demedicalisation - not removing medical diagnoses, but reducing the amount of 'treatment'.

That ^^

I did wonder how long it would be before in an open category competing against non TQ+ males there would be the wails of it being unfair, never being able to win or have records - all the things females have been told doesn't matter and is unkind to mind about.

I'd like to watch and celebrate elite athletes who just happen to be TQ+, competing in a category of their own. As opposed to being expected to celebrate the beauty of a male athlete being validated in a women's competition, which has now been reduced to nothing more than a set of props for a male person's lovely experience.

This is interesting. Whenever they go on about TW not dominating female sports they always imply that it’s because of transphobia keeping TW out. It never seems to cross their minds that many TW athletes know for a fact that male advantage doesn’t just evaporate after a year of taking synthetic oestrogen and will have a level of integrity that means they would not even attempt to compete.

@mcduffy
Amazing what a bit of publicity will do, eh? But they must think we're idiots.
The presentation of the reduced testosterone limit as a halfway house on the way to full exclusion from the female category is suspicious. They are starting from the position that some males should be in the female category so what's the betting that they would find reasons to stick with this policy indefinitely?
Good to see that grassroots athletes' opinions are going to be presented to them. This decision-making process needs careful scrutiny.

Third category is the way to go. It would be nice to see male TQ+ athletes compete when they are able to go flat out as opposed to pulling their performance to avoid winning by too obvious a margin over female athletes. I hope retroactively that the records won by males competing in the female category will transfer to the open category.

We all know what is going to happen in the open category. males suppressing their testosterone will not gain positions. As would be the same outcome for any male taking medication that impacted their performance!

And those males with DSDs probably need to have their own event or that is an area worth researching. Can males with particular DSDs perform at the same elite level as other males without the conditions. Obviously CAIS will be different as would any other condition where testosterone cannot be processed.

Thanks mcduffy for that link

It will be interesting to see what this grassroots London study is going to say.

I don’t understand the need they keep mentioning to ‘have more data’. It seems very clear that no studies have shown a decrease in advantage. And frankly, it was ridiculous that this was ever pandered to in the first place.

Not sure about the money exactly. I think this issue was originally a way to look progressive while being corrupt on other issues.

The original 2003 IOC Committee that first said transwomen could compete in women's events (at that time only after surgery) included an athlete with a VSD who was constantly challenged on her status as a woman during her sport career. I'd imagine that her voice was listened to. Obviously I see this as a different issue but it's not simply corruption.

More positive in the Times coverage today 🤞

Trans athletes likely to be barred from female classifications

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/653b2f38-9da2-11ed-8201-2ed91f44d1e8?shareToken=90542bf1a0c93c9e31cb9d68f7e4bf38

I agree with this. Look for the money trail.

I suppose all we can can hope for is that all the men win which brings sunlight.
Fucking shit though, especially for the women competing.