Transgender women in women's sport - how it happened.

[andyoldlabour]

I have been looking back at all the (considerable) information I have collated over past four months or so, and I was trying to find the IOC regulations regarding transgender women and when the decision was made to allow them to compete in women's sport.
The meeting happened in Lausanne in November 2015, and as far as I can tell, most of the World's individual sporting organisations will be bound by these rules.

stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2015-11_ioc_consensus_meeting_on_sex_reassignment_and_hyperandrogenism-en.pdf

2.Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:2.1.The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.2.2.The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).

www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/25/ioc-rules-transgender-athletes-can-take-part-in-olympics-without-surgery

Former IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist who was present at the meeting, said the consensus was driven by social and political changes.

So, forget the biology and physiology, simply let the touchy feely stuff rule.

To sum up, there were 20 people present at the meeting, 4 women, 1 transgender woman, and 1 woman suffering from AIS (XY chromosones) and 14 men.

Anyone see the Guardian merrily conflating "intersex and transgender women" with regards to this issue earlier?

nobody is going to go through gender reassignment purely to compete in sports! There's a very small number

It’s always “oh it’s only a small number. Poor souls. Let them in. They won’t do any harm.”

“Only a small number” includes Karen White. Harm done.
“Only a small number” extends to all long-term male prisoners who can see that if they play their cards right, they too can be moved in with lots of women.

Then we also have the progression from “5,000 transsexuals are accepted as legally women”. To “transwomen are women and have been for years, you just haven’t noticed” to “we shouldn’t be gatekeeping, it’s cruel and unfair to the 500,000 male bodied people who know they are women”

It’s nonsense. Only a few male bodied people with an unfair advantage being allowed into women’s sport means that those women who have dedicated huge chunks of their young lives training to reach Olympic level might find themselves knocked out of history by that transwoman. Not okay. Not ever.

Am I being optimistic to think that this will resolve itself?

The next Olympics are likely to be a complete shitshow.

And it is an obviously unsustainable situation. It can only last for one Olympics at most before it becomes a free-for-all for second rate men. I’m unclear why the people pushing it can’t see this, but it’s extremely obvious. And then you will have the question of why even have women’s sport.

Of course this could end with women’s sports being abolished but I think the absurdity is accelerating too fast for that. I think the next Olympics will have a bunch of people saying “what the fuck?” and demanding this stops. Maybe the medals will even get retroactively redistributed to female winners.

"Am I being optimistic to think that this will resolve itself?"

Yes, unfortunately you are.
Let us take Kate Weatherley as an example. Kate competed as a male downhill mountain biker - pretty average as well.
Kate started racing in the women's division just three weeks after making the change.
Shortly after, Kate won the New Zealand championships in 2018, and is currently looking forward to high placings at World level.

www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-interviews/kiwi-dh-racer-kate-weatherly-shares-her-story-and-highlights-from-her-first-world-cup-races/

twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1097946006304550917

Donald Trump Jnr tweets in support of a debate about the issue.

Homestar, I have just listened to the Jeremy Vine, Ellis Cashmore, Sharron Davies interview, and I was literally swearing at Cashmore for his loathsome views. On the one hand he said it would be unfair for Caster Semenya to run against men if she didn't agree to lower her testosterone levels, and a couple of minutes later, he said that women had been led to believe that they were the weaker sex, and he could see a time where there was only one sporting category - open to all.

Personal anecdote here just for the record.

I'm a former national standard track and field athlete at youth and junior level. The English School's Athletic competition is one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. Selection starts off at school level with a max 2/3 athletes of a particular sex (and age) being put forward for their event at district level. The districts then pick around 2/3 athletes to go to county, intercounty and then national. In order to qualify for the English School's you need selection by your county, plus attainment of a standard level. Attainment is often gained at these preceding selective events (some counties will only allow distances/times achieved at these events to count).

If a male bodied athlete is selected instead of a female one at any stage in this proceedings, they have effectively ruined her chances of selection or meeting the target standard if she hasn't had the chance to do so. Not only is it making current competition unfair it's quashing potential.

In the Wikipedia list of transgender athletes, only 2 of the transgender male athletes out of 12 mentioned, actually competed as a man and not their birth sex - woman.
22 out of 23 of the transgender women (born male) have competed in women's sports.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports

Yes, only 2, and not one of them won anything as men, though they generally gloss over this as hard as possible.

Bebstar123

This article seems to be fairly certain that 2 UK transgender women athletes have already competed at European Championship level prior to the 2016 Rio Olympics.

www.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/82038833/transgender-british-athletes-fearful-of-being-ridiculed-at-rio-olympic-games

It also says this, which I find amazing.

"Their gender status is known to the organisations governing their sports but not to rivals from other nations."

WTF that article. They're afraid to cheat because they might be exposed as cheaters! Everyone should feel very sorry for them.

Homestar

The person who said that is one Delia Johnson who started out as an "ambassador" to transsexuals visiting the 2012 London Olympics.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039231/London-2012-Olympics-Delia-ambassador-transsexuals.html

Delia is now a "diversity consultant" for "Trans in Sport", Northamptonshire Police, England Netball, Football Association.

metro.co.uk/2015/10/21/transgender-woman-on-her-desperate-struggle-with-her-new-identity-and-how-she-was-accepted-by-the-fa-but-not-her-daughter-5376352/

I think people here are forgetting that nobody is going to go through gender reassignment purely to compete in sports!

Except no 'gender reassignment' is needed. All men have to do is lower testosterone...which totally ignores the rest of the advantages a male body gives..and the T limits are way above those a woman would have too. And McKinnon is whinging that lower T is unfair also for fucks sake.

Look at the Russian team, I bet they wouldn't think twice about this, they don't give a stuff about doping.

AFAIK the transgirls competing in girls' events in the US don't have to undergo any transition (other than 'social') at all, with scholarships at stake.

Except no 'gender reassignment' is needed. All men have to do is lower testosterone...

They don't necessarily have to lower testosterone. About 10% of men naturally have low enough testosterone to compete as women according to IOC rules.

That is true Errol

RiverTam

We only hear about the Russians, never about our own dopers.

www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rule-violations/current-violations/

well, quite - but my point is that it's a nonsense to assume b list sportsmen won't do this, and in some cases, such as Russia, it's backed at the highest levels (has any other nation ever had its entire team banned from a competition?). Only they wouldn't get banned for this.

Olympics and pro sports aside, this comment (random twitter man I think) resonated with me as well:

"Plus there is no way to check T levels in grass root and low level sports. If women are pushed out in the lower levels, they will not reach the elite levels"

They're basically killing women's sports from the ground up.

And the Chinese.

First they hired all teh disgraced East German coaches and doped their female (but not male) swimmers up to the eyeballs.

Then when they got caught, we had the record-breaking female distance runners who never competed before the Olympics, broke world records, then disappeared never to run again because, it transpired, the training regime they were put through destroyed their bodies for a single-event peak.

No one will want to rain on Japan's parade in 2020 more than China.

CallMe and in the US it's not just about sports, it's about disadvantaged girls getting further (higher? Can never remember which it is!) education as many will depend on sports scholarships to get to uni.

The Iranian women's football team was (is?) mostly men.