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

[Kendodd]

Common sense.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/61853450

To my mind, the ruling appears to be encouraging childhood transition

This, it's exactly what we didn't want.

I feel this way. I am originally from India where women are only just beginning to enter sports, after years of social disapproval, sexual harassment, poor funding.... every kind of obstacle. They are just beginning to win Olympic medals in weight lifting and boxing, among others. The idea that a man can come in and take it away from them enrages me. I am afraid I don't care about trans women in sport; we still haven't made it easy for women across the world to enter sport! If I bring it up outside MN, people say " Don't you want to be an ally?" And I want to say "NO". Not if it means throwing women under the bus.

Interesting that Stonewalk have (so far) nothing to say about this.

This was PinkNews’ take on it…

I'm with you, Malaga.

I don't care. I don't care if they're upset, or sad or even angry. Not. My. Problem.
My female socialisation has left the building. Fuck 'em.

It’s not encouraging childhood transition. They’re not (as far as I can tell) suggesting people transition at age 11. They are explaining that if they don’t, they’ll have advantage. They aren’t responsible for whether there is a ‘path’ into competing in the wrong sex class, only for saying what would and wouldn’t represent fair and safe competition. It’s clear to any sensible person that childhood transition is a dangerous medical scandal.

Channel 5 Jeremy Vine asking for telephone calls on this at Jeremy Vine Extra.
"Is it wrong to ban transwomen from competing in the women's category"
Tel 0207 862 2222

So, with the new "open" - anyone can participate?

Male, Female, Trans, non-binary?

Transwomen will lose against males that aren't on hormones?

Let's see them complain about how unfair this is for them, because they will have no hope of winning any races against males.

Thing is, it will give you no real advantage.

Boys who don't go through puberty are at increased risk of things like osteoporosis. Nobody needs or wants an elite athlete who can break a bone stepping off a curb.

The advantage only exists with a male who had gone through puberty who later transitions.

So the increased muscle mass and cardio vascular input along with overall physical size. These can't be reversed by taking some oestrogens, it won't make you shorter, have smaller lungs and rib cages and decrease muscle mass density to a great extent.

There will be no appetite for petite fragile biological males in elite sports.

‘There will be no appetite for petite fragile biological males in elite sports.’

We would be talking about a unicorn occurrence - a young male person so talented that someone recognised their elite potential, but then for some reason decided to pressure them into transitioning at 9/10 years of age so they could compete against females. That’s not going to happen.

That would be for men to agree to. I mean I don't see it happening but maybe if they shout be kind and bigot at all the men?

Thank you Lia, you beauty!

Fallon Fox has a nerve talking about violence. He's probably just worried his days of punching women with impunity in the ring are nearing an end.

The 'transition before 12' is a magnificant wee piece of unintended irony from FINA. Any kid who's been on growth stunters before even entering puberty would be too disabled to compete at any level at all, let alone elite.

All in all, excellent news, and any attempts TRAs make to argue back involve twisting themselves in logical knots. Sanity is finally prevailing.

Exactly. There’s absolutely no way of predicting a 10 year old male will be good enough to beat elite adult females.

A lot of work has gone into talent identification for swimming. The vast majority of Olympic medal winners only start winning post puberty. Only the best of the best of the best are winners at junior level and win Olympic medals.

Let’s say you have a 10 year old boy who is a brilliant swimmer. Most coaches know that it means nothing if he doesn’t go through the “right” male puberty to be competitive against men: will he grow enough, mainly.

So how do you predict that the good 10 year old boy, without puberty, will be good enough to beat women at the elite level? He will still need to have the physical characteristics common among elite women athletes. You can’t control or predict that at 10, so what characteristics in 10 year olds do you need? Genetics? Coaching set up? Time to train? All while this boy is dealing with the effects of puberty blockers, then oestrogen?

This would be a 10-15 year cheating project with no way of predicting at the start that you’re onto a sure thing. Most countries who cheat regularly can cheat much more efficiently to win medals than that.

fallon

I learned that India hadn’t properly understood the paper that India was quoting from, otherwise India would have known that 2/3rds of the participants that India was claiming took part were excluded. Nor did India explain any of the limitations in the research which makes it problematic when extrapolating to elite sports. India also forgot the bit in the paper that explains the skeletal advantages conferred by male puberty that are not mitigated by gender affirming hormone treatment.

I think it’s always useful to point out the difference in Phelps’s medal winning performances between Phelps and his fellow male athletes and Phelps and female athletes.

And of course, Phelps only retains one of his 5 LC world records now (400m IM).

Just when I thought they'd privatized good news. 😁👏

And of course, Phelps only retains one of his 5 LC world records now (400m IM)

Which is only 1.34s faster than the next best, by Ryan Lochte, but 22s faster than Katinka Hosszù’s world record of the same event.

No one ever mentions Paul Biedermann, Caleb Dressel, Kristof Milak or Ryan Lochte, all men who have swim faster than Phelps. No one mentions their arm span, or claim they have webbed toes. Phelps is just the go-to for nonsense arguments.

A sensible decision.

Waiting for the BBC getting backlash for reporting it...

The comparison with Phelps' feet is incredibly tiresome, for reasons not limited to the following:

(a) The 1980s-born male swimmer who was actually famous for having outsized feet [size 17] was Ian Thorpe, with Phelps' being 'only' size 14;
(b) Thorpe's feet (news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/831211.stm) are actually are reminder of the extent to which being a large person, with large hands and feet, confers an advantage in swimming - Thorpe, an athletic, very but not freakishly tall man, has bigger feet than the single woman on the entire planet of 8 billion or whatever it is, does (www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/book/2019/4/woman-with-worlds-biggest-female-feet-gets-her-custom-made-size-15-wedding-shoes-568744), with the woman in question looking in photos [sorry] rather awkward and unathletic.
(c) Having separate sporting categories for foot size would obviously be a nonsense, with far too many questions over measurement [e.g. whether you measure width/length/volume, whether you factor in toe-webbedness etc]; where to draw the line [e.g. above sized 13 or similar?]; and how many entrants there'd be in each category in a given year.

(d) But if there actually was a sporting category for people with outsized feet then the likes of Ian Thorpe absolutely would have to go in it, it'd be ludicrous for him to be able to identify his way into a category for swimmers with little trotter-like feet.
(e) In those few sports where physical size has been deemed to confer an intolerable advantage on bigger people but where there's a will to get smaller people involved [primarily the combat sports, also weightlifting] & necessitating multiple within-sex categories, the weigh-in is a huge deal/can attract many TV viewers/is carried out with great precision etc. Nobody thinks that a boxer using last minute various dehydration techniques including sauna/laxatives/etc etc etc is 'cheating', [s]he's just doing what's sensible to get into an competitively advantageous category. Self identification into weight classes would be beyond nonsensical.

I should add of course that from a spectator perspective people enjoy marvelling at outliers of human physiology such as the cyclist Miguel Indurain's resting heartrate of 28bpm [only 1 bmp higher than the world record].

The imagination of spectators seem to be captured rather less wholly by 'gifts' which are shared with 50.5% of the world's entire population.

Agree with everyone what excellent news this is.

A quibble re the title: this decision doesn't stop transgender swimmers from competing in women's elite events, only males. Presumably transmen who haven't taken T (or had any other advantageous medical interventions) will still be welcome in women's events (as they are in most single-sex spaces).

Lots of pp saying that an additional 'open' category is fair. I disagree. Female swimmers won't be able to compete in an elite level open category for obvious reasons, so it will effectively be an additional category for males. Given that resources are finite, that will surely end up reducing support and opportunities for female swimmers. If there is to be an open category, it should replace the male category.

Taken from Twitter.

Thank you Dreikanter Think the polite phrase for that is cherry picking.

The thing about this issue is that the data is crystal clear and there is tonnes of it. Women cannot be competitive when competing against men and how people like Lia Thomas identify makes no difference to that whatsoever.

Erasing natal women from sport is not an acceptable price to pay to placate a small group who want inclusion entirely on their own terms.