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

[Kendodd]

Common sense.

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

According to Sharron Davis, who had to have one when competing , its a one off cheek swab and that's all.

That's what I thought. And it was routine for a while but they stopped doing it as routine for... reasons?

And I believe athletes still have to produce urine while being actually observed for drugs testing anyway, don't they? Being an elite athlete seems to come with a certain invasion of privacy regardless of anything else! Again... all because some people cheat.

Apologies - I was typing late at night.

Conform should have said confirm.

"According to Sharron Davis, who had to have one when competing , its a one off cheek swab and that's all."

Well yeah, you'd only have to have it done once, wouldn't you, given that it's not actually possible to change sex.

I've already seen a conversation turn elsewhere to "but how can we possibly enforce this without sexually abusing women athletes by having to examine their genitals"

They love trotting this fantasy out.

They also don't care that it makes cheating liars out of all these hypothetical transwomen who will ignore the rulings.

Ha! As ever, Datun, you make a ridiculously good point (which I had completely missed)!

I know a few tall women and a friend who died young but was 6"4, they are and were all shapes and sizes but you would never think that's a man. Their gait, confidence and softness of shape (even when they are very slim) all indicate they are women. Women know instinctively and I'm sure men do too.

I am a tall woman! Just under 6ft. Not in anyway willowy either - tall and solid. Have known a couple of women over 6ft too. Nine of us anything other than instantly recognisable as female.

Datun's point is excellent (as ever) - TRAs saying this can't be enforced are admitting that transwomen would try to cheat and enter elite competition by hiding the fact they are male. It's almost as if they care more about winning in female categories than sportsmanship, honesty and integrity....

Interesting piece on why “fairness and safety” are more important than “inclusion” here, and how that is covered by UK law:

Confusion about Inclusion: Transwomen Athletes in the Female Category

idrottsforum.org/feature-imbrisevic220623/

TLDR; Inclusion presupposes eligibility. Once you realise that inclusion depends on eligibility, the tension between fairness, safety and inclusion disappears.

They’re fine with men being in women’s hospital wards, psychiatric units, toilets, refuges, rape crisis centres and prisons and the subsequent sexual assaults and rapes of women that will occur, but they are absolutely appalled at the idea of female athletes having to prove their sex because it’s sexual assault (even though it isn’t, because it’s a cheek swab). I think I understand.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_sussex
From just after 11 discussion on whether transwoman should be allowed to compete with female athletes. Much sense talked and even Joanna Harper admits differences can't be mitigated.

TLDR; Inclusion presupposes eligibility. Once you realise that inclusion depends on eligibility, the tension between fairness, safety and inclusion disappears.

This has always been my argument. Why are we even debating advantage vs no advantage when males aren’t even eligible for women’s and girls competitions on account of them not being women and girls? Sports scientists like Ross Tucker say it’s a bit of give, to focus the argument on science and make it less of an inflammatory discussion and I can see his point. But TRAs get inflamed no matter what, as evident by their reaction to these decisions, so why pander you them?

”Transwomen are not eligible to compete in the women’s competition of [insert sport here] on account of them not being women. Here ends the discussion.”

Let’s see RMW take that to court to argue they are women, without using the word woman in the definition or stereotypes.

FIFA could tell who was female when suggesting they wore shorter, tighter shorts to increase interest in women's football. F1 can tell who to put into the cars and who a parade about scantily clad in front of them. Athletics knew who was allowed to pole vault and hammer throw throughout the 20th century and who was restricted to a far more limited program of events. Cycling can some how out work out that one set of people can do the Tour du France and another set can't. The faux confusion about identifying men from women disappears when it comes to excluding women.

The faux confusion about identifying men from women disappears when it comes to excluding women.

Quite

Harper confuses me.

I was really shocked to discover that Harper's work had been used to justify the inclusion of transwomen in the female sports category.

I can remember Harper discussing the study previously and arguing that while it did show a reduction of performance in line with t reduction that was not proof that transwomen had the same athletic potential as female athletes.

I sometimes think that Harpers work is used out of context, but Harper only challenges that "misinterpretation" when people are disagreeing with the t conclusion, in a "I never said that t reduction removes transwomen's physical advantage" kind of way

Tbh having seen how TRAs have reacted to scientists correcting the misuse of their papers on DSDs, I don't really blame Harper for keeping quiet.

Harper’s “study” with Emily Bridges and loss of power on the bike is used as the entire basis of demonstrating that Bridges should be allowed to race against women. Yet Harper never jumps in to correct Bridges, or those who misrepresent Harper’s work in Cycling Weekly and so on. I think Harper knows that the science is what it is, can’t fudge it in any other way to give the answer that people like Bridges need to put on the table without it being shot to pieces by other scientists. Harper wants to everyone’s friend and seen as a credible sports scientist and Harper can’t be both.

Which would all be immaterial if it was just ruled that Bridges isn’t eligible on account of being male.

Even if (and that's a bloody massive can see if from the moon with the naked eye if) there was a way found to negate all male physical advantage in sport that still wouldn't make it OK for men to compete as women in my eyes because the social and cultural attitudes to women and men in sport are very different. Making men slower/weaker doesn't mean that have to miss at least a year of competition if they choose to have a child, it doesn't take them back to junior level with afterthought provision (e.g. I know of a local football club where new kit is bought for the boys team and the old kit is then passed to the girls team). It doesn't mean they are called gay if they do sports or told boys won't fancy them if they have muscles. Being slower and weaker doesn't negate the issue of male bodies in women changing rooms and showers.

I like that piece. Short, clear and to the point. Hadn't thought of it that way around - that the aim of eligibilty is to promote inclusion (of the class of the eligible people). The example of boxing is good.

How can Harper's study beproved to be robust when all the participants could be said to have a vested interest in proving a reduction in performance? Emily Bridges has stated that testosterone reduction has reduced cycling performance and yet only a couple of weeks before the intended change to the female category, Bridges was winning men's races, where was the performance reduction there?

Excellent article from The Courier Mail, detailing the process behind the decision from the FINA President.

Hope the article isn’t behind a pay wall - can cut and paste some if it is:
www.couriermail.com.au/sport/olympics/swimming/inside-story-the-truth-about-finas-transgender-vote-and-what-the-critics-got-so-wrong/news-story/36405a9336065f655a0e8abf5a397bbb

@LunaLights could you cut and paste please -behind paywall

“Inside story: The truth about FINA’s transgender vote and what the critics got so wrong”
Swimming has made headlines around the world this week and not because of the action at the world championships in Budapest but for the historic decision handed down on Monday which banned transgender athletes from competing against women. Julian Linden sat down with FINA’s chief executive director Brent Nowicki for the full story.

Story:
Of all the misconceptions about FINA’s game-changing policy for transgender athletes, the most deceitful is why swimming’s leaders took the plunge while other sports were content to sit back and wait for someone else.

The popular narrative is that FINA panicked because of the storm that erupted when University of Pennsylvania trans swimmer Lia Thomas won a national title at the American College championships.

Because that happened just three months ago, and FINA’s bombshell new policy was only made public when delegates were asked to vote on it at the Congress in Budapest last weekend, the simple but wrong assumption was that it was a hit job aimed squarely at Thomas.

“The critics - and there’s plenty of them - accused FINA of rushing through with a half-baked policy just to block Thomas from competing at the next Olympics, taking place in Paris in 2024.

But the FINA executive who engineered and helped draft and oversee the development of the entire policy from start to finish, says that notion is a total fallacy.

“It’s easy to say Lia Thomas was the lightning rod but that’s not the case,” FINA’s chief executive director Brent Nowicki told News Corp.

“These issues, health and safety, welfare issues, competition, fairness issues, these are issues that have been in international sport for years now.”

In his one and only tell-all interview on the policy that has rocked the sporting world, Nowicki has lifted the lid on the true inside story on exactly how the policy that has divided the world came to fruition.”

“Critically, he reveals that it started much earlier than people think - in 2021, not 2022 - and, contrary to popular belief, there was never any intention to exclude anyone.

Rather, the starting point for the project was to find a way to include everyone in a fair way.

It was only after FINA received the detailed report it commissioned from independent scientists and medical experts that it felt compelled to come up with a policy that effectively banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions.

“We didn’t start with the goal posts in front of us. We weren’t trying to kick that ball through those goalposts,” Nowicki said.

“We were trying to move the ball down the field methodically, correctly, and that was the approach we had always taken.“

The starting point for the policy actually stems from FINA’s dark past, and the current push to finally clean it all up.
For much of its 114 years, FINA has been run primarily by men, who spent millions of the sport’s fortune on their own lavish lifestyles instead of competitors struggling to make ends meet.

But that all changed last year after FINA elected a new president - Husain Al-Musallam - on a platform to reform the organisation after its dirty secrets were exposed by a two-year investigation by News Corp.

Nowicki, a top American lawyer who had worked for years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and has a reputation for meticulous planning, got straight to work the first day he sat down at his new desk - June 8, 2021.”

Still of graphic depicting swimming teenage male records vs adult female records.