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

[Kendodd]

Common sense.

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

If someone is allowed to compete, the organisation which is signing a safety waiver should still be liable for their safety and insurance coverage. I hope any f*cking org like that can't shirk their responsibility for anything that happens.

In the worst case scenario, a right to life is inalienable, isn't it?

There is a potential problem with the open category as will it now be incumbent on organisations like the Olympics having to arrange, promote, televise open events in all swimming events.

The potential time expansion of events may be considerable and there may be presumably a lot of medals being won by a small pool of transgender athletes who will want the same recognition as to their fixed gender peers.

If Lia Thomas sweeps the board every Olympics in the open category and takes home suitcases full of gold medals to the US won't she expect slots on talkshows, meetings with politicians, national recognition etc.? If the same level of recognition isn't given to trans athletes won't this be construed by some as transphobia in itself?

Hopefully, then such parents will be held responsible for their actions. And, all the medical and psychobabble crew who are advocating it.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a tanker slowly but surely being turned around….

Also saw this on Reddit and was pleasantly surprised by the comments. A lot on the side of common sense, even if they are (in the main) happy to use pronouns and say TWAW.

Post has been removed by moderators after about 5000 comments. The comments must have been too full of common sense

I'm not so sure that is the case. Didn't Bridges take place in a men's competition just last Spring. As part of a four man team, and they won medals. The NHS won't see men for treatment if their testosterone level is the same as some of these athletes. It is also more than a t level.

Very sensible

Another point are open category medals going to count in national medal counts? If they are you could get seriously skewed medal tables (Saudi Arabia won't have that many in the open category for instance.

In reality I don't the medals will and the open category is proposed currently for legal cover. I think the challenge may come if a trans athletes tries to argue in court they have been denied a chance to gain a 'meaningful' medal in competition.

Thank you Sharon. And all who contributed to this 💪💪💪

Good verdict and strong leadership

Good god. Has the world finally opened its eyes? Wow. This is bloody amazing.

You misunderstand.

It’s not the organisation signing an assumption of risk (waiver), it’s the individual.

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.

Interestingly the voting was against having an open category. Not sure where that leaves the proposal.

Yes, exactly this. The subtext of this decision will reverberate far wider than the impact on swimming and sport, brilliant as that is.

It's the lead article in the Mail online:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10932093/Swimming-set-sport-create-category-allow-transgender-athletes-compete.html

A certain mum of a certain cyclist is not very happy.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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?

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.

This is such good news.