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

[ResisterRex]

Familiar territory:

"Documents seen by the Telegraph show World Athletics’ “preferred option” would instead halve of the maximum permitted plasma testosterone for trans women to 2.5 nanomoles per litre and double the period they must remain below that threshold before being allowed to compete to two years.
The confidential consultation involving one of the biggest sports yet to rewrite its trans rules was sent to member federations amid strict secrecy over that preferred option, which was presented to the governing body’s council at the end of November.
A final decision over the planned new policy will be made by the council in March, with the Telegraph told the preferred option is not yet certain to be adopted.
That option is fiercely opposed by the likes of Fair Play for Women, whose director of sport, Fiona McAnena, said: “It is beyond doubt that the effects of male puberty are irreversible. Testosterone suppression impairs male performance a bit but it does not remove male advantage and it doesn’t make it fair for trans-identifying males to compete in women’s events.
"Sport relies on fairness. Categories, by age, sex and disability, are how we make it fair and inclusive for all. Trans inclusion leads to female exclusion.
“There should be a place in sport for everyone, of both sexes and all gender identities or none. That place is not in the female category, which has to be restricted to those who have not got the lifelong advantages of male puberty.”"
www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2023/01/20/exclusive-world-athletics-set-allow-transgender-athletes-compete/

Also here with another link:

twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1616611142675185664?s=46&t=lylsIVaXDKTr7AvY58gHIw

@MrsOvertonsWindow
Yes. That level would prompt an investigation, certainly. Avg female level of circulating testosterone is about 1nmol per litre.

@DrDinosaur
Exactly. Testosterone levels are a total irrelevancy.

@Pixiedust1234
No, East German women in the '80s were still well below male performance levels.
Marita Koch's world record for 400m - 47.6 seconds - still stands since 1985 (and only a smidgen faster than the men's world record of 47.8 set in 1900!)
Men's world record in 1985 was 43.86 - that had stood since 1968.
Salwa Eid Naser (best current 400m time) 48.14 secs
Wayde van Niekerk (current men's WR holder) 43.03

How incredibly transphobic of the bookies!

Always.

All this blah blah blah when they should just be told no and we can all move on.

They won't and that's the point.

I don't like saying it, but men would have walked out already. Women tend to not like confrontation on the whole in general.

They are relying on this. They are putting men in the women's category because they can.

I have to say I think the disabled would never in a month of sunday put up with an able-bodied person being put in the disabled sports category, it would be shut down quick. Obviously the discrepancy would be far more obvious, but I also think that's because they have to fight all day, everyday to be treated equally. They have to fight to get basic money to help with cost of living from the government and take public transport for e.g. I think women tend to be grateful for being included. That gratitude along with be kind rhetoric means they'll put up with the discrimination, perform on the day and talk about it afterwards. Neither is it fair to ask under pressure from sponsors or scholarships potentially lost.

The sort of feminism you see on this board isn't the type you really see most commonly in the world and isn't the type most women are exposed to or encounter, they encounter a uber liberal inclusive type, my experience at uni as a mature student confirmed this, so I can imagine just how shocking and hard it is particularly for younger female sports persons to have to confront and take a stand on this.

Protesting outside and within the stadium at sports events is more feasible action.

I don't know where you go with this. Separate sporting organisations seems the only way, but they will get enormous abuse from TRAs.

Boycotts only work if everyone does it and I can't see that ever happening. Within women's sports the pressure not to be seen as transphobic is enormous. You also get women who don't really understand the issue or the science and think they can be competitive against men.

Boycotts by a small number of very high profile women can be effective (as seen with cycling) but no-one gives a monkeys if Jane Bloggs walks about and the only one who suffers is Jane Bloggs.

Absolute rage. I'm a fairly keen club runner and I don't think any of the women I run with would find this fair (in fact a few have mentioned the FINA approach of open for anyone and F categories for biological women is the only fair way).

If elite female athletes refused to compete now I think it would bring this nonsense to an end pretty quickly. It would be magnificent to see but it won’t happen as too much at risk and in most competitions still the opportunity to win atm. However once this shit becomes normalised and more males are encouraged to participate women will be fucked anyway because the men will start to dominate 1st/2nd/3rd and then women will no longer even have option to protest because it will have gone too far and any adjustments to the rules will be likened to genocide.

You mean in the way the Women's 800m gold, silver and bronze at the 2016 Olympics all went to biological males?

I actually think the normal person in the street understands this better than the olympic committee. Most people think athletes like Semenya are female because the press has lied to them, but they are generally quite protective of women's sports.

The lack of fairness will surely be stark when trans people start winning everything? It will get a bit silly won't it?

Why can't the testosterone level stay where it has always been? It was fair and achievable to the vast vast majority of women. Stopped dirty cheats cheating as well. Just saying.

This is definitely one battleground the public would be massively behind women on, because sports fans want to see proper competition and are offended by cheating, most sports fans are men and they want to watch actual women (sorry, but it's true) and it really matters to young women sports fans that they are represented. But the fans will only get behind the athletes if they are seen to be doing something for themselves, whether it's a court case, some sort of direct action or a boycott or even setting up breakaway sport bodies.

Absolutely fuming at this. It's bloody pathetic and outrageous. Why is it always us that have to move over, share our spaces, lose our events. Constantly with the "let's be kind and inclusive" bs. No.

You don't see f2m athletes clamouring to compete in the men's events. I wonder why that is.

This is pretty sinister.

I suspect serious levels of corruption in play here.

If you want to come to a fair decision and to be as inclusive as possible, then this is not the decision you make.

So investigative journalists need to do some digging. Something is going on here and I suspect when we find out it will be a massive scandal.

There wasn't a testosterone threshold. Eligibility for female events was based on being female. Early attempts by men to cheat were caught by physical examinations. I believe one Olympic games year, the entire athletics women's team of one country was withdrawn because this inspection was threatened. Then in the '80s and early '90s, there used to be a "passport" - a cheek swab to test chromosomes. This was a once in a lifetime test which worked very effectively and was popular with the athletes. It threw up one or two CAIS and other DSD results, though, which required further investigation. The supposed humiliation of these investigations (probably in reality just blood tests) and the discovery of the DSD athletes were used as an excuse to wedge a particular cohort of males into women's sport and to scrap the passport system.
Circulating testosterone levels, despite being shown to be largely irrelevant for predicting performance within a group of men or a group of women, was adopted as the standard which decided eligibility. And no, it's not just you. It doesn't make any sense.

There wasn't a testosterone threshold

I thought there was because of doping.

Fuck off with your attempts at appeasement and stand up for physical reality. Internal feeling don't trump physical power and size. Fucking hell when will an actual male in power take an actual fucking stand.

For doping maybe, not for eligibility for the event, though. Different issues. Perhaps we are posting at cross purposes?

I think we are!

I wonder whether enough momentum can be gained with the backing of female sports people to change this to what they were initially discussing. That being no male puberty.

This seems like a sop. It seems like a placating measure .

IMO, it has to go back to no males, rather than no males who have gone through puberty. No need to blur the distinction between males and females. Drawing the line at male puberty will be a wedge that could be used to force men into the category further down the line. Plus pre-pubescent boys also carry male athletic advantage (though less pronounced) and societal advantage as well. Plus what about changing rooms?
No males - simple, fair and scientifically backed principle.

We need women to not enter and men nor to enter as allies.

The madness needs to stop. I'm so angry for all female athletes.

British shot put champion, Amelia Strickler, says No:

twitter.com/sharrond62/status/1617250389803339777?s=46&t=niZI2Y-MM3DU1oyUDMJQ3g

Good for her. Please let other athletes follow her lead…

archive.ph/QUXMZ

Mara Yamauchi made the interesting point that males throwing the lighter female versions of shot, discus, hammer, javelin etc would exceed the length of the field in a stadium and be putting the spectators at risk.

What @nauticant said. Cowards.

As far as women refusing to compete go, maybe they will. But Jennifer Wagner Assail refused to cycle against Veronica Ivy (then Rachel McKinnon) in the Masters event in Manchester a few years back. It didn't get mentioned much.

What happened i believe when a British transwoman was about to compete in a big cycling event against Laura Penny was intense manoeuvring behind the scenes with a significant group of women threatening to disrupt proceedings. The politics of sport tend to take place behind the scenes.