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

This applies to many events and sports:

Hurdles, both 100m and 400m, different heights for men and women. There’s already debate as to whether women’s hurdles are too low with the super shoes.

Cricket: lighter, smaller ball, boundary rope brought in more.

Rugby: debate as to whether women should be using a smaller ball than the normal one. Listened to Science of Sport podcast a few months back and the woman interviewed talked about how most women can’t hold the ball in one hand like men, affecting handling errors.

All of these things are related to skeletal structure which is not remotely affected by testosterone levels.

my reading of this was as follows:

world athletics as a body prefers to treat these things (males in female sport) on a more or less purely reactionary basis.

there's never been a TW who's really done anything in world level track and field, meaning that the problem is only barely on WA's radar. the issue of the 46 XY DSD (or whatever you call them) athletes, however, has been a big issue. we relatively recently had an entire Olympic (800m) podium exclusively filled by them. the ban of such athletes from 400-1500m (unless they were prepared to significantly lower their T levels) was a reactionary stop gap.

this new rule is imo targeted squarely at those DSD athletes (Christine mboma et al) who fled into the short sprints or to longer distance running as a result of the 'semenya rule' which banned them from the middle distance races. its applicability to TW's is imo nothing much more than a by-product.

as and when a TW makes a really big splash in track and field (as the shot putter sensibly & bravely said today the throwing events are where male advantage would likely count for most) world athletics will likely rumble into action to 'fix' that. but this rule looks to me like it's mostly about the DSD issue. the trans angle has been reported because it's most interesting to lay people, that's all

Not just sports. This bizarre ideology has women well and truly fucked politically, democratically, morally, medically, physically and psychologically.

You've just made be think of how unpleasant it would be to head a ball kicked full-force by a transwoman.

And - has been pointed out many times - in complete contrast to the levels of investigation and assurance required before anything that could conceivable provide an unfair advantage is allowed into male sports. These people are utterly unfit to manage women's sports.

Seb Coe, for instance, is a twat.

I don't know the answer to this, well I do NO MALES AT ALL IN FEMALE SPORTS. How to achieve it is the problem, maybe getting spectators to boo trans and XY DSD competitors would help. And don't give me any " it's not the competitor's fault" Yes it is, they have a choice, cheat and enter women's sports, or be honest and don't.

Comment piece by Oliver Brown in the Telegraph today:

www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2023/01/25/biology-trumps-gender-unless-world-athletics-willing-rewrite/

"...consider how this policy idea flies in the face of everything for which Sebastian Coe has stood.
“Biology trumps gender,” he declared in the summer, suggesting he wanted to leave the infernal maelstrom of ID politics behindd_. “If we ever get pushed into a corner where we’re making a judgment about fairness or inclusion, I will always come down on the side of fairness.” Will he, really?
At the first stress test of his promise, Coe’s rhetoric has come unstuck.
...
Where DSD runners are overwhelmingly from the developing nations and have gone through life thinking of themselves as female, male athletes identifying as transgender are distinctly male at birth and are growing in number across the developed world. But the two issues can be analysed in terms of the same core idea: namely, the principle of male advantage.
Such an advantage is immutable. Coe accepts this, just as World Athletics’ own literature explicitly describes how the advantage endures long after testosterone suppressants are taken. So how can he even be countenancing letting biological males into female sport? “We can’t,” he once said, “have a generation of young girls thinking there is not a future for them in the sport.” Quite so. But he could, in spite of all his unambiguous pledges, be poised to make that prospect a reality."

Where DSD runners are overwhelmingly from the developing nations and have gone through life thinking of themselves as female

This is highly debatable.

But as it says, it doesn’t matter. Male advantage is male advantage. I don’t have any sympathy for DSD athletes.

www.stateofswimming.com/the-class-action-world-athletics-should-fear-as-storm-amelia-joins-the-weather-girls-to-stop-it-raining-men-in-womens-sport/

Seb Coe needs to grow a backbone!

Yeah, it's completely untrue, certainly in Caster Semenya's case and probably most of the others.

Semenya fairly obviously identifies as male in her private life and, much more significantly, after trying it for a while eventually refused to carry on taking medication to bring T levels down [even down to the old, more 'generous', limit of 5nmol/L], despite having been able to run fast times and even win gold in the London Olympics whilst on it... the only sensible conclusion to draw from this is that Semenya finds the 'feminising' effects of the medication unacceptable, which hardly seems surprising, having had the misfortune to be born male but without external male genitalia it seems likely that Caster has all manner of body issues/confidence and ego issues relating to a lack of masculinity, as would anyone in that position.

www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2023/01/24/trans-women-like-should-not-female-sport-could-have-won-london/

Also today in the Telegraph, Tina Daniels, a transwoman who was paralysed from the chest down in a road accident 20 years ago, has come out strongly against trans women in female sport. "It is unfair and unethical" Tina said.

Tina said that the consequences of their accident mean they would have been eligible to compete against women in the 2012 Olympics in their disability category and they considered entering under their new legal gender. They resumed training after reassignment surgery "and I found I had retained all the upper body strength I gained during more than 30 years of life as a male."

Had they entered,Tina said, they would have likely broken women's world records in their category and qualified for the Paralympics, potentially coming away with a gold medal.

"That is something I could just not bring myself to do. While others had worked tirelessly for the chance to realise the same dream, because of my unfair advantage, I would just be taking a deserved spot away."

"I find it incredulous that trans women like myself are being shoehorned into female sport even when we retain advantages years after transitioning. The evidence is there proving that those advantages are insurmountable."

Tina confirms that most trans women athletes do not accept the idea that the men's category should be open to all, even if it meant renaming it.

"They want the validation of being able to get into the female sports arena, even if it means displacing the rights of millions of others to a sex-based system. Failing to prevent that would lead to it happening on a much grander scale than we can imagine."

Couple of others who are speaking up:

Chris Tomlinson
twitter.com/longjumpchris/status/1618259386648133633?s=46&t=ebELmcX1Y9PRTYUraMmM7w

Jamie Webb
twitter.com/jamiewebb800/status/1618264808608133122?s=46&t=ebELmcX1Y9PRTYUraMmM7w

Chris Tomlinson again:

twitter.com/longjumpchris/status/1618259954389094405?s=46&t=ebELmcX1Y9PRTYUraMmM7w

Beth Dobbin:

twitter.com/bethdobbin/status/1617983106694402048?s=46&t=ohPKT96RYNDGfHA2FKNOLg

Emily Diamond

twitter.com/emilydiamond11/status/1618183368910462977?s=46&t=ohPKT96RYNDGfHA2FKNOLg

Ah, this covers some of the tweets:

www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2023/01/25/female-olympic-hopefuls-join-growing-revolt-against-plan-race/

"Team GB duo Beth Dobbin and Emily Diamond, and fellow Paris 2024 hopeful Ellie Baker, are the most high-profile current British female athletes to have voiced their fierce opposition to a proposal first revealed by Telegraph Sportt_.

...

Dobbin, Diamond and Baker have now become the first British female athletes deemed worthy of National Lottery funding in the build-up to Paris 2024 to publicly oppose such a change.
Dobbin, the Tokyo 2020 200 metres semi-finalist who won 4x400m bronze at last year’s Commonwealth Games, posted on Twitter: “Women deserve to compete exclusively against competitors who don’t have any of the advantages that the female category exists to exclude. Testosterone is what creates these advantages and lowering it doesn’t level the playing field.”

Among the replies to Dobbin’s post was one from Diamond, who won 4x400m bronze at Rio 2016 and medals at world and European level.
She wrote: “That first sentence says it all.”
Baker, an 800m semi-finalist at July’s World Athletics Championships, posted: “I love track&field. I train hard everyday to reach my goals in this sport but if this is going to be allowed this will take away biological women’s livelihoods. We don’t stand a chance. We may as well give up now. I’m not anti trans. It’s just a matter of what’s fair & what isn’t.”
Diamond had previously pledged support for Amelia Strickler after the British shot-put champion told the Telegraph World Athletics’ “preferred option” could lead to a “free-for-all” which would “screw” those born female.
Two British discus throwers also reacted to the news on Twitter, with Jade Lally expressing solidarity with Strickler and Kirsty Law, posting: “How is this even close to being fair! #ProtectWomensSport.”"

I suppose all we can can hope for is that all the men win which brings sunlight.
Fucking shit though, especially for the women competing.

I agree with this. Look for the money trail.

More positive in the Times coverage today 🤞

Trans athletes likely to be barred from female classifications

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/653b2f38-9da2-11ed-8201-2ed91f44d1e8?shareToken=90542bf1a0c93c9e31cb9d68f7e4bf38

Not sure about the money exactly. I think this issue was originally a way to look progressive while being corrupt on other issues.

The original 2003 IOC Committee that first said transwomen could compete in women's events (at that time only after surgery) included an athlete with a VSD who was constantly challenged on her status as a woman during her sport career. I'd imagine that her voice was listened to. Obviously I see this as a different issue but it's not simply corruption.

Thanks mcduffy for that link

It will be interesting to see what this grassroots London study is going to say.

I don’t understand the need they keep mentioning to ‘have more data’. It seems very clear that no studies have shown a decrease in advantage. And frankly, it was ridiculous that this was ever pandered to in the first place.

We all know what is going to happen in the open category. males suppressing their testosterone will not gain positions. As would be the same outcome for any male taking medication that impacted their performance!

And those males with DSDs probably need to have their own event or that is an area worth researching. Can males with particular DSDs perform at the same elite level as other males without the conditions. Obviously CAIS will be different as would any other condition where testosterone cannot be processed.

Third category is the way to go. It would be nice to see male TQ+ athletes compete when they are able to go flat out as opposed to pulling their performance to avoid winning by too obvious a margin over female athletes. I hope retroactively that the records won by males competing in the female category will transfer to the open category.

@mcduffy
Amazing what a bit of publicity will do, eh? But they must think we're idiots.
The presentation of the reduced testosterone limit as a halfway house on the way to full exclusion from the female category is suspicious. They are starting from the position that some males should be in the female category so what's the betting that they would find reasons to stick with this policy indefinitely?
Good to see that grassroots athletes' opinions are going to be presented to them. This decision-making process needs careful scrutiny.

This is interesting. Whenever they go on about TW not dominating female sports they always imply that it’s because of transphobia keeping TW out. It never seems to cross their minds that many TW athletes know for a fact that male advantage doesn’t just evaporate after a year of taking synthetic oestrogen and will have a level of integrity that means they would not even attempt to compete.