Open category for transgender swimmers

[AmaListening]

www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/world-aquatics-debut-open-category-races-transgender-swimmers-rcna100174

I see absolutely no reason why it would be detrimental to women’s or men’s sport to have open sex competition available along side single sex competition.

Meanwhile Scottish Swimming are still undecided!

Surely the problem is prize money? It's basically 2 categories for males and one for females. Indirect discrimination.

Exactly. Yet more sex discrimination in sport.

And it's such a waste. Not just of extra prize money but all the resources - extra officials, admin, marketing... For what? Everybody is already included in men's and protected women's categories. Have a special identity or don't, makes no difference to your swimming ability or your performance. Might as well have a special category for people who like cats. They'd have done much better to rename the men's category Open.

And call me cynical but I suspect money and resources for this will be found by reducing the women's pot - it's all diversity, innit?

Very quickly Men's becomes Elite Men, Open becomes Mediocre Men, and Women's remains Women.

Fair and inclusive?

I see the point on discrimination. Two sets of medals etc.. for men.
But that's not that different to how it is now with men taking the women's medals and money already.
At least women hopefully won't have to share the changing rooms with men under the new scheme?
It may not be perfect but it seems like a much better deal than the current deal to me.

Speculating about how it might progress.
What if other males who aren't quite at the top level join the open category for medals and money? The current bottom of the heap MtF males would return to the bottom of the heap. I think they'd try to invade the women's catergories again because they have no other route to pride.

At least women hopefully won't have to share the changing rooms with men under the new scheme?

I don't think we know that yet. If the three categories were physically separated it would mean having three sets of changing rooms / showers / toilets and how many venues have room or money for that?

Or possibly segregate the events by timing.
e.g.
Women's event first. Changing rooms/toilets female only.
Men's event. Men use their changing rooms. Women finish using thier changing rooms and leave.
Open event. God knows but hopefully women are all done in their changing rooms and don't have to put up with dicks.

There must be some way to arrange things that avoids the current problems. Open category should theorically make this easier.

I don't know who else needs to hear this but the women's category is already protected - even if men claiming to be women really, really want to, they cannot compete in the women's category according to the eligibility policy of World Aquatics published earlier this year. No more men with ladyfeelz in women's swimming.

The only reason for adding the Open category is to pander to genderists. It is not helpful to women, indeed it is detrimental.

@JellySaurus
Very quickly Men's becomes Elite Men, Open becomes Mediocre Men, and Women's remains Women.

Fair and inclusive?

Perfectly summarised.

Does funding work like that and all come from the same pot? If there are more male participants then aren’t they providing more proportionally of the revenue?

I think it’s a positive move.

I don't know what the exact funding allocations are. I do know that men's sport is taken more seriously and women's competitions tend to be thought of as box-ticking.

Why do you think it is a positive move to have an Open category in addition to a men's category and a protected women's category?

What is really needed is two extra categories: one for transmen and one for transwomen.
Transmen could, but don't compete in the men's races because they'd never win, and wouldn't want to compete in the women's race "because they aren't women".

Transwomen do want to compete in the women's races, but they are stronger, faster etc so it's not fair.

Transmen should not be competing at all if they are taking testosterone.

If they can't accept or find it 'literal violence' that sport is segregated by sex then they shouldn't compete. That or they can setup their own little group and all compete together. Funding for sports does not need spreading thinner just to accommodate people's feelz.

Oh, they won't like that, not one bit. Can't be guaranteed a win in that category.

This!

Though really we only need two categories: Open and (single-sex) Women’s.

No, that's now how it works at all.

It's not pay-to-play, with each athlete paying or bringing in £x and that being shared out as prizes. A lot of funding - especially at elite levels and for athlete development - comes from external sources like government and lottery funding. Those pots are limited, so more competitors means more competition for funding, not more funding.

Doubling the number of men means cutting women's funding by 1/3 (at the simplest level; it's actually more compicated in reality because there are complex funding formulae based on things like number of medals won.)

(That is to say, your assumption of more participants means more revenue isn't how it works; the post you're responding to is how it works.)

i know very little about sports funding but it was my understanding that women’s sports attracted far less funding than men’s? If that’s the case I would imagine an open category would attract even less.

Women's sports generally have less revenue from sponsorship and ticket sales. Central funding varies but if it's performance based it's often lower because the lower funding from other sources mean less development money, which means fewer medals, which means less funding, which means less development money, which... tou get the picture.

Whether open categories would get more or less than women is impossible to predict, but every penny it gets is a penny not available for the other categories. And admin costs, publicity costs etc for 3 categories are higher than for 2 - again meaning less money to support and promote women.

Agreed.

What are the rules on artificial hormones in the open category? I can’t see that it’s going to be won by transwomen or transmen so I would imagine it will be a side show rather than have any real place in competitive sport. I think it will demonstrate very clearly WHY there should be single sex competition.

I think it more realistic that World Aquatics will cease the events once they realise that it really is a form of discrimination against women and girls. And probably there will be court cases.

When there are two events for males - one specifically and one indirectly will be only won by male competitors, it will become clear and sports with this third event will fall back to two - open and female.

There is always some kind of prestige at being declared a ‘winner’ and a ‘open record holder’. So even if it is “less” prize money, it is still not prize money female athletes are likely to win. And it removes money from the overall pot .

It has already been shown that the NB category in marathons reward male competitors well down the results table. Yet those winners are celebrated still. And what for? Having a special gender identity?

I personally think it really will all disappear in not many years to come. It will show the studies are correct though and that the reducing of testosterone will not remove the advantages.

Why does open have all these rules? If it’s truly open why shouldn’t a biological woman who identifies as a woman be allowed to compete. Yes, she won’t likely do well (!) but why neither would a biological female who identifies as non binary. Doesn’t make sense to me.

• “Open – athletes with a birth sex of male, trans or non-binary competitors and any competitor not eligible for the female category” [my bold]

Slightly amusing to see men basically described as not-women.