Transgender women to be banned from all female Olympic events

[Misla]

About time!!

IOC likely to announce new policy early in new year after findings of a scientific review about the permanent physical advantages of being born male

The International Olympic Committee is set to announce a ban on transgender women in female competition early next year after a science-based review of evidence about permanent physical advantages of being born male.

The IOC’s guidance to Olympic sports has until now been that transgender women can compete with reduced testosterone levels but leaves it up to individual sports to decide. That is now set to change under its new president, Kirsty Coventry, who has promised to protect the female category.

The committee’s medical and scientific director, Dr Jane Thornton, last week presented to IOC members at a meeting in Lausanne the initial findings of a science-based review into the issues of transgender athletes and athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) competing in female sport.

Free-to-read link: https://archive.is/kGpyI

Transgender women to be banned from all female Olympic events

Didn’t Harper’s original research include a minimal number of non elite athletes? Like 7?

“The issue of who should or shouldn’t be eligible for the female category is a complex question with lots of nuance”

No. No it isn’t.

Idk, I thought one of the cohort was…Harper, but I could be wrong.

complex😂 - female category is categorically for females.

I found the 2015 Harper paper - it was 8 MtF transitioners.

https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/R15_47780_RaceTimesforTransgenderAthletes_FinalOF.pdf

here is the paper

I believe the methodology was very dodgy and some results were compared to very old times after the athlete had aged and then transitioned.

Replied to wrong post

Regarding the number of participants whose self-reported results were included, it was 8.

Coach Linda Blade has written about this.
https://nequals8.com/

Funnily enough, there was a ninth man who reported improved performance when on hormones, but his results were withdrawn from the "study" because they were anomalous.
This particular individual was still training as hard as before, which probably explains his results. And demonstrates neatly that "hormone therapy" doesn't necessarily reduce performance.

Edited for clarity

Thank you! That was the website I was struggling to find.

i hadn’t heard about the Ninth Man before - interesting. If that is true and his results were discounted because they didn’t fit the narrative, then that’s … scandalous.

I thought Harper was one of the 8 as well. Surely that can’t be ethical?

His split times also indicated that he was sandbagging.

This should have been done earlier. But better late than never.

I don’t see any statement on funding or conflicts of interest on that paper.
Also I note the author’s qualifications.

Joanna Harper: Medical Physicist, Radiation Oncology

Did Harper ever publish the long talked about research paper on Emily Bridges? It was trailed for years as being ‘proof’ that TW should compete with women.

Here are a few articles where Harper talks about advantages in sport. It quickly descends into madness when Harper compares advantages that left handed people have over right handed people. Ross Tucker gives a far more sensible and clearer picture. The Critic article is much better.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/61346517

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-flawed-science-of-trans-inclusion-in-womens-sport/

I don't know for sure, but what I do know, is that everyone (three), dropped out of the study group, bar Emily Bridges, leaving a one person study. It is in the Times dated 1st February 2023. The study was funded by the IOC.

Well, this is hot off the press - 13th November 2025 - Harper alleges that Nike scrapped the study.

www.outkick.com/sports/researcher-nike-pulled-plug-transgender-youth-athlete-study

My disgust at the cowardice of the IOC will never end. The female boxers should be awarded the medals they were robbed of.

And then you have Seema Patel:

“The Equality Act 2010 lists gender reassignment as a characteristic given legal protection from discrimination - however, there are exemptions when it comes to sport.

Section 195 of the Act, which deals with sport, says it is lawful to restrict the participation of transgender people from sporting competitions where physical strength, stamina or physique are important factors in deciding who wins, but the restriction can only be done to ensure the competition is fair or the other competitors are safe.

Dr Seema Patel is a senior lecturer in law at Nottingham Law School. She has a PhD in discrimination in sport, looking at the regulatory balance between inclusion and exclusion in competitive sport. She has almost 20 years' expertise on the specific topic of transgender athletes and the law, and argues that the discussion around transgender participation needs to look beyond science and medicine.

In contrast to Harper and Tucker's criticism of the IOC's current guidance, Patel backs the new framework as "groundbreaking", saying: "It's the first time an international governing body has sought to ensure that everyone can participate in sport irrespective of their gender identity or sex variations over the history of eligibility rules for gender diverse athletes.

"We have never had guidance that focuses on principles of inclusion - no presumption of advantage, dignity and respect for athletes.
"The focus on human rights is necessary to ensure a balance; it shouldn't be one or the other. The science should not be the turning factor on this. It has to be also a matter of law, regulation, sociology, athletes and human rights ultimately, because these athletes are individuals."

Addressing the Equality Act exemption clause, Patel called it "highly problematic" to base an argument on it for transgender exclusion, and suggested the government "would need to look at amendments to future legislation".

They gave the last word to Ross Tucker, because I guess even the BBC can recognise when they’re onto a loser.

This is in the sports section of today's Sunday Independent, an Irish newspaper:

Tide is starting to turn in sport and in society against men masquerading as women

https://archive.vn/zlNgC

Well worth a read for some plain-speaking.

Very plain. Thanks for this, it's most uplifting and I dare to feel optimistic that at some point sanity will return. As the article says, after all the years of bullshit, we're well armed for the next time.

I sympathise with your feeling but suspect that trying to remove medals would only result in lots of expensive litigation, cluminating in "they competed within the rules at the time, therefore the medals are theirs".
What could work would be to asterix the medal "winners" with an explanation of the Bach-era weird rules & to award additional medals to the female competitors who placed directly below the "winning" males.

Edited for accidentally cut words.

@HildegardP
Lots of people were allocated medals after the Russian Cheating scandal disqualifications
along with Cycling shuffling results after Lance Armstrong.

There IS precedent.

Boxing is tricky because it was a knockout competition rather than a ranking ...

The difference is that those people broke the rules. The boxers were morally wrong, but not breaking any IOC rules.

Sadly it's not a precedent applicable to your preferred course of action because those athletes broke the rules as they stood at the time. Thanks to the IOC's "passport sex" rule, the males competing in the female cat' in more recent Games were acting within the rules.

@Genesis1v27 Thank you for the link. You're right, it's good read 👏

Wow! I bet he felt better after getting that lot off his chest!!

The tide has to be turning if that got published and his career hasn’t ended.

Truth doesn’t need a loud voice because it’s inviolable. It has its own sovereign integrity. But an ideology needs noise, and plenty of it. It needs propaganda and policing and anger. It needs zealots to chase down heretics and publicly scourge them. Sadly, it cannot nowadays physically torture dissidents, as in the grand old days of the Spanish Inquisition, but it can economically destroy them by driving them out of their jobs, and psychologically destroy them by hounding them on social media, where vast mobs are available at the touch of a button to hunt down the fugitive.