The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.
The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.
Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.
However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.
The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.
I know I’m gonna catch heat for this, but sex-segregated physical competitions is one of the very few places where trans women shouldn’t be treated the same. Women’s sports competitions aren’t segregated by gender, they’re segregated by sex. Trans women are women in gender, but their body isn’t a biologically female body. That’s the exact definition of transgender - when your body’s biological sex doesn’t match your sense of gender. So by definition, trans women don’t have a biologically female body.
The whole point of sex-segregated sports is for people with female bodies to be able to have a fair competition, instead of them not even getting a chance to compete at all because if they had to compete against biological males then almost 100% of females wouldn’t even make the team. This is the whole reason why sports competitions are segregated by sex.
TLDR trans women should always be treated as women - except for sex-segregated physical competitions
Trans women have been allowed in the Olympics for 20 years now. There have been zero trans medalists. If this advantage actually exists, why aren’t they winning?
If i had to guess I’d say it’s simply numbers. Compared to the rest of the population, trans people are extremely rare, and so there likely just haven’t been enough trans people to have been there yet.
3% of the population, about 300 events per Olympics, assume 5 in the past 20 years, so that’s a conservative estimate of 1500 medals. You’d expect 45 medals to just be proportional, and significantly more than 45 would prove an advantage. 0 shows an extremely severe disadvantage.
Actually more like 60 medals would be the baseline expectation if you’re counting winter Olympics too.
Even if you estimate as conservatively as possible, 1% of the population and ignore winter Olympics, you have an expected medal count of 15, 0 is a massive anomaly without some sort of significant disadvantage.
Edit: triple all those numbers to include silver and bronze, realistic estimate of 180, extremely conservative estimate of 45.
You are completely ignoring the externalities of competing at the Olympic level. Trans people are going through so many societal, cultural, interpersonal, and internal conflicts that focusing on training at an Olympic level is going to be more difficult. You can be the most physically gifted athlete in the world, but if your head is not in the right space to train 12 hours a day while still going about your normal life then you aren’t going to be able to compete at that level. Hell, look at how far Tiger Woods’s performances fell after his public disgrace. Yes, some of that was drugs and some was from an injury, but a lot of sports is mental.
Also, you are ignoring that while the Olympic committee might allow it, do you think most countries in the world are so open about trans people?
Also also, do you remember the controversy around the East German women’s team from the 70s? How everyone suspected some were men? There might have been trans people winning medals, just maybe not openly.
Dude, hormone blockers exist. They don’t have any advantages if they’re on hormones/ hormone blockers.
Edit: I’ll die on this hill. Enjoy being evil the future.
My understanding is that’s true for muscle mass. However, if they transition after puberty like Lia Thomas did, height and wingspan will remain; both of which confer huge advantages in swimming. Apparently that’s a major reason why Michael Phelps did so well, his arm span is ridiculous.
Phelps has huge palms that support his paddling ability and is 14 feet tall, which essentially act as flippers (the kind of fingerless arms that seals have).
That site could use a little more proof reading.
Probably AI. There’s probably a reddit comment out there joking about how Phelps is 14 feet tall.
Are there no cis women with large wing spans or abnormal height, though? Are they still allowed to compete? Why would trans women specifically be excluded for that?
While outliers exist, this has to do with averages. On average men are taller than women, and this difference usually manifests between the ages of 12-15. This confers an advantage. However, for trans athletes who transition before puberty it’s far less cut and dry and there’s a good case to be made for inclusion.
So again why are cisgender women who are above average allowed to compete but transgender women are CATEGORICALLY not allowed to compete even if we’re within the average for all women?
Because athletic associations decided long ago to segregate athletics by sex to account for this average difference, even though some women are taller and stronger than men.
So it’s just a ban on trans women from sports, just because with no actual logic or ethical rationale behind it. Even though it is literally not fair, and the justification provided for it is “fairness”. Gotcha.
If Shaq took hormone blockers, would she still have an advantage?
Probably not many, but that is because he is already in his 50s. If you do that with an Olympic level male athlete, on his early 20s and on his prime, then absolutely.
