FINA Bans Lia Thomas and Trans Women Who Did not Transition Before Age 12 from Competing Against Women

You're not all of a sudden going to have an equal amount of open heats.

Two things may happen instead - one is that the open category is dominated by a few higher level athletes and the rest of it is filler and it slowly builds over time to become more competitive with more heats per meet, etc. (this will take years), or having a seperate open category is the death knell for this. Like if it truly was as suspect as people screaming about it think it is, then the male to female that were getting the physical advantage competing against women become less interested in pursuing this now they lose their advantage and it peters out.

I'm concerned over a quarter of them think it should be any other way.

An open category carveout for trans athletes isn't the way I would have done it.

I would have kept two divisions, and just did a bit of a rename. Open (for what is currently the male division, plus a few extras), and Restricted (for the female division, plus a few extras).

Open for cis men, trans females with fully functional male hormones (or who had a male puberty even if they're now on hormone replacement), etc. Maaaaybe allow a certain subset of trans males that have had male hormone replacement, up to sensible limits of testosterone levels. Though it's tough to imagine them being able to compete with cis males.

Restricted for cis women and trans men with fully functional female hormone levels and no significant amount of male hormone replacement in their history. Maaaybe allow some trans females if they've had a verifiably complete hormone replacment dating from before and all the way through puberty, though I'm not certain about this last group.

Also, maybe there's some room in the restricted division for some of the really rare cases, like XY with angrogen insensitivity. I believe there's one of these competing in track and field on the women's side, from India.

No, you don’t need a full slate of swimming events for the “Trans / DSD / Others” division,
at least to start. One event in each stroke should do it. Swimming is already
overloaded with far too many events. Imagine if track had the 100 meters running,
the 100 running backwards, the 100 hopping, and the 100 skipping. And so on, up
through 200, 400, 800 and 1500 distances.
FINA’s ruling is a step in the right direction. Will Athletics / T&F have the guts to follow? And we need a firm decision on DSD athletes. Not just “we’ll keep you out of certain events if you don’t lower your testosterone.”

You bring up a good point about PAIS.

https:/

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is a common etiology of sexual developmental disorders resulting in varying phenotypes. These disorders of androgen action present as 46 XY disorders or differences of sex development (DS...

Link:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK5...

FINA's argument is that male puberty confers an advantage that cannot be mitigated.

It can't ban trans women who transitioned before age 12 with the same argument, because they never experienced male puberty.

They're not going to undermine their own policy.

I don’t believe that this is an Olympic event

I'm a 300lb 1m 95cm bodybuilder. I hereby challenge Bartholomew Maxwell to a boxing match.
I identify as a flyweight, so it's a fair match up, no excuses. Now man up and accept my challenge.

This argument actually supports transathletes competing with their identifying gender.

A 300lbs boxer can literally transition to a lighter weight boxer by losing weight and become a flyweight. They are not banned from competing based on what they USED to be.

Likewise, a male should be able to transition to female, which is something that happens every day in society, and compete as a female. They should not be banned from competing based on what they USED to be.

Rather begging the point. Those arguing against trans athletes in women's sport aren't evil meanies who just can't accept that trans athletes are women. It's the fact that trans athletes clearly do retain physical advantages after transitioning. If heavyweights moving down to fly weight somehow retained advantages, then there would have to be another form of weight class system to redress it. And it wouldn't be 'prejudice' against heavyweights or former heavys identifying as flyweights.

can we stop with the cis rubbish now then please?

we have perfectly good terms; male, female, trans.

Gender is anything. Biology is the issue, not gender.

You are commenting on gender. Which makes sense. This is an issue of biology, which is why we have a womens category in the first place. So your analogy doesnt apply. Its a protected class. It wasnt meant for gender.

Absolutely wrong. They didn't used to be "male." They are still male biologically. The fact that we engage in a bit of legal fiction, doesn't change what every cell in their body is. They were born male, and if their graves are dug up a hundred years from now, they'll still be male.

They are men identifying as women, whether because of dysphoria or fetishes. It doesn't matter. They are free to live how they want to live, but they will never be biological women.

How is any of this going to be confirmed? Who is administering chromosome tests to 12-year-olds?

There will be fall out from this if the rules are applied consistently. Sport is full of androgenous women and many will find out they are XY with an androgen insensitivity syndrome and will be barred because their parents didn't record their T levels when they were in middle school.

When an 11.5 year transitions everyone will whine that it is too early. When they win an Olympic medal, people will still complain...

Not good.

They are encouraging pre pubescent kids to mess with their natural development