Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam in with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.
Thomas swam for Pennsylvania. She competed for the men’s team at Penn before her gender transition.
Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship. By not making the final, the lawsuit mentions that Florida swimmer Tylor Mathieu, who was not a plaintiff, was denied first-team All-American honors in that event.
Other plaintiffs included athletes from volleyball and track.
I think I have to agree that transgender people shouldn’t simply be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Men tend to have a physical advantage, and that is just biology. Yes, there are certainly natural women who can compete against men, but it’s not the norm. I have no clue how to resolve this, but I agree it’s unfair to the majority of women athletes, amd I’d probably be pretty pissed in this situation, too, especially if I were pursuing a professional sports career.
And I worry about women feeling forced to compensate medically or with drugs somehow if this becomes common.
I’m not sure what the difference is in this headline versus the one i made the exact same argument in, but i was down voted for it like 3-4 months ago. I wonder what changed everyone’s mind.
I think the first step needs to be asking why we do this and what we want. We have women’s sports because (cis) women generally cannot compete sufficiently with (cis) men. But what are we trying to accomplish? I would say in middle school and high school our goal should be inclusivity. So trans men and women should be able to compete in their identified genders.
On the other hand in college and the Olympics inclusivity is probably not as important for adults competing at some of the highest levels. So I am more willing to accept some limits, but I’m certainly not well versed enough to know where to draw that line.
My understanding is that if the athlete is correctly undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) the biological advantage is significantly reduced if not removed. I am sure there are exceptions though.
Edit: Everything below
After looking through some studies it seems like Trans fem athletes do maintain some advantage, or atleast the current wait time is not enough for the edge to be eliminated.
Best example I could find https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/current-treatment-period-may-be-too-short-to-remove-competitive-advantage-of-transgender-athletes/
I mean, the question is what’s fair both to trans women and cis women. Competing against competitors with an advantage and being excluded are both unfair. Absolutely eliminating advantage isn’t the standard that minimizes unfairness, it’s a balancing act between competing interests.
I’m not sure sports have found exactly the perfect balance, and it may vary a bit by sport, but it doesn’t seem to be wildly off in favor of trans women.
The Economist looked at and has a perfectly reasonable solution.
The short version is that gender may be fluid, but biological sex isn’t.
They propose two categories, biological female by sex and Open.
Kinda like it used to be.
Here’s the thing: who cares? Like okay, lots of people care, but why? Why cant trans athletes compete? What wound does anyone suffer?
It’s not that they shouldn’t be allowed to compete, I think there needs to be a greater restriction on who and how they compete.
This whole thing started because of Lia Thomas who was a competetive male swimmer from the age of 5 until they completed hormone treatment at the age of 22.
They had the benefit of male puberty and trained as a male. That’s going to make a difference.
Now if you take a child who has not yet hit puberty, put them on blockers, then allow them to transition with hormones and surgery, you’re going to end up with a completely different athelete.
It’s good that the sports organization recognizes that trans atheletes need to be on hormones for a set period of time before being allowed to compete, but there needs to be a policy addressing WHEN they started the hormone treatment.
Starting after puberty has completed should be a non-starter, or at the very least a different category of competition.