Under mounting pressure

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Two steps forward one step back.

British sports governing bodies are under mounting pressure to reform their policies after world swimming banned transgender athletes who reached male puberty from elite women’s events.

Although the policy could have been passed just by Fina’s executive bureau, endorsement was sought from national governing bodies at an extraordinary general congress in Budapest ahead of the World Swimming Championships.

More than 70 per cent of governing bodies agreed, with 15.3 per cent against, and 13.1 per cent who abstained.

Those are the forward. Now the back.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced a new policy on Thursday, opting to allow transgender women to compete if they have gone through puberty provided their testosterone has been suppressed to below 2.5nmol per litre for at least two years. That would potentially mean Welsh cyclist Emily Bridges could still compete in women’s events at the Paris Olympics in 2024.

That’s a crap new policy. Puberty gives male people a whole slew of permanent advantages, that don’t go away with later puberty suppression. This has been pointed out some 90 billion times over the past couple of years so surely it should have sunk in by now.

Cycling’s decision to reduce its limit still faced a backlash from campaigners, who believe that crucial physical advantages remain after puberty even if testosterone has been suppressed.

They don’t “believe” it, they know it. They recognize it. It’s a fact.

British swimmer Sharron Davies, who was denied Olympic gold in 1980 by state-sponsored doping in East Germany, called on other sports to follow swimming’s lead.

“All the sports should be doing this,” she said. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of my sport for doing the science, asking the athletes/coaches, and standing up for fair sport. Biological females deserve the same opportunities of success in sport as their male counterparts.” 

All the sports should be doing this. Now.

Comments

4 responses to “Under mounting pressure”

  1. Rev David Brindley Avatar
    Rev David Brindley

    This is the speech given by Australian Olympic swimmer, Cate Campbell

    Inclusion and fairness –let’s make them work

    IN 2001, my family and I relocated from the small African country Malawi to Brisbane, Australia. A family of soon-to-be seven, we knew no one and knew nothing about the city we would be calling home.

    Almost as soon as we had landed, my parents started looking for ways to integrate us into the Australian community. And that is how, at the age of 9 – much to my consternation, for I had been enjoying the warmth of my bed – I found myself being taken to my first swimming club.

    It was there, in the bustling suburbs of Brisbane, that a shy, tall, freckly girl, with a strange South African accent and absolutely no fashion sense, found her place. A community to be a part of. People to help me understand the subtle nuances of talking “Australian” – that when my coach said “see you this arvo” he meant “see you this afternoon”.

    I felt included, valued, seen for who I was, and accepted for it

    INCLUSION

    Inclusion. This I think is one of the core principles underpinning sport – and is one of the gifts sports gives society.

    It creates a community, drawing people together irrespective of background, race or religion while also fighting the growing obesity and mental health epidemics.

    In Australia, it is estimated that 40 per cent or 11.1 million people aged over 15 participate in some type of community sport, while 62 per cent of children aged under 15 participate in community sport at least once per week.

    I am sure these numbers could be taken and extrapolated to many countries around the world.

    If inclusion is one of the cornerstones of sport, then the other would be fairness. Fairness in regards to competition. Especially elite, professional competition. Unlike in community or amateur sport, in elite sport, winning and losing goes hand in hand with politics, money and power. Creating a place where men and women can come up against the best of their contemporaries and battle it out – down to hundredths and tenths of a second.

    This battle, this standing up and comparing of wills and physique is what draws people to watch sport – to see who can squeeze the very last ounce out of their bodies and minds and emerge victorious. Without fair competition, sport in its elite sense, would cease to exist.

    Usually, inclusion and fairness go hand-in-hand. To create a place that is inclusive, is to create a space that is fair. Transgender, gender diverse and non-binary athletes’ inclusion in the female category of elite sport, is one of the few occasions where these two principles come into conflict. The incongruity that inclusion and fairness cannot always work together is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to talk about this topic. Usually, they are terms of absolutes which work together, yet science now tells us, that in this issue, they are incompatible.

    FAIR, ELITE COMPETITION

    I stand before you, as a four-time Olympian, a world champion and a world record holder. I stand before you, as a beneficiary of fair, elite competition.

    Yet my job today is not to explain the nuances of FINA’s transgender policy. Nor is it to defend the conclusions reached by medical and legal professionals of much greater intellect than I.

    My role is to stand before you, as an athlete who has enjoyed many, many years in this sport and who hopes to continue to enjoy a few more years. To stand here and tell the transgender and gender diverse community that we want you to be part of the broader swimming community.

    We see you, value you and accept you. My role, however, is also to stand up here, having asked our world governing body, FINA, to investigate, deliberate and uphold the cornerstone of fairness in elite women’s’ competition. And it pains me that this part of my role may injure, infuriate and potentially alienate people from an already marginalised trans community.

    Believe me, I have wrestled with myself, with what to say and do. I am aware that my actions and words, no matter what I say, will anger some people – whether they are from the trans-community or from the cisgender female community.

    LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE

    However, I am asking everyone to take a breath, to absorb before reacting. Listen to the science and experts.

    Listen to the people who stand up here and tell you how difficult it has been to reconcile inclusion and fairness.

    That men and women are physiologically different cannot be disputed.

    We are only now beginning to explore and understand the origins of these physiological differences and the lasting effects of exposure to differing hormones. Women, who have fought long and hard to be included and seen as equals in sport, can only do so because of the gender category distinction. To remove that distinction would be to the detriment of female athletes everywhere.

    The creation of this policy did not stem from “feelings”; what we “felt” was the right thing to do. The policy was created with the inclusion of medical professionals, legal professionals, athletes, coaches and people from the transgender community. It is a policy that pays attention to inclusion, but prioritises fairness.

    NOT ABOUT WINNING

    Ultimately, this not about winners and losers, it is about investigating and developing a policy which accurately represents the science and draws a line to protect the fairness of the female category distinction in elite sport. Not community sport, not amateur sport – elite, professional sport.

    I want the broader swimming community to be a place of safety and acceptance for the gender diverse – and I call on all the federations sitting within this room to examine your own policies to ensure the world of swimming remains inclusive.

    It is my hope that young girls all around the world can continue to dream of becoming Olympic and World Champions in a female category prioritising the competitive cornerstone of fairness.

    However, I also hope that a young gender diverse child can walk into a swimming club and feel the same level of acceptance that a nine-yearold immigrant kid from Africa did all those years ago.

    I think she mostly gets it and lays out a good case for female sport, but would have liked to hear a more nuanced explanation of welcoming trans into lower levels of the sport. They may prevent another 9 year old girl, just starting out, from reaching the pinnacle.

  2. Sastra Avatar
    Sastra

    @ Rev David Brindley:

    That’s an excellent speech — thanks for posting it.

    … would have liked to hear a more nuanced explanation of welcoming trans into lower levels of the sport. They may prevent another 9 year old girl, just starting out, from reaching the pinnacle.

    They may also prevent another 9 year old girl, just starting out, from joining in the first place. Swimming isn’t just about competition; it’s also about getting changed in the locker rooms. Girls of all ages — and perhaps particularly girls of 9 — are incredibly self-conscious and embarrassed about nudity. It’s hard enough to become comfortable around other girls. Naked boys watching you undress is for some a nightmare scenario.

    Providing separate changing rooms or areas for trans-identified boys doesn’t work. The TRAs act like it’s segregation in the Deep South all over again, and they win with that once it’s conceded that they’re “girls.”

  3. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    Naked boys watching you undress is for some a nightmare scenario

    I couldn’t change in the locker rooms, even without boys. I somehow managed to shower and put my clothes on without ever getting naked. I don’t quite remember how, but I imagine it involved my gym clothes getting quite wet.

  4. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    ikn, I had the same problem. In my first year of HS I used to scoot out of the locker room without showering. I was 14 and very self conscious. A group of the other boys, mostly “jocks,” caught on to what I was doing and one day after I got dressed they forced me in fully clothed. I sat through history class the next period soaking wet. They thought this was pretty funny. I then skipped out of PE until I came up with a better solution, which was to switch PE class to last period and go home in gym clothes. Needless to say I failed that one semester, which caused more humiliation — “Who fails PE?!”

    I really hated high school, it felt like prison to me. I tried every way I could think of to avoid becoming institutionalized. College was refreshing by comparison, and I took summer courses at the local community college to make up credits that I missed due to being chronically truant. Once I found out I had that option I ran with it. :)

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