News

Well this comment section is awful.

Just one of many ways in which conservative politicians and institutions run by them are trying to exclude trans people from society.

Competition rules forbid participation after undergoing “any part of male puberty” while laws forbid any sort of prepubescent transition or even blocking of puberty.

In closing, I would like to relay the following message to World Aquatics and the Court: FUCK you and your oppressive bigotry! 🖕🖕🖕

So we cant compete if we have ever had testosterone in our blood, even though cis women also have blood testosterone and can undergo testosterone related hormonal puberty if they have certain conditions, and also we are not allowed to transition before the age of 16 which would mean we had undergone some measure of testosterone hormonal puberty. Also, the concept of "male puberty" is awfully ill-defined isnt it. Have cis women with PCOS gone through "male puberty" ? What specifically constitutes "male puberty"? What hormonal levels are necessary to qualify for "male puberty"? Can Cis men with hormonal deficiency disorders compete in womens sports? To what end does this ruling "protect women's sports"? This does nothing in a sport that has 1 single trans female athlete except specifically ban her from competing under some misguided notion of "fairness". I'd love to see them describe how excluding anyone is meant to protect anything, let alone fairness. When will height categories be instituted? When will we make wingspan brackets? How exactly is this competition meant to be fair to begin with?

So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization. Nice. Just say that then. No woman is going to accept being forced to compete in a men's category, so all you have done is single out and exclude one group of women based on their status as transgender. Creating an "open" bracket does nothing either, as there are probably only 1 or 2 trans athletes who would be competing in this organization anyway.

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