The female category
World Athletics has banned trans women from international competition, Sebastian Coe has confirmed.
That is, World Athletics has banned men from international competition. You’d think it would go without saying. If it’s women’s, it’s not men’s.
The governing body has opted to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes and those with differences in sex development (DSD) from female competition if they have gone through male puberty.
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Lord Coe, president of World Athletics, has confirmed the “difficult” decision to change its rules starting on 31 March.
“Difficult” only because of tons of senseless pressure. I actually remember when everyone took it for granted that things for women were for women.
“The decision that the council made is a primarily principled based decision about the over-arching need to protect the female category. This is what our sport is here to do. And I think the council has done that today. We continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.”
What other considerations would there be? People wouldn’t stand around debating whether we should let boxers fight small children; why do they stand around debating whether men should invade women’s athletics?
However, LGBTQI advocacy groups say excluding trans athletes amounts to discrimination.
Not all of them. Certainly not all L advocacy groups – why not ask them? Anyway it’s stupid. We rely on discrimination all the time. If we’re shopping for pears we discriminate between oranges and pears. If we want to read a particular book we discriminate between that book and all the other books. We make choices; we’re allowed to do that. Women get to exclude men when they need to.
This seems like a BFD.
May it flow down to girls’ sports.
“The governing body has opted to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes and those with differences in sex development (DSD) from female competition if they have gone through male puberty.”
The way the author of the article has written this, it sounds like both MtF transgender and individuals with DSDs will be excluded, if they have gone through male puberty. However, the bit about male puberty only applies to MtF transgender, while the DSD policy has just been adjusted. I have looked at the new policy on the world athletics site, and it still allows males with DSDs to compete as long as they bring their testosterone down to the new limit of 2.5 nmol/L for a minimum of 24 months. This means that individuals like Caster Semenya, who is male and has gone through male puberty, could compete if the limit on testosterone is met.
Re #2
Thanks for that, I was hoping someone would chase down the specifics.
It is worth noting that the lede claims this group of people has been “banned from international competition”, when the real point is they are banned from competing in the women’s division. They are free to compete in the men’s division.
And?
Seriously, I’m sick of this not being ridiculed as the manipulative stupidity it is. Discrimination per se is morally neutral.
“The governing body has opted to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes and those with differences in sex development (DSD) from female competition if they have gone through male puberty.”
Why even then? Male is male, including those of us that aren’t particularly competitive within the cohort. It’s okay to suck at sports relative to your peers. And if a male person reduces their competitiveness knowingly, by taking testosterone suppression for example, they are choosing to become even less competitive. That’s their choice, but they are still male.