First olympic transgender athlete to compete at Tokyo 2020 **MOD NOTE IN OP**

sekiro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118304080#Comment_118304080

This just seems really sad.

You have all these female swimmers training hard to try to be competitive and then someone from the male swimming team decides to transition and all that training is basically for nothing as it's now impossible to compete.

I think really there are two options here. The first is that more needs to be done to protect women's sports now or by the next two or three Olympic games every women's champion is going to have a transition backstory. The second is to just do away with gender segregated sports and let the chips fall where they may.

Having an avenue through which mediocre male athletes can become female record breakers should really not be acceptable at all.

The women's 100m World Record was set at 10.49 in 1988. For context the men's record is 9.58 set in 2009.

In the most recent Olympics 24 men competed in the 100m Semi Finals. One was disqualified. The other twenty-three ALL registered times that would break the women's record set more than three decades ago. All eight who qualified for the final ran the 100m in less than 10 seconds.

I believe that we will probably start seeing women's records being broken by trans-women on the Olympic stage within the next few Olympic games. It'll be interesting to see how the world reacts to that.

chopperbyrne

US Rowing put out their new gender policies.

https://usrowing.org/documents/2022/11/28/USRowing_GenderIdentityPolicy_20221201.pdf

Basically, anyone is a woman, unless it will disadvantage a man, then women will be correctly categorised by sex.

"II. Gender Identity Policy

1) Youth Level (Youth, Junior, High School, Scholastic, U19, U17, U15).

Athletes at the youth level (youth, junior, high school, scholastic, U19, U17, U15) shall be allowed to participate in a rowing activity in accordance with their expressed gender identity irrespective of the sex listed on the athlete’s birth certificate or student records, and regardless of whether the athlete has undergone any medical treatment, subject to the Eligibility Procedures set forth below.

2) Adult Athletes (includes masters, senior, intermediate, U23, 18 and over who are not in college or high school).

Athletes over the age of 18, who are not considered a youth or collegiate rower, shall be allowed to participate in a rowing activity in accordance with such athlete’s expressed gender identity irrespective of the sex listed on the athlete’s birth certificate and regardless of whether the athlete has undergone any medical treatment subject to the Eligibility Procedures set forth below. 2

3) Collegiate Level.

Collegiate athletes, under the jurisdiction of the NCAA or other national rowing governing organizations, are subject to gender identity policy in World Rowing’s Rule Book (worldrowing.com).

III. Event Categories

Starting March 1, 2023, domestic events hosted by USRowing will adopt the following categories for competition. For the sake of clarity, this excludes collegiate events, which are subject to following World Rowing’s policy.

• Women’s Events: Events exclusively for athletes who identify as a woman at the start of the rowing season and/or those who are assigned as female at birth.

• Men’s Events: Events exclusively for athletes who identify as a man at the start of the rowing season and/or those who are assigned as male at birth.

• Mixed Events [masters only]: Boat entries in this category must consist of 50% athletes of any gender and 50% athletes assigned as female at birth.

• Open Gender Event: These events are for athletes of any gender. "

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119963356#Comment_119963356

Athletes at the youth level (youth, junior, high school, scholastic, U19, U17, U15) shall be allowed to participate in a rowing activity in accordance with their expressed gender identity irrespective of the sex listed on the athlete’s birth certificate or student records, and regardless of whether the athlete has undergone any medical treatment, subject to the Eligibility Procedures set forth below.

This is the problem.

Previously sport was categorised on biological sex - an immutable characteristic.

Now some are trying to categorise sport based on gender - a subjective experience.

And just to show how ridiculous this change in terminology is, a good 40% of trans identify as non-binary, as neither male or female.

Look, rowers should all refuse to participate until this unfair and ludicrous change in categorisation is reversed.

chopperbyrne

This is the most relevant bit.

Mixed Events [masters only]: Boat entries in this category must consist of 50% athletes of any gender and 50% athletes assigned as female at birth.

They know full well that males have advantage over females, but only care when it will impact on males.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119963411#Comment_119963411

Women's sport being thrown under the bus.

This isn't progressive; it's actively regressive.