This is a really complicated situation that I don’t think they have a good solution for at this point. Certainly trans people exist and have a right to be who they are. Certainly testosterone gives an advantage. One of the failures of our anti-doping system is that androgen used years ago can still offer a competitive advantage to the person who was taking exogenous androgens. I am very much in favor of a level playing field and also I am very much in favor of trans rights. I think the IOC is closer with their requirement that transitioning and hormone replacement needs to have occurred at least two years prior to transition to competition. I do not have a good algorithm make a solution but measuring estrogen and testosterone and other sex hormones and androgens seems reasonable. A two-year transition seems probably reasonable. And Prejudice against Trans people is endemic and unfortunate.
This is a really complicated situation that I don’t think they have a good solution for at this point. Certainly trans people exist and have a right to be who they are. Certainly testosterone gives an advantage. One of the failures of our anti-doping system is that androgen used years ago can still offer a competitive advantage to the person who was taking exogenous androgens. I am very much in favor of a level playing field and also I am very much in favor of trans rights. I think the IOC is closer with their requirement that transitioning and hormone replacement needs to have occurred at least two years prior to transition to competition. I do not have a good algorithm make a solution but measuring estrogen and testosterone and other sex hormones and androgens seems reasonable. A two-year transition seems probably reasonable. And Prejudice against Trans people is endemic and unfortunate.
Agree on all points, Allen. We have a lot to learn about what all of this will mean. The folks that may be stuck are high school kids. Meaning if there is a 2 year transition requirement, it will be diffilcult for kids to deal with. I am no expert in any of this, but all of my friends who are gay who are close enough to have shared their experience with me have indicated that they knew at a very early age (hard for me to figure, because I really wasn't interested in girls before puberty!). I can't imagine a freshman who maybe went through puberty the Summer after 8th grade realizing their orientation should lead them to a reassignment scenario (and apologies if my semantics are poor). At what point should hormone treatment be introduced? And then a 2 year "waiting period" would put that person at what point in their high school career?
But the flip side, as I mentioned, is how the other girls could compete fairly against a person whose physique is more like a male than a female. At a meet this weekend, and my daughter got really close to making her bonus cut a full cut in the 200 Back at 2:01.41. Her 15 y/o male teammate just missed making his first Winter Jr cut in the same event at a 1:49.59. 67Princess beat the field by 3 seconds.......would have been 11th with the males.
I just have absolutely zero idea what a good solution would look like. Somebody will be excluded or unfairly pushed out.
Well, if we are going on "greater good" which seems to be a mostly appropriate argument for many things (+/- vaccine mandates), the solution for this seems simple to a simple person such as myself. If you possess a Y chromosome, you deserve to be happy and live your life free from persecution in whatever orientation you choose; however, (I believe) you do not have any "rights" (especially given obvious muscular and cardiovascular advantages) to compete against the most maligned and persecuted group in all of history...XX (we used to call them female). One can quote all the junk IOC science about testosterone levels and appropriateness to compete against traditional genders and I will still call bs. I have certainly had my questions about title IX but in the spirit of it's enforcement of protecting women are we to tell 10,000 women that we must compromise their experience so that the one may feel better and more included?
Obviously, with conditions such as testicular feminization, the waters become muddied.
Solution people like Lia Thomas would have to swim their worst stroke which I'm guessing for Thomas is breastroke. In fact if you want to swim as a woman, you would have to not be at a physical advantage and swimming a stroke were you have less of an advantage one help. If Thomas is only 59 to 102 as a breastroker instead of being the great freestyle that Thomas is where Thomas wins NCCAS in 500 free but place in consolations in breaastroke then that evens it out.
