Trans girls/biological males competing against females

In my work as a psychiatrist I work with many trans individuals. They are in general a highly marginalized group and being about 0.5% of the population are easy to discount. On the other hand, although biologic females are over 50% of the population they have been highly marginalized in sports and while that is changing it is still an issue.

Masters Swimming is generally inclusive and I applaud this while simultaneously being aware that puberty makes permanent changes to the body which gives those who went through male puberty an advantage.

I just started a thread about the unfairness of older men taking PEDs and I would be hypocritical to not agree that it is unfair for people who went through female puberty to compete against people who went through male puberty.

World Aquatic tends to get just about everything wrong, but I think their rules on transgender athletes are correct. They have an open division for trans swimmers. At the elite level there were near zero applicants, so it never has gone anywhere, but at the Masters level there could be enough applicants..

I think that trans-women should be able to swim with masters teams and compete on a level playing field, but swimming against cis-women is not fair,

In my work as a psychiatrist I work with many trans individuals. They are in general a highly marginalized group and being about 0.5% of the population are easy to discount. On the other hand, although biologic females are over 50% of the population they have been highly marginalized in sports and while that is changing it is still an issue.

Masters Swimming is generally inclusive and I applaud this while simultaneously being aware that puberty makes permanent changes to the body which gives those who went through male puberty an advantage.

I just started a thread about the unfairness of older men taking PEDs and I would be hypocritical to not agree that it is unfair for people who went through female puberty to compete against people who went through male puberty.

World Aquatic tends to get just about everything wrong, but I think their rules on transgender athletes are correct. They have an open division for trans swimmers. At the elite level there were near zero applicants, so it never has gone anywhere, but at the Masters level there could be enough applicants..

I think that trans-women should be able to swim with masters teams and compete on a level playing field, but swimming against cis-women is not fair,

1. Love the idea of an Open division. No need for even the “trans” word/term for the division if it seems derogatory or not inclusive. Some USA age group club meets offer that and occasionally you’ll find an adult or Masters swimmer entered in Open events. As a coach, I enjoyed watching that, my swimmers enjoyed it, nearly everyone did. The only unspoken caveat is that if you place/medal, you should give your award to the young athlete you beat out for it.

One of several problems with an "open division" is that many trans individuals are stealth, and it's not OK to force any swimmers to out themselves, especially if they underwent TIMELY gender-affirming medical care and therefore do not have an advantage over cisgender swimmers.