If we had a free-for-all approach to the participation of transgender athletes in sub-elite, elite and Olympic competition, that’d be OK, right?
Yeh, nah … it’s a bit more convoluted than that. In fact, these issues seem to have arrived at a tipping point and things are even more heated and complex than they were 10 months ago. We sometimes forget these are matters involve real human beings.
Back in 2022, it seemed an almost isolated instance when World Aquatics introduced rules restricting the rights of transgender athletes to compete in international sporting competitions. World Aquatics’ rules effectively prohibit transgender athletes from international competition if they’ve gone through puberty in their biological gender.
Fast-forward to now, and this week ESPN announced it had included the 2022 NCAA champion swimmer Lia Thomas in its celebration of Women’s History Month, a move that was welcomed in some quarters and howled down in others.
Thomas is a transgender female athlete and a remarkably good one at that. She swam as a male as recently as 2019 before beginning her transition to become a female. Swimming for the University of Pennsylvania at the 2022 US NCAA championships, Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle final, trouncing two US Olympians.
That level of domination triggered what equal measures of praise and concern for the future of elite sport competition.
Lia Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle title at the 2022 US NCAA championships, trouncing two Olympians.Credit:AP
ESPN’s celebration of Thomas’ place in women’s sport has not been universally embraced. Her NCAA-level rival Riley Gaines posted on Twitter that “Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title. He is an arrogant, cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman”. Pointed stuff; the “He” isn’t a typo.
World Athletics has now followed aquatic sports in adopting restrictive rules, similar to those enforced in sports such as swimming, water polo and diving.
In contrast, the World Surf League has introduced rules more relaxed than those that apply in aquatic sports and now track and field, requiring only that male-to-female transgender athletes maintain a testosterone level less than five nanomoles per litre continuously for a period of 12 months to be eligible to compete in WSL women’s professional surfing events.
Consider, however, that some cisgender professional women surfers — most notably Bethany Hamilton — have said these WSL rules will result in them not competing in the World Surf League.
Surfer Bethany Hamilton has threatened to quit WSL events over changed rules around transgender athletes.Credit:Getty
And also consider the predicament of the US transgender female cyclocross athlete Tiffany Thomas. A 46-year-old biological male, who started cycling in 2018 and competes in the female category under the USA Cycling and Union Cycliste Internationale transgender rules, Thomas has achieved consistent and remarkable success in US cyclocross competitions recently.
The UCI and USA Cycling rules allow transgender female athletes to compete in female competitions but only if they maintain a maximum testosterone level half of that allowed in WSL professional surfing competitions and for a continuous period of at least twice as long.
Those rules of cycling, which are stricter than the WSL’s but considerably more permissive than the rules governing international aquatics and athletics competitions, are far too flexible for some; the policy has its absolute detractors.
Just this week it has become apparent through US Supreme Court proceedings and evidence filings that a competitor and compatriot of Tiffany Thomas’, the cisgender athlete Hannah Arensman, had chosen to quit the sport altogether, lest she otherwise be compelled to compete against transgender females.
Credit:Illustration: Simon Letch
In statements made by Arensman, she cites specifically having to compete against Tiffany Thomas in the context that it’s “become increasingly discouraging to train as hard as I do only to have to lose to a man with the unfair advantage of an androgenized [sic] body that intrinsically gives him an obvious advantage over me no matter how hard I train”.
There is no solution that can placate all viewpoints here. Because aside from everything else, one must accept all perspectives however slanted, including that of gender being assigned at birth and never in any other way.
If that’s the enlightened state of the reality, what then should the rules be that regulate binary male and female competition classes across all sports in circumstances where gender itself actually isn’t binary but where a significant proportion of society refuses to accept that concept?
Such rules inevitably affect the right of certain people to freely participate in sport. Organising elite athletes into either the “male” or “female” category, as elite sports always do, is now impossible to do well. How do you not damage individual human interests while also not damaging the evenness of the sporting contest to the point that transgender-inclusive sporting competitions are rendered a punters’ paradise?
Improperly considered and non-comprehensive schemes of regulation could distort the competitive balance across a spectrum of competitors of the same gender. Cast-iron rules have a human impact on people who already might be fragile.
We must consider whether the participation of transgender athletes in single-sex sporting competitions is unfairly distortive of the concept of the level playing field so intrinsic to sporting competition to the degree it renders the concept of fair and equal competition a fallacy.
For if Lia Thomas was in a race in 2023 against cisgender females, would you bet against her?
Not everyone who questions the participation of transgender athletes in elite sporting competition warrants being tarnished as a “transphobe”. These are not questions about only the rights of trans people. Instead, these are questions about fairness in competition and the rights and interests of all athletes. A rainbow of gender doesn’t fit well with the black/white of men’s/women’s competition.
Men and women can compete on an even basis in certain sports, such as thoroughbred racing and motor racing,but other sports are difficult, or even impossible, to organise in order to allow transgender athletes the same rights as cisgender athletes while simultaneously maintaining fairness for all athletes. The importance of safety, strength, stamina and physical size in rugby league, boxing and field athletic events means that those sports don’t offer up obvious paths for transgender participation.
And while most knowledgeable observers wouldn’t quibble at the concept of a trans male athlete competing in a heavyweight wrestling contest against cisgender male opponents, such a scenario actually presents its own issues, especially for the safety of the transgender athlete.
In these enlightened times, when gender is accepted as being something that isn’t necessarily just one side of a coin, the questioning as to how the binary nature of the male/female elite sports competition dichotomy is adapted (or adaptable) is compelling, confused and compulsory.
This isn’t at all about Lia Thomas or Tiffany Thomas, but in another way this must be about Lia Thomas and Tiffany Thomas. How, for example, can a trans female athlete in the position of Lia Thomas, who once was ranked so far down the pecking order as a NCAA male athlete that nobody knew who the hell they were, now be said to have no unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage while dominating?
But if Thomas does have a disproportionate athletic and competitive advantage, how can her sport offer her the opportunities she should rightfully be afforded? These are matters involving real human beings.
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
