Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Trans women don't threaten women's sports at any level but mass instances of sexual & physical assault, lack of access to resources, pay inequities, under-representation of women in leadership positions, inequitable media coverage & so on do! theconversation.com/amp/u-s-anti-t…

Instead of choosing to be transphobic & blanket ban TW without evidence #FINA had an opportunity to be at the forefront of evidence-based, broader, transformational change to counter transphobia, transmisogyny, cissexism & oppression enacted through their sport.

While broader systemic change needs to move ahead, harms to trans women in swimming & other elite sports must be reduced and trans women’s safety in and access to elite sport augmented by implementing evidence-based policies now.

There exist significant gaps in the literature, and further research is needed. This research should have trained trans women as a sample population and trained cis women as a comparison group, FINA did none of this.

Additionally, to ensure the generalizability or statistical significance of these studies, a large number of participants would be required.

These studies must also make comparisons with equivalent population groups, such as adjusting for height and weight and not using methods such as handgrip strength which are known to be unreliable outside of population level analysis.

Much of the biomedical research on trans women in sports comes from cis researchers outside both sports and gender studies fields.

It is recommended that all reasonable efforts should be made to make sport inclusive and accessible for transgender individuals.

The available evidence suggests that at some point within 12 months of testosterone suppression, a trans woman’s sex-based advantage in terms of hemoglobin and LBM, CSA or strength are within cis-women ranges.

However, for pre-suppression trans women or women within the 12 month period, there may exist a need (within current sport systems) for some policies in elite sports such as swimming.

Any such policy must be carefully designed so as not to discourage potential athletes, to protect the athlete’s privacy, including their right to not openly identify as transgender, and to not exclude these individuals during this period from participating with a team through

training, social activities, exhibition matches or when competing parties wave objection to the individual’s participation.

‘Trans inclusion’ policies and their enforcement, by nature, create additional barriers for trans women’s participation in elite sport.

It is the responsibility of the sports organization to create any such policy with the mindset of minimizing any such barrier and prioritizing the needs of trans women athletes.

Trans athletes should not have to self-identify, out themselves to their team, coaching staff or sports federation in order to play.

Given that elite athletes already require regular physician monitoring for eligibility, policy can be drafted to add a statement that qualifies an athlete if she meets one of several criteria without specifying how or why she is eligible

(i.e., if the athlete is either cis and meets the criteria or trans and meets the trans policy guidelines).

The importance of privacy and the need for any policy to ensure trans athletes need not ‘out’ themselves as a condition of playing cannot be over-emphasized.

Consideration should be made into what other metrics may be used instead of testosterone to allow these individuals to compete in current sport system contexts.

Possible metrics could include direct LBM measurement through a dexa MRI/scan or other less reliable methods of LBM measurement.

Last, on a systems level, more resources ought be diverted to women’s sport to limit scarcity and increase opportunities for women – cis and trans – elite athletes.

In particular, more resources ought be diverted to trans women elite athletes, who face additional, overlapping, systemic barriers in elite sport from transmisogyny, transphobia, and cissexism.

There are trans women who are currently excluded from elite sport from the same systemic mechanisms that elite athlete trans women face within sport.

There must be evidence-based policies to minimize the barriers faced by elite athlete trans women within sport, while also transformations to the sport system towards welcoming all kinds of embodied diversities.

There are myths surrounding TW in sport. It is a myth perpetuated by & through sport that trans women are akin to cis men.

Biomedical studies that inform trans sport policies have cis men as a proxy to trans women in comparison with cis women and use terms like “biological male” or “transitioning males”.

The debate is framed not with the concern of trans women’s participation in sport, but with the supposed place of a man in the women’s category even though trans women’s bodies and living conditions are not comparable to cis men’s.

Trans women are assimilated to the stereotype of the cheater who would enter women’s competitions with the sole aim of exploiting a single-sex space reserved for women – another myth with deep impacts.

This fear is unsubstantiated and completely ignores the material living conditions of trans women and the conditions in which women participate in sport.

Transitioning, &/or TW’s status as trans, is often utterly misunderstood (at best) in sport discourse as a deliberate choice rather than a necessity for an individual’s survival, despite strong evidence that affirming one’s gender identity is important to health & well-being.

These kinds of presumptions and misunderstandings (again, at best) play into the same unsubstantiated transphobic fears that cis men choose to transition solely to gain advantage in elite sports.

However, the discrimination and violence experienced by cis and trans women in sport and everyday life expose the dangerous dismissive attitudes in sport towards trans identities as well as some the contradictions, ignorance, and violences imposed in requiring trans women to

adhere to specific medical transition guidelines in order to participate in sports competitions.

In response to the literature review on trans athlete’s participation in sport by Jones and al. (2017), Richardson and Chen (2020) report a lot of false information without scientific precautions.

For example, the fact that several trans women have been the subject of media coverage is used to argue that there are frequent and massive occurrences of trans women athletes winning sports competitions when, in fact, the literature shows that no trans woman has ever won

an Olympic medal ever in the 5 summer or 5 winter games since they have been allowed to compete in 2004. Trans women are over-sensationalized in media due to the moral gender panic that surrounds their experience.

Qualitative studies with trans women athletes show that trans women face a lot of discrimination while participating in sport.

Negative experience and exclusion of sport participation for trans women are highly reported in the academic literature (Cohen and Semerjian, 2008; Barras, 2021; Devis-Devis et al, 2020; Elling-Machartzki, 2017; Hargie, 2017; Jones et al., 2017; Tagg, 2012).

Studies with trans women athletes reveal the anxiety-provoking climate and constant surveillance with which trans athletes must contend at all stages of practice: locker rooms, teammate, opponents, staff, dress codes, supporters, obtaining a license, physical and verbal violence.

This leads to a phenomenon of disengagement from the practice of physical activity and sports in the trans population. In addition, discriminatory policies have a role to play in maintaining the climate of violence that trans women experience (Jones et al., 2017).

As well as being outed (McClearen, 2015), violence from staff, the public, and being pushed out of sport (Cohen, 2008) and, be faced with having to choose between continuing to play or transitioning (Lucas-Carr et al., 2012).

Discrimination shapes sport participation making the trans population proportionally and on average less engaged in sports activities trans cis people (Muchicko et al., 2014).

And, we might imagine that these kinds of experiences have negative consequences for their athletic ability and athletic development, though they are not typically factored into studies of testosterone or trans athletes.

Different depth, weight, and levels of consideration of scientific knowledge and political factors are imbedded in the framing of trans policies in sport.

The literature on trans sport policies, their implementation, people who write them & apply them, consequences for athletes, & the debates they frame is constitutive of the social hierarchy of knowledge and the discrediting of some sciences for the benefit of others (Pape, 2019).

Biomedical studies are overvalued in sports policies in comparison to social sciences studies. Research in science an
& gender & in particular the work of Fausto-Sterling have shown that sex is gender-dependent & that the gender system modifies so-called biological sex.

The exclusion of certain types of knowledge from the restricted definition of ‘scientific’ by the sport’s governing bodies makes it possible to obscure the power relations at play in the creation, maintenance, and legitimization of regulation.

Thus, the literature insists on looking at regulations not only at a biological scale, but on the social and political climate that creates them.

This analytical framework makes it possible to highlight the links between some sports organizations, studies in biomedical sciences, and groups with an anti-trans agenda.

Scientists working in this field have organizational ties that suggest particular ideological commitments (Itani 2020, Pape, 2019, Pearce et al.

Moreover, some biomedicals scientist that publishes academics paper on trans women participation in sport to advise sports organization are part of anti-trans activism.

For example, in the United Kingdom (UK) since 2017 and the plan to reform the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (very expensive, invasive, medicalized, and long process to change the gender marker on the birth certificate),

some women’s trans-exclusionary organization – such as Fair Play for Women – expanded their movement (Itani, 2020; Pearce et al., 2020).

The science is used by this group strategically (using only the data that suit their view) to asset their essentialist agenda that sex is immutable.

These organizations use sports as a strategy because preconceived ideas about trans individuals can spread quickly through sport due to the sensualistic medical treatment.

This allows them to quickly spread their agenda as their target does not look at how the science they used is constructed (Lefebvre, 2019) and rely on misinformation regarding then the implementation of sport policies (Pape, 2000).

For example, we can see that there is data that is systematically overlooked, like the diversity advantages that one can have while playing sport.

For instance, financial material resources: access to infrastructure, equipment, nutrition, time to train, salary, etc.

Yet these resources are not subjected to regulations and are not framed by sports organizations to ensure fairness (Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2018).

It is therefore important to consider the differences in considerations by the governing sports organization between all the sports advantages that may exist and the fact that only biological factors are policed on women’s bodies.

Because while Michael Phelps (long limbs and flexible joints) is celebrated for his physical advantages that allow him to compete and be successful at the highest level of sport, women (cis, trans, and intersex) are scrutinized and have their performance medically restricted .

It is reductionist & wrong that FINA suggest the performance gap is all about biology. It is reasonable to suggest that biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors contribute to the range of gender gaps observed across sports.

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