More than 70% of FINA, the international federation recognized by the International Olympic Committee regarding swimming, Sunday voted in favor of a new policy that excludes some transgender women from women’s competitions.
Per new policy – which went into effect Monday – the only trans women allowed to compete in women’s swimming competitions governed by FINA are women who “establish to FINA’s comfortable satisfaction” that they began their transition before the onset of puberty and have maintained testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L.
Specifically, the policy states that women can only compete if “they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later.”
According to the Vermont Department of Health, the Tanner scale is a “uniformly accepted” method of assessing puberty-related changes. Tanner Stage II refers to the start of pubertal changes, which typically begin from ages 8 to 13 for girls and ages 9 to 14 for boys.
Some women who receive gender-affirming treatment before puberty have androgen insensitivity and cannot experience male puberty. Others are androgen sensitive but began their transition early enough to have continuously maintained testosterone levels at a low level.
When women begin their transition later in life, their testosterone levels are too high to qualify them for women’s swimming competition, according to FINA, which is based in Switzerland.
“During puberty… testes-derived testosterone concentrations increase 20-fold in males, while testosterone concentrations remain low in females so that post-pubescent males have circulating testosterone concentrations at least 15 times higher than post-pubescent females,” said the organization’s new policy. “High testosterone levels generate not only anatomical divergence in the reproductive system but also measurably different body types/compositions between sexes.”
Record-breaking swimmer Lia Thomas, a trans woman, has been at the center of some debates about how transgender athletes should compete in the U.S., according to NPR.
To create its new policy, FINA assembled three groups – an athlete group, a science group and a human rights group. It said that the science group “reported that biological sex is a key determinant of athletic performance,” and that males outperform females in sports such as swimming.
“We have to protect the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions,” said FINA President Husain Al-Musallam of the new policy.
“Without eligibility standards based on biological sex or sex-linked traits, we are very unlikely to see biological females in finals, on podiums, or in championship positions; and in sports and events involving collisions and projectiles, biological female athletes would be at greater risk of injury,” said the policy description.
Transgender men must also meet certain criteria to compete in FINA-governed men’s swimming competitions. Those who are undergoing treatment involving testosterone or other anabolic substances required to obtain a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) for that treatment in accordance with the FINA Doping Control Rules (FINA DCR). Water polo and high diving competitors who are trans men must also fill out an assumption of risk form.
Trans women who do not meet the criteria to participate in women’s competitions can still compete in men’s competitions.
People who have taken testosterone as part of female-to-male gender-affirming hormone treatment but are no longer following that treatment are eligible to compete in the women’s category if they can establish that: testosterone use was for less than a year in total, did not take place during pubertal growth and development, have testosterone levels that are back to pre-treatment normal and any associated anabolic effects from their treatment have been eliminated.
Some other rules apply regarding previous adherence to doping policies and changes in testosterone levels. Athletes with 46 XY differences of sex development are also addressed.
“No athlete is excluded from a FINA competition or from setting FINA World Records based on their legal gender, gender identity, or gender expression,” said FINA. However, it acknowledged that the new rules make it impossible for some athletes to compete in the category that corresponds to their gender identity.
Going forward, FINA plans to create a new open competition category for swimmers who are blocked from competing in their gender identification category. The organization said it will create a new working group that will spend the next six months looking into how to establish the open competition option.
“FINA will always welcome every athlete. The creation of an open category will mean that everybody has the opportunity to compete at an elite level,” said Al-Musallam. “This has not been done before, so FINA will need to lead the way. I want all athletes to feel included in being able to develop ideas during this process.”
However, some groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and Athlete Ally, have criticized the new policy.
“FINA’s new eligibility criteria for transgender athletes and athletes with intersex variations is deeply discriminatory, harmful, unscientific and not in line with the 2021 International Olympic Committee framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations,” said Anne Lieberman, Director of Policy and Programs at Athlete Ally.
Dr. Joshua D. Safer, a doctor with Mount Sinai hospital of New York cited by the American Civil Liberties Union, has also pushed back on the data regarding biological sex and athletic performance.
“A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,” he said, according to ACLU.
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