Lausanne, Switzerland- Fédération Internationale De Natation (FINA), the international swimming Federation, has barred Transgender women from competing if they have gone through male puberty.
The new gender inclusion policy, which is set to go into effect on June 20, 2022, says that male-to-female Transgender athletes will only be eligible to compete in the women’s categories in FINA competitions if they transition before the age of 12 or before they reach stage two on the puberty Tanner Scale.
In addition, the policy also states that athletes who have previously used testosterone as part of female-to-male gender-affirming hormone treatment will only be eligible to compete in women’s competitions if the testosterone was used for less than a year in total, the treatment didn’t take place during puberty and testosterone levels in serum are back to pre-treatment levels.
“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.
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. 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,” said Husain Al-Musallam, FINA’s president.
However, Ricki Coughlan, an Australian Transgender athlete and the first to be granted a place in open women’s sport said the decision cuts to bigger questions than sport.
“Do we want a world which is open, inclusive and celebrates us as individuals as much as collectively, or do we want to lead diminished lives where our vision of ourselves is one of sepia uniformity?
FINA’s policy is not an inclusion policy. It’s an exclusion policy. It’s a policy that fails to take into account the diversity among Transgender women, women as a whole and the nuance of sex, gender, sport and society. It is lazy on ethics and science.
Moreso, FINA’s decision fails the leadership test and instead buckles to a noisy element which wishes to preserve a world that no longer exists. Talk of a third category for Trans women similarly fails, because it seeks to move Trans women out of the women’s category, which is an affront to our fundamental identity. The starting place should be inclusion, not categories crafted to exclude.
Sport is a central pillar of our culture. As such, sport should and must reflect our cultural values, but it must also be front and centre in guiding our culture. Surely, the culture and the world to which we all aspire is one that celebrates our diversity and comes together in all our wonderful manifestations of being,” said Coughlan.
