Just 18 months after transgender athletes competed for the first time at the Olympics, international sporting federations are reconsidering whether transgender women should be allowed to keep participating in elite women’s competitions, as debate rages in sports and politics circles over who has the right to play.
Some sports organizations introduced bans this week, citing a need to ensure fairness in women’s competition — even though experts say the science is far from decisive on whether athletes who have transitioned from male to female have any competitive advantage over their cisgender female competitors.
The International Swimming Federation (FINA) will now only allow transgender women who began transitioning before the age of 12 to compete in high-level international competitions, including swimming, diving and water polo. FINA’s rule also affects athletes with a condition known as 46 XY DSD (also referred to as intersex), who have genitalia that is not clearly male or female, but who identify as female.
A day after FINA’s rule came into effect, the International Rugby League went even further, banning all transgender women from international matches while it reviews and updates its rules on participation. A spokesperson told CBC News there are no transgender players at the international level.
World Athletics, which oversees track and field, race walking and other athletics events, has hinted it may follow suit when it reviews its own rules later this year.
“If there is a conflict between fairness and inclusion in the female category, we will always choose fairness,” a spokesperson for World Athletics told CBC News, adding that FINA’s decision was “in the best interests of its sport.”
South African Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya is shown before the women’s 5,000-metre race in Regensburg, Germany, on Saturday. Semenya, who is a 46 XY DSD athlete, has faced years of public scrutiny over her sex and gender. World Athletics, which governs her sport, will decide later this year whether intersex athletes can continue to compete at an elite level. (Stefan Puchner/DPA/The Associated Press)
The new policies come after the International Olympic Committee last year announced it would not set a blanket rule for all sports — telling federations they should come up with their own policies.
Until now, most organizations, including FINA and World Athletics, have allowed transgender and intersex women to compete as long as they meet rules for suppressing testosterone levels.
The fight over who competes
The decision to ban many transgender women athletes has drawn a mixed response in Canada and around the world.
“The new FINA gender inclusion policy perpetuates the harmful and marginalizing practice of gender policing in women’s sport. This harms all women,” Canadian Women & Sport said in a statement on Monday.
Some female athletes have expressed concerns that transgender and intersex women have a physiological advantage in competition and say banning them from elite sports will level the playing field.
Australian Olympic swimming champion Cate Campbell on Sunday told FINA’s congress that she believed its decision would “uphold the cornerstone of fairness in elite women’s competition.”
Australian Olympic swimming champion Cate Campbell, pictured at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in July 2021, is one of few athletes to publicly voice support for FINA’s new rules for transgender women athletes. (David Goldman/The Associated Press)
Critics, however, believe bans like FINA’s are motivated more by ideology than science, coming amid a political push in the United States and U.K. to block trans women athletes from competing (18 U.S. states have banned trans girls and women from participating in female school sports).
“Transgender athletes are not dominating, nor have they ever dominated in sports,” Chris Mosier, a Team U.S.A. triathlete and trans advocate, told CBC News via email.
U.S. college swimmer Lia Thomas is a rare exception. In March, she became the first known transgender athlete to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship — and faced an immediate backlash over her success.
“It is very obvious [FINA’s] policy is a reaction to public pressure because of one swimmer who worked hard, followed all the rules and had moderate success for one season,” Mosier said.
American triathlete Chris Mosier, pictured in New York in May 2019, criticized FINA’s new rule as a ‘very obvious’ reaction to public pressure over Lia Thomas’s NCAA success. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)
FINA confirmed there are no transgender women athletes currently competing at the elite level.
“We’re talking about maybe a handful, less than five, male-to-female trans athletes that have become the centre of attention [in the U.S.] — and so what’s happening politically, and also in the media, outstrips the numeric consideration of what constitutes a threat on women’s sport,” said Carole Oglesby, a board member of research-based advocacy organization WomenSport International.
The science so far
FINA’s decision to ban trans women who transitioned after the age of 12 is based on changes that male bodies undergo during puberty, when a surge of testosterone causes a growth spurt and greater muscle mass.
In its new policy, FINA said its scientific advisers “reported that there are sex-linked biological differences in aquatics, especially among elite athletes, that are largely the result of the substantially higher levels of testosterone to which males are exposed from puberty onwards.”
FINA has not made its scientific advice public.
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, shown at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in August 2021, was among the first transgender athletes to compete at the Olympics. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Experts who spoke with CBC News said there is limited research to show what, if any, advantage a transgender woman athlete might have over a cisgender woman athlete — in large part because studies to date have not used athletes as research subjects.
“What is needed is actual science on how trans athletes perform, and that science is in its infancy,” said Joanna Harper, a medical physicist and expert in transgender athletic performance at Loughborough University in England.
Harper is leading multiple current studies looking at transgender women athletes’ performance at different stages of their transition, as well as comparing the performance of trans and cis-women athletes.
“The advantages that trans women have are significantly mitigated — not eliminated — but mitigated by hormone therapy, and this process introduces disadvantages for trans female athletes, too,” she told CBC News.
“Their larger frames are now being powered by reduced muscle mass, reduced aerobic capacity, and that can lead to disadvantages in things like quickness, recovery and endurance.”
WomenSport International has a new task force collating scientific evidence that it hopes will help sports organizations as they ponder the future of trans women’s participation.
U.S. skateboarder Alana Smith, who is transgender, is shown competing during the Tokyo Summer Olympics in July 2021. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
“I just throw my hands up at the idea that the science is clear,” said board member Oglesby, a former professional softball player and retired professor of kinesiology, formerly of California State University.
“I don’t know where this is going to end up — that’s why I say I’m on the fence. I’m not sure what the best solution is, but I know that we are not at the place of determining what should happen.”
Critics of FINA’s policy also point out that all women athletes — not just those who are transgender or intersex — can be subject to invasive and humiliating sex testing to prove they’re eligible to compete.
“FINA has opened up yet another opportunity for the abuse of women athletes by mandating testing to decide who is a woman and who is not. This policy does nothing to protect women’s sports or protect cisgender women in sports,” Mosier said.
Three sports, three approaches
Days before FINA made its decision public, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) — which oversees international cycling events, including road, track, mountain and BMX — changed its policy for trans women athletes.
Rather than banning them from competing, UCI halved the maximum permitted testosterone level from 5 nmol/L — the limit currently in place for a number of other sports, including athletics — to 2.5 nmol/L, and it doubled the amount of time athletes must maintain low testosterone before they can compete, to 24 months.
FINA is also proposing a new “open” competition category that transgender women — barred from elite female competition — could participate in.
It’s unclear what the event would look like, whether other sports might follow suit or if it would feature in events like the Olympics, said Sarah Teetzel, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, who is researching barriers that transgender athletes face to inclusion in sport.
“They say that a working group is looking at that right now, but will they truly invest equal prize money, promotion, opportunity, access? It would be very surprising if they did.”
Angela Schneider, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University in London, Ont., suggests that sporting federations should be working together to come up with a framework for trans women’s participation across sports.
Angela Schneider, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University in London, Ont., and a former Olympic medallist for Canada, says ‘open dialogue’ is needed to come up with a framework for trans women’s participation across sports. (Western University)
“It does require minds that have the ability to be open but at the same time critical, and to take a step back and look at this, and allow people to actually have open dialogue,” Schneider, a former Canadian Olympic rower, said.
“It has to be a process that allows for the representation of women athletes. And it has to be a process that really does talk about fairness fundamentally.”
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former football star Reggie Bush was at his Encino home Tuesday night when three male suspects attempted to break in, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
“Everyone is safe,” Bush said in a text message to the newspaper.
The Los Angeles Police Dept. told the Times that a resident of the house reported hearing a window break and broken glass was found outside. Police said nothing was stolen and that three male suspects dressed in black were seen leaving the scene.
Bush starred at Southern California and in the NFL. The former running back was reinstated as the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner this year. He forfeited it in 2010 after USC was hit with sanctions partly related to Bush’s dealings with two aspiring sports marketers.
VANCOUVER – A fresh face has been gracing the B.C. Lions‘ highlight reels in recent weeks.
Midway through his second CFL campaign, wide receiver Ayden Eberhardt has contributed touchdowns in two consecutive games.
The 26-year-old wide receiver from Loveland, Colo., was the lone B.C. player to reel in a passing major in his team’s 37-23 victory over the league-leading Montreal Alouettes last Friday. The week before, he notched his first CFL touchdown in the Lions’ win over the Ottawa Redblacks.
“It’s been awesome. It’s been really good,” Eberhardt said of his recent play. “At the end of the day, the biggest stat to me is if we win. But who doesn’t love scoring?”
He’ll look to add to the tally Friday when the Leos (7-6) host the Toronto Argonauts.
Eberhardt signed with B.C. as a free agent in January 2023 and spent much of last season on the practice squad before cementing a role on the roster this year.
The six-foot-two, 195-pound University of Wyoming product has earned more opportunities in his second season, said Lions’ head coach and co-general manager Rick Campbell.
“He’s a super hard worker and very smart. He understands, has high football IQ, as we call it,” Campbell said.
The fact that Eberhardt can play virtually every receiving position helps.
“He could literally go into a game and we could throw him into a spot and he’d know exactly what he’s doing,” the coach said. “That allows him to play fast and earn the quarterback’s trust. And you see him making plays.”
Eberhardt credited his teammates, coaches and the rest of the Lions’ staff with helping him prepare for any situation he might face. They’ve all spent time teaching him the ins and outs of the Canadian game, or go over the playbook and run routes after practice, he said.
“I’ve played every single position on our offence in a game in the last two years, which is kind of crazy. But I love playing football,” he said. “I want to play any position that the team needs me to play.”
While B.C.’s lineup is studded with stars like running back William Stanback — who has a CFL-high 938 rushing yards — and wide receiver Justin McInnis — who leads the league in both receiving yards (1,074) and receiving TDs (seven) — versatility has been a critical part of the team’s back-to-back wins.
“I think we’ve got a lot of talented guys who deserve to get the ball and make big plays when they have the ball in their hands. So it’s really my job to get them the ball as much as possible,” said quarterback Nathan Rourke.
“I think that makes it easy when you can lean on those guys and, really, we’re in a situation where anyone can have a big game. And I think that’s a good place to be.”
Even with a talented lineup, the Lions face a tough test against an eager Argos side.
Toronto lost its second straight game Saturday when it dropped a 41-27 decision to Ottawa.
“We’ll have our hands full,” Rourke said. “We’ll have to adjust on the fly to whatever their game plan is. And no doubt, they’ll be ready to go so we’ll have to be as well.”
The two sides have already met once this season when the Argos handed the Lions a 35-27 loss in Toronto back on June 9.
A win on Friday would vault B.C. to the top of the West Division standings, over the 7-6 Winnipeg Blue Bombers who are on a bye week.
Collecting that victory isn’t assured, though, even with Toronto coming in on a two-game skid, Campbell said.
“They’ve hit a little bit of a rut, but they’re a really good team,” he said. “They’re very athletic. And you can really see (quarterback Chad Kelly’s) got zip on the ball. When you see him in there, he can make all the throws. So we’re expecting their best shot.”
TORONTO ARGONAUTS (6-6) AT B.C. LIONS (7-6)
Friday, B.C. Place
HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE: The Lions boast a 4-1 home record this season, including a 38-12 victory over the Redblacks at Royal Athletic Park in Victoria, B.C., on Aug. 31. The Argos have struggled outside of BMO Field and hold a 1-5 away record. Trips to the West Coast haven’t been easy for Toronto in recent years — since 2003, the club is 4-14 in road games against B.C.
CENTURION: B.C. defensive back Garry Peters is set to appear in his 100th consecutive game. The 32-year-old from Conyers, Ga., is a two-time CFL all-star who has amassed 381 defensive tackles, 19 special teams tackles and 16 interceptions over seven seasons. “Just being on the field with the guys every day, running around, talking trash back and forth, it keeps me young,” Peters said. “It makes me feel good, and my body doesn’t really feel it. I’ve been blessed to be able to play 100 straight.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
