Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

The IOC policy is specifically that athletes need to test negative for the SRY gene to be eligible to compete in the female category. Imane Khelif won gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics women's boxing event, and has since admitted to having the SRY gene. So it isn't a non-issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#2026

The guidelines for trans female athletes for the 2024 Paris Olympics involved transitioning before the age of 12/puberty to be eligible.

There's more info at https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/paris-2024-olym...

Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's division?

Almost every single person on Earth is not built of the right genetic stuff to compete with male Olympic athletes, me and you included. Why do we need a carve out for one particular group because of their genetic bad luck?

The Olympics are looked up to by a large range of people and organization that don't actually participate in the Olympics.

This goes beyond just affecting the Olympics, but setting an example for the world to follow and gives other organizations the cover and courage to follow while being able to deflect to simply setting the same standards of the Olympics.

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Many people like to focus on the purely physical attributes, but there's a clear distinction even in realms like chess.

The highest ranked female chess player is right around #55 globally, wherein the top 50 all are dominated by men.

Some of this may have to do with men having more interest/higher propensity of starting young which is where most grandmasters begin their journey, but still an interesting thing to consider nonetheless.

Exactly. It's impossible to have both inclusion and fair play. We have to pick one, and as a parent of daughters who compete at fairly high levels it's more important to preserve the integrity of women's sports.

What would do about someone like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhi_Soundarajan

If you segregate by sex alone then trans men get a big advantage.

Depends on the time of the transition. So those who transitioned before puberty are disadvantaged

I thought exactly the same thing until I had a politically agnostic fencing judge sit down and explain over the course of an hour and a half all of the steps national and international regulating organizations for that sport had taken to avoid issues with unfair competition. Whether similar field-leveling safeguards could be baked into the rules for other sports is left as an exercise, but this particular instance suggests there's more nuance here than your comment suggests.

Walk me through how you think this is going to be enforced? Athletes will need to start dropping their pants? Disgusting invasion of privacy.

Transition changes biology. We don't yet have the technology to fully reverse the effects of male puberty, so there can be reasonable debate about trans women who transitioned after puberty, but early transitioners have no meaningful advantage. Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.

This is also true for many cisgender intersex women with XY chromosomes. Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth. Drawing the line at having a Y chromosome makes no sense.

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)

Just in case you're referring to Zhang Shan winning Gold in 1992: the decision to bar women from competing in the 1996 Olympics was made before Zhang had won her medal. [0]

> Until men with genetic anomalies are equally banned from sports (for example, being an outlier in height for basketball)

We don't have height categories, we have categories based on sex. We have categories based on sex because there are physical difference caused by difference in sex that lead to advantages in sports competitions. As such, people who have physical advantages over others based on their difference in sex (e.g. going through male puberty vs. female puberty) shouldn't be able to compete in the category created to protect participants from precisely those differences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan#cite_ref-nyt_4-0

Well I think it bans women that thought/think that they are cis but actually aren't, which is a bit of a different story. A fairly tragic one. Intersex/trans/anything else people just don't really have a clean fit into a lot of places, which is unfortunate.

> this is nothing more than a misogynist attempt to make women’s sport as unimpressive and average as possible. Rules set by mostly old men of course.

Well, not really. 56%[1] of young women think that trans women should not be allowed in women's sports.

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one! (See shooting.)

IMO the "better" division should be open. If we are going to do two classes, and we find that one class has some sort of physical advantage inherently, then that class should be the "open" one.

> Stuff like this is why professional sports is widely seen as a cheater’s club where everyone tries to cheat as hard as possible just shy of getting caught, then acts completely innocent and indignant when someone else just barely crosses the line into getting caught.

A lot of people (the majority?) don't understand the extent of PEDs usage in sports. When everyone cheats nobody does. I've heard the argument before for going an "anything goes" division from friends for some sports, but then people are just going to start dying regularly from side effects like in body building.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-american...

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Why should open divisions not work that way? They're meant to determine who's the best, regardless of sex or gender.

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one!

Hypothetically you could have three divisions: open, men, and women. In many contexts it's more practical to have two, where one is open. In those cases, if the sex that didn't win more was also the open division, then people would complain because both divisions would be dominated by players of one sex.

>>>> This also bans cis women with genetic anomalies. What are those? fwiw - I don't think they should be included in the ban. Genetic advantage people in their natural gender is how sports works. I'm 5'7" - Lebron definitely has a genetic advantage over me. Banning him from basketball isn't doing anyone favors.

Men who supplement testosterone are already banned if caught.

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your imagination is wrong. obviously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Done_Quick

Already in the works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Games

Why not Human Olympics?

Many studies show with in ~10% female ranges of ability , but, having more fast twitch muscle fiber and bone mass from male puberty if they went through it. Bone mass does eventually drop to female levels but over decades not years so athletes would likely be out of athletic prime before that happens. Studies showing more dramatic results that stand out in my memory that lean toward transwomen outperforming transwomen are studies done on military veterans comparing to general population metrics of muscle mass for athletic activity levels also done with a very low population count I believe they only looked at under 300 trans women. Regardless we need more research, but there are a comically small amount of trans athletes seeking professional level sports, like I think <20 for all college level for instance.

Anecdotally, I found as a deskjob, pilates and casual weight lifting trans woman, I lost dramatic amount of strength and muscle mass. 20 pounds now feels like 50 pounds did for myself pre-transition. I usually participate with women and the instructor/personal helps with modifications usually aimed at women just getting into fitness. Running joke amongst friends is how easily I am outperformed by my female friends at the gym/pilates/etc. However, that's since my body is low testosterone even for females, its checked twice a year because of it, normally It's once a year for most trans people. Other friends retained a lot of their strength, but are mechanics, so its really situational in my opinion, and its a super hard and interesting topic of research because of it

> Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?

Regularly. It's the competing women who are complaining, though. They feel it is unfair to compete with men.

"born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it)

The usual term is "cisgender", or "cis" for short.

"Cis" and "Trans" both come from Latin; the former means "the same side of" and the latter means "the other side of". If you are happy to be on the same side of the gender binary as what you were assigned when you were born then you are "cisgender"; if you are unhappy with that state of affairs (regardless of how much work you have put into changing it) then you are "transgender".

Certainly some of the high profile cases have been fairly absurd. A mid-tier male athletic transitions, and then blows the female record out of the water and gets gold. What I don't know is whether there are wider stats rather than some really big notable cases. It wouldn't surprise me, I just don't have the facts at the moment.

> Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?

The closest controlled study we have on this topic is not in athletes but in U.S. military servicemembers and their standard fitness test: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36271916/

This isn't a good study for professional athletes training for competition because the fitness test is not analogous to professional competition. They only need to pass with a reasonable score but most are not competing for the top position like in the Olympics

The study found that

> transgender females' performance showed statistically significantly better performance than cisgender females until 2 years of GAHT in run times and 4 years in sit-up scores and remained superior in push-ups at the study's 4-year endpoint.

So of the 3 simple activities they tested their performance remained higher in one test (run times) until 2 years, another test (sit-ups) until 4 years, and remained higher at the end of the limited 4-year study period in the last test (push-ups).

This study was widely circulated as "proof" that hormone therapy erases sex-based gains after only 2 years, but that's not even an accurate read of the study. It's also not measuring athletes who are training or trying to compete.

Depending on the sport, hormone therapy cannot be expected to compensate for sex some important sex differences like physical structure. Male anatomy is simply different in ways that provide different types of leverage or angles (like Q Angle, which runners will talk about, or reach, which is important to boxers)

This is a very taboo topic to discuss and honestly I'm a little nervous to even comment about it here pseudonymously. The popular culture discussion of the topic is very different than the sports science discussion of the topic, where sex differences have long been accepted to be innate and irreversible, regardless of hormone therapy.

There is no standard 'trans athlete'. Every case is different.

Transition is a process. Potentially a long one without a clear point of completion. Which makes things more complicated.

No idea on the hard data. but... We classify competitions for a reason. The competition is more interesting when the competitors are categorized into similar ability.

You can't bring your formula1 to a touring car race just because you feel like it is a touring car.

Personally I think at the top level there should be an unlimited class. within the rules of the sport anyone can enter, then at various lower prestige levels participation is limited according to some parameter.

> Do trans-athletes regularly out perform "born as" (not sure the best way to phrase it) athletes?

No, both because there are very few trans athletes in competition, and because trans athletes (except trans women who have not started or are less than a year into hormone therapy) have net athletic disadvantages, when considering all factors relevant to performance in almost any real sport, compared to cisgender people of the same gender identity.

I mean, if you had a sport that isolated grip strength alone, trans women would have an advantage over cis women, but aside from rather contrived cases like that, they don't.

There's a reason the poster woman for the political movement around this in the US is a cisgender woman whose story of "unfair competition" is tying with a trans woman for fifth place behind four other cisgender women (and having to hold a sixth place trophy in photos, since there were not duplicates on hand for the same rank) in an intercollegiate swimming competition.

There is no way a man would ever compete in women's sports.

Let's imagine a con-man wanted to compete in women's sports. He would have to decide this early in life. Most trans people realize before they are 10. He would then have to spend the rest of his life pretending to be trans to not get his medal revoked.

Trans women are women. They don't have to pretend to be women. However, some trans women have to hide their identity and present as men, for their safety. Presenting as a gender you're not is incredibly taxing. There are high rates of depression and increased risk of suicide for people who have to hide their gender.

Besides the incredible psychological toll, our imaginary con-man would face bullying, harassment, physical assault, sexual violence, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, exclusion from healthcare, and increased risks of poverty and homelessness, which in turn correspond to greater risks of fatal violence.

The rights and legal status of transgender people vary by country. Our imaginary con-man might have restricted access to education, to sports, to bathrooms, and to marriage and military positions. As well as much, much worse.

On top of all that, our imaginary con-man would still have to train to be an Olympic athlete. Most men are not as fast or strong as the world's fastest and strongest women. Sex differences in athletic performance also depend on more than just biological differences. Living as a woman means only having access to the resources available to female athletes.

No man would go through all that for a women's medal.

> what always strikes me as weird is how often the conversation is framed around "men competing in women's sports" when trans women cant really be said to be biologically male anymore.

Just because they are not male, does not mean that they are female.

Testosterone and estrogen are not magic substances that eliminate bone density, preponderance of type II muscle fibres, favourable tendon insertions and all of the other athletic advantages conferred upon males in the womb. I have experience with women who take steroids for strength sports and I am not exaggerating when I say they could be out-competed by 17 year old male high school students with proper coaching.

That isn't the key point. Taking hormone therapy as an adult doesn't erase the huge athletic advantage conferred by going through male puberty.

i agree

That already exists. That’s the men’s category. There are no rules forbidding women from competing in men’s categories at Olympic events.

In the sports I competed in, the men's class was an open class. Anyone could compete in it. The women's classes were the only restricted classes.

There are several sports where female physiology (skeletal structure, etc) has inherent advantages over male physiology where this may not be true, though.

>should of

why

unless you live in the olympics the olympic committee is not your representative

Caster Semenya is XY with a DSD (5-ARD), and absolutely should not compete with females. The same goes for Imane Khelif who was the same DSD.

People with this condition have internal testes, a male level of testosterone, and a male level of muscle development. That a doctor assigned them female at birth and put a F on the birth certificate does not change this.

Intersex category would be perfect fit but this is very rare condition so there wouldn't be enough competition.

So if I take your house. And you complain, I just say: „some people take ownership far too seriously!“

For some people sports is their life and livelihood for that matter, this should be acknowledged.

I actually wish non-sports people would care less about sports, too.

Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing the sports. Not bystanders trying to impose their own agendas on to activities they don't even participate in.

I always sort of speculated that sports existed to channel what would otherwise be human tendencies toward violence; an outlet enablining more stable civilization. Even though I largely ignore sports, I appreciate it over possible alternatives.

So much interest in fairness in the tiny slice of human existence that is sports, and so little interest in the rest of it.

Is it yours?

> Sex objects

In this case they're also banning female athletes with DSDs, which will affect quite a lot more athletes, including all three of the medalists for the women's 800m in Rio[0]

0: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/semenya-niyonsaba-wambui-wh...

Right? It must've cost a fortune for absolutely no measurable impact, let alone any kind of possible benefit.

Shameful

That doesn’t seem to be the case, given the first paragraph of the article:

> The International Olympic Committee has barred transgender athletes from competing in the women’s category of the Olympics and said that all participants in those events must undergo genetic testing.

Genetic testing doesn’t leave a lot of room for accidentally or intentionally targeting women for being “insufficiently feminine.”

What would happen if we didn't allow a female category for power lifting? Just have human power lifting. Does the NFL have a ban on women in NFL? I don't know but the teams look as I expect they would even without a ban.

I follow sport climbing, which has always seemed like a great example of this.

Climbing ability isn’t just a matter of strength or any other single dimension. E.g., the women’s routes are set on the assumption they’re more flexible than the men, not just less strong. Climbers come in many different shapes and sizes. Some climbers look like string beans, others look like they grew up lifting cows.

And BTW, there are women (Janja Garnbret, and Akiyo Noguchi before her) who dominate the women’s competition for years, to the degree that everyone else is almost playing for second place. It’s routinely speculated that Janja could regularly reach the men’s semi-finals.

Don't we already sub-categorize within a gender? E.g. boxing. I don't actually know how common that is or why some sports get this treatment and not others.

> It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men?

In most sports, the "mens" division is actually an open division that accepts all participants regardless of sex. Women just don't compete in it because they have no shot at getting a decent placement. The fact that males and females can't fairly compete with each other is the raison d'être of the women's league. This, and not culture war propaganda reasons is why only the most deranged bigots have an issue with trans men competing in "mens" sports.

The fact that it's only one way (banning men from competition in women's sports) is evidence against your point, not for it. If it was strictly anti-trans, then it would be an applied to both. The fact that no one cares that if a woman wants to participate in a men's event is pretty telling.

Trans men don't compete because women are essentially non competitive against men in top level athletics. Which is why trans women are controversial in women's sports. Every year there are hundreds of males highschoolers who outcompete females Olympic gold medalists. By allowing men to compete in women's sports you prioritize the notions of identity of what's usually a single individual over an entire class. It's plainly sexist.

As for intersex individuals, put them in their own competitive class.

I was wondering about trans men and there is actually quite a bit amount of regulations for it, as taking testosterone is generally considered to be doping. Trans men are only allowed to compete if they are under heavy supervision by a medical professional and they follow a very strict set of rules dictating how, when and what kind of treatment they do. Too high amount of testosterone or too uneven levels of testosterone will disqualify a trans man from competing.

Maybe the trans men issue gets less attention because they have already been excluded from both women's and men's events?

I assume trans men are administered testosterone as part of their medical care, and that's already universally banned from competitive sports.

Trans men have no advantage against cis men.

Men are stronger and faster and not just a little bit. If you allow men in women's sports, (basketball, soccer, boxing etc) then women will not be competitive in those sports.

There's no "culture war against trans people". It's obvious to anyone with a brain that sports were split between genders for a reason since the dawn of sport - sports can be dangerous and that keeps people relatively safe. If trans people would like to compete with others of their chosen gender, the they should just start leagues for their chosen genders. Simple, really.

Also there has only been one (1) trans woman, Laurel Hubbard, who has competed in a women's event (weightlifting) and she not place.

Because trans men have no advantage in men's sport, whereas trans females do. It's not even about trans people at all, it's about preserving fairness in women's sports.

Before trans issues were widespread in culture, intersex athletes were also scrutinized. Hell, I remember when people were questioning whether having a testicle removed gave Lance Armstrong an advantage...

>It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men?

I believe the logic is based on the fact that male athletes are stronger than female athletes.

> culture war against trans people

A war? What you're seeing are at least two phenomena:

1. Practices, including their legalization, that are causing moral outrage.

2. Political actors of various political sides tapping into the emotional charge of the subject matter for other political purposes.

The second is commonplace and part of the political toolbox and doesn't need much analysis here.

The first, however, should surprise no one. The real question is why anyone would expect social and cultural changes that involve the normalization of the gender paradigm and the compulsory acceptance of it in concrete ways to be accepted without so much as a complaint. Of course you will see a reaction. Of course people will react when biological men are allowed in women's restrooms. One has to be detached from reality to find that shocking.

> this only applies to trans women and not trans men?

Because biological men are generally stronger than biological women, and we're not talking about some weak correlation here. That's one reason we have sex-segregated sports. If you wish to attack sex-segregated sports, you're free to do so, but I think this involves repressing truths about deep sexual differences for the purpose of satisfying an ideological impulse or aim.

> so many of these anti-trans efforts end up hurting cis women too, the ones who happen to look too masculine or have too high of testosterone.

How are such people hurt? By whom and in what way? A key presupposition seems to be unstated.

> Gender is not as straightforward as bigots and transphobes would like to think.

The first unmet challenge is to define "gender" in the first place. The trouble with your claim is that no one can come up with a coherent notion, let alone one that has any correspondence with reality. People are simply expected and commanded to comply; no one is ever given anything sensible they might comply with even if they wanted to.

To educate others reading this, it's far from "obvious" how to classify gender in sports. Checking if they have the right "parts" physically doesn't do it. Checking for hormone levels doesn't do it. Even checking for Y chromosomes doesn't do it.

In my opinion the way forward is to stop trying to find arbitrary ways to define gender, and just start making competition classes based on whatever factors are relevant to the event. E.g. a women with high testosterone? They can compete with men or women with the same testosterone bracket. This would also let men with low-T compete fairly rather then be excluded from the games.

It's also relevant at what point other genetic changes are "unfair." There are absolutely genetic traits that give people HUGE advantages in various competitions. Just like the gender-related properties, these are natural and yet result in unfair competitions.

> Why did it take so long for something so obvious to be acted upon?

A few reasons:

1. Sex is not as straightforward as most people think, and what to do with intersex people is not clear.

2. Trans athletes are underrepresented at pretty much all levels of sport, and aren't actually winning that much, making it not actually an urgent problem.

3. The philosophical underpinnings that advantages due to differences in body development should be disqualifying is a little broken, since we do not consider Michael Phelps being double jointed as being an unfair developmental advantage.

how many actual cases does that amount to, i wonder.

Can you say more details? What are you talking about?

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That article does seem very one-sided:

> of youth sports have created clear incentives for them to prioritize competitive fairness over principles like inclusion, well-being, and fun.

In an event that is primarily focused on competitive fairness, what does inclusion have to do with it?

If playing sport is about fun, well-being, etc, then don't play in competitive events. You can't very well want to play in competitive events while complaining about competitive fairness.

The problem for this argument is that there is no actual data that trans kids and specifically trans girls are any better at sport than other girls.

Literally no trans athletes winning anything. I think hacker news skews scientific so we can do the math, if say 1% of the athletes are trans we would expect them to win 1% of the medals in a fair contest. As it is, they don't even come anywhere close. There has not been a single olympic medal won by a trans athlete, so clearly they do not have some kind of magical advantage, in fact (and common sense would make this pretty obvious) they seem to have quite a statistical disadvantage.

On this topic, I feel like "why do some people care a lot about this" is probably the question least in search of an answer.

If they were you wouldn't need to call them "trans"

You’re getting into a separate issue of blocking puberty in children, which may would consider abuse.

Separate from that there are still measurable differences between sexes that you can’t just magically change with a pill or surgery.

Transgender women aren’t ’male athletes’