Joanne O’Riordan: Trans women are not the biggest threat to women’s sport

FINA president Husain Al-Musallam wants you all to know FINA “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”. It’s a sentence I think many people agree with but have their eyebrows raised as it comes off the back of an effective ban on trans women participating in swimming at international level.

The cynic in you might say this comes after Lia Thomas, an Ivy league trans swimmer, became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA Division I swimming championship in the 500 yards swim. The stats and times are there for those who want that debate about advantages/disadvantages.

Others might agree with Al-Musallam and say the women’s category needs to be protected, biology and sex are all one, a woman is a woman and so on. A lot of these heroic saviours of the women’s game tend to also critique it for being slow, boring, annoying and actually would like women to remain in the kitchen. Not all, but some.

[ Swimming governing body bans transgender women from female competition ]

[ Should transgender women be allowed to compete in female sport? ]

The FINA policy is pretty straightforward. Male-to-female transgender athletes can compete if “they can establish to FINA’s comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner stage two [which marks the start of physical development in puberty] or before age 12, whichever is later”. For context, the UK almost banned puberty blockers before you turn 16, and multiple Republican states in the US have outright banned it or are contemplating banning it for anyone under 16. So the thing FINA wants you to do to qualify to swim internationally is already illegal in numerous places.

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This entire issue has been passed on from sporting governing body to sporting governing body like a hot potato. Unfortunately, this hot potato is effectively a live grenade, with people’s lives, careers and health at stake.

In recent times, we have only started looking at hormones and their impact on cis female athletes, and even at that, the research is relatively scant. The research on reversing hormones is practically non-existent, and yet governing bodies, led mainly by men, are dictating what a woman is and what needs to be put into a woman’s body to officially become a woman in their eyes.

The entire process is driven by fear, not evidence, and some of the evidence produced is rarely peer-reviewed or put in context. We know that the later you transition in life, the less visible the changes. Height, bone shape and voice don’t change with hormone therapy, but muscle mass and bone density decrease while fat mass increases. In terms of red blood cell generation, a clear violation in sports, in trans women, oxygen-carrying red blood cells drop to female levels.

It’s also very dependent on individuals. Tall trans women have lost a lot of muscle, so it’s like driving a slick Ferrari with a Fiat engine. The advantages of being tall are there but are we really going to start punishing height in sports?

A lot is relatively unknown scientifically, so scaremongering emerges, and people eventually become tuned to hate or fear the unknown. We all know the science needed for this takes a relatively long time, and the truth is, it might take multiple generations of athletes to uncover the truth.

But while FINA became the first to put in essentially a ban, which isn’t ironic given it was a swimming competition that created a culture war, World Athletics probably won’t be too far behind with regulations. World Athletics Sebastian Coe has always said fairness is his priority, whatever his definition of fairness is.

But, here’s the thing. Trans women aren’t the biggest threat to women’s sport. Sure, it’s a necessary topic to discuss and an actual discussion with people within the women’s sporting world is needed, but there are more urgent matters facing women’s sport.

How about the bullying and systemic abuse within British Gymnastics? How about coaches urging athletes to drop weight so much that they lose their periods and are at risk of osteoporosis? How about sporting bodies pumping money into their men’s side but asking women and their leagues to prove their worth over and over again? What about the unequal treatment and scheduling of shared facilities or sporting staff?

More research is needed, and instead of fearmongering and inciting hatred towards a community that is already marginalised, it’s time for governing bodies to look at, facilitate and release proper evidence when it comes to decisions made on the future of trans athletes.