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The world swimming body effectively bans transgender women from women's events
The decision was the latest salvo in an ongoing fight over whether trans athletes should compete according to their gender identity or their sex assigned at birth.
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FINA, the world governing body for swimming, has voted to effectively ban transgender women from participating in women's swimming competitions.
The vote — with 71.5% approval at the FINA Extraordinary General Congress 2022 in Budapest — was the latest salvo in an ongoing fight over whether trans athletes should compete according to their gender identity or their sex assigned at birth.
"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's president, Husain Al-Musallam, said in a statement.
Under the policy, transgender women must show that "they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later," a move that effectively eliminates their eligibility to compete in the women's category. Tanner Stages describe the physical changes people undergo during puberty.
FINA said it was necessary to use sex and sex-linked traits to determine eligibility criteria because of the "performance gap" that appears between males and females during puberty.A simple sense of fairness and good sportspersonship should have prevented Lia Thomas from competing against women who did not have his advantage in having gone through male puberty and had years to build up muscles aided by male hormones.
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