The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.
The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.
Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.
However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.
The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.
Kind of a contradiction in that trans women aren’t female bit lol. Very much depends on how you define that and how you measure it.
The categories are also not called female categories, they’re called women’s categories, which is effectively the same thing in this conversation. Female is a loose category encompassing people with many typed of bodies and many hormonal levels and many degrees of feminization and masculinization. This is effectively excluding one group of women specifically and ignoring all other groups that have advantages.
Trans women are not biologically female - that is not up for debate. Gender and sex were used interchangeably for the majority of the Olympics’ existence so you can’t “well ackshually” about the definition of women’s sports here - they meant biologically female and you know it. There is no contradiction unless you completely ignore the context.
Honestly, at this point I think the person you are responding to is either a troll, or just so violently obsessed with inclusion that they will refuse every single argument that does not align with their view, while defending all avenues that align with their way of thinking, no matter how ridiculous they might be.