Yeah, this is fucked. So this new policy is spitting in the face of the International Olympic Committee's new guidance they released titled Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations from November 2021.
IOC gives sports new guidance on transgender athlete rules
Aiming to help sports write eligibility rules for transgender athletes, the IOC
published advice Tuesday shifting the focus from individual testosterone levels and calling for evidence to prove when a performance advantage existed.
No athlete should be excluded from competing based on an "unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status," the International Olympic Committee said.
If you want to read it in full, it's rather short. The presentation can be found
here. Some key principles from the presentation are below. When reading, keep in mind things like how in 2003, the IOC officially allowed transgender athletes to compete, but only if they underwent sex reassignment surgery. This requirement wasn't removed until 2015:
Some key principles:
- Fairness. Eligibility criteria should aim to : Ensure fairness. Prevent risk to physical safety. Prevent cheating by athletes who abuse inclusion rule.
- No Presumption of Advantage. Athletes should not make assumptions based on how athletes look. Criteria should be based on evidence.
- Evidence Based. Restrictions to competition should be based on robust, credible research. Sports organizations should follow criteria to prove that a disproportionate advantage orc safety risks exist
- Primacy of Health. Athletes should not be pressured to undergo medically unnecessary procedures or treatment. Criteria should not include invasive examinations to their bodies
- Stakholder Centered. Sports organizations should consult with athletes when setting criteria.Decisions that affect athletes should be fair, neutral and impartial. Athletes should have safe ways to raise concerns and grievances.
- Privacy. Sports organizations should preserve the privacy of athletes. Compliance with privacy laws when handling information. Requiring informed consent from athletes to collecting personal data.
- Periodic Review. Eligibility criteria should be subject to review as new developments arise.
The biggest problem with the IOC framework is that they're really just guidelines and they make clear, "the IOC offers guidance to International Federations on how to design eligibility criteria that work for their own sport/context, while considering fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination." I don't know if the IOC has the power to actually enforce anything to groups like FINA, but because they didn't we now get FINA's new document and policy that pretty much spits in the face of the IOC.
Now to jump through FINA's new policy and pick out some quotes. First off, they are clearly unhappy with IOC's framework. We get this early on:
Specifically, the IOC Framework rejects the presumption that the male sex confers an athletic advantage, and discourages continued reliance on a testosterone proxy as the exclusive basis for eligibility for the women's category.
What IOC
actually said seems reasonable. "There is an unclear role of testosterone
alone in predicting performance across all sports." They want organizations to move away from a one-size fits all approach. Of course, there is so much more than just this in the IOC guidelines, but it is what gets hyper-focused below---
In January 2022, the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations issued a joint position statement (Joint Position Statement) responding to what those organisations considered to be failures of the IOC process and recommendations. According to the Joint Position Statement, the IOC's focus on only one aspect of the human rights analysis meant that it failed to take proper account of "the scientific, biological or medical aspects," in particular that "high testosterone concentrations, either endogenous or exogenous, confer a baseline advantage for athletes in certain sports" such that "it is clear to uphold the integrity and fairness of sport that these baseline advantages of testosterone must be recognized and mitigated."
FINA used the joint statement as a reason to convene their own working group to, "...consider the best available statistical, scientific, and medical evidence concerning sex differences in sports performance, and any associated male sex-based advantage....The working group included (a) an athlete group (Athlete Group), (b) a science and medicine group (Science Group), and (c) a legal and human rights group (Legal and Human Rights Group)."
What is frustrating here is that I wanted to dig into the studies and research, especially from this Science Group. I'm always willing to keep an open mind and learn new things, but this is all you get. Two paragraphs with just about no real data:
The Science Group reported that biological sex is a key determinant of athletic performance, with males outperforming females in sports (including Aquatics sports) that are primarily determined by neuromuscular, cardiovascular, and respiratory function, and anthropometrics including body and limb size. The extent of the male/female performance gap varies by sport and competition, but the gap universally emerges starting from the onset of puberty. The group 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. Prior to puberty, testosterone levels are similar in females and males. During puberty, however, testes-derived testosterone concentrations increase 20-fold in males, while testosterone concentrations remain low in females so that post-pubescent males have circulating testosterone concentrations at least 15 times higher than post-pubescent females (15-20 nmol/L in adult males versus c.1 nmol/L in typical females of any age). High testosterone levels generate not only anatomical divergence in the reproductive system but also measurably different body types/compositions between sexes.
According to the Science Group, if gender-affirming male-to-female transition consistent with the medical standard of care is initiated after the onset of puberty, it will blunt some, but not all, of the effects of testosterone on body structure, muscle function, and other determinants of performance, but there will be persistent legacy effects that will give male-to-female transgender athletes (transgender women) a relative performance advantage over biological
females. A biological female athlete cannot overcome that advantage through training or nutrition. Nor can they take additional testosterone to obtain the same advantage, because testosterone is a prohibited substance under the World Anti-Doping Code.
Open and shut case! No need for them to provide receipts of any kind. We're at four pages. That's all it took for them to make their case, while dedicating only two paragraphs to actual science and evidence. The rest is simply laying out the policy itself. Sure hope those 4 pages sold you on why what they're doing isn't fucked. The new policy from FINA then has the nerve to say they want to, "...to provide a clear, fair,
respectful, and
confidential process by which athletes may establish their eligibility for FINA competitions" while a few sentences later stating you need to certify your chromosomal sex and prove you've not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2.
I could go on, but I've run out of energy. The policy is just shit, and they provided no evidence that I can find to support their new stance outside of, "we have science people who told us science stuff." They blasted a policy for being too focused on human rights, then released a policy almost entirely devoid of concern around human rights.
www.theguardian.com
