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”.
Sex and gender are effectively the same thing for this conversation. We consistently refer to female athletes as women and the terms are entirely interchangeable here. Sex is also a socially constructed category based around certain anatomies and characteristics. Gender is assigned the same way sex is. Sex is not the hardline objective reality it’s being treated as here. Women with CAIS are not forbidden from “female sports”. Similarly, women with PCOS who have high T are not banned from “female sports”.
I’m not male. No part of me is male. My legal sex has been changed. If we’re separating people into male and female, I’m placed into the female group.
You’re directly contradicting the argument that every trans activist has been making for decades by saying that sex and gender are “effectively the same thing”. Is that really what you want to be doing here?
It’s objectively the truth that sex is another class category created by humans to sort people and enforce a hierarchy of sex. That argument (trans women are male women) was adopted to appeal to cisgender people.
I’m female, I am a woman. I’m not male. My legal sex is female.
So what do you call a baby that has a penis but isn’t old enough to tell you whether they are a boy or a girl?
A baby. Are it’s genitals relevant somehow?