The world’s governing body for the exclusion of transgender athletes from swimming is causing waves in Canada.
FINA adopted a “gender mainstreaming policy” on Sunday, which took effect on Monday.
Only swimmers who switch from men to women before the age of 12 are eligible to compete in women’s competitions.
FINA is also considering creating an open competition category.
FINA was the first major international sports federation to announce how it will address transatlets in its sport since the issuance of the Guidelines on Justice, Non-Discrimination and Involvement in the International Olympic Committee last November.
“This is the first IF to exclude trance, from men to women, in such an explicit way,” Bruce Kidd, an honorary professor of sports and public policy at the University of Toronto, told The Canadian Press on Monday.
“I have read the IOC’s overall comprehensive policy in a much more inclusive way, so it is a disappointment to me. Some media have speculated that others will follow in a way that I think would be regressive, discriminatory and so on.
Kidd, a long-distance runner for Canada at the 1964 Olympics, served on a working group for the Canadian Center for Sports Ethics when he created in 2016 a guide for sports organizations to create an inclusive environment for trans participants.
“There are people who oppose this,” Kidd said. “I have participated in one or two public forums recently and there are certainly people from both sides.
“But at the level of national leadership, there is not much disagreement with the CCES position, which is self-recognition, self-identification, no requirement for medical intervention, hormonal or surgical, and no requirement for disclosure.”
CCES allows a change in the understanding of science from more data to potentially change that position, Kidd said.
“Empirical data is so limited,” he said. “Let us err in the direction of inclusion and justice, and let us not add to discrimination, to marginalization.”
Attacks on trans women continue to be horrific. Athletes’ police do not protect women’s sports. It excludes and targets marginalized women. https://t.co/hr4hMZ4XKQ
– @ _ shireenahmed_
Impact on Canadian swimmers
While Swimming Canada is not bound by FINA directives in the domestic market, Canadian swimmers are when they compete internationally at an FINA-approved event.
Under current Swimming Canada regulations, transgender swimmers wishing to swim to Canada in Olympic, Paralympic and World Championships must have written proof from FINA that they are eligible to swim in national selection events.
“Swimming Canada believes swimming is for everyone,” CEO Ahmed El-Awadi said in a statement Monday. “We welcome the fact that FINA is taking these steps to clarify issues such as this one.
“We look forward to reviewing the policy in more detail and working with FINA and other key partners to align our policies in Canada.”
The balance sport he is currently trying to achieve is to include athletes, regardless of gender identity or gender variation, in a harassing environment, while at the elite level, where financial stakes are high, to ensure that no athlete has an unfair advantage. in front of the rest of the field.
Sport Canada cut off financial support last month for a commissioned inclusion study when more than 200 members of academia and the sports community said in a letter that the study’s language was discriminatory against transgender athletes.
The aim of the study was to examine the views of highly effective athletes on the inclusion of transatlets in their sports.
Problems in the United States, the position of FINA
The United States has become a battleground, with some states banning trans women and girls from playing women’s sports.
Until the IOC issued guidelines and principles for inclusion last November, it ultimately left it to the governing body of each sport to draw up eligibility criteria and determine whether an athlete has a disproportionate advantage.
Among the IOC’s principles were the rejection of the general assumption that males give an athletic advantage in all sports, and the discouragement of dependence on testosterone levels as the main basis for eligibility for competition in women.
But FINA claims that in consultation with its research team, higher testosterone levels in men from puberty onwards give them a competitive advantage in water sports.
FINA said male-to-female transition procedures may blunt some, but not all, of the effects of testosterone on body structure and muscle function, “but there will be lasting inherited effects on transgender athletes from men to women ( transgender women) a relative advantage over biological women.
“A biological athlete cannot overcome this advantage through training or nutrition,” FINA said in a 24-page document that formed the basis of its decision.
A wider review of the FINA document and more feedback over time on such an important issue in sport were needed, Kidd said.
“There is a process, there are standards for evidence, there is a hands-free assessment, there are consultations,” he said. “If they had followed this process and it had taken a year, then I think people like me, I think the world would have felt much more confident in that.
“If they had released this as a draft – and CCES always left the door open for further evidence – you have people all over the world, scientists, athletes, ethicists and so on and people have reached a consensus this way, then you” I will have some confidence in that , but not in that. “
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