USA Swimming announced its Athlete Inclusion, Competitive Equity, and Eligibility Policy on Feb. 1. The changes were made as a result of controversies stemming from University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas’s abrupt dominance of the sport. Thomas, a male athlete who had previously competed on Penn’s men’s swim team, began setting new records after announcing a new gender identity and joining the women’s team.
The policy change was an attempt to level the competitive balance when athletes who are male want to identify as female and compete as women. The policy still does not resolve the main issue — that men have an obvious biological competitive advantage over women in sports.
A female swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me that she was encouraged by the latest developments. She felt USA Swimming is headed in the right direction. However, she stopped short of saying the changes created a fair competitive environment.
“Fair, in my opinion, is under no circumstances are transgender athletes allowed to compete with women, but this is definitely a huge step in the right direction,” she said. “It’s definitely way better than it was.”
One change is a “self-identity verification” — essentially background check to ensure that an athlete’s gender identity switch in sports “is consistent with the athlete’s gender identity in everyday life.”
The changes made by USA Swimming “shall apply to all athletes who wish to compete in a competition category (e.g., Male or Female) different than” their biological sex, the organization states. “The policy therefore supports the need for competitive equity at the most elite levels of competition,” it reads.
It’s intellectually disingenuous to claim a need for “competitive equity” but still allow biological men to compete in most women’s sports. Many experts, including prominent transgender athletes such as the former Bruce Jenner, have stated that it is unfair for biological males identifying as female to compete against natural women. And even USA Swimming had to acknowledge this in some form.
“The top-ranking female in every event was ranked about 560th, on average, if the women were to have participated in the men’s category,” this Penn swimmer told me. (I looked it up — it’s actually 536th, but the point stands.) “So clearly men have an advantage. If it wasn’t clear at all before, it is now. They used that as an example of evidence.”
So, USA Swimming has begrudgingly acknowledged that males have an advantage. It even provided the scientific data to demonstrate this competitive advantage that men have over women. It just won’t be consistent about it — yet.
USA Swimming stated that a panel of three medical experts will determine whether males identifying as a women will be permitted to compete among women. There will be two specific benchmarks when determining eligibility.
First, there must be evidence that “the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.”
Second, transgender athletes in female competitions must show that the “concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum has been less than 5 nmol/L (as measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) continuously for a period of at least thirty-six (36) months before the date of application.”
The update requires an additional year of hormone suppressant treatment over the current policy.
Sadly, USA Swimming still is not protecting women’s sports. And, in a way, they are still caving to the transgender mob. There is a reason why men and women’s sports are separate. Men still have a biological advantage that prevents women from fair competition. The aforementioned stats overwhelmingly support that.
As long as women’s sports are going to exist, there is no legitimate basis, scientific or ideological, for biological men ever to compete with biological women.
This UPenn swimmer feels it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps it is. The new rule raises new obstacles to men seeking to compete as women — a three-year waiting period to switch over means that you have to delay your life in order to game the system in this way. That will surely deter many male aspirants.
I still believe it is not nearly enough. USA Swimming appears to be taking action, but it is too frightened to take the principled, legitimate action needed — to ban biological males from competing in women’s sports.
Science can only go so far. No matter how many years of hormone suppressants, even entertaining the idea that teenagers who spent the majority of their lives as men can still be allowed to compete with women is a farce. As long as men are permitted to compete against women, things will remain unfair. And in the end, women, biological women, still lose.
