Sunday 19 June 2022

Right Call On Transgender Swimmers

In any other walk of life i support the rights of anyone Transgender, but when it comes to sport i am completely in the camp that say's athletes who were once men should NOT be competing against women so i am firmly in agreement with the Swimming's world governing body FINA who has voted overwhelmingly to ban transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races.   
It will require transgender competitors to have completed their transition by the age of 12 in order to be able to compete in women's competitions.
A statement from FINA said that in order to protect competitive fairness male-to-female transgender athletes will be eligible to compete if: 'they can establish to FINA's comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later'.
FINA will explore establishing an open category for any male to female athlete but Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ athletic advocacy group responded to the announcement and said the eligibility criteria is: 'discriminatory, harmful, unscientific and not in line with the 2021 IOC principles. If we truly want to protect women's sports, we must include all women'.
Now i'm no biologist but a male physiology is very different to a females and it would be very unfair that women could be competing against other athletes with such a biological advantage of having a male body that no amount of training will be enough to overcome the physical advantage and that isn't fair.
I understand the argument that transgender athletes should be able to identify as male or female and more power to them, they can be who they like, but not in a competition, where some athletes take drugs for just a tiny advantage, a male body is just too much to advantageous to overcome for female athletes who, if reversed, would be left treading water if they competed against males.

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