Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam in with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.
Thomas swam for Pennsylvania. She competed for the men’s team at Penn before her gender transition.
Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship. By not making the final, the lawsuit mentions that Florida swimmer Tylor Mathieu, who was not a plaintiff, was denied first-team All-American honors in that event.
Other plaintiffs included athletes from volleyball and track.
On this subject I’ve had mix feelings.
I get their point and I do not see this as a fair thing. Now that more people are coming out or transitioning should they try to make a different league or something?
Correct me, but we are yet to see a trans person winning anything or achieve a significant record anywhere. IIRC hormones do a big effect on anything but bones frame. And we are still talking potentional damage for M2F transitioners only, not F2M athletes or NB athletes.
Honestly, I think the whole perception of international competitive gendered sports like Olympics shall die. Sportsmanship on that level is toxic, many use drugs, costumes and hacks to somehow gain the edge. I see sports as a motivation for regular people to think of their health, not a gambling platform or a thing to boost national pride by injecting ‘winning horses’ with steroids, inhalers, whiskey.
Trans problem in sports is not a problem of trans people who do sports but another reason to redo sports and our perception of them.
The article itself has this to say:
“Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship.”
I’d say that winning a Div1 title ahead of three Olympic Medalist is somewhat significant.
reading is hard
Gendered sports dying means sports for biological women dying and sports for biological men being basically unaffected.
Something tells me competitive sports aren’t just going to die out because some of us struggle to accept testosterone is a steroid and gives an unfair advantage versus women.
Or they could seperate based on something other than gender?
Like in basketball a 6ft5 woman is probably going to out perform a 5ft5 man even though the man has the testosterone advantage.
Since car analogies always work, consider NHRA or NASCAR.
“I may look like an F1 Ferrari, but I identify as a rule-constrained Chevy.”
The one joke.
Wtf are you talking about?
Yep, I know. It can be countered by encouragement of girla\women, but IIRC they want their own league in many sports due to difference in physique and toxic male challengers. Thus I think it’s not mostly about division but maybe the competitive factor?
…right, it’s totally because only men are toxic, no man has ever been mocked for “losing to a girl” due to that same societal toxicity before nor are women’s sports surprisingly rife with hair pulling/scratching/etc
Pretty sure it’s almost entirely the difference in physique that otherwise trivializes women as competitors on any serious level?
I can only talk about toxicity in men, aince I’m one and was in their changing rooms. That’s a pleasure of a public forum we can discuss that for we can see other perspectives.
Trans athletes have definitely won some competitions. The news were sometimes difficult to miss.
But that’s really the thing. Sometimes it feels like there’s no problem before a trans athlete wins. Like how many competitions have transgender athletes taken part in throughout modern history? Thousands? And how many have they won? A handful?
I mean, almost nobody talked about this before the inevitable happened: A trans person happened to win a competition and it gained media attention. And when we consider that the Olympics has allowed transgender athletes to compete within their gender since 2003…
Seeing sports as a casual way to get exercise is fine on a personal level if you aren’t an elite athlete, but you can’t force that perspective on millions of people who enjoy competing or watching elite athletes compete. It’s a weird take to want to rewire sports to accommodate a very small minority of people, most of whom wouldn’t even agree with that perspective.
I play sports casually, but I play really competitively. I love competition.
There were abolitions of slavery when most holding voting rights could lose something in the process. Sports are not even close. Reformating them can come hurtless if the focus is pushed somewhere else, like local friendly competitions where there’s no stakes. Americans like their local teams at baseball and football, why it’s impossible to limit them to make regular youth the primal category participating in that, so communities in reverse get more involved, not suoerstars?
Just because you don’t understand the value of a thing doesn’t mean it has no value. Casually tossing aside one of the oldest human institutions is foolish.
We tossed a lot of them out. It shows itself as incompatible with current european culture and cause weird gimmicks to happen. Maybe it’s the time to put it down too?
Yeah we tossed a lot of them out, and then had a century of world war and genocide.
Stop trying to see yourself as an expert in culture, and start trying to see yourself as a student of it.
So what are you proposing exactly? You want to reform sports but what does this actually mean?
Many sports throughout history were only segregated by gender once and because a woman fought to participate and beat the men.
This is all about the bruised egos of bigots. If they’d come 5th against a cis woman they’d be annoyed at themselves and try to do better next time, but coming 5th against a trans woman hurts because they see trans people as inferior (yet also superior, sound familiar? that’s because it’s one of the points from the fascism checklist), so them coming 5th is clearly her fault, and she must be persecuted to give her, and other trans people, the message that they aren’t welcome.
There’s actually already been trans women that were setting new records, far surpassing what was previously set. And because to be trans is too just identify… Well this happened https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/
NYP is not a very good source. But either way - maybe there should be a term limit for their transition or something? I don’t know. Abandoning sport competitions as they are now altogether seems easier than adjusting the time they eat hormones.
I mean by all means feel free to Google the name and post any link you want. I just grabbed the first thing that popped up.
You stand corrected.
There are plenty of instances of M->F transpeople completely obliterating the competition.
This article shows one that I overlooked. Have there been plenty already?
Yeah this one is a mixed bag. Biological males can absolutely have an advantage in certain things. Simple as that. I mean look what happened with the Williams sisters.
This one is an absolute mess of a thing to have to figure out and, at the end of the day, I’m glad I’m some dude on the sidelines and not having to make the call on this one lol.
I feel the same way. I strongly support one side of this story, but the other side also has a valid point. So even when things turn out how I think it should be, it still has a nasty after taste.
I think we should preemptively start a Go Fund Me for the poor guy who has to make the choice.
It’d be cool if there were leagues based solely on physical capability, but most women would be in the lower leagues then complain about not being seen as equal to men.