Opinion
Trans debate remains toxic, but in time the binary battle line may fade
Emma Kemp
Sports reporterJune 20, 2022, was not a good time to be on Twitter.
World Aquatics had just voted to effectively ban the participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions, and those engaging in the information wars were slinging fireballs at each other from behind their keyboards. The tone was often aggressive, the content often vile.
In the real world, the dialogue was perhaps less consistently derogatory, but just as strained. Swimmers were divided, with Olympic champions Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm welcoming the ruling and Australian teammate Madeline Groves voicing her objection. The former pair cited “the science”; the latter called the decision “unscientific”.
Families at dinner tables had the same highly charged debates, as did groups of friends out to lunch and colleagues congregated in the office kitchen. By then, many were self-proclaimed experts on testosterone levels and the effects of male puberty on athletic performance.
Many also knew the name Lia Thomas, the American swimmer who had been a moderately successful in the college pool as a male, but won an NCAA national college title in the women’s category after transitioning.
At the time, World Aquatics’ announcement that it would create a separate “open” category for transgender athletes who had undergone male puberty but subsequently transitioned to female was met with similar discord.
Transgender American swimmer Lia Thomas has helped lead the debate on trans involvement in elite sports.Credit: Getty
More than 15 months later, not a single entry was received for the category’s first trial, which had been set to take place at this weekend’s World Cup in Berlin. On Tuesday night, World Aquatics announced there were no entries for the 50m and 100m races in each stroke, and said the planned debut of the “pioneering pilot project” would be cancelled.
On the surface, there seems a couple of obvious reasons for this: not many transgender swimmers are capable of or willing to compete at the elite level; and/or transgender swimmers would prefer not to compete outside the traditional men’s and women’s categories.
On Wednesday, some of my acquaintances spoke of segregation, questioning why any transgender athlete would volunteer to place themselves into a classification that would brand them as “other”. Some also spoke of science and fairness, while others still of a misplaced desire to address an issue in elite sport when trans inclusion in community sport requires more urgent attention.
But it was a friend with a transgender son who offered the most insightful perspective: perhaps this will just take some time. Maybe, right now at least, there is still too much misinformation on both sides of the toxic, binary debate for the concept of a third category to receive dispassionate treatment. And maybe, over the coming years, once it becomes less flammable, the pool of elite trans swimmers will grow, and the feeling of segregation will subside.
Olympic great Cate Campbell.Credit: AP
The very next person might argue that the feeling of segregation will never subside. After all, the crux of the issue has been attempting to reconcile two near-irreconcilable positions on how best to balance inclusivity and competitive fairness.
The messiness was underscored once more on X, Twitter’s new name, which on Wednesday descended back into a cesspit of the unsavoury on all matters transgender sport. It is not a platform famous for fostering helpful debates, and it is not just swimming that has found itself at the centre.
Several other sporting bodies, including athletics and cycling, have followed the lead of World Aquatics when assessing their own transgender policies. World Aquatics, however, is the first major Olympic sport to try and establish a third category of competition.
It means it is the guinea pig, and can therefore expect obstacles along the way. As it stands, Thomas will be prohibited from realising her dream to compete at the Olympic trials for Paris 2024. In a statement to America’s ABC News last July, she said: “The new FINA release is deeply upsetting. It is discriminatory and will only serve to harm all women.”
Thomas’ statement is grossly at odds with that of World Aquatics, which said an open category “would be able to compete without regard to their sex, their legal gender or their gender identity”. Cate Campbell’s sister and fellow Australian Olympic gold medallist, Bronte, last year called on Fina to consult the “unbelievably marginalised” transgender community.
The level or nature of such consultation is not clear. The working group said it is considering another trial attempt, flagging masters events for swimmers aged over 25 as a possibility. For now, it remains unclear if the discourse is dictating the guidelines, or vice versa. Maybe it will just take time to untangle.
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