World Aquatics to Include Transgender Swimmers in New ‘Open Category’
“Our sport must be open to everybody”
World Aquatics, the governing body behind competitive swimming, is creating a new ‘open category’ that will allow transgender athletes to compete.
This news comes just a week after Union Cycliste Internationale banned trans women from international cycling events.
NBC News reports:
Trans swimmers to be included in an ‘open category’ at competitions, World Aquatics says
Swimming will set up an “open category” that will include transgender competitors, the governing body of the sport said Tuesday.
World Aquatics president Husain Al-Musallam said the event would take place in the future among other races but gave no details. Reports suggest it could be this year.
“This is a very complex topic,” Al-Musallam said at the World Aquatics Congress in the southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka. “But I am delighted to tell you today that we are now making plans for the first trial of an open category, and we hope to be able to confirm all the details soon.
“Our sport must be open to everybody,” he said.
World Aquatics had previously banned transgender competitors from major events like the Olympics and world championships.
See the announcement below:
BREAKING: World Aquatics has announced plans to create an "open category" for transgender swimmers in order to better protect female athletes.
The news comes one year after the sporting body ruled that males would be banned from women's elite competitions. pic.twitter.com/1fP8FDe43I
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) July 25, 2023
FOX News has more:
World Aquatics, previously known as FINA before its name change was announced in December, updated its policy for transgender athletes in June 2022 to ban any biological male athletes from competing in women’s events unless they transitioned by the age of 12.
“We have to protect the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions,” Al-Musallam said in a statement at the time.
The policy change was spurred by the IOC’s guidelines and recommendation in November 2021 that all international federations develop their own sport-specific eligibility criteria for the women’s competition category.
Is an open category going to be the fix for this issue?
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Comments
Presumably the category will be open to all certifiable deviants.
Well, if it’s aquatics, it should be open to ducks.
Giving watersports a whole new meaning…
I predict that the category will last for one or two meets and then collapse due to the realization, on the part of the deviants, that they couldn’t win against real men so they can’t win, again.
The ‘Mids’ would be a good name: slower than any of the male athletes and faster than any of the female athletes.
Which leads one to think that a group of men could “identify” as trans and go into the misfit division (where underachiever males are hoping to beat women) and clean up the prize monies.
The narcissistic and misogynistic male trannies won’t abide by this. These reprobates want to dominate women’s competitions, so that their mediocrity as male competitors can be magically transformed into award-winning performances.
nailed it, better than I could.
“unless they transitioned by the age of 12.”
interesting wordage. I believe most of Europe has banned chemical and physical “transition” of children, and many states as well. In 20 years, there will be VERY few in that category.
So it is another easy trophy.
Put an “*” by any “record” under the heading of “neither”.
“This is a very complex topic”
No it isn’t. It’s actually very simple. There are 2 sexes. End of story.
It’s only a complex topic because western society has become too cowardly to tell crazy people they’re crazy and society isn’t going to kowtow to them.
Agreed. Unfortunately what began as a reaction to the societal/cultural demands of 3rd.wave feminism with women adopting more masculine traits and men adopting more feminine traits in the bizarrely hopeless search for equality between men and women (as opposed to the equality of everyone under the law) has descended into folks choosing to carry this impulse to conform to social pressure into mutilating themselves.
I suspect that until the first large wave of folks who fell victim to this cultural imperative pushed upon them realize how thoroughly they allowed the dominant lefty woke culture to use them to advance an ideology and speak up against it in larger numbers that at present that this ideologically driven mutilation will continue.
The topic is so complex that you guys are only now arriving at the solution that commenters here proposed over a year ago.
Why do all the official panjandrums take a year to come to conclusions that tinfoil-hat conservatives come to almost immediately? Gee, maybe the virus DID come from a Chinese lab, and Hunter’s laptop IS genuine.
Although it may be interesting. These kinds of athletic competitions depend on donors, patrons, etc. What happens if this open class can’t attract any?
Subotai Bahadur
Good. As in the Chess world, there are “open” tournaments and “women’s” tournaments. So far, no middling male GMs have donned wigs and made a mockery of the game by crashing the women’s tournaments.
It may happen someday, but I am not aware of any top level chess perverts. Maybe the bar is too high in chess for perverts.
So ‘One Night in Bangkok’ isn’t based on a true story?
It’s still a place to make a hard man humble. But that would suggest… Knowing me , knowing you.
An open category already exists, and all the men are in it. These trannys could always compete, they just wanted to cancel women instead.
Not all of them. Some just want access to the female locker room and wag their junk around.
Everyone here knows this “open” category will be dominated by male-to-female trannies, as the female-to-male trannies won’t be competitive.
Fine by me. They have the Special Olympics so why not this?
Prediction: Every single medalist in the new category will be a man who “became” a woman.
Prediction: Every single medalist in the new category will be a man who “became” a woman.
Prediction: almost every single entrant will be a “trans woman.”
Also, prediction: After the first blush there will be almost no entrants at all, as they realize it no longer means they get to be BGOC.
BGOC = Big Girl On Campus
Special Olympics? Don’t say that, they’ll claim they’re special and want to compete in that category, too. And they would have no shame in doing so.
Kinda surprised no big time promoter has not tried to put together modern day version of Riggs-King
Bet Lia – Ledecky challenge match promoted by Dana White in Las Vegas would be huge money event.
There already is an “open” category. It’s called “men’s swimming”. Iszac Henig is a F -> M transgender athlete for Yale. Oddly, Henig chose to swim in the *women’s* races, and won the 50m freestyle. Of course, that time wouldn’t have come close to winning the men’s (open) freestyle. Interesting that a M -> F swimmer wants to swim in their chosen gender, but F -> M still wants to swim as a woman despite claiming to be a man.
The point is not inclusion in competing in sporting events.
It is to destroy sporting events.
Destroy the language, destroy the culture and destroy the family — all which leads to destruction of a self-governing republic and the freedoms that it protects.
Trans “men”
Trans “women”
FIFY
.
The Men’s Category is the Open category. ALways has been. Pretty much in every sport. But women cannot possibly compete with men so no one ever really tries – but they can.
A couple of women golfers have tried to play in PGA matches – Annika SOrenstam and Michelle Wie, but they cant compete. In track and field and swimming and other such timed events it doesn’t even make sense for women to be allowed anywhere near the men’s competition since women are, at least, 10-20% slower than the men, which on the elite level makes them completely uncompetitive.
The only “sports” that women seem to compete with men on a fair basis are drag racing (where some women can beat the men) and America Ninja Warrior (if that’s still a thing, but where the women are clearly far behind).
The Men’s competitions ARE the Open competitions. Always have been.
The real question is the locker rooms, which should just be split by chromosomes for heterosexuals and having a third locker room for all the queer types of whatever shape or sort.
“The only “sports” that women seem to compete with men on a fair basis”
Target sports (firearms, archery) are another exception.
You would think … but they still hold competitions with sex-based leagues, right? I couldn’t really get the fair comparisons but do women score the same as men in archery at identical distances and targets? Obviously, men have an advantage in being able to pull much heavier bows, but does that not come up in international competitions?
Pool is another of these types … although, one of the biggest differences in golf, for example, isn’t just driving distance but putting. WOmen seem to generally fall far behind the men at putting, by my understanding, which would have nothing to do with strength and seems a bit anti-intuitive.
“but they still hold competitions with sex-based leagues, right?”
I don’t believe any of the NRA Nationals are.
15 years ago or so, our local HS team (made up of a slim majority of girls) beat everybody but the Marines’ and Army’s A teams in one national event.
So, not only no sex basis, but no age basis.
Does it include male sharks, male barracudas?
Now they’ll have a “league of their own.”
“Is an open category going to be the fix for this issue?”
Probably.
Because then they’ll stop winning.
This is good.
Protects biological women, and allows full participation by Lia Thomas and the like (1980’s East German women?).
Trans-people are people and athletes and they should be allowed to compete.
And Riley Gaines was the top female swimmer in 2023.
.
Do this for biking, running, cross-country skiing . . .all sports where male-pubescent development provides a big advantage.
Maybe not necessary for bowling, archery?
Obviously this the only rational solution to this trans-athletic controversy…….at this time. My own hunch, aligned with some of the other responses, is that this new trans competition category will simply fade away over time for some of the reasons advanced above. Some day we’ll look back and reminisce about this weird time in our history when this controversy flared up for a few years, before the world progressed to worry about other, more genuine problems to be solved.