FINA, the world swimming’s governing body, announced Sunday that it has effectively banned transgender women from competing in women’s events beginning on Monday.
The new “gender inclusion policy” would only permit swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events.
“This is not saying that people are encouraged to transition by the age of 12. It’s what the scientists are saying, that if you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” said James Pearce, spokesperson for FINA president Husain Al-Musallam.
“They’re not saying everyone should transition by age 11, that’s ridiculous,” he continued. “You can’t transition by that age in most countries and hopefully you wouldn’t be encouraged to. Basically, what they’re saying is that it is not feasible for people who have transitioned to compete without having an advantage.”
The organization’s new 24-page policy also proposed a new “open competition” category but Peace said “a new working group that will spend the next six months looking at the most effective ways to set up this new category.”
“No one quite knows how this is going to work. And we need to include a lot of different people, including transgender athletes, to work out how it would work,” the spokesperson added. “So there are no details of how that would work. The open category is something that will start being discussed tomorrow.”
This comes after transgender swimmer, William “Lia” Thomas, competed on the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania recently and won a race recently at the NCAA 500-yard freestyle championship.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis denounced Thomas as the winner of the championship, saying Emma Weyant, who came in second, should’ve won instead.
“She earned that. We need to honor that appropriately,” DeSantis told reporters of Weyant. “The NCAA is basically takings efforts to destroy women’s athletics.”
Last year, DeSantis signed a law that banned transgender athletes from joining female teams.
“I can tell you this: in Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports, and boys are going to play boys’ sports,” he said after signing the bill. “That’s what we’re doing, and we’re going to make sure that that’s the reality.”
