Budapest, June 20 (BNA) World swimming’s governing body has banned transgender women from competing in women’s events starting Monday.
FINA members widely adopted a new “gender inclusion policy” on Sunday that would only allow swimmers who moved before the age of 12 to compete in women’s events. The organization also proposed an “open competition category”.
James Pearce, a spokesman for FINA President Hussain Al-Musallam told The Associated Press.
“They’re not saying everyone should move by the age of 11, that’s ridiculous. You can’t move by that age in most countries and we hope you’re not encouraged to. Basically, what they’re saying is that it’s not feasible for people who have transitioned into competition without getting on feature.”
Pierce emphasized that there are currently no transgender women competing at elite levels in swimming, the Associated Press reports.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health has just lowered the minimum recommended age to start treatment with gender transition hormone therapy to 14 years and some surgeries to 15 or 17 years.
FINA’s new 24-page policy proposed a new “open competition” category. The organization said it was creating “a new working group that will spend the next six months researching the most effective ways to create this new category.”
Pierce told the AP that the open competition will likely mean more events, but those details still need to be worked out.
“No one quite knows how this will work. And we need to include a lot of different people, including transgender athletes, to see how this works,” he said. So, there are no details on how this would work. The open category is something he will start discussing tomorrow.”
Members voted 71.5% in favor of the organization’s extraordinary general conference after hearing presentations from three specialist groups – a sports group, a science and medicine group and a legal and rights group – that were working together to shape policy following recommendations made by the International Olympic Committee last November.
The IOC has urged a shift in focus from individual testosterone levels and advocate for a demonstrated performance advantage.
FINA said it recognizes that “some individuals and groups may be uncomfortable with the use of medical and scientific terms relating to gender and gender-related traits (but) some use of sensitive terms is needed to be precise about sexual characteristics that justify separate competing classifications.”