Sign the Petition: The Swimming Community Urges USA Swimming to Prioritize Fairness in Women’s Sports
January 26, 2022
The undersigned members of the swimming community ask that USA Swimming take a leadership role within the global sport community to adopt transgender eligibility guidelines that are evidence-based and that affirm fairness in the women’s swimming category.
The NCAA has recently announced it would defer to USA Swimming’s transgender eligibility standards, and FINA has said that its transgender eligibility standards will not be finalized prior to the championship season. Therefore, we respectfully request that USA Swimming adopt an interim evidence-based transgender eligibility process to be announced well before the Women’s NCAA Championships, March 16-19, 2022, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Respectfully, we request that USA Swimming’s interim eligibility process incorporate the following elements:
1. An expert review committee consisting of recognized experts in swimming performance, sex differences in human performance, physiology, cardiology, and endocrinology.
2. Examination of physician documented evidence such as:
a. Suppression of testosterone into the female range for a minimum number of years prior to swimming competition in the female category.
b.Demonstration of continuation of suppression of testosterone in the female range during the period of eligibility for swimming regular season and championship competition in the female category.
Necessary certifications concerning timing, levels, and consistency, should be reported by the athlete’s treating endocrinologist to ensure monitoring is not unnecessarily intrusive.
3. Consideration of male-puberty mitigation in swimming performance by event, such as:
a. Examination of pre-/post- transition time declines compared to the current NCAA qualifying time male/female percent difference as a proxy for the expected male/female difference.
b. examination of pre-/post- hierarchical ranking in male and female D-I swimmers to determine whether these rankings are reasonably within the same range.
c. examination of pre-/post- video evidence of swimming performance to verify that the swimmer is maximizing their performance effort.
4. Review of drug testing results during the regular season or at conference or NCAA championship events.
Sports organizations regularly recite that they will “balance inclusion, safety and fairness.” But their inadequate transgender eligibility standards are failing biological females, 54.2% of USA Swimming’s member-athletes in 2020. Meanwhile, the Williams Institute has estimated general transgender population as less than 1%. While we do not know how many transgender athletes are participating in competitive men’s and women’s sport programs, we do know that inadequate eligibility standards (as currently exist in the NCAA, USA Swimming and FINA) prioritize the interests of transgender individuals over the interests of biological females.
Swimming teams are typically co-ed. More often than not, we train, lift, stretch, travel, and compete together. Probably less than 5% of swimming sport-time involves competition. We are asking USA Swimming to separate girls’ and women’s competition eligibility from team inclusion. Transgender athletes would always be able to participate in the social construct of sport – the 95% of sport – the workouts, socializing, team meetings, and travel.
In the 1970s and 1980s, sport failed to address the travesty of East German women dominating swimming by ingesting and injecting large amounts of performance enhancing drugs. At the time, sport leaders did not stand up for U.S. women who were not testosterone advantaged. Instead, women were told to be gracious losers. Now in 2022, on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, USA Swimming’s 2022 guidelines on transgender inclusion must support competitive equality for biological women. Do not tell women to be gracious losers again.
Women’s sports competitions, including women’s swimming, are separate from men’s because of the immutable physical and physiological differences between males as a group and females as a group. As a legal matter, there is no alternative, defensible, rationale for sex-segregation in sport. Recognizing, respecting, and accommodating male and female differences ensures that sport meets its social justice obligations to both female and transgender athletes, enables fair and safe competitive sport, and secures the integrity and viability of female sport.
————————————————————————–
The Immediate Issue:
In 2021, a transgender woman began competing for the University of Pennsylvania in the Women’s NCAA Division 1 category after three years competing on the men’s team, Lia Thomas. Lia is on track to win at the Women’s NCAA Championships, and possibly even break Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky’s records. After the NCAA Championships, it will be difficult to undo the damage.
Transgender women should compete head-to-head in women’s events only when they can demonstrate that they’ve rolled back the physical advantages that result from male puberty, and are no longer benefitting from the structural and physiological effects of circulating testosterone outside of the female range.
As we explain below, Lia Thomas cannot make such a showing even based on the limited data available.
The table below and preliminary scientific analysis demonstrates that Lia Thomas is currently over performing in women’s events. The male-female performance gap in NCAA swimming is between 8.7% in distance events and 13.3% in the sprints. But Lia’s testosterone suppression has not resulted in moving her times anywhere close to the times necessary to demonstrate she has “mitigated” the advantage she received from 10 years of male-puberty. Based on NCAA historical performance data and the effects of testosterone suppression, Lia’s fast times are unlikely to be the result of normal development over time, including male-typical training gains in the collegiate cycle.
Back-up Facts:
Had testosterone suppression worked to roll back Lia’s male-puberty advantages, we would have expected to see the gap between her performances grow at least to approximate the gap between males and females generally. Instead, Lia has gone from being ranked #462 in the country in the men’s 200 yard freestyle, to #1 in the women’s 200 yard freestyle. She has gone from being #65th in the men’s 500 yard freestyle to being #2 in the women’s 500 yard freestyle.
Additionally, the overall pattern of Lia’s times are consistent with the research on transition; her times have moved closer to the women’s times in the women’s endurance events as compared to her times in the sprints; she is a much better sprinter post-transition than she was pre-transition.
We have no reason to doubt Lia’s word and her institution’s representation that she followed the NCAA’s non-scientific transgender inclusion policies, which required transgender women to complete at least “one-year of testosterone suppression treatment.”
However, we now know that the NCAA’s standard was based on the hypothesis that one year of testosterone suppression would be sufficient to roll back a transgender woman’s male-puberty performance advantages. But new scientific evidence and results like Lia Thomas’s demonstrate that mitigation may not be possible in the sport of swimming.
We, the undersigned members of the swimming community, ask that USA Swimming adopt transgender eligibility guidelines that are evidence-based and that affirm fairness in the women’s swimming category.
Add your name and Swimming cred. Don’t be modest here. Then SHARE IT. And we appreciate your donations!
Or HERE — > https://championwomen.dm.networkforgood.com/forms/swimmers-usa-swimming-to-prioritize-fairness-in-women-s-sports