Olympic Committee Updating Rules For Trans Athletes After Having First Transgender Competitor
After the Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee will revise its policies for transgender athletes, claiming that the present laws are outdated.
In 2015, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted regulations letting transgender athletes to participate in the Olympics against competitors of their gender identity as long as they fulfilled specific criteria. The athlete’s testosterone level must be below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least a year prior to competing as transgender women — biological males.
According to Yahoo Sports, the IOC now considers the policy to be outdated and needs to be changed. The news comes after Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, a 43-year-old transgender woman, made history on Monday by becoming the first openly transgender person to participate in the Olympics. Hubbard, the oldest competitor in women’s weightlifting, was eliminated after failing to score on three tries.
“But in recent years, many medical experts and policymakers have come to the conclusion that those rules were no longer fully supported by science. ‘Experts who spoke with Yahoo Sports, some of whom have consulted with the IOC, identified two main shortcomings: That testosterone-related rules were too lenient, and that one set of guidelines should not apply to dozens of different sports,” Yahoo Sports reported.
According to two scientists who informed the IOC, the 10 nanomole threshold is excessively high and should be reduced by half. Experts also believe that the criteria should vary according on the sport in which the trans athlete competes.
Later this year, a new system to developing regulations for transgender athletes is likely to be revealed. Katie Mascagni, the IOC’s director of public relations, said the studies the IOC will rely on must be appropriately “contextualized” before the announcement.
“The research needs to be more contextualized. What might be true for rowing and this specific discipline — where potentially testosterone or other aspects come into play in order to justify the reasons there is a disproportionate advantage — might be totally irrelevant in another context,” Mascagni said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has no plan to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in Olympic competitions. Richard Budgett, the IOC’s medical and scientific director, claimed in July that “everyone agrees that trans women are women.”
He stated earlier this week that the new rules would strike a “balance between safety, inclusion, and fairness.” Concerns about transgender women in women’s sports, he said, were “overstated” since a transgender woman had not yet reached the highest level of competition.
“And the other important thing to remember is transgender women are women. So you’ll include all women, if you possibly can,” he emphasized.
Hubbard praised the IOC for being inclusive when she was eliminated from the tournament.
“[The IOC has] been extraordinarily supportive, and I think that they have reaffirmed the principles of the Olympics that sport is something that all people around the world can do, that it is inclusive and successful,” Hubbard said.
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