April 6, 2022
The undersigned members of the swimming and women's sports communities and Champion Women ask that sport leaders at the NCAA, at National Sport Governing Bodies (NGBs like USA Swimming) and at International Federations (IFs like FINA) take a leadership role within the global sport community to adopt transgender eligibility guidelines that are evidence-based and that affirm fairness for females in the women’s sports category.
This petition is an update to our January 26, 2022 petition. If you signed the earlier petition, you do not need to sign again. See the 300+ Olympians, Paralympians and National Team athletes that have already signed before March 15th in the attached file. (We are now up to 375 Olympians & Paralympians who are publicly calling for #Fairness4Females!)
This petition update is to gather more support, and to reflect more recent events.
In January, the NCAA asked USA Swimming to create transgender eligibility standards. Swimming created outstanding policies and procedures that conformed to the fairness tests set out below. The NCAA then quickly reversed course, and allowed Lia Thomas to swim in the NCAA Women's Championships, even though it knew inclusion would not be fair to the biological women.
We requested USA Swimming’s eligibility process to incorporate the following elements, and it did:
- An expert review committee consisting of recognized experts in swimming performance, sex differences in human performance, physiology, cardiology, and endocrinology.
- 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, the Olympic & Paralympic Movement and International Sports Organizations like FINA) prioritize the interests of transgender individuals over the interests of biological females.
Swimming teams are typically co-ed. Far more often than not, we train in co-ed lanes, lift, stretch, travel, and compete at the same events. 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 continued 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.
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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 went on to win the 500 yard freestyle at the Women’s NCAA Championships.
Transgender women should compete head-to-head in women’s events only if and 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 overperforming in women’s events. First, the male-female performance gap in NCAA swimming is between 7.2% in distance events and 13.3% in the sprints. This means men's times are about 11.5% faster than women's, or almost a pool-length. 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. Lia's time in the 100y freestyle is almost identical to her time competing as a man. Lia's time in the 200y freestyle moved less than a third of the time expected with mitigation. Her time in the 500y freestyle, the only event she swam "tapered, shaved with a skin suit" in both men's and women's events, Lia still needed to be 3.42% slower to show testosterone suppression worked as-promised. While Lia did roll back her time by the percentage required in the 1650y freestyle, she moved from being a life-long distance swimmer to the shorter distances, where male-puberty was most helpful. Lia did not swim the 1650y freestyle "tapered, shaved, with a skin suit" at the NCAAs - where swimmers typically swim 2.5% faster.
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: