• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Fair Play For Women

Fair Play For Women

  • Prison
  • Sport
  • GRA
  • Language
  • Changing rooms
  • Resources ▼
    • Take action! Here’s how
    • Key facts
    • UK law
    • Science
    • Sex vs gender
    • Consultation submissions
    • Materials
  • About Us ▼
    • Review of 2022
    • Our aim
    • Our beliefs
    • Our spokeswoman
    • Our history and achievements
    • Our supporters
    • News
      • Newspapers
      • TV Interviews
      • Radio interviews
    • Contact
    • Donate
You are here: Home / Sport / Trans inclusion in women’s sport: IOC abandons testosterone suppression.

Trans inclusion in women’s sport: IOC abandons testosterone suppression.

18th November 2021 by FPFW

The IOC’s new guidelines covering transgender athletes, issued on 16 November 2021, have dropped the requirement for testosterone suppression. They now say “medically unnecessary” treatments should no longer be required for eligibility. We agree that testosterone suppression is a bad idea. Male bodies need testosterone, so suppressing it may be risky to their health, while doing almost nothing to reduce the significant performance advantage generated by male puberty. It was always a fake fix. So it’s right that the IOC has abandoned it.

UK sports governing bodies now have two different sets of guidance to consider, and on this point they agree. The new Sports Councils Equality Group guidance also concluded that testosterone suppression was pointless. But unlike the IOC, they kept sight of the implications: there is no fair way to include people who’ve been through male puberty in female competitive sport. Women will always be disadvantaged. That’s why a separate category for the female sex exists in most sports in the first place.

The IOC claims it has taken notice of the UK Sports Councils Equality Group’s output. It’s hard to see how. The IOC’s new guidance has abandoned the science and says there should be “no presumption of advantage”.

“No athlete should be excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”

What does this mean? It means that being transgender is no longer to be counted as having any relevance at all for sporting eligibility. No one is arguing that we don’t need separate female and male (or open) classes. Without them, females would barely get a look-in. Yet the IOC is saying being born male is not a factor.

“Transgender status” is what permits a male to compete as a female when there’s a massive advantage, ranging from 10% at the low end, in running and rowing, to 35% in weightlifting. This advantage is unaffected by gender identity. It would be laughable, were it not so disappointing, that the IOC has thrown out the fig-leaf of testosterone suppression and ended up with self-identification. 

So what now?

The problem we now face is that the status quo in the UK is, in effect self-identification. Look at the transgender inclusion policy of the National Governing Body (NGB) for almost any sport in the UK (with the notable exception of boxing) to see that the default position is that no one may challenge a male person’s right to assert their womanhood and compete as a female. Whatever the policy may say about the need to declare a testosterone level, or an intention to live as a woman, the reality on the ground is invariably self-ID without constraints. Realising this, a few NGBs are now working on how they can monitor a testosterone suppression policy across their sport. But we’ve pointed out that even if they succeed, such a policy may well be more problematic and exclusionary for trans players than the SCEG alternative, replacing the Male category with Open while retaining a Female category.

US Powerlifting, in 2019, and then World Rugby, in 2020, dared to ask and answer the questions that these obvious biological realities create in sport. In September 2021 the UK Sports Councils  published their comprehensive review of scientific evidence. They concluded that it was not possible to “balance” inclusion of transgender people in the female sports category with fairness (and in some sports safety) for females. The report was accompanied by new guidance proposing alternatives, such as Open and Female categories. It also pointed out how people in sport felt silenced on this issue.

All this new information should now lead to all NGBs reviewing their current policies. Eligibility rules based on testosterone have been discredited. There’s no magic bullet to achieve all three desired outcomes of inclusion, safety and fairness. NGBs now have a choice to make. Do they follow the IOC’s lead and abandon women’s sport? Or do they follow the Sports Councils’ evidence-based approach to policy-making? That new guidance offers them a way to uphold sporting integrity by reinstating a truly female sex category to ensure fairness for females in their sport, while finding new ways to welcome transgender people into their sport.

We are now busy writing to every NGB in the UK asking to discuss their policy. Sports will be held to account for the decisions they make next. It will be plain to see which, if any, sports truly value the woman’s game.

Update: In November 2022 the IOC published a “position statement” in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. This does nothing to explain or justify their position, merely repeats previous contradictory statements. On the one hand, it recognises the need for sex-segregated sport, and claims to value fairness for females, while on the other asserting that there should be no presumed advantage for transgender athletes over those born female. The position claims to be informed by human rights principles, but these seem to exclude fairness for females, instead prioritising the right of males to self-identify as females in sport.

Filed Under: Sport

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Biological sex
  • Children
  • Gender Identity
  • Male violence
  • Scottish GRA reforms
  • Silencing women
  • Policy guidance

Our materials

  • Our factsheets
  • Our short films and animations
  • Our memes
  • Our research

Our latest articles

  • Testosterone suppression in sport: time to drop the Roberts study
  • World Athletics new transgender policy fails women
  • Statement on the UK government move to block the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill
  • Rowing policies make no sense
  • A progress report on the fight to restore fairness in female sport

Archives

Footer

Prisons, crime and protecting women

  • The facts about transgender prisoners
  • Prisons timeline – how did we get here?
  • Karen White & prison review
  • Sex attacks in female prisons
  • Refuge shelters deeply worried
  • How do women in prison feel about sharing with transgender prisoners?
  • Can you believe what you read about sexual and violent crimes?
  • The judicial review of prisons policy
  • Factsheets

Sport and the human body

  • A progress report on the fight to restore fairness in female sport
  • Biological sex differences
  • Chromosomes, sex and gender
  • The science and statistics behind the transgender debate
  • Guidelines for single-sex sport policy
  • Testosterone suppression in “elite athletes” – what do we know?
  • Safeguarding in sport still matters
  • Male inclusion leads to female exclusion
  • What you can do

Making policy and the law

  • Scottish government is forcing sex self-ID on whole of UK.
  • The Equality Act 2010 and women’s rights
  • GRA reform
  • Advice and guidance for policy makers
  • Changing room policy advice
  • What can I do now?
  • Take Action: Say NO to letting Sex Self-ID in through the back door.
  • Public opinion on the tension between women’s rights and trans demands

© 2023 · Fair Play For Women

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt out if you wish. Read More

Accept Decline Cookie Settings
I consent to the use of following cookies:
Cookie Declaration About Cookies
Necessary (2) Marketing (1) Analytics (4) Preferences (0) Unclassified (4)
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
wpl_user_preference fairplayforwomen.com WP GDPR Cookie Consent Preferences 1 year HTTP
YSC youtube.com YouTube session cookie. 52 years HTTP
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE youtube.com YouTube cookie. 6 months HTTP
Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_ga fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier. 2 years HTTP
_gid fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics short-time unique user tracking identifier. 1 days HTTP
vuid vimeo.com Vimeo tracking cookie 2 years HTTP
IDE doubleclick.net Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. 2 years HTTP
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_gat_UA-109881507-1 fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
GASessionCookie fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
rtc linkedin.com --- Session ---
_wpfuuid fairplayforwomen.com --- 11 years ---
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
Cookie Settings