Transgender In School Sports...

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pasayten
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Transgender In School Sports...

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Many sides to the Issue... I am currently of the opinion to keep school sports based on the original biological identity...
lia_thomas.jpg
That is one big "female"... Jeesh
NCAA swimmer wants rule change after missing out on finals to Lia Thomas
By Patrick Reilly
March 20, 2022 9:01pm Updated

A Virginia Tech swimmer blasted the NCAA over its rule allowing transgender women to compete against biological women after she came up short in a championship qualifying race that was dominated by University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Reka Gyorgy leveled the criticism in a post to her private Instagram account after missing the cut on Thursday to compete in the finals of the 500 free at the NCAA Championships, Fox News reported.

“It doesn’t promote our sport in a good way and I think it is disrespectful against the biologically female swimmers who are competing in the NCAA,” Gyorgy said of the rule that has received considerable scrutiny since Thomas has smashed records in her first season competing at the collegiate level as a transgender woman.

Gyorgy also placed blame on Thomas for her failure to qualify. The Virginia Tech swimmer said she felt the last spot to get into the final was taken from her “because of the NCAA’s decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete.”

Thomas finished with a 4:33.82 in the preliminaries and ultimately took home the national women’s 500 free title when she won the finals race with a time of 4:33.24.

Gyorgy’s letter urged the college sports organization to amend its rule.

Penn Quakers swimmer Lia Thomas swims the 100 free at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships.
Thomas has faced some backlash with a number of organizations and athletes questioning the fairness of a swimmer who was born as a biological male competing against women.
Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
“I’d like to point out that I respect and fully stand with Lia Thomas; I am convinced that she is no different than me or any other D1 swimmer who has woken up at 5 a.m. her entire life for morning practice,” wrote Gyorgy.

“On the other hand, I would like to critique the NCAA rules that allow her to compete against us, who are biologically women.”

Gyorgy has swam for the Hokies for the past five years and represented her home country of Hungary in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“I know you could say I had the opportunity to swim faster and make the top 16, but this situation makes it a bit different and I can’t help but be angry or sad. It hurts me, my team and other women in the pool,” wrote Gyorgy.

“One spot was taken away from the girl who got 9th in the 500 free and didn’t make it back to the A final preventing her from being an All-American. Every event that transgender athletes competed in was one spot taken away from biological females throughout the meet.”

The two-time NACC champion and two-time All-American swimmer said the NCAA “knew what was coming this past week,” criticizing the media frenzy the organization caused by not addressing the issue.

“It is the result of the NCAA and their lack of interest in protecting their athletes. I ask the NCAA takes time to think about all the other biological women in swimming, try to think how they would feel if they would be in our shoes. Make the right changes for our sport and for a better future in swimming,” Gyorgy concluded.

The NCAA did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Thomas has faced some backlash with a number of organizations and athletes questioning the fairness of a swimmer who was born as a biological male competing against women.

The NCAA made new regulations about transgender athletes earlier this season, and essentially left eligibility up to individual sports.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/ncaa-swim ... ia-thomas/
College Sports
Lia Thomas broke no records at the NCAA championships but left plenty of questions
Washington Post By Les Carpenter
Yesterday at 7:37 p.m. EDT|Updated yesterday at 10:21 p.m. EDT

Lia Thomas's college career ended with this weekend's NCAA championships in Atlanta. (John Bazemore/AP)

ATLANTA — Lost in the debate about testosterone levels, gender identity and what constitutes a level playing field was the fact that Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas, who became the first known transgender swimmer to win a Division I championship this weekend, is not a wedge issue or a talking point but a person.

She stood awkwardly and alone on the winner’s platform in Georgia Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center on Thursday after she took the 500-yard freestyle final at the NCAA women’s swimming championships — more a spectacle than a champion. Few cheered when her name was announced; fewer booed. Everyone appeared to understand that college sports were changing before their eyes, but it seemed no one knew what to make of it — so they did nothing.

Several yards away in the arena’s front row, 10 feet above the pool deck, Thomas’s friend and adviser Schuyler Bailar, who a little over half a decade earlier had become the first openly transgender swimmer to compete for a Division I men’s team, seemed saddened by it all.

“I don’t think it’s hard to imagine what would it be like if you were supposed to be being celebrated but you won’t be,” Bailar said later. “I think that’s pretty easy to imagine. I would imagine that it’s lonely.”

Thomas dominated the Ivy League in her only season competing on the Penn women’s team, winning conference titles in the 500, 200 and 100 freestyle. Her success helped push the NCAA to rewrite its eligibility policy for transgender athletes, leaving those decisions to each sport’s governing body, but the NCAA did not accept USA Swimming’s policy requiring transgender athletes to undergo three years of hormone replacement therapy — a half-year more than Thomas has undergone.

ESPN brought multiple camera crews to Atlanta. Seats were set on press row not only for the New York Times and USA Today but for the Daily Wire, ABC News, Fox News and NewsNation. Protests over Thomas’s inclusion in the meet raged just outside the arena’s entrance. And while Thomas never spoke to the media, declining to attend the news conference required of all winners, her name seemed to linger everywhere, even as she finished fifth and eighth in her other races.


Predictions that she would break national records and destroy the rest of the field, in the final weekend of her college career after she swam three years for the Penn men, never came true. Even her time in Thursday’s 500 victory was nine seconds behind Katie Ledecky’s 2017 record.

“Lia is such a kind person,” Bailar said. “I have spent time with her, and she is so kind. She’s just compassionate. She is shy. She is an all-around very nice human, and I think people miss that. I know people miss that. They are painting her as some nefarious human that is trying to destroy women’s sport. She is just a woman who is trying her best in a sport that she loves. And she is a real person. I hate having to say that, but it’s true, and people have to treat her as such.”

About 6½ hours before Thomas won her national title, Beth Stelzer flipped a switch on a speaker she had set up near the swim center’s entrance. “We’re live!” she shouted.

As the founder of a group, Save Women’s Sports, that opposes transgender athletes taking part in women’s competitions, she says “we’re live” a lot — a call to action when she and the nearly two dozen others who had come with her spotted a TV news live shot to stand behind or a group of parents to corral — or, in this case, a rally to stop what she called “the erasure of women.”

One of the first speakers, Barbara Ehardt, a former women’s basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton and now an Idaho state representative, said if Thomas had been a freshman instead of a senior, other Ivy League coaches would have had to recruit transgender swimmers to counter her perceived advantage.

“I promise you it’s going to change the face of women’s sports — and it must be stopped now,” she said.

Kellie-Jay Keen, a feminist activist from the United Kingdom, repeatedly referred to Thomas as a man, calling her by the first name she used when she swam for the Penn men. Later, Robert Fausett, a taekwondo coach who has worked with the USA Taekwondo coaching staff, said, “Men are bigger faster, stronger and have more explosive power,” adding, “It is not transphobic to defend reality.”


Several college students heckled Stelzer’s group. Counterprotesters who stood across from Stelzer’s rally said the demonstration made them feel “unsafe.” Campus police lingered nearby, occasionally breaking up arguments after Save Women’s Sports members surrounded a handful of counterprotesters.

“Save women’s sports!” several in Stelzer’s group chanted at the counterprotesters.

“Say it loud, say it clear: Trans athletes are welcome here!” the counterprotesters shouted in response.

And yet as fast as the rhetoric surfaced, it slowed — at least a bit. On Friday, just hours after Thomas won the 500, she was fifth in the 200 freestyle. The notion that she was going to destroy women’s swimming disappeared.

Early the following afternoon, Bailar sat in the back of a cafe in the swim arena, trying to respond to what he called “propaganda” about Thomas. Yes, Thomas is over 6 feet tall and has broad shoulders, but these things aren’t necessarily the advantage they were when Thomas swam for the men’s team.


But it was something Bailar said the day before that might linger as sports organizations grapple with legislation for transgender athletes.

“If you try to police Lia’s body or any other trans woman’s body, then you have to police all women’s bodies,” he said.

To exclude transgender women, sports officials will have to know which athletes are trans and which are not. Organizations will have to come up with a way to test all female athletes.

“What this is doing is creating this box of what a woman can look like, what a woman can perform like [and] what a woman can sound like,” he said. “And at what point is a woman [who is] too good going to be accused of being transgender and thrown out? At what point is a girl too fast, too tall, her bones too big, her shoulders too wide, her hair too short, her appearance too masculine? At what point are they going to be accused of being transgender?”


Thomas won a title but finished fifth and eighth in her other events. (Brett Davis/USA Today Sports)
At the end
By the time Thomas walked onto the pool deck for the 100-yard freestyle Saturday night, the mood had shifted somewhat. It was her final college race, and it seemed a little less lonely around her. The day before, Newsweek published an essay by Texas swimmer Erica Sullivan, who had finished third in the 500, that said Thomas “has been unfairly targeted for … being who she is.”


“As a woman in sports, I can tell you that I know what the real threats to women’s sports are: sexual abuse and harassment, unequal pay and resources and a lack of women in leadership. Transgender girls and women are nowhere on this list,” Sullivan wrote.

Just minutes before Saturday’s final, Wisconsin swimmer Paige McKenna, the winner of the 1,650-yard freestyle, praised Thomas at her postrace news conference.

“I definitely feel for her,” she said. “It was tough coming in here in the situation that she was in. I think with this whole experience we need to treat people with more respect. I respect her so much. Coming in here was really hard, and I think she handled it really well.”

Outside, police had erected steel barriers to keep the Save Women’s Sports protesters from the spectators entering the arena. The protesters had brought bullhorns and shouted at the swimmers’ parents; while a few stopped to talk or take leaflets, most walked by without looking.


Thomas was joined in the 100 by Yale’s Iszac Henig, a transgender male who still swims on the women’s team, making the race the first in college sports to have two known transgender participants. Henig finished fifth in the eight-person race; Thomas was last. Afterward, they posed for pictures and hugged.

For the first time all weekend, Thomas didn’t seem alone on the pool deck.

The mood seemed different as the parents and swimmers headed into the night. Thomas’s mother, Carrie, chased down Henig to introduce herself. Still, a small group of parents debated whether Thomas intentionally lost the last two races, a theory that had been floating around the stands since she finished second in the 200 preliminaries.

A few feet down the hall, a handful of Save Women’s Sports protesters had surrounded a transgender woman with children at home who was covering the event, shouting that she was “not a mother” and ordering her to stay out of “women’s spaces.”


Outside, night was overtaking evening, the sun’s last rays lighting the nearby towers of midtown Atlanta a blazing gold. After the confrontation with the transgender journalist, Save Women’s Sports demonstrators did not return to their spot in front of the arena.

In their place along the steel barriers stood a group of six Georgia Tech students, several of whom were from the school’s Pride Alliance. They stood behind gay and transgender pride flags and held homemade signs that read “We support trans/queer athletes” and “Trans women belong in women’s sports.”

The students said nothing as people walked past. They stood behind the barriers, clutching their signs and occasionally smiling if someone made eye contact. In the distance, birds chirped an early good night, and a soft breeze whispered through the trees. Otherwise, there was silence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... questions/




Amy Legacki Manson
Facebook
March 19 at 5:252PM

The cut and dry issue is this: Fair sport does not allow someone in Group A to compete in Group B, when Group B’s category was specifically separated & created based on the extreme physiological advantage of Group A. (Examples of Group A & B: 18yr old & U12 soccer, Olympian & Paralympics, MLB player & Little League, dirty athlete & clean sport).

Fair sport does not allow any athlete to cross over to a disadvantaged category on the basis of identity because identity is not the basis for the separation. Different sport categories were created to allow fair access to success and opportunity and are based on extremely different natural ranges of physiological advantage/disadvantage.

We can respect and honor the identity of trans girls/women and still defend the integrity of fair sport. The non-inclusion narrative needs to be changed to the simple fact that trans females are blessed with a physiological advantage, extreme enough to have warranted a separate category, in sport. Period.

Do we tell trans females the hurtful lie that they can’t cross category lines because they are anti-LGBT victims or do we tell them it’s because they are fortunate enough to possess a physical advantage that makes it unfair for them to compete against CIS women? This is not hate. This is fair sport. Crossing category lines in sport is cheating.

For those who do not understand the extent of this advantage, please see the below stats. Not only would 3-6,000 male HS athletes rank 1st in the female rankings, in each event, but hundreds of them would smash the women’s professional world record in that event, each year.
2021 United States HS T&F Rankings from MileSplit.com
11.09 for 100 Meters: Girls #1 rank, Boys #2,937th rank.
52.54 for 400 Meters: Girls #1 rank, Boys #6,661st rank.
4:37 for 1600 meters: Girls #1 rank, Boys #5,482nd rank.
20’7.25” for Long Jump: Girls #1 rank, Boys #5,482nd rank.

Allyson Felix’s amazing 200 M American HS Record, set in 2003, was beat by 2,487 HS boys last year. Are you ok if the 2,485th 200m boy had transitioned to female and now had one of the longest standing records in their name? Or any one of last year’s top 850 HS boys transitioning and taking Allyson’s spot on last year’s Olympic Team? I’m not. Please don’t mess with the history and integrity of this sport I love.

Please stop using the anti-LGBT basket to try and get good people to jump on the bandwagon for something so hurtful and wrong. This has nothing to do with L, G or B athletes and only involves the issue of T females competing against CIS females, in sports.
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