World Athletics goes even further, banning any transgender woman who went through male puberty from rankings AND also banning some female at birth women in the ban if they have certain sex-disorders and don’t keep their testosterone levels extremely low.
I’m not sure any of these groups are writing them to be more inclusive, unless they simply had no policy before. Lots of the groups that allowed them are even increasing the restrictions, since the old guidelines around testosterone less than 10 nmol seem to have been found to be insufficient and some of those groups have dropped it to 5 instead.
Testosterone is a hell of a performance enhancing drug.
In that first article it notes that the instigating decision was the olympic comittee relaxing testosterone requirements and allowing individual sports to make determinations.
The FINA does straight up allow trans men into men’s sports. If you read the FINA policies one of the ways for a trans woman to compete is to have started puberty blockers at 12 yrs old and maintain normal female levels (less than 15 nmol) whereas the target for therapy is 50 nmol (standard male levels are 300+ with 500 being typical)
So the weird thing here is that it’s not uncommon to see cis women with ~20-30nmol especially among career athletes where they’re already selecting for oddities. The criticism here seems understandandable; I’m not sure its entirely about fairness.
I think the thing that’s crazy about that is that it basically excludes every trans person because its almost impossible to get on blockers that early.
The boxing rules are just sad. How dumb.
Its important to note though these are international orgs targetting top athletes. I’m not sure governments can regulate them. The state intervention being requested is to remove like 2k kids nationwide from like junior varsity teams.
FINA (The world Swimming body) banned them a few years ago. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106173020/swimming-bans-transgender-women
World Boxing banned them recently. https://worldboxing.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/World-Boxing-Sex-Eligibility-Policy_FINAL_20Aug25.pdf
World Rugby banned them as well. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106173020/swimming-bans-transgender-women
World Athletics goes even further, banning any transgender woman who went through male puberty from rankings AND also banning some female at birth women in the ban if they have certain sex-disorders and don’t keep their testosterone levels extremely low.
I’m not sure any of these groups are writing them to be more inclusive, unless they simply had no policy before. Lots of the groups that allowed them are even increasing the restrictions, since the old guidelines around testosterone less than 10 nmol seem to have been found to be insufficient and some of those groups have dropped it to 5 instead.
Testosterone is a hell of a performance enhancing drug.
In that first article it notes that the instigating decision was the olympic comittee relaxing testosterone requirements and allowing individual sports to make determinations.
The FINA does straight up allow trans men into men’s sports. If you read the FINA policies one of the ways for a trans woman to compete is to have started puberty blockers at 12 yrs old and maintain normal female levels (less than 15 nmol) whereas the target for therapy is 50 nmol (standard male levels are 300+ with 500 being typical)
So the weird thing here is that it’s not uncommon to see cis women with ~20-30nmol especially among career athletes where they’re already selecting for oddities. The criticism here seems understandandable; I’m not sure its entirely about fairness.
I think the thing that’s crazy about that is that it basically excludes every trans person because its almost impossible to get on blockers that early.
The boxing rules are just sad. How dumb.
Its important to note though these are international orgs targetting top athletes. I’m not sure governments can regulate them. The state intervention being requested is to remove like 2k kids nationwide from like junior varsity teams.