Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam in with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.

Thomas swam for Pennsylvania. She competed for the men’s team at Penn before her gender transition.

Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship. By not making the final, the lawsuit mentions that Florida swimmer Tylor Mathieu, who was not a plaintiff, was denied first-team All-American honors in that event.

Other plaintiffs included athletes from volleyball and track.

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Correct me, but we are yet to see a trans person winning anything or achieve a significant record anywhere. IIRC hormones do a big effect on anything but bones frame. And we are still talking potentional damage for M2F transitioners only, not F2M athletes or NB athletes.

    Honestly, I think the whole perception of international competitive gendered sports like Olympics shall die. Sportsmanship on that level is toxic, many use drugs, costumes and hacks to somehow gain the edge. I see sports as a motivation for regular people to think of their health, not a gambling platform or a thing to boost national pride by injecting ‘winning horses’ with steroids, inhalers, whiskey.

    Trans problem in sports is not a problem of trans people who do sports but another reason to redo sports and our perception of them.

    • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Gendered sports dying means sports for biological women dying and sports for biological men being basically unaffected.

      Something tells me competitive sports aren’t just going to die out because some of us struggle to accept testosterone is a steroid and gives an unfair advantage versus women.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Or they could seperate based on something other than gender?

        Like in basketball a 6ft5 woman is probably going to out perform a 5ft5 man even though the man has the testosterone advantage.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Yep, I know. It can be countered by encouragement of girla\women, but IIRC they want their own league in many sports due to difference in physique and toxic male challengers. Thus I think it’s not mostly about division but maybe the competitive factor?

        • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          …right, it’s totally because only men are toxic, no man has ever been mocked for “losing to a girl” due to that same societal toxicity before nor are women’s sports surprisingly rife with hair pulling/scratching/etc

          Pretty sure it’s almost entirely the difference in physique that otherwise trivializes women as competitors on any serious level?

          • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            I can only talk about toxicity in men, aince I’m one and was in their changing rooms. That’s a pleasure of a public forum we can discuss that for we can see other perspectives.

    • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Seeing sports as a casual way to get exercise is fine on a personal level if you aren’t an elite athlete, but you can’t force that perspective on millions of people who enjoy competing or watching elite athletes compete. It’s a weird take to want to rewire sports to accommodate a very small minority of people, most of whom wouldn’t even agree with that perspective.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        There were abolitions of slavery when most holding voting rights could lose something in the process. Sports are not even close. Reformating them can come hurtless if the focus is pushed somewhere else, like local friendly competitions where there’s no stakes. Americans like their local teams at baseball and football, why it’s impossible to limit them to make regular youth the primal category participating in that, so communities in reverse get more involved, not suoerstars?

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Just because you don’t understand the value of a thing doesn’t mean it has no value. Casually tossing aside one of the oldest human institutions is foolish.

          • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            We tossed a lot of them out. It shows itself as incompatible with current european culture and cause weird gimmicks to happen. Maybe it’s the time to put it down too?

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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              8 months ago

              Yeah we tossed a lot of them out, and then had a century of world war and genocide.

              Stop trying to see yourself as an expert in culture, and start trying to see yourself as a student of it.

    • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Many sports throughout history were only segregated by gender once and because a woman fought to participate and beat the men.

      This is all about the bruised egos of bigots. If they’d come 5th against a cis woman they’d be annoyed at themselves and try to do better next time, but coming 5th against a trans woman hurts because they see trans people as inferior (yet also superior, sound familiar? that’s because it’s one of the points from the fascism checklist), so them coming 5th is clearly her fault, and she must be persecuted to give her, and other trans people, the message that they aren’t welcome.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        NYP is not a very good source. But either way - maybe there should be a term limit for their transition or something? I don’t know. Abandoning sport competitions as they are now altogether seems easier than adjusting the time they eat hormones.

        • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I mean by all means feel free to Google the name and post any link you want. I just grabbed the first thing that popped up.