Part 2: The solution?

In my last blog post, I decided to tell the story of Lia Thomas, a trans swimmer at University of Pennsylvania winning a NCAA title in one of the women's events. Lia had been doing hormone therapy for 2 years before she was able to compete in the women's events. Some people say that this isn't ethical at all and she shouldn't be able to compete with women because she was born a male and still has male hormones even though she has gone through the hormone. Some people say it is ethical and she should be able to compete with women because she has gone through the hormone therapy regulated by NCAA but the way she is scored should be different or increase the number of years you must do hormone therapy. This blog post will be siding with the ethical debate of she should still compete but possibly scored different.

Due to that fact that Lia was born a male, she already has lot of advantages over most of the women she competes with. She is already tall and has more lung capacity (men have larger lung capacity compared to women). One of the things the hormone therapy can change about her biological body is her muscle mass. The hormone therapies cause a decrease in muscle mass in transwomen. This is a very important difference between men and women in all sports not just in swimming. A male’s muscle mass is 36% greater than a female’s muscle mass. Males are just physically stronger than females which sets males at an advantage over females. Now in the case of Lia, even though her muscle mass has decreased due to the hormone therapy, it won’t be at the level of a regular NCAA female swimmer’s muscle mass. It also takes one to two years for maximum effect to kick in but this may be vary from person to person. In Lia’s case, it probably took 2 years because the muscle mass produced from swimmer over the years increased as time went on which could make it harder to decrease all at once. So, it defeats the purpose of changing the NCAA regulation of 2 ½ years of the hormone therapy treatment because that ½ year is there so they can become accustomed to their new bodies and the hormone can take the true maximum effect. 

Nancy Hogshead- Makar argues why Lia has another advantage over the women she competes with. She argued that women’s times are on average 11% slower than the men’s time for the NCAA “A” standard qualification times. “A” standard qualification times are one of the fastest times you must receive in order to qualify for that event. Lia is not included in that 11%. She is only 2.6% slower than her men’s 200-yard freestyle time and 5.76% than her men’s 500 yard freestyle time. Basically, her times are still somewhat close to her men’s times which were also closer to the NCAA’s qualifying times for those men’s events. So technically, she can still be scored as a man but compete as a woman especially for sprint events. In sprint events, the advantage between men and women are much larger than the average for distance events. Ethically from a utilitarian standpoint, everyone would be happy. Lia would still be treated and able to compete as a woman, she would just be scored as man. This solution would be able to give everyone a fair shot. Lia is getting her wish of competing as a woman while the women are still being able to win their events. Everyone has a "equal opportunity" but Lia would have to give up winning for the greater good of the sport. 

A lot of people are treating Lia Thomas’ case as a doping case when it isn’t that. Even though she made the choice to go through hormone therapy, it wasn’t her choice to be born a male that naturally produces testosterones. She should be treated fairly and equally as any other swimmer. Now, personally, this solution isn't going to resolve the issue with trans people competing in sports but it can be the start to improve it. Until more people within the sports community are comfortable with coming out and transitioning, this will just have to be the solution. Once there is enough trans swimmers hopefully, we could create two new scoring categories for trans men and women while they are still able to compete with the gender they identify with.