Insolvable

 Recently the governing body of international women's swimming has said they will not allow transgender women to compete if they went through male puberty. Megan Rapinoe has a response that makes sense, but both sides actually have an argument.

The rationale for dividing athletics into men's and women's divisions is that there are structural differences between male and female athletes. Male puberty provides men with more muscle mass than would female puberty. I enjoy women's soccer (mainly because the US is so good at it) but women's soccer simply isn't played at the same pace and power as men's soccer. The USWNT would be unlikely to beat any competent NCAA men's program. That's not a criticism of women's soccer, but the reason women's soccer exists separate from men's.

Rapinoe's point about inclusion is also a good one. Trans kids are at risk for all sorts of negative mental health outcomes, and while things are undoubtedly getting better for them, this represents a step back in many regards. Sports should be inclusive.

But they are also, by definition, competitions. We would ban a female athlete who took male hormones, because we understand that's cheating. Lia Thomas did not cheat, when she competed as a female swimmer, because there was no act of commission. However, going through male puberty gave her an advantage over other swimmers that would be cheating in other contexts.

I'm lucky, I suppose, as my sport is officially co-ed. I don't have to worry if a student is male, female or transitioning. We have weight classes that are designed to sort some of that out. If we didn't, I would want to be as inclusive as possible in my sport. However, in a few years, I imagine we will have female wrestling teams. In that situation, a trans girl - who had gone through male puberty - would present a competitive problem.

Obviously, this is a "problem" for a vanishingly small percentage of athletes. There were a couple of sprinters in Connecticut, and then there was Lia Thomas in the Ivy League. To a certain degree, this is a nontroversy, since it's dealing with massive outliers. But there's no trade off where transgender advocates can trade a few athletic opportunities for more support for transitioning teens. 

Like I said, it's insolvable.