The policy change comes after a lawsuit against a trans athlete who had been denied a spot in the Crossfit Games. CrossFit announced that it will allow transgender athletes to compete in its annual national tournament, Crossfit games, in accordance with their identified gender, starting in 2019. “This is the right thing to do,” Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, told Buzzfeed News. “CrossFit believes in the potential, capacity, and dignity of every athlete. We are proud of our LGBT community, including our transgender athletes, and we want you here with us.” In CrossFit Games, a summer tournament hosted by CrossFit Inc. and Reebok, athletes compete in exercises typically present in the popular fitness regiment, such as gymnastics, aerobics, and weightlifting. Each year, a surprise exercise is added to the competition that is not a part of the usual CrossFit workout. The competition is divided by gender, as are most sports competitions, according to the CrossFit Games site. Previously, CrossFit policy required trans athletes to compete according to their assigned gender at birth. This policy culminated in a lawsuit against the company when transgender athlete Chloie Jönsson's registration was invalidated and she was told she must compete in the men’s division. The organization justified invalidating Jönsson's registration based on the debunked claim that trans women supposedly have a competitive advantage over cis women. The change suggests that Glassman was receptive to criticism offered by the LGBTQ community, or at least was subjected to pressures from the MoveOn petition supported by GLAAD in light of the lawsuit. “CrossFit admitted they’re wrong and is making it right,” Jonsson told Buzzfeed News of the policy change. This is not the first time Glassman made a stand for the LGBTQ community. In June, CrossFit’s then-legal researcher and de facto spokesman Russell Berger praised an Indianapolis CrossFit facility for canceling a Pride event and calling Pride “a sin.” Glassman fired Berger, calling Berger a “zealot” who needed to “take a big dose of ‘shut the f-- up.’”<doc-sep>CrossFit’s CEO and founder Greg Glassman has announced that transgender athletes will be allowed to compete in the 2019 CrossFit Games season. As reported by Them, Glassman made the announcement at an event held in Madison this Friday by LGBTQ+ CrossFit group OUTWOD, to whom Glassman also presented a $10,000 check from the CrossFit Foundation. He said, In the 2019 CrossFit competitive season, starting with the Open, transgender athletes are welcome to participate in the division with which they identify. This is the right thing to do. CrossFit believes in the potential, capacity, and dignity of every athlete. We are proud of our LGBT community, including our transgender athletes, and we want you here with us. He steps up to the microphone at the 3:50 mark in the video below. CrossFit has been criticized by LGBTQ+ organizations in the past for not allowing transgender athletes to compete in the division of their identity, with GLAAD launching a petition a few years ago to change the policy in response to a 2014 incident regarding Chloie Jonsson. A transgender personal trainer based in California, Jonsson was denied the right to compete as a woman in that year’s CrossFit Games season. She sued, charging CrossFit with discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and unfair competition. In a letter that her lawyer shared with CNN, one of HQ’s lawyers was quoted as saying, The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women. (…) Our decision has nothing to do with ‘ignorance’ or being bigots — it has to do with a very real understanding of the human genome, of fundamental biology, that you are either intentionally ignoring or missed in high school. The case was settled out of court. Many other sporting bodies, including the International Olympic Committee, have instituted guidelines that do allow trans athletes to compete, sometimes requiring the competitor to have undergone sex reassignment surgery or to have been taking hormones for a certain period of time. [Learn more: What it’s like competing in powerlifting as a transgender man.] The announcement comes two months after the departure of CrossFit’s “Chief Knowledge Officer” Russell Berger, who posted a string of tweets this June in which he said that “celebrating ‘pride’ is a sin” and that “the intolerance of the LGBTQ ideology toward any alternative views is mind-blowing.” This was in response to an incident in the Indianapolis area where a box’s owners canceled an OUTWOD-sponsored Pride event because they felt the event did not “value health and wellness.” Glassman responded by firing Berger and publicly saying he should “take a big dose of ‘shut the fuck up,'” adding that he (Glassman) was “crazy proud of the gay community in CrossFit.” Judging by the outpouring of support reported by Them from LGBTQ+ CrossFit athletes around the country, this latest move to legitimize transgender athletes is already having a big impact on the organization’s relationship with the community. Featured image via @chlojonsson on Instagram.<doc-sep>CrossFit announced that it has reversed a policy barring transgender athletes from competing in its annual national tournament, the CrossFit Games, starting next year. “This is the right thing to do,” Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, said in a statement published by BuzzFeed News on Monday. “CrossFit believes in the potential, capacity, and dignity of every athlete. We are proud of our LGBT community, including our transgender athletes, and we want you here with us.” More than 415,000 people from across the globe participated in the company’s CrossFit Games this year. ADVERTISEMENT Will Lanier, executive director of the Out Foundation, which has been consulting with CrossFit, told BuzzFeed the fitness brand is still finalizing guidelines for its official rulebook for 2019 but said it has looked at adopting some of the rules for trans athletes carried out by the Olympics, which first allowed trans athletes to compete in 2004. CrossFit has long received backlash from the LGBTQ community over its old policy for the CrossFit Games, which has aimed since 2007 to determine the “fittest on Earth" and required athletes to enter divisions that matched the gender they were assigned at birth. CrossFit drew even more backlash from the LGBTQ community earlier this year after it was revealed executive Russell Berger tweeted that celebrating LGBTQ pride is "a sin.” Berger, who previously worked at the company as a legal researcher, made the remark while tweeting out his support for a CrossFit gym's decision to cancel a workout in honor of Pride Month. He was initially placed on paid leave shortly after the tweet came to light but was eventually fired. At the time, Glassman told news organizations that Russell's views are "appalling." “He needs to take a big dose of ‘shut the f--- up' and hide out for awhile. It’s sad,” Glassman said. “We do so much good work with such pure hearts — to have some zealot in his off-time do something this stupid, we’re all upset. The whole company is upset. This changes his standing with us. What that looks like, I don’t know. It’s so unfortunate.”<doc-sep>CrossFit will allow transgender competitors to compete in events in the gender class they identify with starting next year, CrossFit’s CEO announced this weekend. “In the 2019 CrossFit competitive season, starting with the Open [a series of elimination events], transgender athletes are welcome to participate in the division with which they identify,” Glassman said in Madison, Wisconsin, where this year’s Reebok CrossFit Games are being held. “This is the right thing to do. CrossFit believes in the potential, capacity, and dignity of every athlete. We are proud of our LGBT community, including our transgender athletes, and we want you here with us.” This is a major change for CrossFit, which was sued for $2.5 million in 2014 by Chloie Jonsson, a competitor who was outed as trans and then told she would have to compete as a man since that was the gender assigned to her at birth. In the four years since, CrossFit had stuck to its position, often using bigoted and ignorant language, until this weekend’s announcement. Them, which broke the news about the new CrossFit policy, said Jonsson felt vindicated. On Friday morning, ahead of Glassman’s official announcement, Jonsson was informed through the community that the policy would finally change. She says she cried tears of happiness and relief when she heard, and was “one hundred percent ecstatic.” “It just feels now that what I did had a purpose,” says Jonsson. “That there’s some resolution, even though it’s many years later. It feels like a little bit of closure.” Jonsson can’t speak about her lawsuit due to a settlement, but she does recall how painful it was to be “scrutinized from every angle,” and subject to transphobic comments, as a result of the attention around the case. ... “I always loved CrossFit so much for how inclusive it felt,” Jonsson says. “So when this all happened four years ago, it felt so divided. And now I’m hoping that it can all go back together again. I want it to feel like everyone is included, and everyone has the same opportunity.” Glassman spoke Friday at “Big Gay Happy Hour,” an event sponsored by LGBTQ+ CrossFit group OUTWOD, Them reported. Earlier this year, CrossFit fired Russell Berger, the company’s Chief Knowledge Officer, after a series of homophobic tweets by him caused a firestorm of protest.<doc-sep>
Beginning in 2019, transgender CrossFit athletes will be permitted to choose whether they compete as men or as women in the annual CrossFit Games. This shift represents a significant change in CrossFit’s policies. Since the competition’s inception in 2007, athletes have been required to register as either male or female, depending upon their actual biological sex. But CrossFit’s recent decision will change all of that. According to the LGBTQ website them, CrossFit CEO and co-founder Greg Glassman announced the policy change last Friday. He was speaking at an LGBTQ-themed event titled “Big Gay Happy Hour,” designed to kick off the Reebok 2018 CrossFit Games being held in Madison, Wisconsin. “In the 2019 CrossFit competitive season, starting with the Open, transgender athletes are welcome to participate in the division with which they identify," Glassman said. "This is the right thing to do. CrossFit believes in the potential, capacity, and dignity of every athlete. We are proud of our LGBT community, including our transgender athletes, and we want you here with us.” This is not the first time CrossFit has faced controversy over the subject of transgender athletes. BuzzFeed News reports that in 2014, personal trainer Chloie Jönsson sued CrossFit for $2.5 million in damages, for preventing him from competing as a woman. Jönsson is biologically male, but has allegedly identified as a woman since his teen years. CrossFit’s position at the time (as stated in a letter from the company’s lawyer to Jönsson’s attorney) was that, “The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women.” The lawsuit was settled one year letter. Then this past June, CrossFit spokesman Russell Berger was fired for tweeting that participating in gay pride celebrations is a “sin.” The tweet was intended to be in support of an Indiana CrossFit gym, which had cancelled a workout event in honor of Pride Month. The Christian-owned gym was eventually shut down, when club staffers and members protested the owner’s conscience-based decision. Glassman had strong words for Berger at the time. “He needs to take a big dose of ‘shut the f--- up' and hide out for awhile. It’s sad,” Glassman said. “We do so much good work with such pure hearts — to have some zealot in his off-time do something this stupid, we’re all upset. The whole company is upset. This changes his standing with us. What that looks like, I don’t know. It’s so unfortunate.” The stated purpose of the annual CrossFit Games is to determine who is the “fittest on earth.” The event--a “grueling” combination of aerobics, weights, and gymnastics--is a culmination of a number of similar competitions held throughout the year. Top athletes can potentially earn up to $300,000 in prize money. It remains yet unknown whether CrossFit will require transgender athletes to have had “sex reassignment” surgery, or meet hormone thresholds, in order to compete in a particular division.