The death of women's sports?

Self ID is a joke in sport, my DH who is middle aged and good but not national standard in his sport would make the commonwealth games and maybe olympic standard as a woman. On an amateur level where there's no testosterone testing he would win first place as a woman everytime.

trans person not teams

There is an organisation called Women in Sports (I think) which is involved with research and campaigns to get more women participating in sports. Now that self_id is being pushed through, it would be pertinent to ask them the question of which women they are referring to when they write about women.

Yes, it seems bloody obvious that a lot of women who have joined a specific women's sport or women only activity will just drop out because they feel unsafe due to mismatched strength, despondent due to unfair competition and self conscious due to the presence of a male bodied/socialised person.

I also wonder about safeguarding. In my daughter's sport, 13 year olds can play in the ladies team. They all use one open changing room and the advice to sporting bodies is that a teams person can choose to change where they want.

I think the AFLW/Hannah Mouncey issue is an interesting one. They took the approach of putting in parameters that they thought was a compromise; allows for the safety aspect of differing size in a contact sport to be considered, while not excluding trans women completely. Mouncey felt hard done by of course, and got to have a tantrum write about it in an international newspaper. The AFLW probably breathed a sigh of relief; they got to look like they were still “woke” enough to consider someone like HM as having a fair chance, while making sure it was unlikely to happen, because of, you know, biology. Personally however I think they took the coward’s approach. They should have stood up for female sports participation and the protection of women and said “No, it’s not fair, we are not having it”.

I suspect many sports organisations will follow this cowardly pathway.

I was drawn to play against a man who identified as a woman in a golf tournament. The local league officials were so afraid of making a mistake that they agreed that he should play the women's course. (Men's tees are further back, and women's tees are forward. Men play a longer course than women)

I'm bloody sure I detected a smirk as he tee'd off. He was powerful, muscular and had a neck like a bull.

To cut a long story short, women dropped out whenever he was a competitor and asked for their money back. The dithering officials were faced with poor attendance, a dip in income and the sight of his ugly mug in the local papers, clutching a trophy at every event. They were only saved when he had to move to the other end of the country.

He also left the seat up in the Women's toilets every time.

The thing with the Equality Act exemptions is that they do not say, for example, "sports must be sex segregated". It says that sports may be sex segregated (in certain circumstances) and that if they are that will not constitute unlawful discrimination.

So it is up to the body responsible for a particular sport to decide whether or not their sport is sex segregated. It's not unlawful to allow trans women to compete in women's competitions. All the EqAct does is allow "discrimination" (ie sex segregation) that would, in other circumstances, be unlawful.

I'm another one who recalls the first time they made us play hockey with the boys. I was a member of the finest first XI girls' team in our county, I might add - we used to thrash all the teams we played.

First games lesson in the sixth form, some bright feckin' spark in the PE dept thought we could play together. It lasted about ten minutes before so many girls had been clobbered, shoulder charged and knocked over, etc that a halt was called and we resorted to single-sex games again.

Girls don’t like playing tennis against boys

Not fun

Miss hits Judy Murray

Judy recognised need for girls to play tennis with other girls and coaches are all women Role models

Miss hits is the programme she set up

Many sportspeople hurt their careers by boycotting South Africa in apartheid times.
They stood up for a principle at cost to their sporting ambitions and it made a difference.

That poor man that got stabbed by Lauren Jeska, 'transwoman' was one, as I recall.

The dreadful irony of a man who took a hit to his sporting career to ensure fair play, being stabbed by a male person competing as a female who was refusing to submit to tests to meet the (already inadequate) rules supposed to ensure fair play.

And playingwith boys is often not the issue, at least in non contact sports. It’s competing against boys , which is pretty much a hopeless task.

Well they don’t have enough protection ( in the opinion of most parents) if girls have might have to share changing and showering facilities with boys .

That would outweigh the “friendships , fitness, health and fun “ for most pubescent girls.

Whilst I absolutely agree that this issue is an outrage, I think it’s a huge over-reaction to consider not encouraging your girls to participate in sports. There are so many benefits - friendships, fitness, health, fun - and they can get these even if they play with boys. Youth sports have a lot of emphasis on safety for both sexes, because all children need extra protection.

I will be interested to compare the amount of transwomen who appear in women's sports to the amount of transwomen who appear in equestrian sports where men and women can compete equally... could be informative. I imagine spending most of your time getting covered in horse shit and breaking bones every 5 minutes doesn't appeal to those wedded to the idea that women are "ladylike" though...

Thats not a bad idea. The problem with laws is there has to be social as well as legal support for them to work, as people pick and choose the ones they want to uphold.

People silenced with fear =/= support. But it does equal authoritarianism.

Op - yes

Sports has always been "for men"

Many men resent having women's sports shown on telly, given airtime
This also comes just as women's sports are starting to make seriosu inroads with sponsorship deals, airtime, individual advertising and clothing deals and so on
Why SHOULD women have this stuff? Sport is for men.
While it was "second class", hardly ever seen on telly, only a handful of women were famous etc it was bearable
Now that the fame and money is there, men are taking it back.

Plus of course all the men who have been saying for YEARS "you want equality you should play men at sports then" well now it's happening. FUCK YOU, WOMEN!!!

It's just standard patriarchal / mra backlash about women making gains.

We need a fighting fund to take on legal cases under the Equality Act. I have no means to set this up but wish I could.

A few well chosen test cases will settle this.

The TRAs are targeting litigation and so must we. I am in for some money if some women can set this up.

Grauniad

In the UK yes, the Equality Acts makes sports exempt, and they are allowed to be sex segregated. But it turns out that someone has to be the one to make a complaint about that rule being broken.
This is one problem with The Equality Act. It is a law, but it isn't being adhered to or enforced. Its being left to individuals to manage.

I already decided against enrolling my daughter for gymnastics for a variety of reasons (including safeguarding)

Would it be helpful for parents to contact clubs and tell them they won't be enrolling their daughters, and why? Surely we need to make some kind of a stand against this? Although parents of girls being beaten in Connecticut seem to have gotten nowhere :(

www.wtnh.com/news/connecticut/petitions-circulate-after-transgender-athletes-take-top-spots-in-state-competition/1236486365

Look how careful that mother has to be, trying to push the problem on a few years, she can't just say "he's a boy, he shouldn't be taking all the prizes from girls, including college scholarships".

My child is under 16 and I can tell you right now which boy in their age group will be identifying as a girl, once they have gained their full male height, muscle mass etc .

And no, it’s not because they like pink or wear nail polish. It’s because they are utterly obsessed and will do ANYTHING to win at their sport. They already do things that have other families whispering about child abuse.

You are right , they won’t win against boys / men. But if they are barred from their sport , they won’t be able to play in ANY events. So for most sports they will have to stop doing it completely .

These bastards have us stiched up nicely.