New rugby thread

The BBC article is seriously one-sided. And funny how the only scientists saying transwomen don't have an advantage are the trans scientists who want to play in women's sports.

Does anyone have the link to the leaked Rugby findings on body strength ? It might be useful to have it here

Trans athletes have also expressed concern, and activists like McKenzie have described it as "a gut punch

Try taking one from someone with almost twice your upper body strength

being granted access to a woman’s rugby team is hardly up there in the ranks of things one might want to do to be recognised and accepted as a “woman”.

I think this is generally called having your cake and eating it too.

Pretty much everyone else in the world accepts that making life-changing decisions means giving up some things in order to have other things. Have children - goodbye to all-nighters. Get married - goodbye to playing the field. Move house - goodbye favourite cafe.

But not this segment of the population. And they don’t even have to give up their sport, just admit for the sake of fairness, there are teams they shouldn’t be on. It’s almost like the only thing they care about is themselves.

I started to read that Mackenzie quote and thought it was a woman talking who was no longer able to play the game despite loving it because having transwomen playing as part of the teams was just making it too dangerous to continue.

Oh the irony! Can’t believe that Mackenzie thinks it is perfectly fine to make it so dangerous for non-transwomen to play with them, without any regard for the health and safety implications though!

Zana next time, have more penis.

I have been to a few tech conferences but nobody has ever approached me to play rugby

What am I doing wrong?

On the other thread, I pointed out how it was notable how there was no perspective from anyone McKenzie plays against or has to share changing rooms with.

Hannah Mouncey was finally asked to leave the Australian women’s handball team because Mouncey’s team mates no longer wanted to share showers with Mouncey. Make of that what you will.

Wrong there use there

Mckenzie, 26, had never picked up a rugby ball before until she was approached at a tech conference, but was soon hooked

Umm wonder why / how she was approached.

There is lots of me, me, me, me in the report but not one instance of McKenzie considering what impact (nice choice of word their) their playing has on women. No recognition that they could cause greater harm to their opponents.

I have. 14 year old boy who is nearly as tall as I am and is far stronger and faster than I am or ever was.

Even when rules are followed, rugby is always potentially dangerous. They mitigate as far as possible via strict rules but ultimately your body gets a bashing.

World Rugby know they're potentially on a shakey peg in terms of concussion research that might make the game untenable in its current form.

They would be mad to open themselves to the inevitable legal cases - and surely now that they've investigated they couldnt say they didnt know.

Im hopeful that this is one argument that TRAs cant guilt and DARVO their way out of (although I'm disappointed by the number of young, male rugby Twitter accounts that are shouting transphobia).

Why is the BBC doing that? The current Government message is not to further Trans rights.

Remember the Boston marathon.
Women were not allowed to run marathons. Because it would damage their tender female reproductive organs. The pics of the men trying to grab her...

Women have fought and fought to be allowed to take part, to have their sports taken seriously. Sponsored etc etc.

The can you imagine how it feels stuff is so tone deaf as to be obscene. I can only assume it's trolling? As no one is that shortsighted surely.

Namechange: I am genuinely confused why transwomen rugby players don’t want to play for men’s teams. Is that a bad question to ask?

But playing for a men’s team would imply that they are men. That is the last thing they want.

"The BBC recounts a time that Morgan “folded an opponent ‘like a deckchair’” shortly after recounting Morgan’s own physical injury whilst playing the sport with men."

"The founder of Morgan’s team “jokes” that things will be great as long as they “can stop [Morgan] injuring players in training.” "

thepostmillennial.com/british-transgender-rugby-star-celebrated-for-injuring-women

The BBC is nothing but a men's rights organisation on this issue.

Yes @howard97A, one could paraphrase Mackenzie there to ask to think about what it’d be like to suddenly find you had a minimum 20-30% extra chance of receiving a serious injury when playing a sport you love because someone decided it was ok for the opposing team to include players who had gone through Male puberty.

I am genuinely confused why transwomen rugby players don’t want to play for men’s teams. Is that a bad question to ask?
For sure they’d probably have to play for lower ranked teams, but - if this isn’t too simplistic a way too see things - being granted access to a woman’s rugby team is hardly up there in the ranks of things one might want to do to be recognised and accepted as a “woman”. I’m sorry if that’s an offensive or ignorant view. I guess it could be experienced as hurtful to not be allowed to be part of a team which you identify as being a member of, but this boils down then to hurt feeling vs actual broken bones. Not to mention that if trans women are permitted to play in women’s sports we’ll pretty soon have no women’s sports at all, so trans women themselves will effectively erase the thing they want to be part of.

It's essentially a toss up between trans womens' feelings and womens' health and safety
Hopefully world rugby (and other sports) will stick with science.

It's within my lifetime that women have been able to participate in so many sports that we were originally barred from - long distance running (1972 for women's 1500 metres), pole vault, rugby, football etc. Yet the narrative is currently that those born male who identify as women are the courageous ones for speaking out about their entitlement to replace women from teams, awards, medals, scholarships etc.
That fight for women to be able to just participate in sports was a long one. Yet this now is being removed at the speed of light.

I understood the decision to be a safety issue, and therefore a valid reason.

I confess to “misgendering” Mackenzie, who “fears being excluded from competition” as a result of the World Rugby proposals.

Mackenzie asks World Rugby to “think about what it would be like to have something that you love, cared about and that brought meaning and happiness into your life taken away from you, and you had been told that that you weren't able to access that based on who you are as a person …Hopefully there is a chance to empathise with our cause and understand what that would be like."

Katie Gornall of BBC Sport introduces Mackenzie’s video as follows:

“It takes courage to speak out about this issue. One rugby player tell me what she thinks of World Rugby’s proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby.”

Oblivious to the real courage of the women who face transwomen in contact sports.
Typical BBC bias in their coverage of ‘trans rights’.

Yes, I agree the average person doesn't really know how much stronger the average man is than the average woman.

I go to the gym. My partner refers to himself as a desk jockey and seriously thinks I could be stronger than him especially as he rejects the man=muscles brand of masculinity.

I think so many of his friends are similar, they're all into IT, gaming, reading etc, none are into sports so they have never really experienced the difference (I used to enjoy roughhousing with my male friends as a child until it became no competition). All they have are the endless superhero movies etc where women seem to effortlessly beat men

And it is worth pointing out that in boxing, weight categories go up every few kilos as the authorities do not think it is generally fair for a 55 kilo male to fight a 50 kilo male - that is only a 10% difference.