Oh Fuck Off, Claire Balding

Yeah no. I train in a martial art and everyone at my club is male so I have no choice but to fight men. It's fine and my choice but there are drawbacks.

I can win practice fights against some of the less skilled and less strong men but they are friendly fights. The bigger and more practised men I don't have a chance against partly just due to the fact their arms and legs are longer and they are heavier. I also get injuries, particularly from the teen lads who can get a bit less restrained when the fight gets going and their blood is up. The heavier guys can also bulldoze me pretty easily and I fall hard - it's just physics.

I'd never fight competitively against men. It would be too dangerous.

I read the article this morning but didn't have time to post, pretty much anything I would have said has been mentioned by pp. As was touched on earlier re. rowing, you can bet mixed sexed teams would definitely be by biological sex to avoid disadvantaging men. TW might find it even harder to get a game and TM wouldn't get a look in unless they'd avoided damage from pb and weren't on testosterone.

Can anyone say how this is going down in the comments?

And apparently a BBC sports presenter’s opinions are inconsequential too.

So how will a highly regulated mixed sex football team work? Does the format dictate exactly which sex in each position? Or will all the key positions for driving goals end up being male players because obviously they will try to simply overwhelm the rest of the field ? Oh and always a male goalie unless specified?

Again, all it takes is looking at the current teams with male players either due to male’s with DSDs that have meant their bodies virilise, or in inclusive teams to see exactly what happens when even 1 male is playing against female people. The reports of injuries in teams playing the Flying Bats in Sydney also shows that it is the female players who end up losing their ability to ever play again if they are seriously injured by the male players.

All female players would need to be made fully and comprehensively aware of all the risks. Including head injuries. Including taking a header when kicked off a male foot! The potential over time of simply connecting a woman’s head and the impact on the neck etc needs women to fully understand the additional risk. And that is not including women being tripped and ‘tackled’.

I am very surprised that Balding used football as an example. But hey, apparently, posters on MN don’t know much.

Perhaps the more audiences and players are directly and simultaneously shown the physical differences in male and female athletes the sooner the realisation will penetrate about keeping women’s sport separate?

It would be interesting to test a rule for these types of games that allowed girls/women to pass to anyone but boys/men to pass only to a player of the other sex.

Why are these fuckwits perpetually shoved down our throats as national treasures. To who? A mythical Middle Englander ensconced in a Marylebone flat or listed building in the shires?

I've watched this happen in touch rugby before, an immensely talented female player who played for a premiership team came along for a fun time and three times was in a perfect position to take a pass and three times a mediocre male player ran in front of her to intercept the pass (one knocking the ball on). Even in something like touch rugby you can see the differences in terms of reach, speed & power despite, in theory, being a non-contact sport.

I'm not suggesting that mixed sports should not be allowed (as I've said, I've enjoyed them for many years), or that very good women should not be allowed to play in men's competition, if it is safe to do so.

What I am against is the suggestion that mixed sports are equal or should in any way replace single sex sports. This seemed to be where Balding's comments were going and I've seen it used in other areas - i.e. where the performance of one exceptional woman is used to try to prove men have no advantage over women.

But at the highest level mixed sex teams are regulated in terms of the number of each sex that compete per team. I would say they’re even more regulated to ensure teams are fair. Because otherwise the mixed teams would just end up being men’s teams.
I don’t really see why she should have mentioned trans/intersex etc. it’s not really relevant to the interview? At the end of the day it was just a short interview, she offered a few opinions. She probably didn’t even choose the title of the interview, they probably just chatted a bit about the mixed relays at the Olympics and how great they were and how great it would be to see more similar events (a conversation I’ve had with people about the Olympics), then the journalist decided to focus on that as the headline.
If you care so much about women’s rights why are you tearing down a woman for giving a couple of pretty inconsequential opinions.

I'm just not sure what you, and others, are suggesting?

The optimum should be that there are single sex sports AND women should still have the option to play in mixed teams. I am very wary of suggestions that sport should be so segregated that no women should be allowed in men's leagues for fear it weakens an argument for women only sport. That would be detrimental to women.

It's actually also not that unusual in women's cricket. There are several girls/ women who play in the 'men's' league. Not one of them are 'second fiddle' to the men. They're not there as a charity but through merit. But I do appreciate that cricket is a sport where, particularly with bowling, skill can be of more value than physicality.

Hmm. Agree that mixed sex triathlons and running relays are exciting, but it's dangerous to even consider mixed sex in any contact sports. Football? Insane. Golf? Ok.

But she avoided the massive elephant in the room of trans women.

The performance of an exceptional woman - as your daughter evidently is - does not negate the experience for the vast majority of ordinary women playing mixed sports. I enjoy it - I played two mixed sports for over a decade - and they have a different vibe from single sex and bring different things to your enjoyment, but I was never anything approaching equal to the men I played with.

We had one exceptional woman on our team (so good she now represents England in the sport) but she was outperformed by may of the sporty but very ordinary men in the team.

My 15-year old granddaughter plays rugby - how can these young girls possibly play alongside boys/men? They'd be seriously injured!

She can have another even bigger FUCK OFF

Even in a largely non-contact sport designed from the ground up to be mixed (i.e. there are different rules, points and even equipment for the sexes) they can never cancel out the male advantage. Women end up playing the less enjoyable positions, they still risk injury, and they will play a less significant role in the game.

This isn't borne out in my daughters experience in cricket. She opens the bowling in her men's team in the men's league and won player of the year at the awards ceremonies!

She has been promoted up through the league over time which has 8 divisions.

She is a county girls player. The best female players can compete in the highest men's leagues but would never be good enough to play for the England men's teams or top counties.

I just think that we have to be careful what we wish for. Ending participation of women in men's leagues, where they can, would be detrimental for women's sport.

In the article she’s not saying that SS sports shouldn’t exist, she’s just saying the mixed events can be good. I loved the mixed relays at the Olympics. Rather than what a PP suggested that “sports are more interesting with men involved”, I think that having mixed events will introduce some viewers to women’s sports who otherwise wouldn’t have watched them. She’s also not saying that mixed events would be suitable for all sports. I don’t know much about football but she talked to a lioness about the idea of mixed teams so I’m assuming a player who’s won the euros would know more than me (and maybe most of us on Mumsnet).
As for research into women’s sport and bodies, I think it’s super important. Men have had decades (if not centuries) of a head start into sports research of how to train, what to eat, what equipment to use to be at the top of their game. As with the football boot problem, there are countless other areas where women’s sport can be better researched and improved both in terms of safety and performance.
I like Claire Balding and for decades she’s been advocating for women’s sports. I don’t understand why she’s getting so much hate here?

Elite women players - I stress elite - play against and beat elite boys and Academy players as part of out-of-season training.
The boys learn from the older elite players' football intelligence and gamecraft - they would benefit from playing adult men but of course there is a safety concern and there's nothing in it for the men's first team.. The women get a much sterner physical and mental test than any women's team could provide, which prepares them for the season ahead.

The women's first team at top European clubs do this, as does the USWNT. They typically play against an U15 or U16 team and get defeated - the first time. The boys are quicker, stronger, can jump higher, judge the flight of the ball more easily, etc. The women have less time to think and make good decisions on the pitch, they have to pass the ball under severest pressure.
Then they have a rematch a couple of times...and the women win because they are elite players after all and they have become used to the greater physical and mental demands.
Then the women take on the next age group, and so on. It usually stops at U18 level because by that stage the women's tactical nous and experience advantage is much smaller. The U18s are more talented than the U15s, many of whom will have been let go by their clubs. And the U18s are of course much bigger and stronger so at that age group, the women's safety has to be considered. But the women often do beat them as well. It's a training exercise - so when you see headlines about boys thrashing top women teams, this is the context.

Anyone who's a rugby league fan, as CB is, is perfectly well aware of the massive difference between men and women in contact sports. So it can't be said that oh, it's not really her field, or anything like that. So yes, disappointing. But that's the BBC for you.

"It’s not about power, it’s about speed..." is an asinine statement - where does the speed come from one might ask?

I love women's football but compared with any level of the men's game it is very slow. Somebody earlier mentioned goalies - Mary Earps is 5'8 and Jordan Pickford is 6' and he's considered short for the men's game.

I've played both competitive and social mixed and single sex sports for decades. They serve very different purposes and mixed can never replace single sex (social or competitive).

Even in a largely non-contact sport designed from the ground up to be mixed (i.e. there are different rules, points and even equipment for the sexes) they can never cancel out the male advantage. Women end up playing the less enjoyable positions, they still risk injury, and they will play a less significant role in the game.

In social contact sports, it is only successful if the males significantly hold back. These types of games can be utterly demoralising, even for talented females.

One of my sports is football. To suggest males and females can compete on a level playing field is of the highest order of stupidity.

It is a rather ignorant example for her to have made, to be honest. It is almost like she doesn't understand how football works or just chooses to ignore the very differences between male and female bodies she skirts around discussing all the time.

She only has to look at examples such as Zambia with at least one if not more male players with DSDs, the Flying Bats in Sydney with their up to 5 male players, or even teams in the UK where they have a male goalie such as Hamilton playing to see just how it is going to not really be feasible to have mixed football. But.... she will just keep on skipping over the obvious.

So a mixed team that's all male. Yeah, that would work Clare 🤔

I am shocked by what she says about football - has she ever seen an elite women's teams play against boys, or old fat men? There's no real competition at all.