Not again! - Government is proposing to allow trans-identifying boys into under 18s girls’ school sport - unless it is deemed unsafe

No i hate girls being treated like fragile little things that the boys will always hurt. I haven't been raised to think of myself as so weak and powerless.

Sure we should have single sex leagues for many sports. But playing with the boys isn't going to kill girls. It might even improve their relationships with their other sexed peers.

It all seems very old fashioned and Enid Blyton. I'm glad I wasnt raised with the belief that I will always be weaker and slower than every single man.

I do think Black women are raised to know their strength though, physically and mentally.

You really really hate women and girls having things of their own and men and boys being told no don't you

and so what if you personally have never been injured playing with boys, I've been injured playing sport with boys and it was just a run around.

anyway, just a reminder of the difference between men and women when it comes to sport

Never been injured from playing with boys. I think sometimes we have to remind girls that they arent fragile and won't break. That they can be strong and fast, too, and that isnt always the way you win, anyway.

Id hate if I was raised to believe that the boys were always going to be better than me and it would be dangerous for me to join in.

SternJoyousBeev2

They can view themselves however they want to but they cannot impose their preferred identity onto others.

Are you speaking of a child here?

Ignore and/or injure. Where ignoring generally means passing around them (to other boys) or similar in team sports. I would agree that they are more likely to include girls if they have specifically chosen to play on a mixed-sex team.

The KCSIE guidance is about safeguarding. In school PE lessons, protection from injury is a key part of this. Sometimes (and in line with the single-sex exemption in the Equality Act), this will mean keeping boys' and girls' lessons separate.

Equally, sometimes there are more reasons than safety to keep some PE lessons single-sex e.g. (borrowed from Gallant's post above) fairness or a need to exclude boys to develop leadership in girls. This is covered separately in the non-statutory "gender separation in mixed schools" guidance. That also talks about safety.

There's no meaningful basis on which to say "we'll split sports between boys and girls, except for this boy who will play with the girls".

This is the point to remember.

There are a number of ways to think about single sex services and spaces, but, legally, single sex services and spaces are not a state of nature they are exceptions to the EA 2010 that makes sex discrimination against either sex unlawful. The range of valid reasons for justifying exceptions (i.e. for establishing single sex services or spaces) is broad: privacy, modesty, physical safety, fairness, a need to exclude boys to develop leadership in girls, safe-guarding, etc., but there must be one, and accepting males into those services legally violates it by definition. This is what the Supreme Court was clear on.

The draft provisions seem to try to take us to pre-FWS days when some thought that you could simultaneously justify a single sex service or space and justify making an exception for trans individuals of the opposite sex. This is explicitly not allowed per FWS.

It is possibly allowed to suddenly turn a single sex sporting activity into a unisex activity that allows all boys (but even then the question must be asked why is it now suddenly OK to accept boys but it was in the previous years), but this is not what the provision is trying to do; it's trying to accept some boys and not others.

Womblingmerrily The current default is for single sex sports and facilities. Thats what they are trying to change, this is one step in a process.

Single sex services and facilities shouldn't need defending at all. If they currently exist they are lawful.

Girls are not resources for boys.

This!!

You are missing the fact that no boy is factually closer to being a girl than any other boy.

There's no meaningful basis on which to say "we'll split sports between boys and girls, except for this boy who will play with the girls".

Either there is a good reason to split that sport/activity by sex, in which case that underlying reason applies to all kids, or there isn't a good reason in which case it shouldn't be split in the first place.

The comparison was, as you very well know, not an insinuation that all transgirls are rapists. The post was illustrating exactly why it’s always a young child that is used by the #bekind-ers rather than post puberty teenagers. Knotty was comparing the obvious difference between the 7 year old transgirl and the 15 year old. And the pink leggings is a fairly famous image which illustrates Knotty’s point without having to use overly graphic or lengthy prose.

And like it or not, Isla Bryson is a transwoman and we are regularly reminded by the high profile middle aged transwomen that they were all once trans children. That they were never confused and that they always knew who they were. So Isla was also once a transchild.

And again you have expressed my thoughts on this much more concisely.

I always try to look at issues like this from the point of view of the principle rather than anecdotally - so yes, a poster enjoyed playing basketball with boys, and yes, Katie Taylor used to register for matches as 'K.T.' Taylor because women's boxing wasn't the thing it is now, and yes, girls sometimes play cricket with boys - yes, all that happens.

But one of the distinctive features of all sports is that they have rules.
Don't handle the ball. Don't hit below the belt. Don't throw the ball forwards. Don't take more than 4 steps with the sliotar in your hand. Don't enter the attacking zone before the puck does.
Rules rules rules! But that's what sportspeople sign up for.

Learning to accept and abide by rules, and take the consequences if you don't, is part of what children learn by taking part in sport. That's the principle that is at stake here.

A boy who wants to play on a girls' team has to learn that if you want to play a sport, you have to adhere to its rules.
One of them is eligibility. Boys are not eligible to play in women's sports - they are welcome to play lots of others that they are eligible for, just not this one.
That's the rules. That's sport.

There are important lessons there, about sport, about life, about respect, and about boundaries. And about accepting that sometimes you will be told, politely but firmly, 'No'.

💯

You have articulated my thoughts on ‘case by case’ so much better than I ever could.

One of the issues I have with it is the mind fuck for the kids (and adults).

A child (or adult) can be treated as the opposite sex for some reasons/activities but not others. And with case by case trangsgirl ‘A’ might be awarded permission whilst transgirl ‘B’ may be denied. We know that case by case on an individual basis mostly means permission is granted as no one wants to have to justify why ‘A’ is allowed but ‘B’ is not. If permission is based on a blanket basis on the nature of the activity then that leads to a transgirl being treated like a girl for some activities but not for others. One is either male or female, so it’s damaging for the whole cohort for someone to be accepted in their preferred sex for some things but not for others. And this is how the mission creep starts and we start talking about sending women to men’s prisons. And that fucks with the brains.

Little Johnny who now wants to be Little Joanie isn’t allowed to use the girls toilets because ‘she’ is actually male but ‘she’ is allowed to join the girls for music and movement because there are no fairness or safety concerns.

When the children are taken for swimming lessons it’s a mixed sex group in the pool but LJ is not allowed to join the girls in the female changing room so LJ changes into a bathing costume whilst the rest of the boys are changing into their trunks. Apparently social transition is a neutral act and is supported by the school but LJ doesn’t understand why ‘she’ cannot get changed with the girls.

LJ has an identical twin brother who wants to be a dancer when he grows up and would like to join the girls also instead of doing what the other boys are doing. He isn’t allowed as he does not have a trans identity. Is that fair?

This stuff messes with the brain (by design rather than a bug). Much better to be straightforward and honest and make sure children and adults know that they cannot ever change sex no matter how much they may want to. And that even if they use a name stereotypically associated with the opposite sex and wear clothes stereotypically associated with the opposite sex that they can never be the opposite sex. They can view themselves however they want to but they cannot impose their preferred identity onto others. That basic understanding must be a prerequisite for any kind of medical transition.

Agreed, so many girls drop sports at puberty, Sport England commissioned a report and I thought this section was really interesting and emphasised why girls often do better in girl only environments:

An underlying narrative prevails; that girls are not as competitive; that sport is not important for girls; that they will never be as good at it compared to boys; that sport can be at odds with femininity. Add to that the harassment and unwanted attention teenage girls are subject to when exercising and quite simply, taking part becomes a burden, instead of bringing freedom and joy.

It’s from 2022
womeninsport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022-Reframing-Sport-for-Teenage-Girls-Tackling-Teenage-Disengagement.pdf

Where can I get my: "Brigit Phillipson: destroyer of womens' and girls' rights" t-shirt from?

In terms of competition, Helen Joyce sometimes mentions her cricket-playing sisters playing against men, because there just aren't enough women around for a high-level game.

Boys identifying into competitive girls' sports, even if we leave aside the issue of pretending that they're girls, is the exact opposite. In terms of fairness, it's like that Fast Show sketch about the dad who was always challenging his small children in some kind of activity.

It's the kind of thing that could be dealt with by a robust national framework and some common sense at school level, because clearly teenagers playing competitive sport is not the same thing as 7 year olds doing PE, which is also not the same as a teacher having to make a judgment call on whether Jack (15) sincerely wants to do yoga or is mainly interested in perving on the girls.

What this looks like to me is that there's going to be the usual sort of DfE guidance that's both extremely detailed and vague enough to be given a very broad interpretation, and since social transition has been bolted on, this will be the backdoor for activist teachers to keep social transition, special boys being able to self-ID into the girls' showers, and all the other stuff that they don't want to admit is happening.

You haven't addressed any of my points.

A girls PE class is not an optional activity designed for both boys and girls.

What is being proposed is for school to have a girls PE class, where it is assumed that everyone taking part is a girl, then introducing a boy, but pretending that its still a class exclusively for girls.

If playing together helps both boys and girls equally, thats great, but thats not what is being planned here. They are suggesting that if a boy wants to take part in a girls class, and the risk assessment concludes that there is no physical danger, then he can take part. There is no consideration for what the girls can get out of it, just that they are not likely to be harmed.

it's great for you that you had those experiences playing basketball with boys. Lots of people enjoy mixed sports. Mixed sports are not the issues. It's about eligibility rules in specific sports.

Some sports are mixed, like equestrian sports.
Some sports are divided into two branches, e.g. there's women's soccer and men's soccer, women's boxing and men's boxing, and the distinction is as significant as the difference between flyweight and heavyweight boxing bouts.

There are eligibility rules in boxing, so you won't be allowed take part in the flyweight division of boxing if you weigh 93kg - nobody thinks that's unfair.

Nobody claims that just because they'd like to be 50kg, somebody who weighs 95kg should be allowed box in the flyweight division.
That's not the way the rules of the sport operate.

There are similar eligibility rule in girls' and women's sports. It's easily established whether you're female and eligible, or male and not.
That's clear, open, inclusive of all girls and women, and fair.

Quite a few. Not the current GB team but the one before. Quite a few of my female friends play pro basketball in European leagues. Some play for BBL teams here. I am late 30s though so we are getting on a bit!

More girls went pro than boys as more boys play basketball so competition is tougher.

How many of the girls you played with are now pro?

I think PE is a place where boys ignore girls. It's different when you are all at a training session for a sport you all want to be at. In my experience, anyway.

Yes, mixed sports can be a good thing. Equally, it can result in girls self-excluding (e.g. from fear of being hurt by faster, stronger boys) or being ignored (by boys who view them as substandard). It all depends on the sport and how it's managed.

But to manage mixed sports successfully, schools need to know what sex each child is.

Firstly, they will need to decide which sports should be mixed-sex and which should be single-sex. Then only the mixed-sex ones should allow both sexes.

Some may over-pivot, like my daughters' school and decide that every PE lesson should be mixed-sex. For contact and semi-contact sports, this puts girls at risk of injury. Even more so if schools are also pretending that they are following good mixed-sex sports practice but are instead allowing children to self-ID as the opposite sex.

According to evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven, sex difference in testosterone starts in the womb. Boys are exposed to much higher levels.

During puberty, male brains are again exposed to high levels of T. Testosterone builds muscle, boys have more of it, and it gives strong and increasing advantage over girls in sport.

Research shows that nearly every boy by age 15 throws better than the best girl, for example.

Ive always trained in basketball against boys. It's quite normal for that sport in London at least. We didnt always have the resources to have totally separate training sessions so many sessions were mixed. I think it is less common now than it was in my day but not totlaly unheard of. Many of the boys I played with are now pro. One went to the NBA!

Playing together as equals helped us as young people. We learned to communicate without the added social pressure of romance and sex and the boys learned to respect what women bring to the table. We might not be as athletic as them, but we play with an intelligence that boys typically learn later on. They teach us to be more flexible and improve our strength.

I'm actually about to start playing football in a mixed recreational league.

I think there should be more mixed team sports.