Transgender students may not have to reveal birth sex to play sports

[Bambambini]

"Transgender students should not have to declare their birth gender when applying to university sports clubs, the National Union of Students (NUS) is expected to rule.

It adds that trans and intersex students should not be asked to disclose their legal gender or personal medical information to participate in university sport, including details regarding hormone replacement therapy.

The motion suggests that the NUS follows the lead of Durham University’s new policy on inclusivity, whereby trans and intersex students are allowed to compete and train in whichever team “best fits their gender identity”."

Whole Telegraph article here www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/04/24/transgender-students-should-not-have-declare-birth-gender-applying/

I don't care about sport either much, I don't even watch the Olympics.

I still think this is soooo wrong.

They won't need to declare it.

It's bloody obvious when an athlete is a man, however loudly he declares himself to be a woman.

No-one really believes this bollocks about men becoming women, but many people are still politely pretending the emperor is wearing clothes.

We should all stop pretending.

There are already separate competitions for disabled people, so that they can compete fairly on their own terms.

Why not separate competitions for transgender people?

I personally don't care about sport. I care about the work my friend, who works for the NUS, (which is the British Students' association, for those who think it's in the states) does to bring young women back into sport for their own health and wellbeing. So many teenage girls stop doing sport, she works really hard to re-awaken their interest. There's really no point if only transmen are going to make the team, is there?

I don't care about sport either. I'll occasionally watch Wimbledon, but that's it.

Ask yourself why you don't care about the issue?

Is it because frankly it may not actually affect many people. The number of transwomen is quite small. It will increase, because it will be exploited, but it may well still remain fairly small.

So you may be of the school of 'I'm alright Jack, pull the ladder up'.

But if you have even the smallest interest in the plight of women and girls, this is the biggest threat to women's rights in decades.

You need to make the connection between how your life is at the moment and why you have the opportunities you have, and people who fight for the rights of women.

Women having careers and being able to vote, maternity leave, sex discrimination rights, etc - none of this happens organically. It doesn't happen by coincidence. It's not random. It's because women fight. Bloody hard.

No one ever gave women an ounce of equality by women saying please may I have?

Women have got angry. Women have got aggressive. Women have yelled, shouted, organised. Died.

Without militant women spearheading the fight for equality, you would never have the laws you enjoy.

So don't you dare tell women you won't listen unless they play nice.

I think I love you Datun

I'm tired of playing nice. We need to fight.

There doesn't need to be a large group of men that self identify as women, to massively affect female sports. You only need one male that idendifies as a women, in each sport, and women will come second, in the vast majority of cases. Give it a few years and there will be NO females winning in female sport. It's fucking depressing.

I will add this.

We see men not pulling their weight at home. We see men watching TV rugby while the woman cooks Sunday lunch. We see women holding down jobs and yet organising the entire family's social life and school life We see women not 'having it all' but doing it all. We see women objectified, harassed. We see women being beaten. Raped. Murdered.

Who Looks at this? Who thinks about this? Who understands why this happens? Who takes steps to tackle it?

Feminists.

Feminists aren't bigots. They are analysts.

Genuine question: does it stop offering TW validation if there are no women competing in an event?

Seems to me that there are 2 ways forward. One is to have separate sex-based categories for women, men, and those who do not identify with their sex.

The other would be to have a category for women who have never undergone any kind of hormonal or surgical gender reassignment procedure and a second , completely open category. The open category would include men who identify as men (and have the advantages of hormones and physical build), trans men (who could have a hormonal advantage over women) and transwomen, who generally have the physiological advantages that boys develop as they go through puberty.

It'll never happen though, because only women and girls lose out so most men probably don't even notice the problem. And, as previous posters have illustrated, objecting to men competing in women's sports leaves those who speak out at risk of violence and threats, as the Lauren Jeska case demonstrates.

It strikes me as being beyond the realms of hypocrisy for sporting authorities to put of such a hardline show about doping in sport , yet remain utterly silent about putting female competitors at a huge disadvantage by allowing biological men to compete against them. Sportspeople compete with their bodies, not their feelings.

Olennas

It might well decrease the validation, but it won't stop the competitive edge. You will have teams of men and teams of transwomen and women no-where to be seen.

Brilliant posts Datun

olenna I don't think it's about validation in the case of sports. It's about winning. Some sports are big business, and a gateway to further opportunities.

Ceding women's rights to men who say they are women will compromise women in sport, compromise women in their intimate spaces, compromise women who want to organise alone, compromise women's sexual orientation, compromise women's sex discrimination rights, compromise women's language around their biological functions, compromise women's drive to dispense with 'women can't do that' stereotypes.

Because being a woman can mean a feeling in a man's head.

Is this really the end result of treating a man who has gender dysphoria?

Totally and utterly ridiculous.

I am 5ft 1 and weight 10 stone. DH is 6 ft 3 and weighs 20 stone.

If he threw on a dress and called himself Barbara, he would still be able to beat me at any sport going or kill me if he fancied. Because he's bigger, stronger, faster and nothing can change that.

Same here greenwool

Once you start looking at this it only becomes clearer that one "side" of the argument has facts, logic and sound concerns based on reason; the other has emotive catchphrases, silencing tactics and a party line. That's the real reason "these threads" all resemble each other. And I, for one, am grateful to those posters who continually take the time to make these important posts and stand up for women.

The motion suggests that the NUS follows the lead of Durham University’s new policy on inclusivity, whereby trans and intersex students are allowed to compete and train in whichever team “best fits their gender identity”."

And funnily enough, it's ALWAYS about ex-men competing with women. Never ex-women competing with men.

Because what would be the point of that?

So basically every loser who can't compete with other males, can call himself 'Suzie' and win medals from girls. How liberal and progressive

The day I treat this with any respect is the day women who identify as men start to beat men at sport.

Oh my GOD. Untwist your knickers, live and let live and at least try to be open minded. I don't know why MNHQ haven't cracked down on this transphobic behaviour.

Nobody said that trans- shouldn't live so far

dinosaurs - please report the transphobia to MNHQ. And point it out - I can't see any, but am happy to look again at the thread if I have missed it

I've been trying my best to be open-minded: inviting discussion, asking questions, putting my views across as carefully as possible. I've even admitted that what I really want is to be persuaded that I'm wrong, to have my mind changed back to the way I thought before. I was wondering whether I agreed with Strummer's post, and then dinosaurs came along and pretty much proved it. Catchphrase, silencing and slogan all in three sentences.

I was very surprised to have found this. Chris Mosier was born female and now competes as a male triathlete. He has competed at World Championship level in duathlon (this sport is not covered at the Olympics).

Not sure what to make of this. One part of me thinks "well done!", but he still has to take testosterone injections, and the other part of me can never agree to drugs in competitive sport.

Damn that pesky biology and the sexual dimorphism our species exhibits - so bloody transphobic it's not true.