To be appalled at these parents trying to force a girls football team to let their son join?

[AngeloMysterioso]

The FA is threatening to suspend a girls’ football league after a boy’s parents complained because they wouldn’t let him join.

There’s nothing in the report about the boy being trans, or identifying as a girl- he just doesn’t want to play with boys and doesn’t have the ability level.

I’m just gobsmacked at the entitlement of these parents, which they are also teaching their son - that they expect a girl to have to lose her place on a team just because he isn’t good enough to play with the boys.

DM article- so far not being reported by any other news outlets but will keep checking.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13149771/west-riding-girls-football-league-boy-footbal-association.html

My interpretation of the FA rules (allowing boys and girls to play football together until age 16) was that it was primarily to enable girls to keep playing. Often there aren’t enough footballing girls to keep teams going, so girls may find they have to quit. Allowing them to join boys teams means they can keep on playing. But that would be their choice - if they felt strong and capable enough to compete against boys, then it would be their responsibility to face any consequences.

Allowing boys to join a girls team is completely different. The girls then have no choice but to risk playing with someone physically bigger and stronger than them. It’s not fair. It’s no better than a 15 year lad deciding he wants to play in his 6 year old brother’s team!

At least you see some posters showing how we get into these messes. For me, inclusion in sport means single sex teams. Sport is competitive!

@TheOriginalEmu how old is your son now? Is he still smaller than girls his age?

Rather obviously not all boys @TheOriginalEmu, but every cell of their body gives them a 20% advantage. Pound for pound they have 160 % more explosive power. So, even an identically sized boy and girl in a collision would see the girl flat on a back.
Anyone who can't see that this is so so wrong is one of two things - utterly ignorant about sport (which is fine just don't muscle in on an argument you know nothing about), or misogyny is so ingrained for them, that they're oblivious to it.

'He's one boy.'
What your number, @TheOriginalEmu, of how many girls it's fine to expose to injury/be pushed out by boys?
One is clearly fine. So is two? What about three? What about 200? What's the cut off for you?
How many boys should be able to take the places off girls?

I'd be going back to the FA saying if he's not skilledenough to play on the boys team, he's not skilled enough to play on the girls team either.

Please @TheOriginalEmu, please do sone research. Take it from someone who knows. This is a disaster for girls sport. Really not helped by women who don't understand saying things like, but Sylvia is taller than Bob. Height and size is one tiny part of the difference.

Puberty begins about 12, this league is between 12-16 so right in puberty range.

Boys also have a physical advantage pre-puberty, boys are bigger from the day they are born (hence the different length and weight centile charts for baby boys and baby girls.

It's not "gendered", it's sex.

And for social reasons, girls have more of a chance of getting involved when they have a category of their own.

Yup. And you'll notice mums of boys who don't have a fucking clue. It makes my blood boil on behalf of our daughters.

It’s very real. My daughter plays in this league.

One of the key reasons that girls want all-girls teams is because the boys push them out of mixed teams - don't pass to them and don't really let them play. Which is why you don't want a girls team to become a mixed team.

And it's not like he doesn't have other places to go to. On average, across England, there are 9 boys teams for every girls team. And lots of 'mixed' teams too, which, when I look at the pictures, don't tend to have many girls in...

No because he would get to train with them, change with them if he went down that line. And what if players were injured and they had to field him? And finally no, it’s a girls team. As girls keep being told- “try harder”

And did he play football?

Sporty boys dwarf the girls from 13 up and it only gets more pronounced as they get towards 16. And even if your son is tiny and weak, doesn't give him or any male the right to invade women and girls spaces.

And the post puberty safety rules are there because the average 13/14/15/16 old boy is much stronger than the average 13/14/15/16 y old girl. Doesnt matter that yours isn't.

And how do we ensure that your son playe with the girls and mine doesnt? Because my 13y olf and my 16y old would inadvertently hurt girls in a competitive situation. They hurt themselves playing football and rugby against other boys, they would really hurt girls at full contact force.

It really isn't.
It is completely different.

One male athlete competing in a girls volleyball game in the USA resulted in a girl having her orbital bone fractured because he could spike with more power than the girls in the game.

One male athlete in a girl's teenage age range rugby team injured three female players in Guam.

One male athlete injured 3 girls in a basket ball team also in the USA just last month. And that was in the first half of the game and the injured girls' coach forfeited the game because of 1 teenaged male athlete.

It has now been proven that female people have much more delicate brain fibres. They also have more delicate bones, including in their skull. Female people have less speed on average than a male player and less power to kick a ball.

What part of all the research that is now available to read for free leads anyone, including the FA, to believe that they should continue to allow any female player to have their safety risked like this.

Yes, the FA rules need to be changed. Why do they think that male after puberty should be playing against female people in a team that has been set up for female people? I even question at what point should teams under the age of adult should be mixed sex because there seems to be little understanding of the risks and a whole lot of dismissal.

I know this isn’t really the point of the thread but the girls on my DS’ predominantly male team often outplay the boys. They are 12 and enjoy the more competitive edge of a ‘boys’ team. I think the boy in question possibly thinks he’ll be the best on the team if he plays with the girls… highly unlikely from my experience. There are loads of lower divisions for mixed teams. Girls have had such limited options in football since the game was invented that they should be able to play wherever they feel comfortable.., girls only teams should be protected.

You see this is the kind of thing that doesn’t do you any favours. I’m a mum of 2 footballing boys. I don’t have a daughter. But I do have a “fucking clue”, as you so eloquently put it. I strongly disagree with allowing boys into girls teams, as do my sons. Don’t alienate parents who only have sons.

And my 13 year old son was half the size of many of the boys he played with. At 13 he was much more on parr size wise with his twin sister than he was some of the other boys. My friends daughter of the same age was a 8 inches taller and dwarfed him in all ways
not all boys are huge and not all girls are tiny.

Dont be so dense. Dont really not understand that male and female bodies are different? That girls/women are not the same as small boys and men?

Why are we still conflating height with strength? Short boys do not = girls and tall girls do not = boys.

One of my sons, in his late teens, is the same height as me. He's probably not as strong as his taller brother but I do know he's still significantly stronger than me.

I think you need to read the research that is very easy to find.

Male people after starting puberty have many advantages that do actually matter for safety and for fairness. The number of twitch muscles and the ability of boys to jump and the power that they have available to kick or hit a ball. They have stronger neck muscles to even be able to do headers if they are doing them. They are on average faster, they have skeletal proportions that allow better leverage, they don't have to deal with menstruation where their bodies and ligaments are more prone to injury. Their bones are denser so when they hit a female body, they have more density.

This is just a sample.

Just because you consider your 13 year old son to be 'half the size' of the boys he played with, does not make him safe to be playing against female people. And being shorter and seemingly slighter doesn't make him at all safe because even being 'shorter' and 'smaller' doesn't mean he is not stronger and more powerful.

Just because you might deny that he is, doesn't mean that he is. It also doesn't mean that he doesn't suddenly have a growth spurt and become an even higher risk.

It also doesn't mean that because of the different types of muscle that him being on the field doesn't mean he is getting fitter and more powerful at a faster rate than the girls whose safety you are dismissing.

Because OvaHere we see it all the time. It is a lack of understanding about the realities of male bodies vs female bodies.

Competitive sport for girls and women is single sex. The end.

Smaller boys, boys with concerned mothers and boys who claim to be another gender should be told to go do one. Our society seems to have lost its marbles. We are all intelligent women and these rules don't even respect the idea of girls competing when our own female team nearly won the World Cup. Pathetic.

No males in females' teams, races and spaces. If this boy is not good enough let him play in a lower league team.

There is also a very marked dismissal by some parents about boys and girls competing together. How often do we see, but my daughter is still better than the boys? The reality is that parent's daughter is an exceptional athlete and should be celebrated for being exceptional. Whereas they just dismiss that girl as being good because they beat unexceptional boys. It builds a very unrealistic narrative that is harmful for those girls.

Because if they were competing with a boy who had that girl's exceptional talent, that girl would not be winning. Yet, those parents would write that off as that girl not being good enough, or training hard enough in comparison to the boys she is competing against. And they would not even consider the impact that this would have on that girl. All because some parents will declare, it is just a bit of fun, or that 'girls can compete against boys at x age'.

The reality is that the research is now consistently showing that even from 6 years old boys out perform the girls at the same age. Because it is not just from puberty that boys have advantages.