190cm, 100kg size 15 feet transwoman tries to join women's Aussie Rules football

[pisacake]

www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/aflw/transgender-footballer-hannah-mouncey-waits-on-aflw-draft-call/news-story/123a463e71aa3c4b9bbd634724ce8f75

Hannah Mouncey wants to join the Australian Football League (this is basically rugby) Women's division.
"Mouncey played the final three games in the ruck for Ainslie and kicked 15 goals, with Canberra officials ruling she was not a safety concern."

this despite the fact
"one [female] player broke her leg in a tangle of legs with Mouncey."

Mouncey says:
“I am female like 50 per cent of the population. I may have been born a bit different but there was a real sense of normality when I transitioned,” she said.

The average MALE AFL player is 188cm and 88kg, so Hannah is both taller and heavier, and if admitted will both the tallest and heaviest player in the entire league.

Hannah was previously on the Australian MALE Olympic handball team as Callum Mouncey.

[MrSlant]

Rugby is an example of sport where there is a wide range of body shapes, you don’t calls for weight class rugby when a smaller person gets injured.

Actually there has been a lot of discussion around having different weight classes in rugby due to the increased average stature in the modern game. The athlete here would be playing in the 'higher' suggested weight category in the mans game from what I have seen discussed. In New Zealand they have weight rather than age categories in junior rugby already, to minimise injury and also to give the bigger children the chance to enhance their skills rather than bulldoze through the opposition which is what they do otherwise.

Also to my mind Aussie rules is much rougher than rugby!

[QuentinSummers]

This is interesting
www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/hannah-mouncey-trans-handball-player-sidelined-over-height-fears/news-story/ed49c42c1314d797427a9218c578b1ae
Mouncey was barred from women's handball, unofficially because officials were worried they may not be insured should someone be injured.

[Datun]

Apart from the obvious physical differences, that can never be eliminated, he's taking the place of a woman. The conclusion of which is that women's sport will be pointless.

I don't see a single sportsman being in the slightest bit concerned that men's sport will be pointless.

Because biological sex matters. I don't know how many times it has to be said.

[Rumandraisin1]

These are the reasons that men and women's sport are separate:

fairplayforwomen.com/biological-sex-differences

It is due to biological differences in male and female bodies, not because women like to wear pink sports kits and need breaks to re-do their lippy if it gets smudged. Therefore, sports should be split based on biological sex, not whether someone identifies with feminine stereotypes.

[okMaybeIAmATERF]

People saying someone can't play on a woman's team are not obliged to justify that person's playing on the men's team. Playing competitive sport is not a human right. Maybe being transgender sometimes means you can't do that. If your transgender status is that important to you, you'll find something else to do, just like all the men and women who don't play competitive sport for all the other reasons, like not being good enough for the team they're eligible for. FFS.

[Ereshkigal]

I used the term ciswoman to clarify, as someone suggested I might not be, presumably due to my size.

That wasn't why they suggested that.

[PricklyBall]

That's why I linked to the article about Jaiyah Saelua, who plays men's football for American Samoa. She (and in her case, I'm happy to call her she, because she's doing the fair and decent thing) interestingly comes from a culture which genuinely has a "third gender" concept, rather than having simply appropriated it from someone else's culture in a pick and mix steal the bits that suit you sort of way. It seems very clear, seeing what she says about being fa’afafine, is that it doesn't involve making any claim to being "literally female"; rather it is a social and cultural category where you are seen as embodying a mix of masculine and feminine qualities. (Her comments about the place of fa’afafine within the family, kind of "covering" for roles that might otherwise be missing, seems to me to stand in stark and very positive contrast to the extreme, inward looking narcissism of many online transactivists in the west).

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

to enter into a contact sport with and against the opposite sex with no regard to their safety is just bloody selfish absolutely. It seems to me that all these transwomen so desperate to invade womens' spaces are just being spectacularly selfish, narcissistic and staggeringly lacking in the one characteristic that is supposed to be SO feminine - empathy. Empathy is apparently a really, really womanly trait when discussing why the caring professions are staffed by more females than males (and is the reason such jobs are paid less 'it's a vocation / labour of love' etc etc). Of course when it comes to transwomen like the one in the OP, empathy for anyone their actions could impact is suddenly less of a feminine trait than wearing lipstick.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

Curling is sex segregated , certainly at Olympic level.

Equestrian events are not.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

Shooting is also sex segregated I think.

[hingedspeculum]

“I am female like 50 per cent of the population. I may have been born a bit different but there was a real sense of normality when I transitioned"

None of the medical professionals who have facilitated Hannah's transition agree with the first statement. I am so fed up with "my testosterone levels are actually lower than most women". I don't understand this theme of isolation biology - one process, one body part, one sub-GCSE analysis, removed from everything else and then heralded as FACT.

On an aside, Prickly, the Samoan Fa'afafine are interesting to explore really entrenched cultural-tied gender roles. Historically, the existed in households without girls, a male baby would be brought up as a Fa'afafine in order to balance the family; historically, there wasn't a notion of being gay in Samoan culture, either. Now, more fa'afafine are self identified and/or more that by showing "effeminate" behaviour as infants, their parents have labelled them and subsequently brought them up as girls.

[ALittleBitOfButter]

I want to give some context to the Australian Football League for Women.
It was created very recently to give women the opportunity to play football. In Australia, "Aussie Rules" Football is a religion that dominates a lot of people's lives. It's even how you learn maths in primary school - you have to have a team, there's no choice.
On the 'rugby' thing, it's not as brutal as rugby, which has a lot of Islanders and quite thickset men playing it (don't know much about it to be honest, it's more of a NSW/QLD sport). However, it does have contact. Men crash into each other, particularly when they all leap for the ball. Nowadays, AFL footballers tend to be enormously tall and muscly. It's obvious when you see one out jogging or whatever. They stand out with their physique.
AFL is also deeply sexist. Only ten or twelve years ago there was a ruckus because a woman was going to be allowed to be a commentator, calling a game (within a group of men). I remember hearing outraged calls to the radio about how women just don't understand the game properly, and radio DJs seriously discussing her merits. A Fairfax football journalist, Caroline something or other, has been personally attacked. There's a repellent former footballer called Sam Newman (famous for having a giant picture of Pamela Anderson's breasts on his house) who is on a mainstream TV show called 'the Footy Show'. He got a mannequin with Caroline's face on it and punched it. The audience loved it. The CEO of a TV channel, Eddie McGuire, was discussing her with a group of other men on the radio and said he'd like to drown her (I think, or she deserved to be drowned, or killed, can't remember). Of course, when it was raised he dismissed this as light hearted banter, and all the men weighed in saying things like, if she can't stand the heat, she needs to get out of the kitchen etc, men banter, get over it, and implying that she was the one with the problem.
AFL footballers are often in the news for domestic violence and rape allegations. There is an entrenched culture of women-as-decorations.
Another issue is the AFL tribunal which meets to rule on misdemeanours on the field. It seems like every week someone is up for punching a player during a fracas. So there is a lot of aggression from some players.

Girls have grown up often kicking footballs with their brothers and schoolmates. Men and women are footy fans in equal proportions. I remember girls wanting to play football in primary school at lunchtime and not being allowed to by the boys, and them kicking up a fuss. Finally, the AFLW was created not long ago to give opportunities to women to play professionally. It's been going really well, except for when THAT newspaper (that printed this article - Murdoch's) for example refused to put the grand final result on their cover and instead had some men's football article instead. Women have finally clawed a space in the league and it's being taken over by second rate men.

And for what it's worth, that contributor earlier who asked whether they would be allowed to play women's sport at 115 kilograms. No, you wouldn't, because you sound unhealthily overweight.

[Whinberry]

I do think transmen and women should be a paraolympic category. Oscars Pistoia wanted to run in mainstream races but they had to establish if his blades gave an unfair advantage. Why is it not the same for testosterone and male build?

[ALittleBitOfButter]

*professional women's sport, that is. You would be welcomed with open arms at your local sport games.

[scottishbride]

This makes me sad.
At the end of the day most professional sport is about money and if the women's league is as big as it appears it will be the sponsors who have the power. In a dream world, the top female players will refuse to play against XY players, eventually making the matches against an XY player a non event, sponsors lose money, tell teams not to recruit XY.
I like the idea of using XX vs XX or something similar to explain this to supporters, it means you don't have to worry about how people say they "feel", as others have said more eloquently than me- biology is biology

[Zoll]

We were all discussing this on Friday. I am 75kg and 5'10 and markedly stronger and larger than all the women I work with. I don't really work out, I just came this way: broad shoulders and squat legs. All the girls get me to lift big stuff and so on and we all laugh about it cause I carry 10 shopping bags in each hand or whatever. One is super jealous because she lifts weights and is really serious about it but can't lift like me and I do nothing (she's like 5'0).

But we work with one bloke, he's maybe 5'7? And he could crush me. Just from sheer density of muscle. Even if I worked out all day I'd never match him. Men and women are different.

This is just cheating. Sport is about the body - it's a competition of the body and without classes there is no fair competition. You can't make it totally even, but you can set a field of competition and being a different sex is not ON the field. This person cannot join a juniors team and cannot join a women's team and cannot join a team for blind people and so on! Well, they can and I'm sure they will, but they're a cheat and they should be ashamed.

It's not a human right to play top flight competitive sports. Sheesh. It's a game. The point is the competition. If there's no competition then there's no point. You don't get to box a 9 year old either. It's shameful.

And anyway, I don't get to be on the British Olympic team because I'm very lazy and old. Is this fair? Have I got some terrible medical affliction, motivation identity disorder, where everyone has to pretend I'm actually a 22 year old type-A superstar and give me the gold medal? Oh and an award for bravery while I'm at it, because it's so much harder being born lazy and coming out as athletic than just being plain old cis-athletic.

The whole thing is nonsense and obvious cheating.

[Zoll]

@hingedspeculum "I am so fed up with "my testosterone levels are actually lower than most women"."

I think it's because you can buy hormones. They are both measurable and commodified, so there's a market. Once there's a market for something there's an economic incentive to push it as determinative.

You can't buy new skeletons!

[Datun]

The testosterone thing is such a red herring. He has benefited from testosterone all his life. It's shaped his body, and built his muscles. Stopping taking it doesn't erase all that.

In fact I seem to remember a study about athletes taking illegal steroids. Even when they stopped taking them, they benefitted for years afterwards.

And yet again women are having to spend time and effort to justify saying no.

[QueenOfTheAndals]

He describes himself as "a 6"2 transgender lesbian

Otherwise known as a tall straight man...

[badbadhusky]

I'm 184cm, 116kg, size 10 feet.

I'm a woman.

Should I not be allowed to play on a womans team based on my size?

I've not yet finished RTFT, but wanted to note there was an article on the Today programme a couple of weeks ago about organising children's Rugby Union teams/matches by size/weight rather than chronological age because there are such large disparities in young children's development & the little ones are more at risk. Perhaps adult contact sports should be organised the same way. Hannah would probably be in a league of their own. 🙄

[badbadhusky]

I see mrslant got to the same point sooner. It may even have been a NZ player/coach being interviewed.

[ALittleBitOfButter]

If they did that Hannah would find zeself in an all men's team...