Yet another consultation to fill in - on trans policy in sport

[qumquat]

Just seen this on Twitter from the Sport and Recreation Alliance. Very leading questions as always but it's a quick one to fill in so please do!

www.sportandrecreation.org.uk/pages/consultation-in-focus

Sorry if that's not clicky I'm not sure how to make sure it is.

I've just completed this. And started a thread about this Scottish survey on WAG in sport if anyone fancies having a go:

https://onescotland.org/equality-themes/advisory-council-women-girls/have-your-say/

akkakk I completely agree. It's hard enough keeping girls in sport, without this being thrown in. It's not as if anyone is saying transgender people should be excluded from sport. If a girl who identified as a boy wanted to join a girl's rugby team, that is of course totally fine. I would welcome seeing transgender people participating in sport, but it needs to be in their born sex. The bandwidth needs to be widened to include them.

Girls and boys train/can play on a team together in rugby up to age 12. Beyond that it splits. Given the level of close physical contact in rugby, I'm not sure many girls would be comfortable, and it certainly wouldn't be safe.

This was my response:

I think it's great to have as many people as possible participating in sports, regardless of their gender identity. However, I have real concerns around trans women playing as women in female-only teams.

Trans women are biological males with all of the differentiation in physical strength that that brings. In my daughters rugby club, girls and boys are MADE to play in sex segregated teams once they reach high school specifically because of safety concerns.

A man or boy saying that they feel like a woman or girl does not make this real and important issue go away.

And for sports where girls and women are competing against other biological females, it is a clear advantage to be a biological male with the testosterone and muscle strength that comes with XY chromosomes. Women and his will lose against trans women and girls, because of biology. Feelings and identity won't make any difference.

Mixing the sexes like this in competitive sport will only serve to turn girls and women off sport.

Trans girls and women should play in the team and sport that corresponds to their biological sex. And boys and men should be educated to be OK with this, regardless of how their trans fellow athletes dress, behave and identify.

Women and girls should not be thrown under the bus to increase trans participation.

Bump

I posted this on the Scottish sport consultation thread:

The best Scottish athlete for some considerable time is Laura Muir - she is a European gold medallist.

Her best time for 1500m: 3.55.22, a British national record (previously held by Kelly Holmes, double Olympic gold medallist).

Mens' British record: 3.28.81 (Mo Farah).

Power of Ten only goes down to the 246th best men's time - 3.42.

As you can see, it's still massively faster than Muir's women's record. Allowing men who say they're women to compete with women will destroy women's sport.

I'm curious about the motivation for this consultation. Looking around online, transgender-inclusive policies are already in place in most sporting organisations.

Self-ID won't change anything - from a trans perspective - as the rules under which they are permitted to play in domestic or national competitions have already been determined and they don't refer to GRC, rather gender-reassignment as defined in the Equality Act 2010.

Who even is this orgnisation asking for views on the GRA reform consultation? None of the questions are about self-ID or gender recognition certificates. Are they being disingenuous?

They are inviting people to look at the document EHRC document What equality law means for your business

"If you are interested in the wider context of the act, you may find some useful resources and clarifications on pages 16, 17 and 37. Please refer to this detail to help distinguish between what is classed as objective justification and unlawful indirect discrimination"

That document is about the Equality Act 2010. If trans lobby groups have already infiltrated sports organisations and they've written trans-inclusive policies based on the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, they would have used the Equality Act 2010.

Is this just a survey to allow TRAs to air their grievances?

VickyEadie - re: Laura Muir

As Dr Fond of Beetles puts it in her blog post:

The performance gap between male and female athletes is utterly astounding; it’s not a “gap”, it’s the Grand Canyon.

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1046753949758500866

Filled this in today. Quite an easy one. The City of London result has convinced me it is worth doing these things.

That document is about the Equality Act 2010. If trans lobby groups have already infiltrated sports organisations and they've written trans-inclusive policies based on the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, they would have used the Equality Act 2010.

Trans-inclusive policies have been written by trans-rights' activists.
They don't include impact studies or consideration for the possible effects on women and girls.

Neither do the 'transgender policies' in the NHS added to the 'Same Sex accomodation' policies.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3378258--Transwomen-should-be-treated-on-female-wards

Neither did the 'trans-inclusive' schools' policies in Scotland:
www.heraldscotland.com/news/16311379.schools-forget-girls-in-rush-to-adopt-pro-trans-guidance-campaigners-claim-as-christian-group-threatens-legal-action/

Done. I may have typed ‘obliterated’ more than once...

We're the supposed to include impact assessments?

How did they get this stuff into sports organisations? Were they just ticking the box, copy and paste and assuming trans people were so vanishingly rare, they'd not encounter one? When the Equality Act was debated was no-one pointing out the conflict of rights? I wonder if all these policies in sports orgs came out after the international Olympic committee changed its rules. I expect TRAs saw it as a green light to go to all national sports orgs and demand trans inclusive policies for the sex segregated sports. Most seem to be dated 2016/2017.

Were they sorry I'm typing on a bus.

I have sporty DC's and both I and DH volunteer for organisations providing sports activities. As most small and local sports events and organisations rely heavily on volunteers just to keep functioning, I am fairly confident that that we can be seen as being 'involved in the sector' in that capacity.

You clearly don't need to be a member, or to log into the site as a member, in order to fill this in.

So I've filled in the form and will pass it on.

The more responses they get (from all sectors), the better.

Interesting. I'm being badly hampered in filling this in about a sport in which DH and I are both involved at coaching level because our organisation makes multiple references to its policies but none of them are available on the governing body's site.

Despite this, every club/regions training material mention these policies as they cover governance, participation, guidance, and competition rules. Not one of them quotes from these documents nor links to them. Apparently, they just exist.

Have emailed several times but I am now worried that we shan't have a response in time for the official submission date so will have to fill in our responses without being able to reference the documents directly.

I accidentally filled in the form and then submitted it. Oh dear.

'Name of Organisation (leave blank if not applicable)'

Indeed. So anyone who competes in sport is welcome to fill it in. This includes people who have left their sport due to transwomen forcing their way in, like me. I was a member of a rugby group that 2 'transwomen' wanted to join. First they were told no, then they got a LOT of pressure from transactivists and they caved, which resulted in me and 8 other women leaving as playing contact sport against male people is clearly unsafe and we were not willing to put ourselves in danger like that. So female people forced out of their sport due to male people insisting on joining. Of course thats relevant to the consultation.

Very relevant Bolloxio. I'm sorry that happened to you.

bolloxio -

This is exactly the fear I have for the 4 very talented girls on DS's rugby team (primary age so still mixed sex at this point).

This is literally the systematic destruction of women's sport, and the super-woke are just pretending it's not happening.

Bolloxio, that's really sad reading, and my fear re women's rugby too. I really hope you and your teammates are still playing, but appalling that you were all forced out.

Bolloxio that's really shit

I still play, just have to travel a lot further to do so. No way was I going to put myself at risk like that. Most of my mates do still play to, a couple don't bother at all now and say that wherever they join, men are going to colonise. Which is, sadly, the case really.

It is extremely important that you do not keep quiet about your experience Bolloxio

The Olympian ideals of sport are heading this way: