Great article re trans involvement in sport

[NellieEllie]

Not sure if this has been shared here. I e had a quick read and I think it’s great with good detail of sex differences.
www.bendirs.co.uk/single-post/2019/08/29/Transwomen-in-womens-sport---stunning-and-brave-or-a-problem-that-needs-addressing

That's a really excellent piece. I hate to say it, but I always feel so relieved when I see something like this by a male ally. We can all bang on as much as we like but we just get labelled as a bunch of embittered feminists and worse. Good to see him give proper recognition to Emma Hilton and Nic Williams. Though I also really liked this para about our dear friend Jolyon Maugham:

"Elsewhere, QC Jo Maugham praised the BBC’s ‘wonderful reporting’ of the Kelly Morgan story, and accused the naysayers (there were a lot of them) of being ‘unable to adapt to a world that is not binary’. Maugham asked for evidence that trans women competing against women in collision sports is dangerous. As the comedy writer Graham Linehan, himself smeared as a bigot, pointed out: ‘I’ve never seen anything as mad as this. Men suddenly pretending they don’t know the difference between men and women.’"

Wow what an excellent thoughtful article! One of the best summaries on the subject I've read.

Ross Tucker is also good to follow on Twitter recently as he has all the science and recent data and isn’t afraid to share it!

Good article. Ben Dirs used to work for the BBC and was very good, so the comment about how he can’t be cancelled now he doesn’t work for anyone is interesting.

That’s a brilliant article and he pulls no punches. Good man.

Thanks for that link NellieEllie. I like the way Ben Dix has covered so many different sports and competition at different levels.

It is an absolutely excellent article.

Dirs not Dix - sorry

Yes JessicaWakefield. I’ve started following Ross Tucker - useful info.

Came on to post this and been beaten to it not finished reading it yet but very good!

so the comment about how he can’t be cancelled now he doesn’t work for anyone is interesting.

Yes very interesting!

Excellent article.

Can anyone remember/ post the recent thread around how sex differences start in the womb?

Was it on this article mentioned in Bens article by Dr Hilton or on another one?

fairplayforwomen.com/emma_hilton/

Excellent article

A very comprehensive article.

“Sport is played with bodies, not identities; that women’s safety, dignity and opportunity should trump the feelings of trans women; that if males who identify as women are allowed to compete against women, then why not males who don’t identify as women, on the grounds that their biology is the same?; and that if trans women don’t have an advantage, why don’t you see trans men thriving in men’s sport?”

Brilliant!

And yes very telling he can only write this now because he can’t be ‘canceled’.

“ It wasn’t just that someone with all the obvious physical advantages of being born a man was playing against biological women that made me angry, it was that people involved seemed to know it was dangerously unfair and think it was hilarious. ”

This - that people find it funny that women are getting hurt and losing out. Much stunning, much brave

So good. Thanks.

A very well balanced article, thanks for sharing. I shared this on FB and the only response I got was that surely only contact sports are an issue and something will have to be done to sort this out to be inclusive. The view was that women’s sports will be fine going forward. I wasn’t able to convince them otherwise and they are a lot more scientifically minded than me. I was left feeling a bigot.

Sport seems to be one category which is really open to abuse because of the potential awards involved. Why wouldn’t teams/ organisations take advantage of the rules to win? I don’t understand how it is going to be resolved.