Rugby reject koolaid, listen to science

[niceberg]

Thank goodness.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/19/transwomen-face-potential-womens-rugby-ban-over-safety-concerns?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I'd love to see the look on their faces if a real men's rugby team decided to identify as female for a day and turned up as their opponents. Proper Jonah Lomu type guys.

I ignorantly thought of rugby-players as likely to be sexist and unenlightened. That really is prejudice! My apologies to rugby, and congratulations and thanks for standing by women.

@NotBadConsidering

To anyone’s knowledge no one who is now an adult transwoman who has been through medical affirmative treatment of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones with or without surgery has played or tried to play women’s rugby, probably because they’re too busy dealing with their reduced bone density, lack of fertility, lack of sexual functioning and any other of the myriad of effects on their cardiovascular systems that result from this treatment pathway.

Just add competitive sport to the list of many things these children are being denied.

Why should my daughter be denied her place On a woman’s sport team?

Let’s just add competitive sport to the list of many things these female children are being denied.

You’ve misinterpreted my post. I’m saying children who are being put through a medical affirmative pathway are having their bodies permanently medicalised and damaged and are thus unlikely to be physically capable of participating in competitive sport with their own sex, either male or female.

I am not saying males are being denied participation in female sport at the expense of females, I’m saying they are being denied reaching adulthood with a healthy unadulterated body so they can then partake in sport with other males.

Thank you for clarifying.

Just want to clarify, this is a draft isn't it. Words like 'considering' fill me with dread.

Will the Union's back it or will there be big amendments.

Were World Rugby to backtrack on such a careful review of the evidence, the sport would deserve to be litigated out of existence by every woman harmed by the inclusion of males in the women’s game. The kind of injuries we are talking about can cause life long disability and death. It’s no longer a ‘sport’ if the sporting body is not prepared to mitigate those risks and would instead subject players to unwarranted harm to placate noisy activists. It would be cowardly in the extreme and deserving of condemnation.

Thanks for that.

They are very smartly making the process as open as possible so that TRA can’t say “but you didn’t consider xyz therefore decision is invalid”

They’re also determinedly behaving like the adults in the room, acknowledging ppl will disagree with them and that’s fine but that at the end of the day the decision is theirs to make

It’s a masterclass of how to deal with the issue and a shame so many orgs wet their pants in fear the moment the first “most vulnerable group/trans ppl exist!/be kind” tweets hit their account

@Kit19

They are very smartly making the process as open as possible so that TRA can’t say “but you didn’t consider xyz therefore decision is invalid”

They’re also determinedly behaving like the adults in the room, acknowledging ppl will disagree with them and that’s fine but that at the end of the day the decision is theirs to make

It’s a masterclass of how to deal with the issue and a shame so many orgs wet their pants in fear the moment the first “most vulnerable group/trans ppl exist!/be kind” tweets hit their account

I agree. They’ve presented actual evidence from experts.

If the TRAs disagree then that’s fine, but they’ll need to provide proper evidence from their side and we all know they can’t do that.

All they’ve got is threats and emotional blackmail.

In New Zealand they observed years ago the risks of pitting enormous Pacific Island / Maori teenage kids against average sized white kids carried an unacceptable risk of serious injury. As a result they reorganised youth rugby by weight rather then by age group to mitigate against the fact the PI/Maori lads physically developed much more quickly. It is now not uncommon to see some 15 year old Maori playing senior grade rugby rather then smashing up kids 25kg lighter then him on the school pitch. The only consideration was player welfare not feelings. The IRB are spot on with looking after women's player welfare.

Has anyone been listening to radio 5 this morning? Just listening to the second contributor, missed the sports scientist, anyone know what he said?

@DillonPanthersTexas yes, I was reminded of that too.

The Kiwis also found it benefitted the larger lads as playing in weight groups meant they had to develop their skills faster, rather than relying on size/strength to outplay their smaller opponent.

You just don’t want to run the risk of the TRAs trying to split women’s rugby by weight in the same way. This isn’t just about weight.

Found it - Ross Tucker, just before 8am. Very clear and all science based argument, vg!

Five live-I only heard the coach from (I think) Derby. Had to turn it off as she only seemed to burble fence sitting nonsense.

Am I the only person feeling faintly depressed at how excited we all are that World Rugby has demonstrated that it's not completely insane? We set the bar so low now that we are practically crying with relief at the discovery that there is someone who holds the unexceptional view that men shouldn't be allowed to take part in women's sport.

No, I’m right there with you @RoyalCorgi

You just don’t want to run the risk of the TRAs trying to split women’s rugby by weight in the same way. This isn’t just about weight.

Muscle and bone density are obviously important too. I'm not sure they'd get much traction in rugby - the whole structure of teams and leagues would be affected, there couldn't be any justification for applying thang to women but not men. It's more of a risk in boxing etc where weight categories already exist.

there couldn't be any justification for applying thang to women but not men.

When has that ever stopped them 😂

yep also there royalcorgi

discussed with DH last night - he brought it up so my ranting is definitely getting through. He thinks it's utterly insane that this conversation is even being had in the 21st century

www.ebar.com/news/news295172/rugby_considers_barring_transgender_women

This is an awful article. Highlights include:

"Despite citing a concern for potential safety issues that might be created from any big transgender women playing against any small cisgender women, it did not make any recommendations regarding potential safety concerns when particularly large cisgender women play against particularly small cisgender women."

and

"World Rugby said it would fund research to work toward transgender inclusion and would continue to encourage transgender involvement.

The proposal suggests a "mixed-gender" category might be created, which apparently would be a form of touch rugby rather than tackle. That's a move IGR opposes.

"IGR is firmly opposed to any measures based on a fundamentally flawed 'separate but equal' principle that would exclude transgender athletes from playing contact rugby," the organization said in its statement. "We will continue to actively work to keep transgender athletes' boots on the pitch."

Conflation of tall women with men: check.
Total capitulation: check.

Chesterton's fence yet again, isn't it, Collidascope?

Why do they think we segregate by sex in the first place? After all there are players in the current England women's team who are taller than some of the men in international rugby. If you used that daft argument, you'd end up with mixed sex rugby (which of course is precisely what you get when you include transwomen in women's rugby).

This isn’t just about weight.

It really isn't, as the research (peer reviewed studies that were included with Dr Hilton and Tommy Lundberg's review of them) clearly shows.

Now, wouldn't it be grand to have some data to hand of actual performance of trans athletes that would balance out the argument? Oh yeah..... those types of studies were likely shut down as phobic in the 'no debate' spirit of things.... Maybe, just maybe, some of these studies will now be done with the view that if they can't disprove the theory, at least the truth of the situation was acknowledged. And, maybe, just maybe, the activists claims would be proven correct to.

Unbiased, independent research based on discovery not proving a belief should always be welcomed.

You just don’t want to run the risk of the TRAs trying to split women’s rugby by weight in the same way. This isn’t just about weight.

Quite, as pp said it would involve needing to look at muscle strength and bone density, and all the things we used to just be able to call sex difference. If this is done however, we will end up with defacto sex segregation by default, as with if all serious sex offender prisoners who self identify are moved to women's prisons a category A women's prison facility would have to be created because of the sheer numbers, and it would be all TW. As the prison services would no doubt have to consider safety of putting the very few female prisoners in this situation into a male dominated environment; the reason they will not place TM into male prisons.