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

On Sunday, McKinnon tweeted “I have yet to meet a real champion who has a problem with trans women. Real champions want stronger competition. If you win because bigotry got your competition banned… you’re a loser.”’

Yes you non-males, just try harder. Just because in most athletics boys 13-15 beat the females world records means you are not trying hard enough.

My eyes cannot roll enough.

hurrah! i know it is blindingly obvious to 99% of people why male bodied people should not play rugby against female bodied people but i think the RFU did exactly the right thing by going through such a completely transparent process. The slightest hint of behind closed doors, unbalanced panels/speakets etc and the howls would have begun. as it is it, the TRA have no ammunition at all. They got a chance to put their case and it didnt stack up

hopefully other sports will now stop dancing around the issue and address it too

Gendered intelliegnce's piece of work for sport england on trans inclusion will make interesting reading in the light of this...

Many people have blamed the Guardian for the phrase "assigned ... at birth" but it seems to be a quote from the World Rugby report. Certainly in this para, you can see that "assigned female at birth" is a direct quote from the World Rugby working group, and while "assigned male at birth" isn't within quotation marks, it would be a reasonable inference that this phrase too is taken from the World Rugby report.

As World Rugby’s working group notes, players who are assigned male at birth and whose puberty and development is influenced by androgens/testosterone “are stronger by 25%-50%, are 30% more powerful, 40% heavier, and about 15% faster than players who are assigned female at birth (who do not experience an androgen-influenced development).”

hopefully other sports will now stop dancing around the issue and address it too
Agreed - while the safety issues may be particularly clear-cut in rugby due to the nature of the sport, surely the fact that those who've gone through male puberty are so much stronger and faster is a constant and affects the vast majority of sports in terms of fairness.

Fannycann I think I posted a link on first page from Tommy Lundberg and Dr Emma Hilton that’s goes through this as well as other physical advantages.

Female and male are sex classifications. Female is not an identity to be adopted by someone who does not produce and has never had the potential (including where a medical condition prevents this) to produce large gametes.

@MiladyRenata

Male body, female brain. Trust me, it's not a fun place to be.

What is a female brain?

Finally someone accepted science on this matter.
In terms of expanding research into other sports I found www.boysvswomen.com illuminating when I stumbled on it last night.
It compares female Olympians against high school boys track records. And shows the women would almost never win.

These are boys that haven't even finished growing - I remember the boys at school at 17/18 and even Freshers year of uni, they were "scrawny" for lack of a better word. Then all in a year or two they bulked out. To confirm this wasn't my own imagination I just checked out the literature:
"Peak muscle mass occurs between the ages of 16 and 20 years in females and between 18 and 25 years in males unless affected by resistance exercise, diet, or both."
And
Although the strength of boys and girls is essentially equal during preadolescence, hormonal differences during puberty are responsible for an acceleration in the strength development of boys and a continuation at approximately the same rate in the strength development of girls as during the preadolescent years.

These excerpts are from a book published years ago, the science isn't new. (Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning)

So even boys who haven't even finished development beat women. We have long since had the science around male development and the statistics to compare any level of male vs female records. I wonder why it's taken this long to be realised...

Real champions want stronger competition

Er.... so why doesn’t McKinnon compete against men?

Logic is the first casualty of gender war.

@FannyCann

"Current policies regulating the inclusion of transgender women in sport are based on the premise that reducing testosterone to levels found in biological females"

Am I right in saying that testosterone levels are not reduced or not required to be reduced to levels found in biological females?
I haven't the stats to hand but I seem to remember the reduced level recommended, whilst well below normal male levels was still well above normal female levels.

Yes they are above the levels usually found.

'Under the current IOC guidelines, issued in November 2015, athletes who transition from male to female can compete in the women’s category without requiring surgery to remove their testes provided their total testosterone level in serum is kept below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months.

Those guidelines, used by most sports federations to draw up their transgender policies, have proved controversial, given that women’s testosterone levels tend to range between 0.12 and 1.79 nmo.'

(That's copied and pasted from a Guardian article to save time and avoid links for those who don't want them.)

The proposal to reduce them has been delayed until after the 'Tokyo 2020' Olympics (which will not be renamed even though they are meant to take place in 2021):

www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/28835943/ioc-publish-transgender-guidelines-tokyo-games

I am exasperated that Transwomen are framed as the victims in the headline. Rather than ‘Women to play rugby in safety’, for example.

Does the report reference the horrific injuries inflicted on Tamikka Brents by Fallon Fox, I wonder?

I wonder why it's taken this long to be realised...

Because females are required to be kind to males, but males aren't required to be even basically fair and decent towards females?

And yes as mentioned by another poster even pre puberty babies and children have different growth charts, again the science isn't new!
I have to say even I was surprised at the difference - on average male babies are half a pound heavier than female babies. Considering this is after only 9 months gestation and the small amount of male hormones the foetus produces from 7 weeks onwards, which pales in comparison to puberty.
Already at a year old the girls in my NCT group are noticeably smaller than the boys.

Finally some sense, good to see there are still some organisations with a backbone. Hopefully the IOC takes notice.

Yes , I count 14 words used where 2 would have done : women players.

This does not make us any less female. It's just a case of acknowledging the reality that we are cursed with a male-typical body

Are you aware of what 'forced to the discourtesy' means?

I would not claim to be a transwoman because I cannot possibly understand what it is like, the lived experience, the very specific and subjective struggles and realities of it. Please extend the same respect to female people, who need some words left over to express themselves and their reality and to class themselves, and God knows due to the TRA political movement female people are already left grubbing around for the scraps they're still allowed. You are perfectly well aware of all this or you would not be here, in a place where female people are trying to protect female rights, deliberately and provocatively saying these things to get a reaction. It's classic male entitlement.

Thank God rugby are at least scared of the compensation payouts even if they can't summon up a fuck for female people's right to have some forms of sport and competition that male people haven't colonised and taken from them in the interests of meeting their own personal needs.

Seen this morning on Titter Sport raises issues of fairness and now, it seems, safety for transgender people. It strengthens the case for early treatment - going through the right puberty.

it must take some effort to read that article as raising an issue of safety for transgender people (the safety impact on transmen is arguable but I don't think he is referring to them) and strengthening the argument for 'going through the right puberty'!! It was predicted earlier on this thread I think :¬)

I'm very happy to see this. I don't play rugby any more, but it changed my life. I think we need to work hard to protect these opportunities for women.
I really believe sport is transformative, and should be a universal opportunity, so we need to try our best to ensure we can create opportunities for trans people to participate, but not at the disadvantage of women.
I played rugby during my time studying in Canada, at UBC. The current policy of U Sports seems to be student-athletes may compete on the sport team that corresponds with either their sex assigned at birth or their gender identity, provided that at all times student-athletes are in compliance with the Canadian Anti-Doping Program.
So I could have been playing rugby against males who have undergone no form of transition whatsoever.

Hopefully, for the safety and opportunity of women and girls, this position is revised soon.

This has made my morning!

DS used to play rugby, and I remember some of the very talented girls he played with up to age 10. I was also privileged to be in the crowd for a women's 6 nations game which set the record for the biggest crowd at a stand-alone women's rugby match ever - the atmosphere was amazing.

Thank god world rugby has gained some sanity, and grown a pair and had the guts to do the right thing.

I do have residual worries about transmen in men's rugby. One thing that became apparent (in connection with the transwoman playing for Porth women's team) was that the RFU was losing referees to this madness. The referee is the person ultimately in charge of safety on the pitch, and there is no way a referee could guarantee a transman's safety no matter what disclaimers they'd signed - and it would be the referee on the line in a court case. (IANAL, but my understanding is you cannot sign waivers which waive your right to basic safety considerations in the workplace or in leisure activities - those "I know this is a dangerous activity and I won't sue" forms you sign at, for instance, trampoline parks could be overturned in court.)

The mind matters more than the body. I know that I'm female.

Who says the mind matters more than the body? And how could you possibly know that you're actually the opposite sex? You have no first hand point of reference. You personally don't feel like you think a male should feel, so you feel you must therefore be female. But you have no way of knowing what being female might feel like, or if it feels different in any way other than what is due to the socialisation members of our sex receive and the physical reality of our bodies.

MTF trans people are biologically male - even in your own ideological worldview it's the only thing which differentiates them from women, who are female. Otherwise, any of us female people here could be one, couldn't we?

Incidentally, when it comes to rugby, there are forms of the sport where mixed teams do compete fairly.
In touch rugby, mixed sex teams exist in friendly and competitive format, right up to world championship international competition.
There are still rules around the balance of male and female players on a team, to ensure equality and fairness, but no rules on how those players need to identify or express. So a real opportunity to engage in high-level sport safely and happily.
We need to encourage and promote more opportunities like this.

@gardenbird48

Seen this morning on Titter Sport raises issues of fairness and now, it seems, safety for transgender people. It strengthens the case for early treatment - going through the right puberty.

it must take some effort to read that article as raising an issue of safety for transgender people (the safety impact on transmen is arguable but I don't think he is referring to them) and strengthening the argument for 'going through the right puberty'!! It was predicted earlier on this thread I think :¬)

So this person reckons it's a good idea to encourage kids to be permanently sterilised, on the off chance they might want - and have the ability - to be some sort of athlete?

So this person reckons it's a good idea to encourage kids to be permanently sterilised, on the off chance they might want - and have the ability - to be some sort of athlete?

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that TRAs on Twitter are using this argument to push for puberty blockers for children.

It strengthens the case for early treatment - going through the right puberty

Treatment? "Right" puberty, "wrong" body?
Sure, that's a really healthy message for GNC kids who want to do sports.

Yes ihaventgottimeforthis touch rugby should be played much more. I remember in Sydney teams would meet up on a weekday lunch and play lunch time corporate fixtures.

Yes , I count 14 words used where 2 would have done : women players

If the word woman is banned, I honestly would prefer 'non-men'. At least it accurately reflects the attitude that has allowed this ideology to infiltrate sports.