New rugby thread

[DianasLasso]

To discuss this:
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/53667683

Last thread was pulled, presumably for "misgendering", so be careful with pronouns and so forth, because it's worth discussing.

There's now a wealth of scientific evidence (e.g. recent study by Karolinska institute) to show that transwomen retain enough advantage over natal women to have an unfair competitive edge, and in the case of rugby, to pose a significantly raised risk of injuring other players (best case scenario was about 20 to 30% increased risk according to the recent RFU report.

Yet the BBC keeps running these sob story articles, despite the science being quite clear that it is both unsafe and unfair towards women.

It was pointed out that these articles often feature very slightly built trans-women (one assumes to garner sympathy). But even so, people who've been through male puberty but then transition remain significantly stronger than women even if, compared to a men's rugby team, they look skinny and slight.

Someone on the last thread made this comment a propos of slimly built men.

Purely anecdotal, but my 2 youngest brothers are like rakes and only a tiny bit taller than me. Both still as strong as an Ox though, because of male puberty. I have no doubt they'd destroy me in a physical game of anything. Looking at them, you'd think they weigh about 8 stone wringing wet, but they're heavy.

My sport used to be climbing. I've known several husband-wife climbing partnerships where the woman was by far the better technical climber, but the man climbed harder just because he was stronger. One pair in particular stick in my memory, where, having watched the woman lead an overhanging E3 on limestone, I discovered she couldn't do a single pull-up of her own body weight. He, on the other hand, could do pull ups (from a finger edge, not a bar) until he gave up from sheer boredom. He was a very slightly built bloke, too, and about an inch shorter than her.

I work with (mainly) boys in Y7,8 and 9. We have a policy of using restrain when necessary. We can’t hold the majority of the boys at this age as they are too big and strong (we are a mostly female workforce). And that is kids.

My DS used to play rugby - they segregate children's teams by sex from age 11 upwards.

I think there's also an argument for segregating teen rugby within each sex into weight bands - which is what New Zealand do. But if you took two sets of 15 year olds matched for height and weight, one boys, one girsl, the boys' group would be about 10 to 30% stronger. In fact, I doubt you'd find a single matched pair where the girl was stronger.

I remember arm-wrestling once with male friends when we were in our teens. A couple of them were so short and scrawny-looking that I genuinely thought it would be a close thing. It wasn't. I'd fought with my older, bigger brothers growing up, and always been trounced, but I think this was the first time I realised how much stronger a male about my size was than a female.

My DS is 12, pre-pubescent, and about the same height as me. He is definitely not an athlete and, to be honest, during lockdown he has become decidedly unfit.

I was genially shocked a couple of weeks ago to discover just how much stronger than me he has become. Not a bit stronger - he is able to physically overpower me completely without any real effort at all. There is a lot spoken about how puberty confers physical strength advantages on males, but based on my experience I would question that actually it begins earlier than that.

genuinely, not genially!

In recent years I have come to realise that the average person simply has comprehension of just how much stronger the average man is compared to the average woman.

No comprehension

Gross measures of body strength suggest that women are approximately 50-60% as strong as men in the upper body, and 60-70% as strong in the lower body

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#:~:text=Gross%20measures%20of%20body%20strength,to%2063%25%20of%20male%20strength.

And it is worth pointing out that in boxing, weight categories go up every few kilos as the authorities do not think it is generally fair for a 55 kilo male to fight a 50 kilo male - that is only a 10% difference.

Yes, I agree the average person doesn't really know how much stronger the average man is than the average woman.

I go to the gym. My partner refers to himself as a desk jockey and seriously thinks I could be stronger than him especially as he rejects the man=muscles brand of masculinity.

I think so many of his friends are similar, they're all into IT, gaming, reading etc, none are into sports so they have never really experienced the difference (I used to enjoy roughhousing with my male friends as a child until it became no competition). All they have are the endless superhero movies etc where women seem to effortlessly beat men

@AlecTrevelyan006

In recent years I have come to realise that the average person simply has comprehension of just how much stronger the average man is compared to the average woman.

I guess it is because we just don’t see men and women competing against each other in any (?) physical/contact sport (because of obvious reasons) but then it drops from peoples consciousness because it has been settled and shouldn’t need revisiting.

@Hulo

Yes, I agree the average person doesn't really know how much stronger the average man is than the average woman.

I go to the gym. My partner refers to himself as a desk jockey and seriously thinks I could be stronger than him especially as he rejects the man=muscles brand of masculinity.

I think so many of his friends are similar, they're all into IT, gaming, reading etc, none are into sports so they have never really experienced the difference (I used to enjoy roughhousing with my male friends as a child until it became no competition). All they have are the endless superhero movies etc where women seem to effortlessly beat men

I think there's a lot in that analysis, Hulo.

I find the defence comes from two ends of the spectrum. The nerdy end who watch superhero movies and think real life is like that. (I had a colleague who believed this - I was complaining that it was a struggle for me as a woman to lift my bike out of an overcrowed bike shed, specially as it had a child seat on the back, and he said "bet you're stronger than me..." "Mate, I was late 40s, just over 5', post C-section, and you were early 30s - are you shitting me?" He genuinely believed that because he was weak relative to other men this meant most women were stronger than him!)

But also (to my disappointment) some excellent sportswomen I know, who have worked very hard to get where they are and to get their sports taken seriously, and (I think) see any admission that women will never catch up that 10 to 30% performance gap as a sign of weakness which means all their hard work in buidling their sports up teeters on the brink of being undone. (Some of them are also into ultra-endurance events which women occasionally win - though this, I think, is for two reasons: firstly a smaller pool of people doing the sport in question; and secondly crossing that point where keeping your body going by sheer strength of mind and managing to carry on while pretty much hallucinating with tiredness counts for more than physique.)

I confess to “misgendering” Mackenzie, who “fears being excluded from competition” as a result of the World Rugby proposals.

Mackenzie asks World Rugby to “think about what it would be like to have something that you love, cared about and that brought meaning and happiness into your life taken away from you, and you had been told that that you weren't able to access that based on who you are as a person …Hopefully there is a chance to empathise with our cause and understand what that would be like."

Katie Gornall of BBC Sport introduces Mackenzie’s video as follows:

“It takes courage to speak out about this issue. One rugby player tell me what she thinks of World Rugby’s proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby.”

Oblivious to the real courage of the women who face transwomen in contact sports.
Typical BBC bias in their coverage of ‘trans rights’.

I understood the decision to be a safety issue, and therefore a valid reason.

It's within my lifetime that women have been able to participate in so many sports that we were originally barred from - long distance running (1972 for women's 1500 metres), pole vault, rugby, football etc. Yet the narrative is currently that those born male who identify as women are the courageous ones for speaking out about their entitlement to replace women from teams, awards, medals, scholarships etc.
That fight for women to be able to just participate in sports was a long one. Yet this now is being removed at the speed of light.

It's essentially a toss up between trans womens' feelings and womens' health and safety
Hopefully world rugby (and other sports) will stick with science.

Yes @howard97A, one could paraphrase Mackenzie there to ask to think about what it’d be like to suddenly find you had a minimum 20-30% extra chance of receiving a serious injury when playing a sport you love because someone decided it was ok for the opposing team to include players who had gone through Male puberty.

I am genuinely confused why transwomen rugby players don’t want to play for men’s teams. Is that a bad question to ask?
For sure they’d probably have to play for lower ranked teams, but - if this isn’t too simplistic a way too see things - being granted access to a woman’s rugby team is hardly up there in the ranks of things one might want to do to be recognised and accepted as a “woman”. I’m sorry if that’s an offensive or ignorant view. I guess it could be experienced as hurtful to not be allowed to be part of a team which you identify as being a member of, but this boils down then to hurt feeling vs actual broken bones. Not to mention that if trans women are permitted to play in women’s sports we’ll pretty soon have no women’s sports at all, so trans women themselves will effectively erase the thing they want to be part of.

"The BBC recounts a time that Morgan “folded an opponent ‘like a deckchair’” shortly after recounting Morgan’s own physical injury whilst playing the sport with men."

"The founder of Morgan’s team “jokes” that things will be great as long as they “can stop [Morgan] injuring players in training.” "

thepostmillennial.com/british-transgender-rugby-star-celebrated-for-injuring-women

The BBC is nothing but a men's rights organisation on this issue.

Namechange: I am genuinely confused why transwomen rugby players don’t want to play for men’s teams. Is that a bad question to ask?

But playing for a men’s team would imply that they are men. That is the last thing they want.

Remember the Boston marathon.
Women were not allowed to run marathons. Because it would damage their tender female reproductive organs. The pics of the men trying to grab her...

Women have fought and fought to be allowed to take part, to have their sports taken seriously. Sponsored etc etc.

The can you imagine how it feels stuff is so tone deaf as to be obscene. I can only assume it's trolling? As no one is that shortsighted surely.

Why is the BBC doing that? The current Government message is not to further Trans rights.

Even when rules are followed, rugby is always potentially dangerous. They mitigate as far as possible via strict rules but ultimately your body gets a bashing.

World Rugby know they're potentially on a shakey peg in terms of concussion research that might make the game untenable in its current form.

They would be mad to open themselves to the inevitable legal cases - and surely now that they've investigated they couldnt say they didnt know.

Im hopeful that this is one argument that TRAs cant guilt and DARVO their way out of (although I'm disappointed by the number of young, male rugby Twitter accounts that are shouting transphobia).

Mckenzie, 26, had never picked up a rugby ball before until she was approached at a tech conference, but was soon hooked

Umm wonder why / how she was approached.

There is lots of me, me, me, me in the report but not one instance of McKenzie considering what impact (nice choice of word their) their playing has on women. No recognition that they could cause greater harm to their opponents.

I have. 14 year old boy who is nearly as tall as I am and is far stronger and faster than I am or ever was.

Wrong there use there