World Rugby Guidelines out

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

www.world.rugby/news/591776/world-rugby-approves-updated-transgender-participation-guidelines

"it was concluded that safety and fairness cannot presently be assured for women competing against transwomen in contact rugby."

"As a result, the new guidelines do not recommend that transwomen play women’s contact rugby on safety grounds at the elite and international level of the game where size, strength, power and speed are crucial for both risk and performance, but do not preclude national unions from flexibility in their application of the guidelines at the community level of the game. Transmen are permitted to participate in men’s contact rugby. "

Anyone had a response from British cycling? I need to write

cutted up pear

I was reminded of this when the Liz Truss statement came out.

Anyway, this has given me more to talk about in RL. Sport is a really obvious area for lots of blokes to get. So that's good.

I had a chat with my male colleagues about the Iranian women’s football team. They are all keen football fans. They got the issue straight away.

Strange how all the rugby clubs who are deeply disappointed with world rugby appear to be made up entirely of gay or bi men. They always describe themselves as LGBTQ rugby clubs but strangely the photos are always of quite obviously male ppl...odd that

www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/sport/local-sport/aberdeen-taexali-hugely-disappointed-by-world-rugbys-transgender-women-decision/

Lol! The NZ women’s team don’t understand the issues!

‘Sams really vulnerable’
‘But they’re 6ft 5! How vulnerable can they be?’
‘You don’t understand, they need to be taken seriously and wear womans clothes to feel womanly’
‘But they haven’t had any surgery and we wear practically the same all-black kit as the men?’
‘It’s not safe for them to play with men, we can’t put them at risk of injury’
‘But the females could get injured’
‘They’ll feel more comfortable when they’re in the women’s changing room’
‘WE WONT!’

"I had a chat with my male colleagues about the Iranian women’s football team."

Totally different to the Hubbard/Mouncey/McKinnon scenarios IMHO. It was an Iranian FA official who spotted the males in a training session and had them booted out. They never actually played any matches and the Iranian women's team hardly ever plays outside the country.

@andyoldlabour
The men had spent their entire career playing women’s football. The problem had been identified for at least 4 years before any steps were taken as the first concerns were raised in 2010 but final action wasn’t taken until 2015. So the women who played against them were put at risk for years. This is completely analogous to most grass roots sport.

I'm still shaking my head over how disappointed all these male organisations and people are that female people are being protected from career destroying injury or death.

So ruddy disappointing.

The Black Ferns (NZ women's rugby team) asked their national governing body to go along with World Rugby recommendations in preventing male players from joining the women's game - and the national body rejected their petition on the grounds that they (the Black Ferns) didn't understand the issues!

For fucks sake, the women understand the issues completely. Of course.

Being discussed on GMB now. Sharon Davies representing women in sport.

How many times is this Blair bloke going to say "actually"?

What I don’t understand is all the calls for “more evidence before we decide” Or “there were no studies specific to rugby” what is the evidence they demand? a comparative study of the number of women seriously injured by trans women with a control group of women injured by other women? How many injured women would there need to be to make this statistically significant? Over what time course?

Surely the burden of evidence is for the sports bodies to prove that it’s safe and fair for them to participate... someone on another thread cited the battles Oscar pistorius has over many years to prove they conferred no advantage to be allowed to run on his blades.

This wouldn’t happen in any other field of safety testing... new medicines first have to be tested for safety, if it is not known whether a drug is safe/not safe in pregnancy for example, it is not licensed for use in this group. They don’t just say, ah let’s give it to some pregnant women and we can ban it later if it proves to be harmful.

This is a better link:

www.change.org/p/rugby-football-union-rfu-board-should-be-replaced

Discussed here in this excellent podcast with Ross Tucker - aca.st/8438b6