The inevitable happened - and DD is rightly pissed off (as am I)

[discontentpearl]

I've not forced my gender-critical beliefs on DD (13), keeping schtum when there's things on TV etc, but when she's asked me a couple of times in the recent past I've told her what I think (along with the standard caveat of "everyone deserves to be treated equally" etc.).

At her age, the standard mantra of TWAW is a regular feature in her daily life, but I think she peaked yesterday.

A boy in her year group socially transitioned at the beginning of this school year, returning after the summer holidays with a new name/pronouns etc. Yesterday DD returned home and asked me if she was still biologically male and whether biological males are better at running than females, as this trans-girl had quite emphatically beaten her to 2nd place in a sprint and she didn't think it was fair. I explained why males were faster due to their physiology and had a brief chat about how more and more people are standing up and talking about trans-women in female sport, even though they fear retaliation and cancellation.

DD went off to bed reasonably appeased, I am bloody annoyed though. It was only a PE race (she does run in inter-schools events too), but she has a neurodivergent diagnosis and has struggled somewhat academically, but the one thing she's always had is that she's good at sports.

NB: I've name changed for this as I know the mum quite well and am reasonably identifiable via previous threads.

They are in year 9 (13/14) - although there are a few boys that aren't obviously well into puberty as yet - the individual in question most definitely is.

Regardless of puberty stage, there are obvious differences in achievements/standards between boys and girls at this age. Look at the records for the Junior Boys and Junior Girls for England - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Schools%27_Athletics_Championships

You could also look at the English Schools athletic award scheme, which has differing standards for boys and girls - www.esaa.net/v2/awards/awardsposter-a2.pdf

The differences are real, and start before puberty, although puberty obviously ramps up the differences.

Awful for girls to be openly disadvantaged from succeeding in their own sport. Here's the link to Safe Schools Alliance who have numerous letters and advice for challenging the numerous policies that currently discriminate against girls

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/

And here's a link to Transgender Trend's warning from a psychologist about the dangers of socially affirming a teenager:

www.transgendertrend.com/teenager-says-theyre-transgender/

They Sex-segregate sports at the beginning of secondary schools in the U.K. which is from age 11+. Some boys start puberty earlier, so even at primary school they sex-segregate sports (depending on which it is) or within mixed-sex sports they have an even match of males and females.
In out of school sports competitive clubs they divide boys and girls in to different streams from age 8 (cricket in the U.K.). Yes some boys start puberty late but some start it much earlier so to traditionally allow young females at least a chance of enjoying and excelling at sports they split the sexes quite early on.

Playing devils advocate here; if the boy concerned hasn't gone through puberty, surely there is a limited biological advantage?

Our local primary segregates sports day from p1 because apparently no girl would have won anything in at least the past 6 years (I was talking to ds's teacher about sports in general) if was mixed sex. Ds won the boys events for his year last year, none of the girls came close to his times, he's 7. Practice might be a factor, he has football training twice a week and he and I run together at least twice a week as well as social acceptability in that it's okay for boys to run about getting sweaty compared to the girls (thinking peer pressure) but there definitely seems to be difference. I used to think there wasn't as I could beat the boys into secondary school but my dad whose build I inherited ran marathons for fun and I'd train with him plus it turns out I'm in that percentage of women who don't have the "female" pelvis (mine is flatter and apparently feels much more like a mans according to half the hospital who had a feel when ds got stuck in it).

My husband used to do the local hill race pre puberty. Obviously familiarity with the terrain helped as did being willing to take the rougher route but he used to beat all the adult female competitors including club runners.

Girls need encouraging into sport and single sex is a big part of that imo.

Wow, do you know nothing about children at all?!

My experience of children - based on having helped at numerous childcare settings and schools - is that boys can easily and soundly beat girls at running, jumping, and wrestling, from at least age two, possibly earlier. Girls on the other hand are about a year ahead of the boys at fine motor skills by age four and stay miles ahead in eg handwriting until about age ten when the boys finally catch up. Ask any teacher.

Their bodies are completely different. The obsession with puberty is a trans activist / Stonewall thing, probably connected to their obsession with sex, it has little basis in reality and nothing to do with fairness in single sex sport.

Girls aren't just boys who haven't gone through puberty any more than they are feelings inside a males head.

Presumably the boys currently have single sex pe as it would take an idiot of the extreme to place one female child amongst the boys in a rugby scrum.

So the boys get single sex pe and the girls no longer do?

Its discrimination on the basis of sex.

Your poor dd

@Aroundtheworldin80moves we had this issue. DD was physically injured during handball by a boy who had "transitioned" weeks before. I took it through safeguarding, head, governors and ofsted ... all agreed that mixed sport is allowed.

There seems to be an emerging group in DDs age group who "transition back and forth every week just so they can kick off in class that the teacher used the wrong pronoun."

A few months back I saw something very interesting about the strength/speed differences between boys and girls which (as far as I can recall) said that a lot of the research into this area had focussed on girls and boys of about 10 years old and found not much difference between them. It was then assumed that would apply to younger children too. This was unfortunate because what the researchers failed to appreciate is that:

1. Girls of 10 are generally a bit further into puberty than boys, so starting their growth spurt, and this is the only point in childhood when girls do have similar strength and speed to boys; and
2. Boys are exposed to a lot of testosterone in the womb and that gives them an advantage in the early years of childhood.

I remember seeing a study about unbiased conditioning in parenting. Parents were asked to allow their babies to crawl up and along a wide beam until they the parent felt it was unsafe. Each time the parent stopped girls before boys. It's an unconscious basis that allows boys to be more physical and adventurous than girls from an early age. Presumably this will have an effect on the two sexes ability at sports long before puberty sets in.

@daffodilandtulip so everyone you went to dismissed the injury to your daughter?! I have no words.

Our schools are not perfect, but transitioned boys continue to play on the boys' teams. Surely that makes more sense?

I'm sure you're right that there's a big social difference too. However, I feel some people think it's sexist and somehow doing women and girls down to acknowledge that there are big differences between male bodies and female bodies when it comes to strength, speed, height etc, whereas my view is it's accepting material reality.

It is, of course, important to be very clear that most of the physical differences between males and females don't affect our ability to do most jobs or to benefit from education. As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence to support the idea that males have superior brains, and evidence around sex differences in specific skills like mapreading and maths is tricky to evaluate because of the social conditioning from a very early age.

As an aside can i recommend the film LADYBUGS (available from Amazon) its a comedy but takes this idea to its conclusion.

To answer the puberty question, I read a response to something similar about boys and puberty. They said something along the lines of that puberty was just the icing on the cake, the actual cake had been baked long before that.

If she did that, i.e. point out the truth, would the adults around her collude to say that she cannot believe the evidence of her eyes. We all need to stand up for our children. I am sure you will not be the only parent annoyed. Get facts completely straight, and I would be speaking to school.

Which changing room does the boy use?

This is whyit annoys me so much that people opposing transwomen competing against women often specify that they oppose this in elite sports. Why should only elite sportswomen be protected from this obvious injustice?

This makes me so mad. We are teaching a generation of girls that fairness is only for males.

This is exactly why even the argument "well in elite sports one can account for it but who cares about everything else" (which by the way many don't even like, to many full on male participation without any limitations is the only way) is so, so infuriating. Small things also matter. Not just the elite. A girl lost first place because a boy's feelings were prioritised.

Each time the parent stopped girls before boys.

I most certainly don’t want to dismiss the role of social conditioning. But how did they rule out the possibility that the parents had an accurate perception of their child’s strength and balance?

Also I just Googled to check whether the sex differences in TBI risk from falling apply to children as well as adults. Apparently girls are more at risk from a fall, but it turns out very small boys get more TBI than any other group of children, so that supports the idea that parents are disproportionately overprotective of girls in situations like that. I think even in that experiment though, you can’t neatly disentangle the social conditioning from the physiological reality.

Just to update - DD has said that the trans-girl does not get changed in the female changing room, so that's good, but of course, that's the current setup, and things may change.

I've started to draft a letter to the school, but may have to do so anonymously as I'm self-employed and cannot risk my business being hit by a cancellation campaign.