Public want trans women kept out of female sport (Times, 16/6/22)

[BettyFilous]

The Times is reporting on research undertaken by the More in Common think tank. The article covers multiple domains, not just sport.

^Only 19 per cent of Britons supported allowing trans athletes in women’s sport against 57 per cent who did not. The report found consistent opposition to biological males in women’s sport in every group surveyed, even among groups who backed transgender inclusion in other parts of
public life.^

(snip)

Support for trans women using women’s lavatories and changing rooms depended on whether they had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Those who had were twice as welcome in single-sex spaces as biological males who identified as women. But it was the question of sport that proved to be the “red line”.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4d010462-ece3-11ec-8821-d2e916a7eab3?shareToken=3725b577b2d58b381a2773f04ce1f860

But when you speak to ordinary people across the country you realise that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, most Britons take a nuanced, compassionate approach that is rooted in society doing what it can to make trans people feel accepted but which also balances inclusion with fairness.” Others could learn from ordinary Britons, he added

But this is exactly what most gender critical feminists are saying! Unless Luke was having a pop at transactivists, which he probably wasn't!

I've downloaded the report and data tables.
Interesting overall, the debate about transgender people didn't rate very high at all.
(1.A-C) In your opinion, which are the most IMPORTANT issues facing the country today?
Select the top three
64% Cost of living
32% Supporting the NHS
29% The war in Ukraine
26% Climate change and the environment
21% Covid-19
18% Affordable housing
18% Mental health
16% Crime
14% Asylum seekers crossing the channel
12% Social care for the elderly
12% Jobs and unemployment
12% Gap between haves and have nots
10% Brexit
7% Racism in society
5% School standards
2% The debate about transgender people
1% Other (Please specify)

I can totally see why most people - maybe including me - would put it behind other issues that seem more urgently important in their lives. Especially when framed as a debate about trans people rather than about women's rights, which doesn't even appear. Most people, arguable rightly despite the massive increases, think of "trans people" as a tiny minority and many of them don't know about the full realities and ramifications of gender ideology.

Despite years and years of campaigning from Stonewall, the public still haven't accepted the new message that being trans is a matter of self identification, that penises can be female, and that being a woman is literally anyone who says they are a woman with no further qualifications.
This is a very good point. Though they've campaigned for these ideas to be basis for policies and to become accepted in some institutions, they haven't actually campaigned for this to become the main way of understanding trans people in thd population generally.

The reason is obvious if people with a penis or who have gone through puberty with one compete against biological females then that will be the end of female sport completely. Trans should have their own sporting event. There are so many of them now and with the trend growing, it should be easy for them to organise their own events.

That would be my prefered solution. But you know they wont have that because that option states in plain terms that TW are not women. Hell will freeze over before the tin foil hat gang accept that.

They do not have to accept that. They do have to accept that their belief is not shared by others, and they cannot demand it any more than the Church of England can require everyone of all faith to affirm that there is only one true God and to wear a crucifix.