Nadine Dorries to meet with sporting associations

[achillestoes]

Dorries has been making the right noises on the issue of male people in female sports for a while, but on Tuesday she is holding a meeting with Sport England and other bodies representing football, cricket, rugby, tennis and other sports. She intends to make it clear that she is expects sporting bodies to reserve female sports for people born female. I think the implicit message is that sporting bodies need to do this voluntarily or they will seek to legislate on it.

Does anyone know where Lucy Powell, the Shadow Minister for Culture and Sports, stands on this?

Watch them keep quiet. They know its wrong but haven't the courage to upset the activists. They'll let the Tories just carry the can.

Starmer has said (vaguely) that he agrees that female sport should be for women. The problem with him is that he uses that word in a very gymnastic way.

Where did you read this about Dorries?

Dories gets a lot of stick but I hope she’ll get some credit for this move. Personally I think it should be legislated for to stop a move to roll it back in 5 years time but there may be good reasons for a voluntary code.

She’s in the Mail on Sunday. I don’t do links on here because there’s a risk of doxxing.

‘Personally I think it should be legislated for to stop a move to roll it back in 5 years time but there may be good reasons for a voluntary code.’

The DMCS has a massive legislative programme - Online Harms being a big plank of it. They probably will legislate but it might be that they’re trying to avoid the necessity for it.

I would imagine Dorries' priority now will be bringing back her bills restricting access to abortion in the UK.

What were the restrictions she wanted?

This is the MoS piece:

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10953147/NADINE-DORRIES-choose-fairness-inclusivity-sport.html

In fact, in terms of other related areas such as workplace schemes, I prefer her framing of "fairness" over "inclusion". The need to consider disability at work is because it is otherwise unfair not to. It helps achieve equality. You can show a clear reason for doing it and so on.

What's not needed is "inclusion" whereby you have cross-dressers in female spaces, for example, as it pushes women out:

Civil servants told they are free to be gender flexible

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eb361384-f3dc-11ec-b7b8-d1bfbe7f1c7e?shareToken=106ae5839860057d609fe396ad8eb6ed

Same kind of thing. "Include" everyone and you end up being unfair. It's very very clear in sports and it needs to stop at all levels. Not just elite levels.

‘What's not needed is "inclusion" whereby you have cross-dressers in female spaces, for example, as it pushes women out:’

I agree inclusion undermines fairness. It’s also a feature, not a bug. People who advocate inclusion of male people in female sports know and admit it’s unfair. They’re just trying to persuade people not to care.

Time limits. She has been vocally anti choice for years.

Does supporting time-limits make you anti-choice? What is her preferred time limit? (I think we’d find if we surveyed the country that nearly everyone supports some time limit or other.)

I read an argument on another thread that inclusivity is important but only for those eligible in the first place. So efforts must be made in female sport to include all females. But as males are not eligible for female sport it is not a priority ( for female sport) to include them. For trans men / non binary ( females) “fairness” may ( or may not if the individual has not had any treatment) trump inclusion.
That argument makes sense to me.

Inclusivity in sport as a whole is important. Everyone who wants to should be able to participate in sport in some way. Inclusivity in exclusive categories is a nonsense. It contradicts the inherent purpose of the category system, which is inclusivity for everyone through categorisation that allows as many people as possible a chance of success.

Does anyone know where Lucy Powell, the Shadow Minister for Culture and Sports, stands on this?

She's explicitly said she supports the EHRC's approach that inclusion doesn't trump fairness.

That said, I think the approach Starmer et al are generally taking is to leave it to individual bodies to decide. That leaves individual experts trying to push back against the might of Stonewall, mermaids, TELI etc.

His definition of woman includes the bepenised.

So his support is as effective a chocolate teapot which has been carefully spray painted to look real.

‘That leaves individual experts trying to push back against the might of Stonewall, mermaids, TELI etc.’

We badly need people in government who are prepared to stand up for women.

‘So his support is as effective a chocolate teapot which has been carefully spray painted to look real.’

Agree.

She would like to reduce the abortion time limits from 24 to 20 weeks. It's an appalling proposal.

I am glad she is trying to protect women's sport.

She wants it reduced to 20 weeks - which is pretty much allowing for advances in pre-term care. She also wants to split up abortion provision and pregnancy counselling so that they have to be separate providers.

It doesn’t exactly sound rabidly anti-choice. And I think I’d prefer time limits to be debated by someone who clearly does know what a woman is, what a man is and that male and female bodies are different.

I get the impression Keir wants the whole thing to go away. And if push came to shove he’d side with inclusion.
But he is happy to leave to others basically. He is not a leader imo as he is unwilling or unable to make (potentially ) unpopular decisions or decisions at all.

‘She would like to reduce the abortion time limits from 24 to 20 weeks. It's an appalling proposal.’

Appalling? Would you advocate for no limit, or a different limit?

‘She wants it reduced to 20 weeks - which is pretty much allowing for advances in pre-term care. She also wants to split up abortion provision and pregnancy counselling so that they have to be separate providers.’

20 weeks being 5 months into the pregnancy. I would want to know more about how long an abortion takes to arrange before I commented on that, but I wouldn’t call it ‘appalling’.

In fact I’d probably want to know a few things. Like how many women would be denied the ability (practically speaking) to have a termination if the time limit were reduced, and why. I would want to understand, if that number was significant, why that was. Is it an access issue? Is it bureaucratic difficulty? Is it to do with not testing for pregnancy early enough? Etc.

I believe the vast majority of women who will eventually choose termination do so long before 20 weeks.