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?

Exactly.

We do need that amending in the EA but it would be very hard to get described accurately and then passed - assuming that would it need to be passed by a majority as usual. Also, I actually would not trust the Civil Service to do so accurately - they seem to defy any government edits on this. The Civil Service has been so thoroughly Stonewalled that, for them, gender identity takes precedence over sex based women's right every single time. Sadly.

Mendacious is a very polite word for what Dorries and her ilk are, nor am I disagreeing with her position on this topic. I’m not making assumptions - if it walks like a duck….
She’s pointing to something that you will like while she’s stealing your purse.

There is a high proportion of swimmers with asthma and there have been a number of studies after it was seen that the number of TUEs were increasing at all levels of swimming. My own DC developed chloramine induced asthma as a result of getting back into training too soon after a chest infection .

I posted this article on a different thread:

Confusion about Inclusion: Transwomen Athletes in the Female Category

idrottsforum.org/feature-imbrisevic220623/

The author makes the following point about how fairness and safety are covered in the EA 2010 whilst inclusion is not:

If we look at the respective legislation in the UK, we find that it mentions both fairness and safety but not inclusion. The UK Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004 (Section 19 Sport) states that a trans athlete can be excluded from a gender-affected sport if this measure ‘is necessary to secure – (a) fair competition, or (b) the safety of competitors’. The relevant section (195) in the UK 2010 Equality Act (EA) repeals/supersedes the section on sport (19) in the GRA – but retains the substance: fair competition and the safety of competitors can warrant the exclusion of ‘transsexual persons’.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/195

A woman has different chromosomes to men , if it comes down to genetic testing I’m fine with that.

Dorries is tweeting having just finished her meeting. She’s made it ‘absolutely clear’ that she expects sporting bodies to follow a policy that reserves competitive women’s sport for people of the female sex.

Thank you, Nadine Dorries.

It's really great she's made it 'absolutely clear' what she expects but will be interesting to see is what happens if these bodies don't do what she expects and allow TW to compete with women. This is what is important.

Again, they are saying the right things however I want to see some action, to date they have just let all these things happen - TW in women's prisons, competing in our sport, they havent actually done anything. I don't believe a word this government says.

Just seen a number of posts on Twitter suggesting that, because Dorries isn’t the brightest, she must be an imbecile who has this ‘complex discussion’ all the wrong way round.

Let me give you a hint, fellas: Dorries was a nurse. She knows the difference between male and female bodies. If this debate appears to you to be ‘highly complex’, take a moment to consider whether that might be a you thing.

Noisyprat

Jumping to legislate would be a mistake. You’re absolutely right that there’s only one answer to this, but the shift will have more legitimacy if it doesn’t require the legal stick to make it happen. She seems very happy to legislate if she has to.

At the very least it should be possible for the Government to ensure that UK sporting bodies which don't comply will not be eligible to receive any public funding, including lottery funding.

Interesting to see how this plays out.

I am to assume that the Ministry of Culture is not part of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme?

My concern with the government (is not so much the ministers of whatever party is in power at the time), but the civil service who now have their own agenda and seem to block legislation they don't like.

The civil service leaked the government plans about conversion therapy to ITV's Paul Brand (whose husband is a senior civil servant at Downing Street) and Brand is a member of various LGBT+ pressure groups.

BootsandRoots

Didn’t make any difference, though. If anything it gave the government their pretext for breaking off ties with Stonewall - Stonewall did the severance themselves.

@Dreikanter "The author makes the following point about how fairness and safety are covered in the EA 2010 whilst inclusion is not"

This is a point I raised in a thread recently. Nowhere in the Equality Act 2010 is the word "inclusion" mentioned. The words "equality" and "diversity" are mentioned several times.

It is curious as to where this focus on "inclusion" is derived. It certainly is not relevant to our law.

I have no doubt that facts and science would have been discussed at the meeting. As would things like liability for avoidable death and injuries.

It's possible that representatives from governing bodies (hopefully without their Stonewall influenced D & I staff) might have been forced to listen to some uncomfortable truths instead of the emotional manipulation of the self invested males determined to invade women's sport. Maybe?

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/61973789

Statement from Dorries

That BBC article reads badly - no coherence, it's as if it's a collection of cut&pastes.

"For their part, the governing bodies said that they are "actively carrying out their own scientific research to establish the impact of athletes' sex at birth and gender reassignment on athletic performance"."

Maybe they should have carried that out before their wholesale inclusion of males in female sports? It was for them to prove they could be included, not for women to prove they couldn't.

The cynic in me sees this 'scientific research' as no more than a delaying tactic. There's already considerable data out there.

MaudeYoung - I think inclusion is relevant to the EA, only not in the way TRAs think. To ensure all women who want to be can be included safely and fairly in sport (a legitimate aim), men can be excluded (the proportionate means). Men and women have their meanings per the EA as male of any age and female of any age respectively.