Irish Rugby amending policy in line with World Rugby guidance

[SwissBall]

www.irishrugby.ie/2022/08/10/irfu-updates-transgender-policy/

Contact rugby limited to those whose sex was recorded as female at both. Tag/touch rugby an option for those not.

That's quite the step for Ireland as it's full steam gender woo over there

It affects two players on the face of things. I feel for them, but in reality (of course) it affects everyone, because the rules were unfair and now they are fair, and because the players sent on a pitch with the two trans players were at increased risk, and now they’re not.

I don’t feel for them. They’re perfectly entitled to play with people of the same sex.

That will be fun and court games.

If one can get €5k for hurt feelings over a hair cut what will being told that one has to play on the correct sex team cost??

I certainly do, it must be hard to be one of just two affected people when a policy changes at this level. I have empathy with that. But it’s 100% the right decision.

This is why the Irish GRA is nuts though because all someone has to do is fill out a form and you can get your birth cert changed to record your sex as female:

"Players are permitted to play in this category if the player’s sex recorded at birth is female, irrespective of their gender identity."

If someone has a birth cert that says female, the policy document doesn't provide any contingencies for that to be challenged. They needed a much better policy in light of the ease the GRA makes of getting a new birth cert.

That’s a good point miri. Does this mean it’s pointless?

I think it will be really hard to enforce given that it is so easy to get a birth cert that says X was born "female" even if they weren't. The policy document just says sex recorded at birth but I don't know how you ask someone to prove that in the post GRA era.

If I Ms. X decide to play rugby, I've got my birth cert that says "female", as far as I'm concerned I fulfill the policy. If the person is obviously trans will the IRFU then turnaround and say a birth cert doesn't prove I was born female? If you then start insisting that certain people get DNA tests to prove that they were born female etc, you're getting into real grey areas. The GRA insists that the

Someone on the thread about the GAA posted a video of Aodhan O'Riordan when the GRA was being debated scoffing at the idea of excluding anyone from sport and calling it nonsensical. The level of debate they did when they were pushing through the GRA in Ireland was nonsense, its an incredibly poorly drafted law (IMHO unconsistutional) that didn't forsee any of the obvious problems such as sport and prison.

That doesn’t surprise me about being pushed through. At least in the UK you’d need a diagnosis of GD and then wait 2 years to get the GRC, you don’t even need that in Ireland do you?

Nope, you just fill out a form, no diagnosis or anything else needed, you "become" the opposite sex and are given a gender recognition cert and can send off for a birth cert that has your new sex recorded as if you were born that way

(also I see the irony in my previous comment calling the GRA poorly drafted and then mispelling unconsistutional myself )

'Recent peer reviewed research provides evidence that there are physical differences between those people whose sex was assigned as male and those as female at birth, and advantages in strength, stamina and physique brought about by male puberty are significant and retained even after testosterone suppression'

Recent? So we didn't know the difference between men and women until recently? Great decision by Irish Rugby but FFS these journalists need to get a grip - though I guess this might be the acceptable way of phrasing it.

Yep! “Recent research”. Except We have a hundred years of sports statistics, medical records, employment data, data on patterns of offending etc. and it all clearly shows that women are at a disadvantage.

Thats why I don’t have sympathy. A) because everyone involved already knew it was unfair and B) because if those involved had the ability to compete and win in the more prestigious and lucrative men’s categories, they would have done and we wouldn’t have this stupid conversation.

The Irish Rugby Football Union has a lot of pull right now , as the men have just made history , winning a series against the mighty All Blacks.

It's hard to think of worse people for the government to piss off. Except the GAA , the Credit Union and Irish Mammies.

I suspect the Mammies will be coming for them as more & more sunlight spills out onto matters… & it will be a glorious reckoning…

www.flac.ie/news/2022/08/11/flac-irfu-gender-participation-policy-may-give-ris/
FFS.

The problem is, they're not wrong. The legal changes that have been made over the last few years to appease genderwoo have created a situation where a TW could potentially challenge this on legal grounds, which is ridiculous.

The Equal Status Act is just nonsense now, because it mentions 'gender' rather than sex, and since you can be whatever gender you like....
I know it's mostly for work, accommodation and good and services, but I think they could claim that participation in sport comes under that somehow?

Also our GRA explicitly states that it changes a person's 'legal sex', so that another shitshow that creates a legal mess that apparently nobody thought through.

And, they are planning to included gender identity in the Equal Status Act, so challenging guys like GAA player in the junior women's team is going to be harder.

They are bullshitting under current legislation there is woman/female and man/male

If the male has a GRC he can take a case and could win if the rules of the club were not clearly defined but clubs can have membership rules and a primary function.

The Portmarnock Golf Club case has not been overturned and the principles remain if the club can classify members.

I agree if the male has a GRC there is a problem.

Without a GRC this claim ⬇️ is 100% bullshiting

“The IRFU is subject to the Equal Status Acts which prohibit discrimination – including differences in treatment on the basis that someone is transgender. As a result, the exclusion of individuals from the sport on the basis of the new policy may give rise to discrimination complaints under the Equal Status Acts.

It will be intresting because they are private clubs and Freedom of Association comes into play which is why they are targeting the money.

TBF on one level I would bust a rib laughing, if the IRFU management all got GRC's; it would resolve the risk of funding cuts due to their gender imbalance.

FLAC was the organisation which was involved in the original case and looks like the women in Limerick Prison can mark them off the list for free impartial legal advice.
www.flac.ie/news/2022/06/14/flac-are-proud-to-announce-our-membership-of-trans/

Is there any precedent for legislation being so badly constructed that it has to be completely re-written? We've no equality legislation protecting women because the "gender ground" which was supposed to be about sex-based protections used the bloody word "gender". And of course the self-ID legislation is equally confused. That's before you get to the lunacy of doing away with the requirement for medical input. I don't see how we progress without the legislative shitshow being remedied. We can push back against the erasure of the word woman and we can push for proper explorative therapies for gender questioning children but with the current legislation what happens with the inevitable court cases?

Loads of legislation has been challenged.

The first bit of legislation which springs to mind is the sex with a minor legistation which resulted in convictions being overturned. And new legislation was "rushed" through the Dail

The legislation recognising the right of a mental health paitent was partly as a result of a woman being committed for the "mental insanity" of arguing with her (soon to be ex) husband in public. BK used that legislation to prove that legally sane people can want to rape and stab their mother to death.

I suspect that one of the reasons that the child rapist's GRC nor BK's GRC will not be challanged by the Minister is that the governemnt dont want the Courts looking at it. Reading reports of the Judge's comments on the BK case make's it evident that the view is BK still remains a risk to women and removal of the GRC should be given consideration.

@SolasAnla Thank you! That is a relief to know. All we need now is the political and legal will to change it!

How does it only affect two players ? Last time I checked rugby was a team game. So any biological males playing would be a risk to everyone they played with and against. So this ruling must improve the safety of hundreds of women who might have ended up playing with these two people you mention @achillestoes .

The government want to push GRC's down to babies as to how that would work in real life is anyone's guess. That is why they want to remove the obligation on minor's to apply for a GRC through the Courts.

The politicians opted to remove the word woman from pregnancy legislation and will sell this as "progressive" so its up to the Mammies and Daddies to ask the questions.

They seem to be doing a volte face on the removing "women" from the legislation, I think they were expecting to sneak it in without anyone noticing but now that there is some sunlight on the issue, they seem to be backtracking www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-40938056.html

I honestly don't think the GRA would survive a Consitutional challenge, it changed the defintions of words that are in the Constitution (man, woman, sex).

If you look at the discussion that was had before the marriage equality referendum, some wanted the government to introduce legislation that would simply change the definiton of marriage without a consitiutional referendum and were told no that it could be easily challenged if they were to redefine words in ways that people who voted for the consitution would not have understood.

When the constitution was voted in '37 did people understand the word "woman" to be adult human female or "adult human female + some males - some females"

If you look at the timing of the GRA it was done after the same sex marriage ref but before it had been signed into the constitution by the President, I know when I voted in 2015, I voted using for the wording understanding sex to mean either male or female not gender identity which is what is was changed to after the vote.

TBH, I'm hoping that FLAC etc challenge the IRFU's policy, the GRA has not been challenged in court to date and its high time it was

I think Ireland needs a massive, public wake up call about self identification. Others have been saying ‘it’s fine in Ireland no one minds, no problems’ for years.

When in fact just no one really noticed or understood.

If a man, who’d been able to change his birth certification to female, then now tries to contest this publicly then it would be a good thing - rugby is important in Ireland and people would realise for the first time that this was even a ‘thing’.