Governing bodies are beginning to recognize that allowing trans women to compete in women’s categories is inherently unfair.
(imagine that! It’s almost as if women have been trying to tell them this the entire time! 😏)
original article: nationalpost.com/opinion/fairness-may-be-coming-back-to-sport?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAQ4IqdjeTu_8irARjnoPWPtpu375IBKg8IACoHCAowmdaOCDDj-3U&utm_content=related
Archived article: canadatoday.news/ab/barbara-kay-maybe-fairness-will-come-back-to-sport-73953/
Inclusion rights have dominated the political podium for a generation of athletes. Female athletes watch in dismay as those born males whiz past them in track and field, rowing and other sports where postpubertal differences in muscle strength and lung capacity – even with reduced testosterone – guarantee them a significant boost in the female category ( self for those who are fairly mediocre by male standards).
Resistance was futile. Sports federations were so committed to inclusion that complaints were interpreted as transphobic and athletes risked rejection by slipping: expulsion from the team, loss of sports scholarships and the eradication of childhood dreams. Their coaches went along to get along. Anger, fear and dismay simmered behind the brave face many female athletes had to show when rational expectations were sidelined by irrational gender politics.
A defining moment came last year when trans-identified Lia Thomas, a second division male swimmer before she switched socially and lowered testosterone levels, beat female competitors in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races in Ivy League swimming and diving -Women brutally surpassed championships with such seeming ease that the existential problem of “unfairness” exceeded the capacity of ideologues to spin the narrative.
One of the women forced to compete against Thomas was the daughter of Kim Jones, a former Stanford University tennis player who was so devastated by the “emotional blackmail and abuse” she witnessed that she left the Independent Council on Women’s Sport (ICONS). an advocacy group comprised of current and former collegiate and professional female athletes and allies dedicated to empowering women in sport by protecting their gender rights.
On Jan. 12, ICONS attended a rally during the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) annual convention in San Antonio, Texas, to demand that the organization, the governing body for collegiate athletics, commit to promoting women’s gender rights to respect sports.
ICONS participated as a member of a newly formed consortium called the International Consortium on Female Sport (ICFS), a lobby group that proponents for the preservation of the female sport category worldwide. For example, in a Jan. 18 letter to the Ontario Powerlifting Association, the ICFS urged the Governing Body to have an “honest conversation” about the advantage those born to males have in sports, citing admissions of such Benefits posted to social media by a transgender athlete from Alberta who competed in the women’s category.
ICFS’ original membership groups come from seven countries, including Canada, the United States, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. The lead founder of the ICFS is Linda Blade, President of Athletics Alberta, high performance coach and author (@coachblade to her 16,000+ Twitter followers).
Blade reported to me that a panel at the NCAA Convention on Inclusion in Sport and Transgender Athlete Policy did not include dissenting opinions. “The panelists were all trans activists,” Blade told me, with “not a single panelist representing the female voice.”
According to Blade, each individual panelist justified the primacy of inclusion with a variant of the claim that women needed to make their sport “safe” for trans-identified athletes who were born males because of the risk it would not have mental health. Other sports federations promote the same motive. Essentially, inclusionists argue, women’s sport exists in part as a therapeutic haven for mentally distressed male births.
Men’s sport obviously has no similar obligation.
The article carries on but I think we get the gist of things. Feel free to click the link to read the rest. This popped up high on the canadian recommended list for google news. Canada is rather infamous for trying to suppress or bury these types of subjects so I’m feeling rather good about this!
I think canadian women are getting tired of tolerating it. I’m hoping things will start to shift in the right direction soon.