Elite sports people speaking up!

[Signalbox]

There seems to be an increasing number of sports people speaking up about the problem of males completing in women's sports which is positive. Thought it might be useful to have a thread of those who are risking sticking their heads above the parapet. Obviously the likes of Sharon Davies, Mara Yamauchi and Martina Navratilova have been bravely doing this for sometime but now we appear to have a few current athletes as well who are prepared to risk the mob to ensure women have fair competition. Is it too much to hope for that there will be a snowball effect?

Good grief - over 600 female athletes had lost over 890 medals across 29 sports.

And presumably none of that includes all the women kicked out of sports like football to make way for men claiming to be women?

Football is an incredible game for women. The camaraderie and team work, learning that you have a body that can be strong and fast, that you can be brave in the face of physical danger, that you can learn a physical skill and get good at it and pit yourself against other women. Over the years I have came to the reluctant conclusion that men should probably have nothing to do with women's football - from lecherous coaches to the governing body who thew us under the bus to appease the trans lobby.

Well all sports seem to be growing in popularity. I've been a bit surprised by the growth of the women's game in my sport, rugby league, which certainly is the most physically demanding of all contact sports.

Hmm. Rugby Union is defo more physically demanding duc

Most people who've played both codes beg to differ!

Fight! Fight! 😄

I'll just warm up.

Reminded of this 😁

The immortal words of Laurie Daley: Rugby league is a simple game played by simple people, Rugby union is a complex game played by wankers.

Disclaimer, I'm neutral. Fella follows local RU team and he says RU code is harder because they don't keep stopping. I'm not sure what he thinks line-outs are.

Are you an Aussie, Cakey? [nosey]. Laurie Daley's hardly a household name in the UK. Great player, though.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1967285/football-association-womens-rights-transgender

"Next week a 17-year-old girl, possibly autistic, will face a disciplinary hearing at the Football Association for improper conduct. Her alleged offence is that in a women’s match she asked a player on the other team: “Are you a bloke?”

Sacred caste indeed.

No, I knew the quote, his name came up when I googled it. I'm actually surprised, I didn't know RL was a thing in Oz! <faintly embarassed>

It's arguably the biggest sport in Oz. Players there are household names like footballers are here.

Is it? It is huge in NSW and QLD and obviously the State of Origin helps there. I mean, I grew up watching it every weekend on tv in season as a kid. Whereas football is played just about everywhere.

Even Australian rules covers a lot of the population these days. I would have thought it might be bigger than league.

And cricket of course?

Yeah, between Aussie Rules and league.

I'm half-watching the Lionesses right now. Good job Germany are missing their chances, or they'd be out of sight by now.

Article in the Spectator about Asalems report by Damien Reilly. I am less optimistic but... "One hopes after this report, the allowing of men to compete with women in physical contests, let alone to share changing rooms, will be a strange thought experiment we will tell future generations about, while shaking our heads in bewilderment. ‘Males must not compete in the female categories of sport,’ the report says.
And let that be an end to it."

The article talks about an open category as the answer to all this, but this seems a naive view as that has already been tried, hasn't it? And has had zero take up.

Daley Thompson, friend of Sharon Davis (exboyfriend) haven’t heard of any others when there should be a long long long list of elite sports MEN speaking up, but they just can’t be arsed, men are BFJoke, so rare to find one that speaks up for us unless its in the scenario where he wants to get into bed with a woman, that’s their level end of.

Link is to video on Twitter…

https://x.com/icons_women/status/1850880927725191486

Why does that article refer to Imane Khelif as "biologically female" when it's been proven he is not?

Shite reporting I suspect. I'm curious about this line

A handful of transgender men and women took part in the Paris olympics this summer

I wasn't aware of any trans athletes, does it refer to tp that were in the opening ceremony and the like? Or did I miss something?

There were certainly suspected to be some in the Chinese (I think) basketball team.

I think we can also assume that countries like Canada fielded some in the less high-profile events. An archer qualified to represent Canada, I believe.

‘Trans Olympians’ included female people (rightly) competing in female categories, off the top of my head I can think of at least four.

2 American NB, a Canadian NB and a Filipino transman.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Saunders

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Hiltz

https://www.outsports.com/2024/7/1/24097116/quinn-soccer-nonbinary-defending-champion-canada-trans-athletes/

https://www.preview.ph/culture/hergie-bacyadan-preview-in-focus-june-2024-a5158-20240628-lfrm?s=euci97n2hpligtbn9asnj6tsp0