British Rowing - Imminent Announcement?

[SabrinaThwaite]

The Telegraph is reporting that British Rowing to ban transgender athletes from women's events after members urge policy change in a policy announcement expected tomorrow.

… the governing body has decided to follow the majority view of its 31,500 members, more than 80 per cent of whom are understood to have urged a change in approach that would ensure the fairness and integrity of the female category.

… under the revised rules, these events are to be protected exclusively for rowers who are biologically female.

Rowing is the last of the big Olympic sports in the UK to have been sitting on the fence about allowing males in the women’s category.

Fingers crossed that this happens.

You can put the following link into an archive service to read it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rowing/2023/08/02/british-rowing-transgender-athletes-womens-sport/

Couldn't agree more. It's a logical, very straightforward classification system which is simple to understand. It only gets complicated if you try to find reasons to shoehorn special males into the female category.

This is interview with ex GB rower Alex Storey is great - talk about being forthright!

https://twitter.com/gbnews/status/1687066967260471298?s=46&t=fMjCB4vFfh_N6mYE72mhHw

Alex Storey is brilliant. We need more people in the media simply stating the facts like him.

Go Alex He's absolutely right though, and is simply stating the facts as the majority of us know.

Alex Storey just sounded so fed up that this was even having to be discussed - and he’s absolutely right that honesty and integrity are the backbone of sport.

Personally I thought he came across as rude and arrogant, seeming more interested in telling the viewers that he was wasting his holiday.

Also I'm not sure stating that a transwoman is just a bloke in a wig is the way to win hearts and minds on this topic. If rowing had been to first sport to make this change, that could have had quite an (understandable) backlash from those who support trans people that they know to live every day lives. Personally I think it would have been better to counter Peter Tatchell's nonsense about general biological variables with some solid facts about physical differences as a result of male and female puberty e.g. the impact on power from the shape of hips and from fast muscle twitch fibres. Anyway, I guess he made the point about fairness in sport. Yes, all that is obvious but for years sporting bodies pretended not to even notice.

Here on the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rowing/66393959

I'm not thrilled by the BBC saying "transgender women" in the title. It obscures what has really happened. Which is men have been banned from female events.

@BonfireLady
I was surprised to hear Alex Storey express himself in the way that he did, but I think sometimes frankness is necessary. He was talking about objective observable reality. A person's internal sense of who they are is not objective, not observable by other people and most importantly, it is not relevant in sport.

Also, there are a lot of people who, while they believe males shouldn't be in female sport, also believe that there is something different about male people who claim to be women, or that they are not "as male as proper men". This needs to be knocked on the head. Objectively speaking and from the point of view of sport categories, there is male and female, and nothing else. Some people may find this painful to hear, whether they themselves claim a special identity or not, but it remains true and there is no point attempting to fudge it. Sex may be the only binary that exists in the natural world, but binary it is.

I do agree he could have said something about different physiology etc as well, but I think his point was excellent. I too am fed up to the back teeth of people trying to make us pretend that having a special identity matters to anyone else other than the people who claim it.

Yeah - as we keep seeing, it's not the transness, it's the maleness that matters.

*saying

Rude and arrogant?

Or just pissed off at the bandwidth that has been sucked up by this whole mess - he’s right that it should never have got to this point.

And as for his rather blunt comments - it’s what a lot of people are thinking, he’s just said it out loud.

Personally I think it would have been better to counter Peter Tatchell's nonsense about general biological variables with some solid facts about physical differences as a result of male and female puberty

Maybe, but it’s GB News so plain speaking is going to appeal to the audience.

I think Alex Storey perfectly summed up many people’s feelings about this nonsense. What a miserable waste of time it’s been, pandering to this delusional idiocy that ruins bodies, destroys careers and makes it impossible for people to state objective truths without being accused of “literal violence” while themselves literally being threatened with violence.

Trans women are just men pretending to be women though, what else do you call it?

Alex Storey sounded fed up to me and I’m not surprised. So much money and time has been spent on this issue across every sport. Such a waste of time. So many people have lost medals and places. So many people have been abused and suffered by this nonsense. But common sense is prevailing at last and girls and women can continue to participate in their sports fairly and safely .

Maybe, but it’s GB News so plain speaking is going to appeal to the audience.

Fair point. However, I think there are ways to make the same point without making the issue sound so blunt. There are plenty of people who believe that gender identity exists and that transwomen are different from men. And to be fair, they are. Many have had breast implants or taken hormones. That's not your average "bloke in a wig".

@bellac11 personally I say transwomen are transwomen. However, they are not women. Then I'd talk about the fact that they have been through male puberty, and what that meant as an advantage.

If someone wants to press me on the point, I'll say that there are two sexes: male and female, or men and women respectively. "Transwoman" is a gender identity, or gender for short, and the only relation that it has to sex is that it's impossible to be a transwoman if you're not a biological man. Sex is biology, gender and gender identity are belief. Sport isn't segregated on belief.

In other words the same point can be made without it being very easily dismissed as transphobic and hateful. What I've just said above would also be considered transphobic by some - but I suspect that the majority of people would think that it wasn't.

Instead, his comments sound brash.

Same principle, though - however far a male person goes in "transitioning" you are still looking at a male person + wig/implants/mood swings due to exogenous hormones. Which is all that matters for sport. Female people claiming to be men, or to be neither male nor female, compete in women's categories. This whole problem is a male issue.

Plenty of people, as you say, believe that males claiming to be women are different from men, but we should not encourage them in their delusion. There is too much at stake. Those males are not fundamentally or intrinsically different to men in any way which is relevant to sport.

Speaking personally, after careful thought on this question when I first heard that males were being put on Labour Party women-only shortlists, I never cared whether anyone dismissed me as transphobic or hateful. The truth, reality will always win in the end. How much damage to women and girls, to freedom of speech, to children and vulnerable young adults are we prepared to contemplate in the meantime in order to maintain a fiction for a tiny number of people?

Many have had breast implants or taken hormones. That's not your average "bloke in a wig".

Breast implants and hormones do not a woman make. I don’t care if some people think this is enough of a commitment to qualify these males to think that they are women.

If ‘brash’ words are needed to make the point then good. I’ve had enough of sports bodies dancing around these men with their ‘womanly feelz’ that want nothing more than to disadvantage women.

Alex storey was a bit pissed off, and it showed.

I agree that maybe his comments were a bit intemperate.

However, the Peter Tatchell case was basically that any male who wasn't a very good athlete in his category should be able to compete against females if he identified the right way. Mad and embarrassing.

Make puberty could be drawn on. But the reality is that: 1) for those who don't go through male puberty, many of those individuals are likely to have health issues for life, so we should not encourage them not to go through puberty with rules of this type; and 2) just having a male skeleton with male proportions will affect many sports. It's just sane to segregate sports by sex

Not surprised. As a competitive rower and member of British Rowing I voted in the survey they issued earlier this year. I literally have not met a single fellow rower who voted for the existing status quo (reduced testosterone). Anyway, India Willoughby is upset so that is a good thing.

I filled in the online survey as well, am pleasantly surprised to find the results were taken into account and not buried.

Anyway, India Willoughby is upset so that is a good thing

On this point I am very much united. The Streisand effect that India brings to the debate with support for such clear unfairness in sport is great 👍

His followers are claiming the announcement is 'unscientific'.

He is trying to make the piss poor point that because there are currently no elite transwomen dominating rowing then no problem exists. Never mind fairness to grassroots sports.

Willoughby gets upset about anything that doesn’t validate Willoughby’s imaginary female status. Previously it was swimming, then athletics and cycling. Now it’s rowing. Maybe rugby was in the mix earlier on but I can’t remember.

I can’t imagine that Willoughby has had any experience of taking part in any of these sports beyond school PE lessons, and as a male Willoughby can STFU about women’s sport.

Personally I think it would have been better to counter Peter Tatchell's nonsense about general biological variables with some solid facts about physical differences as a result of male and female puberty

I think we need to move away from that type of discussion. It's irrelevant. Are you female? Yes, great. If not, stay out of women's sports. Bluntness is required now.

As for IW banging on about no transwomen dominating rowing, they've still taken the place of an actual woman, who then misses out on an opportunity to be part of an elite club for life.

So glad sensible people have seen how unjust this is. When you create something just for women, it should be just for women.