Transgender Canadian international cricketer

[Talipesmum]

There’s a long article on bbc news about a transgender cricketer (from Canada) about to play in women’s international T20 cricket. It’s a pretty good article. It’s not leading with the angle of criticising her, but it’s also not leading with how wonderful it is. It describes what is happening, mentions how this is in contrast to what many other sports are doing, follows that up with a good explanation of why those sports are doing that. It includes lots of quotes all round including from hee, but I think gives a pretty clear picture for readers, and sets them up to know what to look out for. And for anyone at all familiar with the topic there’s a lot clear but unsaid. Imagine there will be more on this later. Feels very different to an article we might have had a year ago.

Danielle McGahey: Transgender cricketer set to play in women's T20 international for Canada https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/66597000

Blythin was claiming an incompletely diagnosed DSD in 2019 which meant they always had testosterone and therefore hadn’t had the benefits of a male puberty.

https://www.skysports.com/amp/cricket/news/12123/11870243/maxine-blythin-transgender-cricketer-reveals-birth-condition

Currently playing county cricket for Wiltshire.

When puberty failed to commence in adolescence, a variation in Blythin's biology became apparent for the first time. Test results showed the teenager's body was not producing testosterone at the expected level. She has not been given a medical diagnosis of a DSD (difference of sexual development) - also known as an intersex condition - but she may yet receive such a diagnosis in the future.

Still not diagnosed which is very weird. Surely not going through male puberty would trigger enormous investigation?

Also says their testosterone is 1nmol and that there are girls with longer arm spans in the team which I find very difficult to believe.

"McGahey emigrated from Australia to Canada in February 2020, socially transitioned to a woman in November 2020 and started medically transitioning in May 2021."

That is an astonishing transition. Spent 20 odd years as an Australian male but has now become a Canadian international sportswoman.

Honestly, if the Canadian women players and administrators are OK with this, they deserve it. A Canadian woman has lost a place on her international team to a man who doesn't even mention representing Canada but "her community " - so unclear that the writer has to clarify [trans] community.

There's an article on the Times website about this too.

Not one of the comments supports McGahey (not the ones I saw anyway).

From the article:

She believes any power or timing she has while batting have been honed from years of playing the game rather than the physiological benefits from male puberty.
"I can only speak about my journey. But the perceived strength advantage that trans women have is exactly that - it's perceived," McGahey said.
"I've been playing cricket for 25 years. I know if I'd just picked up a bat last week, I wouldn't be able to hit the ball like I hit the ball."
First up: McGahey has been playing cricket as a man for most of those 25 years. Obviously McGahey wouldn't even be picked for the international team if they'd only picked up a bat last year, would they?🙄

International success means more to the decision makers than fairness - playing McGahey increases their chances of winning, they know this.

So yet again, a narrow female field becomes further narrowed.

I know if I'd just picked up a bat last week, I wouldn't be able to hit the ball like I hit the ball.

Well duh. International sports success requires years of training and improvement, no shit. No one is suggesting all men are automatically brilliant at cricket because of their sex, but that they have a physical advantage. Where both sexes have done the training and preparation, that advantage remains.

What are the rules in Australia? Would the Canadian cricketer be able to play on the women's team there?

Australian sport is as captured as Canadian sport.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/11393860

And even if an individual did not have a physical advantage, it's still unfair. Female is female and there is a female category for females. Then females and males can have equal chances of having a career in their sport, of being the best, of playing for their country. A "transgender" (or not but just cheating, because how can we tell) male regularly takes a female's place, but not vice versa because females don't generally have an advantage over males. Thereby causing a sex-based disadvantage for all would-be female top players - there's less space and less chance for them.

Why don't we just let disabled men, or men shorter than 5'3", or men with one arm tied behind their back, play on women's teams? Because they are men and they don't belong there.

I grew up in Kent and some of my fondest memories are going to watch cricket with my dad. When Kent made a male player, Maxine Blythin, their women’s player of the year in 2019 I stopped supporting them and started supporting Surrey. I’ve got no interest in a team that clearly despises women. Women’s cricket with the introduction of the Hundred and men’s and women’s matches being on the same day as rocketed interest with record crowds in the recent women’s ashes series. Hopefully cricket will act before it can be spoiled.

on a side note, women were barred from joining the MCC, who are responsible for the games laws, for 212 years, they were only admitted in 1998. So cricket is clearly very aware of what men and women are.

From one of the links within the BBC article:

“The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were three to seven times higher for Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2006, 0.79%) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996, 0.51%) than for Generation X (born between 1966 and 1980, 0.19%), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965, 0.15%) and the Interwar and Greatest Generations (born in 1945 or earlier, 0.12%).“

(stats from the Canadian body responsible for their census analysis)

And they continue to deny it’s driven by social contagion. Greater acceptance and ‘visibility’ might account for a (very) small element of the increase, but not a “three to seven times” disparity between the age groups.

yeah, I dunno. I suppose it's borderline plausible that you might not question your 6'2" 16 year old son too hard about why his voice is still relatively high pitched, why he hasn't obviously started shaving yet, etc. I suppose I find this story just about plausible. Blythin does have a willowy figure, for sure, albeit with more typically male height and facial bone structure... just maybe he does suffer from some kind of very unusual androgen insensitivity which doesn't stop external male genitals developing in the womb but which further down the line blocks puberty... I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it, though.

Cheating was bad enough in the past. But at least it was what it was, men getting an advantage over other men, women ditto women. It may have been lauded in alpha circles, but there was societal disdain.

Now, the cheating has certainly trans-ed. Trans-ferred as the men trans-fer. And somehow the authorities, primarily male, look upon this with inertia bordering on coma state.

This will change. Like cycling, swimming, athletics, rugby, boxing, it has to. And the "not down to me, guv" 180 spins and ultimate gaslighting will predominate.

All the while the damage is done right now.

PS excellent article, within the PC confines of BBC reporting, this is as hard hitting as it gets.

Blythin is 6'4. In this pre-transition photo, there are clear signs of male puberty. As far as I know (and I'm not an expert in any way), there are no DSDs which would produce such low levels of T. Also, any boy with crashingly low levels of T would be treated as soon as they started puberty. They wouldn't grow, their muscles wouldn't develop, they would suffer fatigue.

They wouldn't be playing county cricket.

Why do these men feel the need to take over our sports? Just why? Male entitlement.

Photo didn't work. Try again!

Yes, and further down the article they include these points from Loughborough Uni:

Gemma Witcomb - an academic expert on the issue of gender identity in sport at Loughborough University - said fairness in sport "is not solely down to physiology" and the historical pre-eminence of men's cricket compared to the women's game plays a part.

"Trans women may reap the rewards of the greater investment in their early cricketing careers and possess some advantages related to these earlier experiences," she said.

"For example, more opportunities both at school and recreationally, to learn, play, and hone their skills; better funded and equipped clubs; more invested coaches etc.

"Such factors - related to opportunity - are well accepted to influence all men's and women's experiences and outcomes in sport and so ignoring these would deny their importance."

I remember Maxine Blythin. Isn't he the one who had a batting average that was, well, distinctly below average (about 12 or something) until he transitioned, joined Kent Women and it jumped up to about 120, whereupon he became their Player of the Year?

What a fine figure of a woman Danielle is. What a physique. You'd be forgiven for thinking she was a man.........

Because they get a kick out of transgressing boundaries.

The ICC need to step in and stop this destruction of women’s cricket. How many more women’s places will be taken by opportunist mediocre male cricketers claiming to be trans gender?

Trouble is, some parts of the cricket establishment are certainly sexist. E.g. Geoff Boycott, convicted of beating up his girlfriend, continues to be feted, and was eventually even knighted.
So what chance do we stand with this current unfair situation?

I went to watch the 100 cricket last week. In this you have the women’s teams play then the men’s teams afterwards. Everyone - male and female - who plays in the 100 is a high end cricketer. Watching one after the other left me in no doubt of the biological advantages males have in cricket.

For many years I played a mixed-sex social version of a game very similar to cricket. The difference between the men and women (even the least co-ordinated and least sporty men) was like night and day. And those differences have both physical and social causes - many women are barely taught how to throw or hit a ball growing up. And if they are, men's far superior upper body strength will always put them on top.
I actually get scared for the women he'll be facing when I watch McGahey bat. A cricket ball travelling at those speeds is no joke.

Before this person realised they were a woman, did they by chance happen to be a mediocre player with no real hope of great success or standing out in any way?

I find that many mediocre sportspeople are having gender identity epiphanies. It's great that their transition can coincidentally lead to sporting success.

I read this and thought how depressing, but actually think that Danielle will be cricket’s Emily or Lia i.e. the person who prompts a u turn. Surely meeting the criteria only serves to show that the criteria are woefully unfit for purpose.