School sports

[AlphaTransWoman]

Do you think it is ever acceptable to force a child assigned male at birth to participate in contact sports at school such as football or rugby. If so do you appreciate the distress this may cause to children born with a male body who have a female gender identity?

This is bordering on offensive.

People with differences/disorders of sexual development have a biological sex. It may need to be investigated further at birth (and has historically been assigned).

But this OP doesn’t not have a DSD. This OP’s sex was observed at birth (and determined at conception).

There is no need at all the drag people with DSDs into the discussion.

Intersex is an outdated term, there is no mysterious third sex. People with differences or disorders of sexual development (DSD) are still either male or female. Thanks to modern medicine and science, we are able to correctly sex people with DSD using blood tests and scans.

Girls play football and rugby too.

At the school I teach at, there’s a PE set for children who don’t like/take part in competitive sport. Many of them are ASD or neurodivergent. All of the PE teachers say that these children make loads of progress in e.g. touch rugby, because they’re not intimidated by the more competitive kids. Perhaps this would have been an appropriate set up for the OP at school? Nothing to do with ‘gender identity’.

Why can’t I have wings and fly? Feels like a punishment for not being born a bird 😢

(sure, I’m not going to get eaten by my cats but, wings!)

My DD played rugby at her primary school,

No one has a sex 'assigned at birth'.

Gender ID is made up unicorn rainbow poo.

Women play contact sports too. Girls are often traumatised by PE lessons, if you are getting picked last it doesn't rally matter if it is rugby or Netball.

I've always seen contact sports as a sort of ritualised combat, designed to provide a relatively safe outlet for male aggression. I can't understand why any female would be interested in participating in such a thing.

What a mysoginistic thing to say. Women have fought to take part in sports. Have you seen / heard of the Lionesses?

What about Nicola Adams?

No child is assigned male or female at birth. If you have a penis you are male and that can never, never change. And yes, we do assign some things by specific genitalia e.g. people with a penis use people with a penis's changing rooms and loos, not the ones assigned by sex to people with a vulva, i.e. women.
As to playing sports, I agree. No-one should be forced to play a sport they don't like, but they should at least have a go to make sure they do not like it - how can you know if you never try?

Not liking sport doesn’t mean you are a women. Plenty of women love sport plenty of women don’t.
Strangely enough women are all individuals with likes and dislikes and don’t fit into these gender stereotypes that you seem to have in your head.

The self pitying tone of this OP is getting irritating.

Frankly they should get off MN and get some proper psychotherapy instead. The kind that actually asks questions not the therapy-as-validation kind.

Nowadays all kids play the same sports in primary together. Some children with profound SEN requirements will be able to opt out but that’s about it.

Schools are quite different from how they were 40 years ago. We can mourn the past but it’s a bit rich to start a thread about not liking sport in the past when you probably have zero knowledge of schools now.

(always picked last for teams cos I was a weirdo and the other kids didn’t like me.)

i had to play rounders hockey and netball, later lacrosse and tennis because i was a girl. Boys played football rugby and cricket.

It is what it is.

We have to sing in assembly at my school. Most of the kids like it, some love it (must be birds, eh?) some hate it and find it really hard.

Some kids hate maths. Some don’t like playing out when it’s hot, or cold, or wet or bright (and so on)

Some really hate art because it’s really hard to be good at.

We can accommodate the children with ASD to a point but we also have to prepare them for life. And doing stuff you don’t want to and don’t feel suited to it part of life. It’s why we have to work on resilience.

Sex is observed at birth or sometimes in utero.

Nobody is "assigned" anything.

And plenty of girls like playing contact sports, while plenty of boys don't.

If you were a boy who didn't like contact sports, you were a boy who didn't like contact sports. Not a girl.

because you are blinded by sex stereotypes?

There is nothing about being female that makes women less physical. Our bodies are designed to be robust and enduring. The physical characteristics we excel at are different from men’s (because of our biology, not gender) but we aren’t less physical. The fact you did not excel in sport with other men doesn’t make you like a woman.

I’m a highly competitive woman who liked contact sport with other women. I wasn’t picked last in games. Being competitive, enjoying contact sport, being sports captain in school and getting colours at uni didn’t make me anything like a man. It just made me sporty. Something many women are and many women aren’t.

i had to play rounders hockey and netball, later lacrosse and tennis because i was a girl. Boys played football rugby and cricket.

In the US, lacrosse is a game mainly played by men. I understand it can get quite aggressive. I laughed when I found this out, having always associated lacrosse with girls' boarding schools, but it turns out I didn't know very much.

Obviously men play ice- hockey too.

Sports should be segregated by sex, due to biological differences, but they aren't inherently gendered.

It sounds like you were never keen to take responsibility for yourself, just fished about for an explanation that is "poor me," rather than trying to improve at sport or sucking it up that people who do more sports than you will be better than you.

"I've always seen contact sports as a sort of ritualised combat, designed to provide a relatively safe outlet for male aggression. I can't understand why any female would be interested in participating in such a thing."

• can you tell this to all the TW in roller derby please!

In the 80s I campaigned at my school for girls to be allowed to play rugby.

You don't know what being a woman is. So obvious! Silly goose.

Personally, i think there is no reason for women to get involved in contact sports, i mean, that is what cheerleading was invented for, so the ladies could join in a bit.

Either a fake account, or an absolutely blinding own goal.

I thought, until my 20s, that I hated sport and exercise because they'd been such a joyless experience at school. Netball and hockey in the freezing cold and rain (if you think girls don't do contact sports, you've clearly never been biffed in the ankle by a hockey stick or skewered with the queen bee's talons in netball).

As an adult, turns out I adore exercise: walking, fencing, running, swimming, cycling. Just not team sports.

Both my boys are the same. They couldn't give two shits about football, hate rugby, but love climbing, cycling, walking, swimming...

I do agree that making rugby-hating boys do rugby is harsh, but this is sod all to do with gender, and solely about the crapness of school PE.

I always liked rugby and think I probably would have been ok at at because I'm a good catch and reasonably physically strong. But I never did, because of sex stereotypes. I admire women and girls who ignore such nonsense and play the sports they like.

It seems so obviously misogynistic to us it’s understandable to think it’s made up. But unfortunately the idea of women as weaker/smaller/less “good” men without any real appreciation of what men lack that allows them to be generally stronger is fairly pervasive.

Either a fake account, or an absolutely blinding own goal.

Alpha just has staggeringly outdated views about the differences between the sexes.

I'd add that the suggestion that my gorgeous, affectionate, baby- and baking-loving, rugby-hating sons are actually girls rather than lovely gentle future men is offensive and fucking stupid.

They have bodies and personalities. Identities irrelevant and unnecessary.