Starmer backs banning tw from women's sport 🤔

[IcakethereforeIam]

He seems fairly unequivocal

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2024/03/11/keir-starmer-backs-ban-on-transgender-female-competition/

https://archive.ph/4lLbf jump the paywall, don't get stuck halfway

There's a rehash of a few things at the end. That some sports have already done this except football and cricket. Apparently they are being called to parliament to explain themselves!

That isn't protecting women's sport or banning males from women's sport though.

It needs legal clarification or it's just meaningless words.

HTH

Breeze serves as a really good example as to why we need a definition of 'women' that means having the biology that is capable of producing large gametes and why we also need a space where everyone can simply be themselves.

Not convinced. He is flying a kite to see if this soft ball announcement will placate campaigners. Which it won't.

Starmer will try to say any collection of words to make this issue go away

He’s clueless and will spin on a dime

Careful, Keir - you'll get splinters in your arse from all that fence-sitting.

His arse must be half wooden by now

@ChateauMargaux I'm not sure what people want to happen (legislatively) about Breeze rides, or any other non-competitive activity. Breeze has specifically said that it is open to transwomen - should any non-competitive event that is open to both women and transwomen be unlawful? If an organisation, or an individual, wishes to organise an event of any kind and say that it is open to both women and transwomen, then that is their prerogative surely?

So he does know what a woman is then.

Not necessarily

Only 99.9% of the time though…

Of course he knows. He just doesn't care.

A long as it is clearly presented as a unisex event. Calling it a women's event but allowing males to compete as women is entirely unfair, inappropriate, and should be illegal as it discriminates against women.

@coureur ... I think Breeze is a great example to explore these questions.

There is provision within the UK Sports Council's Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport to prioritise inclusion over fairness, where the objective of a sporting activity is inclusion.

Breeze was established to close the 'gender' gap in cycling between men and women and sought to overcome the barriers that prevented women from getting involved.

If the presence of male people is a barrier for a significant number of women, then Breeze may be failing in it's original objective.

What do 'people' want to happen - some people want female only spaces, some want spaces where female identifying males are welcome.

You also said: 'If an organisation, or an individual, wishes to organise an event of any kind and say that it is open to both women and transwomen, then that is their prerogative surely?'... lawful and unlawful discrimination is the subject of much discussion and we are seeing fewer efforts to create female only spaces in sport, despite the wealth of evidence that these female only spaces are crucial to increasing the participation of women and girls in sport, exercise and use of outdoor spaces.

Collectively, I believe that we have lost sight of the objective to encourage women and girls to take part in sport, for fear of engaging in the difficult discussions around inclusion.

Nah, he's a weasley man who changes what he says from one week to the next. I don't believe him for a second.

@JellySaurus - I wasn't talking about competitive events.

@ChateauMargaux - I agree with everything you said, and indeed Breeze may well be failing in its original objective if women are being put off from participating by the possible presence of males. As you say, this could potentially be indirect discrimination under the EA - but I don't think this would require any new legislation?

Anyway, Truss's new (and suprisingly non-mad) private member's bill is finally published, worth a read: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3560

coureur

YY to pps on this subject.

British Cycling's policy says
All Transgender and Non-Binary Participants are able to take part in British Cycling sanctioned Non-Competitive Activity (save for the Breeze programme, which is aimed at those whose birth sex is female, trans women or people who most closely identify as female).

It seems to me that BC do regulate Breeze activity and Breeze does not set its own eligibility rules separately from BC policy.

You also ask what is wrong with setting up races for women and males who claim to be women. Several things.
The Women's Tour and British Cycling are covered by anti-discrimination law. Allowing one specific group of male athlete in directly discriminates unlawfully against other men - those without the PC of Gender Reassignment.
As a result of including male riders in women's events, women and girls suffer negative experiences, often self-exclude subsequently and have fewer chances to ride. Permitting male cyclists to ride as women discriminates against the women riders. I urge you to read the Fair Play for Women report about the extent and effect of this discrimination.

The Breeze champions network was created with the aim of, and receives funding for, increasing participation by women in cycling.
From the Women's Tour website:
https://www.womenstour.co.uk/find-out-more-about-the-breeze-network/#:~:text=With%20support%20from%20the%20National,provide%20local%20opportunities%20for%20women.
With support from the National Lottery via Sport England’s Active Women’s fund and using the opinions of over 1,000 women to design an accessible programme for women – a local network of trained female Breeze champions was created to provide local opportunities for women.

Women are an underrepresented group in cycling, as I'm sure you are aware. The Breeze programme should not be receiving public money under false pretences.

You could throw a private party and only invite women and males who claim to be women, if you wanted to.

coureur
I agree with everything you said, and indeed Breeze may well be failing in its original objective if women are being put off from participating by the possible presence of males.
Not just the "possible presence" - the actual presence of and domination of these rides by male athletes.

More double talk from Starmer who thinks 1 percent of women have a penis. He needs to do a massive U turn on that statement to get my vote.

@Snowypeaks yes, I didn't mean to imply that Breeze were somehow separate from BC, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that I would have no problem with BC permitting racing by self-identified gender rather than sex - like the vast majority in the cycling world I have hugely welcomed the policy introduced last year initially by BC and subsequently by the UCI.

My question about permitting entry by self-identified gender rather than sex was more about non-sanctioned event organisers. An example would be my local MTB enduro series. They are not affiliated to BC or any other governing body and permit entrants to self-identify by gender. And then confusingly list results by sex (male/female). They basically take the same position as parkrun - worse in fact as they make no bones about the fact that they are a competitive race series whereas parkrun claims not to be. This seems to be the norm with independent events not adhering to rules set by a national or international governing body. While I disagree with their policy (or more usually, lack of policy) I'm not sure how legislation could prevent it. When there was uproar about men on the female podium of the ThunderCrit series, they simply changed the names of their categories to 'Thunder' and 'Lightning' and I could imagine organisers who don't want to engage with the issue pulling similar stunts.

Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding about Breeze.

Thanks @Snowypeaks - you are making me think a lot about this, I basically welcomed it as a done deal in May last year (I confess as a coach I'm more involved in the competitive side of things and know very little about Breeze other than a couple of the women in our club are also Breeze leaders). I don't know enough about how the EA and EHRC treat direct and indirect discrimination to understand if using the cop-out of 'gender' (or even made-up categories) rather than sex is enough to bypass the legislation.

There's also the wider issue of the fact that in all sports, including those that strictly enforce sex categories, there are usually more events for men than there are for women.

Picking (at random), this race meet: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/294707/Full-Gas-Spring-Rumble-Series-Event-3

There are four races open to men and only one is women-only. Worse, the women's race is all categories from 4 to 2, meaning that the cat 4 (beginner) riders are extremely unlikely to win any points allowing them to progress to cat 3.

This is something that has bugged me for years and I really don't know how it can be fixed - women are put off racing or have their progress slowed due to the lack of races, and organisers don't put on women's races due to lack of entries.

Legally speaking, there's no cop-out by using the word "gender" because it's not a PC according to the Equality Act.

You are not alone in feeling confused - the blurring of the meaning of words, misstating the law and even bastardising the very concept of a category are all deliberate ploys by those who want to give Gender Identity primacy over sex. So many people are intimidated into not complaining, as well.

What you say about the number and composition of races is familiar - I don't know much about cycling myself, but a poster on a thread some months ago made some of the same points - it can be a Catch-22 situation.

It's good news if you actually care about the issue, given Labour are 25 points ahead in the polls.

Political parties are not pressure groups and it matters very little what Keir Starmer "really believes". What matters is how far you can influence them to go in the direction you want.

@Snowypeaks surely the fact that gender is not a PC is exactly why it could be used as a cop-out by those who don't fancy actually enforcing a sex classification? (either out of cowardice or ideology). It means whatever you want it to mean.

HPFA

If KS doesn't really believe it then he will simply backtrack or kick the issue into the long grass after he gains power. He might realise women's rights are important to the electorate but if he himself doesn't believe that women are or should be a sex category and that sex is real, he will nonetheless find it easy to ignore our pleas or even worse, press ahead with the changes Angela Eagle listed and claim they will help "all women". Which he does really believe, IMO.
I don't believe he has moved in our direction at all. He just thinks he can placate us. He can't make any kind of clear, unequivocal statement on this whole thing.