You might enjoy the replies to what I am sure Sport England thought was an innocuous tweet

[wiltonian]

To save you time, they are pretty unanimous, no dissenters at all

https://x.com/Sport_England/status/1772973661311369496?s=20

If you want a geeky take on it, Sport England, as a public body, has a duty under the Equality Act 2010 not just not to discriminate against protected characteristics but to advance equality...

The fact is other demographics also have lower participation rates in sport - older people, people on lower incomes, people with disabilities and people in rural areas. We won't all be sitting around talking about choices and social expectations, we would be talking about the real barriers for them taking part.

But for some reason we're focusing on why don't women and girls choose to play sport. It's all utterly offensive if you think about it.

😂.

I think more and more organisations are going to start looking at the responses and realise they need to find a GC employee to review before they publish.

What age girls? Once 11, 12 there is a lot of awkwardness around their developing bodies, changing rooms and sports clothes and activity. Periods become a concern, period pain becomes relevant. Male attention and male behaviour make sports less attractive to sensitive girls, ie commenting on their female bodies. These are all due to the girls female sex.

The other aspect of sport and female participation generally is that our sports, especially the sorts of sports pushed in school, are designed around testing and developing aspects of male prowess and do so in a way that male hormones respond to better than female.

Boys, even in primary, are more likely to find competing enjoyable. So much of our sport is based around speed and strength and competition. Very little emphasis is put on developing other sport approaches that are more likely to light the pleasure centers in women and girls.

Which isn't to say no women or girls compete or that they shouldn't be catered for in competition, but boys, even when young, are more likely to enjoy competing and there are links to male hormones that indicate there is a sex based aspect to competitiveness and status seeking. So chances are, engagement in sport is likely to be skewed towards boys if the emphasis is on competitive sport with non-competitive sport treated as the poor cousin (as seems to happen in every school I've seen).

WTF is this supposed to mean?

But I don't have a gender. I am a woman. My sex is female. The misogynistic stereotypes, expectations and limitations that were placed on me as a girl (and, now, a woman) are because of my sex. Nothing to do with my non-existent gender identity. I don't have one.

@borntobequiet isnt it obvious? Gender stereotypes such as 'it's unattractive to be sweaty' or 'it's unfeminine to be competitive' plus sexist poor provision for girls' and women's sport are the main reasons why so few girls and women participate in sport. There is zero physical reason why women shouldn't take part in sport. The old stuff about not being active while menstruating is another example.

Effeminate boys also suffer from homophobia and abuse that restricts their physical activity. I don't know if there is a higher proportion of boys who transition that were at single-sex schools and were ruthlessly bullied for not being 'manly' enough for not liking team sport, or even for liking it but not looking or acting 'right', but I've certainly come across quite a few. Including a cousin of mine and a few I've met through work.

Of course they would say they were bullied for being trans, whereas I would say they were bullied for being boys who threatened the patriarchy. The bullying was wrong, we'd agree on that.

This is basic feminism, isn't it?

What's also true is that the tweet may not quite mean all this. But it's not wrong.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but isn't that reinforcing gender stereotypes to some extent?

For example, outside imposed gender roles, is it objectively true that young pre-pubescent boys are more likely to enjoy being competitive than young girls are?

Agreed @Manxexile. I only found I enjoyed hard competitive physical sport at University. It would have been nice to find it out earlier. It's also true there are plenty of boys who enjoy non-competitive physical activity. Tbf non-competetive stuff was all that was available at my son's school.

My DD stopped being on her swim team when she got her periods which are painful and heavy. She was getting them every 3 weeks and missing - therefore - about 1/3 of training (before you even get to catching normal school diseases). We didn't get reduced fees so it's also a financial issue for parents. Based on sex.

The club was piss poor at doing anything to address the large numbers of girls dropping out once they got their periods. There were lots of them and they did nothing.

Absolutely. When parents indulgently watch their sons climbing trees, while telling their daughters to be careful of their nice dresses (and unsuitable shoes) - yes, even in the 2020s - they are reacting to their children's sex. You might say they are enforcing gender stereotypes, but the stereotype they pick is determined by the children's sex.

Which of course, is one reason why many women, me included, became feminist at an early tree-climbing sort of age. And looking back, I'd now call the young me gender-critical.

It's not about gender stereotypes.
Prepubescent boys outperform prepubescent girls on almost every measure of athletic performance by about 5%. Jump height, leap, speed, strength, etc. Girls are better than boys when it comes to balance and flexibility. This is one of the reasons girls often get into dance rather than sport - they're better at it.

If you win or do well at an activity you are more likely to want to carry on with it and fall in love with it for its own sake.

Most sports were invented by men to display men's strengths. Rhythmic gymnastics is a sport in which women excel because of their greater flexibility but is much harder for men.

Have a look at the chair challenge or the broom challenge online. Men's and women's bodies are different and this has consequences.

In my experience you're talking bollocks. I never liked sport because of physical aspects. If anything I preferred to be messy (I'm ashamed to say I fell into the "not like other girls" trap so getting sweaty or looking unattractive wasn't a problem.) No the problem was it hurt!

I was scared of leaking with my period but also, especially back then, it was very painful. Sorry to be graphic but as well as the cramps I got constipation and diarrhea. I got javelin arse. My boobs (huge very early on)ached. Actually, all of me ached. And while I know the line about exercise helping I never found it did any good, I fact it made it worse.
Those boobs I mentioned? They hurt, a lot was growing pains but they then got worse on my period. Running was awful - I couldn't afford a sports bra and normal ones (cheap, we were poor) really were not adequate so the bounce was painful.
I got injured a lot - I now know that as a female my body has weaker periods due to my hormones. Those hormones meant your body changed massively and pretty unpredictably- you could be able to run fast one day and the next nowhere near. Periods are unpredictable at that age and where you are in your cycle affects you so you couldn't even plan around it.

And yes, I hated the way we were sexualised in gym kit or swimming costume but I could deal with that. It wasn't what stopped me - my body did. None of those things connect to gender, they all came down to sex.

It is a delicate area. If there is no link, highlighting the difference as natural risks reinforcing stereotypes. If there is a link, denial risks leaving women underserved and constantly wondering why they never measure up.

It’s hard to do robust ethical experiments on people that totally account for imposed gender roles, but experiments do show that boys enjoy competition more than girls from a young age and experiments on adults have established a link between competitiveness and sex hormones. So I believe there is a sex link, though it doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of very competitive women (I’m one!).

But we don’t need to answer that question to improve things for women now. The lack of focus on non-competitive sport fails to serve all the non-competitive kids, male and female, whether their aversion to competition is due to natural inclination, social conformity, or something else. If society treated non-competitive sport as as valid as competitive for everyone then it wouldn’t matter if females were naturally less competitive or not, all the non-competitive people would be more likely to continue to engage in sport.

Even if it is socialisation of girls trans identifying males are not socialised as girls from the outset.

Of course, despite lived experience and inner identity being the most important thing we do need to remind ourselves that it's only male lived experience and inner identity of a tiny minority.

If you're one of many many women or girls whose physical sex related changes at puberty made you drop out of sport then that apparently doesn't matter.

Gender stereotypes such as 'it's unattractive to be sweaty' or 'it's unfeminine to be competitive' plus sexist poor provision for girls' and women's sport are the main reasons why so few girls and women participate in sport. There is zero physical reason why women shouldn't take part in sport. The old stuff about not being active while menstruating is another example.

Our reproductive biology impacts significantly on our sporting abilities and inclinations.
Painful periods interrupt competition and training. The menstrual cycle affects not only mood but physicality (as is now recognised in elite training, where programmes are built around it). Many keen young female athletes give up when suddenly performance drops off at a crucial time, or (in more than one case I’ve encountered as a coach) the pain of undiagnosed endometriosis makes it impossible to commit to team or individual sports.

I don’t doubt that sexist stereotyping exists to some degree, and it’s true that participation in competitive sport and possibly other activity drops off in girls from their early teens, but I very much doubt that there’s a genuine causal link.

Most people don't have a gender. The idea that we do is just an obfuscation pushed by hate organisations such as stonewall. Everyone has a sex though. Either male or female. we're told there are over 100 genders and if that were true, which of those 100 are more or less likely to play sports?

You've nearly got it. They are targeted because of their sex. And 'gender' is the way it's done.

There's no reason why girls shouldn't participate in sports identically to boys. But society stereotypes and expectations prevent them (gender).

It's because of their sex they are targeted.

And 'gender' is what's used to do it.

trans ideology doesn't allow for this, though.

Men who have a female 'gender' are excelling at sports (in the women's division, obviously.).

Gender isn't stopping them. Because it's their sex counts when it's actually about physical advantage.

Just to add to my post, obviously, girls do have physical issues which prevent them being sporty all the time, like periods and pregnancy and breastfeeding.

But just to ram home exactly how gender (societal expectations), is the means by which girls are disadvantaged.

In the USA, women's and girls' sport gets something like one percent of the funding that boys and men's sport does.

That's not arbitrary. It's because of their sex. But gender is the means.

Boobs. Boobs were the problem for me, and for DD with sport.

For me, I had what passed for a sports bra at the time but didn't find it comfortable. And even with the best bra, having boobs and having to confine them isn't nearly as comfortable as not having them. I remember feeling that needing a bra stage as a serious loss of freedom to move as I wanted. I still hate bras. They're itchy, sweaty, confining, and I can't run comfortably without one. And did I mention itchy?

DD was doing gymnastics and got increasingly self-conscious about wearing a leotard, but also self conscious about wearing shorts and t-shirts when everyone else was wearing leotards - so then she just stopped.

You can't be for real.

The reality of the pain, inconvenience, energy slumps, mood variance, and, y'know, general presence of blood is the reality of how periods affect girls and women in sports. Not the stigma.

I was sporty in primary school. Fast runner, liked to play cricket, dance classes.

Moved to middle school and was forced to change into my pe kit aged 9 in a class with boys. That was the first year I felt it wasn't worth it.

Swimming was excruciating for me. From that age I became deeply afraid of getting changed with other girls or having them see my body.

Age 10 we did sports only with other girls. What is this talk of girls doing football mixed with boys? Does that happen now?? We got to play volleyball, netball and hockey, tennis and field sports in summer. Loved the sports, did not like the changing and enforced communal showers, with developing breasts, hair, and not being a cool girl (cool girls were sporty and pretty mean) it was made very clear that sport was not for me. By other girls. So that's not a gender stereotype issue is it.

When I was diagnosed with a bone condition that got me out of pe forever I was unbelievably happy. That was the end of sports for me.

All pre period, too! It wasn't a gender thing, it was a sexual development and puberty thing.

All pre period, too! It wasn't a gender thing, it was a sexual development and puberty thing.

It was. And the gender aspect, according to the transactactivist definition wouldn't have made any difference. If you had identified as a boy, you would still feel the same.

But 'Gender' in the feminist definition IS involved.

If it was just about sexual development, boys would be experiencing the exact same thing. It's not intrinsically about that.

It's because girls, when they develop, realise that there is something of objectification going on for them. They're not particularly encouraged to be strong, powerful, sweaty, competitive. They're looked at, leered over, judged. Even if it's minor, it all seeps in subliminally.

There's no inherent reason for human girls to feel more self-conscious than human boys. But they do. Because of society's reaction to them.

That's the 'gender' part. The expectations imposed upon men and women.

Physicality of periods is a huge issue. Even for me, and I am one of those awful, smug women who was blessed with what I call PE Teacher Periods. I call them that because they were pain-free and every 28 days. I hit 18 before I ever experienced menstrual cramps. Now I have, I am full of respect for the girls who had cramps all the way through their school years. I can't imagine coping with that at school.

So as far as a menstrual cycle goes, I hit the jackpot. But over my teens, I still found my period inconvenient. The crowning incident was the month my period not only came a day early for the first time - meaning I hadn't put a preparatory pad in - but also arrived in the most embarrassing way possible: I flooded right through white sports kit during a group class, and didn't realise. It was the first flood I'd ever experienced; I didn't even know that could happen!

My shorts looked like a Japanese flag, and the male teacher was too embarrassed to mention it. He sent for a female colleague to approach me if I was alright! And that was the first I knew that my entire front was bright red with blood.

The amazing thing is that this was a voluntary out-of-school activity and I went back the week after without being forced, because I loved it that much. I imagine a lot of girls wouldn't have done, and frankly I wouldn't blame them.

These days, the uniform shorts are black, which is a most welcome change. It only took a few decades for someone to question the value of white shorts as a tradition for a sport that allegedly wanted female members.