And cricket bans transwomen from the women's game too

[Apollo441]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/05/01/transgender-players-banned-womens-football-england-supreme/

It's not just the safety thing though, it's also the representation.

I keep thinking of chess. I don't know why women are so underrepresented in elite level chess, but there are 2000 grandmasters in the world and 40 of them are female. Jen Shahade has written and spoken brilliantly about the male bias of the game.

So even in something like chess, where there's no physical danger, women and girls are so underrepresented that separate female events are needed to establish a basic element of fairness, and with numbers so small, even a tiny number of men identifying into the women's event can undermine its whole purpose.

A grown up legal team got in touch with Sport England I suspect

Excellent!

I have seen several women play on men's team. They are given a place because they are good. If the situation was reversed the team with the man on it would have huge advantage. So that's the reason it isn't a co-ed situation post puberty.

i think they said on the lunchtime news that netball would now have single sex women’s and men’s, plus mixed.

They can. This is where that ‘proportionate’ thing comes in - there are good reason for needing women’s only sports, but not the same compelling case for single sex men’s rather than Open.

Thank you.

Thought you were talking about cricket! Sorry.

Mixed netball is a long established part of the game, yes. Unfortunately England Netball have decided mixed netball will be decided by gender feels. So while women’s netball will be female born only, a mixed netball team can be 100% male. I just meant that unlike cricket or football or pool or pretty much any sport the overwhelming majority of people who play netball at all levels are women and girls. Representation is not an issue like it is in other sports so we don’t need to equalise opportunity within the sport for girls and women. But we absolutely do in cricket and chess and all the other male dominated sports for all the reason pp have said.

I think they might run into problems offering mixed netball if some of the men count as women. It's not really a contact sport but the team with the most men will have an unfair advantage and women will have fewer spots. If they said that it was mixed, men counted as men, there is a set number of male players on each team, etc, that would be fine. But as soon as you bring GI into it you get absurdities. Like a mixed team being 100% male.

Still can't understand why genderwoo has such a hold on people. There's no reason to take account of it at all - totally irrelevant as a sporting factor.

I agree but they've nailed their colours to the mast pretty firmly that mixed netball is trans inclusive. It will be interesting to see if they have to backtrack down the road.

Agree that they’ve definite pinned their ‘inclusivity’ to the mixed version of the game. It’s a shame because it’s a legitimate way for women and men to play the sport together. As long as everyone knows where they stand when they step on court. I hope women’s who do play mixed feel less inclined to be ‘kind’ when faced with the cheating.

I will never understand why some women are so desperate for male approval. Which is why I think netball went so bonkers.

This makes sense. I hope it encourages other sports bodies to make sport fair again. It always struck me as weird that sports lovers would support blatant cheating.

Then, I hope it will spread outwards to all the other organisations —cowards, the lot of them — that have so shamefully allowed male bullies to steal women’s rights,

ECB says transgender women cannot compete in women's cricket with immediate effect - BBC Sport

Thank you. I am off to read up.

I'm really glad this is happening but I'm so sick of the news reports! "Transwomen (or sometimes even erroneously "Transgender people") BANNED from women's sport after SC ruling! We talk to a poor sad TW who's being kicked out of sport!" <sigh>

The headline should be "Sporting body restores female-only requirement to make women's sports fair and safe after misinterpretation of rules" or similar and "We talk to a woman who unfairly lost out on a team place or medal to / was injured by a male in her sport."

My jaw was on the floor listening to radio 4 (hey, I sound like a rapper) this morning as they wanged on about transwomen being excluded and "banned" oh do fuck off! You mean MALES rightly not allowed to play in FEMALE sports which is so fucking eminently reasonable it shouldn't even ever have been news! It is not about banning, excluding or deliberately upsetting trans people. If certain TW weren't shoving themselves into the wrong category for their sex and certain GI organisations hadn't lied about the law to multiple bodies and institutions this wouldn't have even been necessary .

It's like saying "burglars disguised as security guards banned from bank vaults shock horror!

[And apols I was not aiming that at the OP, who is just repeating the headline from the linked article - but the general media take.]

Finally, common sense prevails. Hope they keep the trend going.

I did come across this front page though (apologies of it’s been linked already) for football. Just realised the link may change content each day…heading is ‘FA sees sense at last’, large headline is ‘They think it’s all ovaries … it is now’

https://www.frontpages.com/the-sun/

‘They think it’s all ovaries … it is now’

Genius 😂

Any movement by governing bodies of contact sports? I can’t see anything in the news re boxing or rugby as yet.

Rugby already sorted, world rugby was 2022 I think

Great news 🥳

All these avenues for men to cheat in women's sports disappearing!

Wonderful!