Wah wah wah. 'Snot fair.

[Gymnopedie]

‘It’s devastating’: Trans cricketers feel betrayed by the game they love

They can't be their authentic selves any more.

“Most sports are not an environment trans people want to be in. Open cricket is predominantly men and is not the nicest place for women to play cricket. It involves prejudice."

And women's sports are for women. They're not an environment they want men in.

Look, a lot of us are older. We've been in workplaces where we had colleagues who never mentioned that they even had partners and talked about going on holiday with 'a friend', or never chatted about their holidays, and didnt have a wedding which was known about in the team, because they were gay. Those days are gone in any workplace I've been part of, and good riddance. There are still probably workplaces where that kind of homophobia exists (my perennial reminder that AFAIK there still isn't a single out gay male professional footballer in the UK). That's what bringing your whole self to work should be about. And tbh it's fine for a colleague to say they're transitioning as well, I wouldn't ever want trans people to have to leave their jobs and take a new one to try and hide their transition which many used to do. It's just that their real self does still include their sex. The old days of hiding and passing and stealth should be gone too.

TomPinch · Today 04:40

This is a silly point.

Is that a fielding position?

One that can result in a leg break if you're unfortunate.

Well, that's my earworm for the day sorted out. Love a bit of 10CC.

I don't like cricket, oh no
I love it
I don't like cricket, no no
I love it
Don't you walk through my words
You got to show some respect
Don't you walk through my words
'Cause you ain't heard me out yet

Exactly.

Enabling trans people be their true, authentic self ( in the TRA-style I mean, NATPALT) requires all the people who don't define themselves by a sense of inner gender, people who may find being defined as if they have an inner gender that makes them mentally the same as people of the opposite sex, invalidates their own experiences and takes away their right to set their own boundaries with respect to privavcy and safety pretty damn offensive, find their true self is not in fact welcome and their own knowledge of themself has to be subsumed into whatever the trans person says they are.

Aargh what have you done? Now I’ve caught it 🎶

These men are pathetic self-centred gits (and I'm being polite).

One reason I enjoy going to watch cricket is there is never a queue for the ladies loo. And thanks for the earworm; it has replaced a rather more annoying one that I won't infect anyone else with!

So very sorry.

It's this forced teaming and compelled speech that has destroyed their argument. Before that we all knew that some men liked to dress as women, either to be funny (Izzard, Les Dawson, Gazza with the fake breasts) or because it was a thing. I have met and worked with transsexuals and I was sort of fine with them in the ladies because it was one or two occasionally.

Then they started to insist on pronouns and that being female was about sex stereotypes when I've been fighting them all my life. And now they are having a massive stereotypical man-baby tantrum just because we won.

I'm fed up with it. But mostly I'm really pissed off with intelligent men and women, some of them with PhDs in biological research, who are saying sex is a spectrum and are calling me a transphobe. These people often identify with asking for evidence and being rational and scientific but don't see their own bias and can't back down.

Thank goodness for people like Andy Lewis (@lecanardnoir's on TwiX) who have stood up for biology and actually done the research and applied rationality.

My son played cricket from age 8 to age 13, when he aged out of Kwik Cricket to Hardball. He didn't like Hardball. It was indeed a hard ball, going quite fast when thrown by some players, coming right straight at your body. It scared him and if it hit you, it hurt, even with pads.

When I was a teen, my (gorgeous) teen boy neighbour broke three fingers just catching the ball!

The sheer stupidity of people who overlook the significant dangers to women of men in a women's game makes my blood boil.

What a load of rubbish, loads of women play in what were traditionally the men's leagues, meaning that those leagues are mixed.

My daughter has done that since she was 12.

There is no need for any man to play in the women's leagues.

Absolutely my daughter played on a 'mixed' team on Wednesday night with one other woman and 9 men. The opposition had 10 men and 1 woman.

Most clubs don't offer any changing / shower facilities for the women and some don't even have a women's toilet.

These men (who are complaining about not being allowed in women's teams) make me sick, it's all about them. It's nothing to do with fairness for women.

The women put up with these things because they love the sport.

All of the emphasis on 'inclusion' on the part of the ECB has been about trans inclusion. Hopefully now that that ship has well and truly sailed they'll work on ensuring fairness for women.

But there is a cow corner!

‘authentic self’

There’s few things less authentic than a man pretending to be a woman. Barging his way onto a women’s team then having a tantrum when, shock horror, he’s told that their single sex sports category is not a stage for his performative nonsense.

Balls in every sense of the word.

You know what @MyrtleLion you've just provided me with a lightbulb moment, thank you.

Obviously I support single sex spaces and find the whole genderwang movement at best ridiculous, at worst a danger to women and children but until I read your post I never consciously acknowledged something else:

Then they started to insist on pronouns and that being female was about sex stereotypes when I've been fighting them all my life.

I too have long fought against sex stereotypes and it is this backwards looking element of the trans that sickens me so much. It's not so much that a man puts on a dress and makeup and expects everyone to think he's now a woman (ridiculous though that is), it's the dragging women's rights backwards by 40 years to a time when women were expected to look and behave in a certain way. This is what pisses me off.

I suspect many male TRAs would like a return to those days and when women 'knew their place' and dressed accordingly.

Gender is the tool of our oppression

it is abhorrent that gender studies across academia have become about the very thing it was created to challenge

Quite so: as big a load of bollocks as the bollocks they undoubtedly still possess...

And your thread title is so inspiring and mature.

About as inspiring and mature as grown men having strops because they can’t play in women’s teams.

Yes, but JasmineAllen that is why they will never admit that it is based on sex stereotypes. That is why they double down on the 'inate feeling'. Which is a fallacious position but they also cannot acknowledge that. So they fall back on the 'I cannot ever know how those people feel, so I have to believe it is something that cannot be determined, defined or diagnosed because I can never 'feel' it myself.'

Which leads into the fallacious position that underlies the entire 'feels like' position. Because how can anyone declare that they feel like a woman when every interaction in their life is as a person with a male body who has stuck a 'woman' label on those interactions.

For instance, it is only because they react how they imagine a stereotypical female will react that they label it thus. Or they react how they cannot imagine another male person reacting. Because it is not only their conceptualisation of how female people live and react to society, it is their rejection of how their conceptualisation of male people live and reaction to society.

And once you see this rather clear disconnect, you can never go back to mere acceptance because someone said so.

Exactly!

I'm confused. I thought trans women were the most pioneering equality go-getting women ever? So why do they want to stay playing boring old safe girly cricket when they could be smashing down boundaries and pioneering participation in open teams/matches. Then in 10 years they could claim that as another thing they revolutionised for (actual) women.

Which brings us to that piece of equipment that they still need and women do not!

And I used to think it was a knee guard and walk around with my father's protector on my knee.

Flouncing and "considering giving it all up" just because you've finally been told NO is hardly an inspiring or mature look for an adult either!

I thought it was highly accurate portrayal of the phenomenon described.