Trans girl winning every race at primary sports day

[Minibea]

My DD is 8 so in year 3 at primary school. There is a male child who self-identified as a girl from roughly age 6 and has socially transitioned at school. I’ve discussed this with DD along the lines of the importance of being inclusive, respecting someone right to be addressed in the way that they prefer etc but have also been clear with her that this child is biologically male and that you can’t change your sex. All fine.

Yesterday was school sports day. The child in question won every single race again the girls. DD is quite sporty and was up there with a chance of winning in all the races so is disappointed.

I don’t want to be “that” parent with school, nor rock the boat with the parents, but as the kids get older I’m concerned about the message this is sending and also the implications for bathroom arrangements, residential trips etc etc. So I want to ask school to provide/confirm their policy around all of this but what exactly do I need to see/hear? And what “should” the policy be so I can sense check it against what’s actually happening? An idiots guide would be most welcome!

Isn’t that up to you as a parent to be ‘having a word’ with your own school? Seriously? Why the fuck should anyone do your job of making sure girls in your child’s school have fair competition ? why isn’t it your job?

Oh yeah. This is you!

Telling parent who would make sure girls have fair competition, who do the work in understanding the science, that they would be bitching and whining.

Nice.

It absolutely is ‘a thing’.

So you think your because your son isn’t going to be able to win, that girls should have to accept that they lost to a boy if a boy wins their race? Because your school chooses to ignore the science and just have mixed races?

Sounds more like your ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude than an evidence backed argument.

I would withdraw my child from any school that allowed this.

If my child was at that sports day I'd have taken them out and gone home. Not a chance I'd let them think this was normal or acceptable.

It matters to OPs daughter, and the other girls in the races now

But these races weren’t supposed to be mixed. The school had already split them into boys races and girls races. Then because one boy said so all the girls have to move over. Nope.

I think the single sex race is odd as our primary school is all mixed races. Some of the girls beat the boys and visa versa. I’ve not really seen a massive difference in their abilities yet. Maybe more at year 5/6 but my child hasn’t reached that age yet.

I think it’s hard to put it all down to someone being biological male in a female race as they would have a natural ability too and sounds like they would win the male races too.

i am completely torn if I would say anything

I've never heard of a sex segregated primary school sports day before.

Please read the studies that have been linked to this thread.

Boys have a competitive advantage. From 6 years old.

And until mumsnet, I had never heard of schools who did not do this.

My child’s primary had single sex athletics and other sports here in the UK and in another country where they went to primary school.

It really is a thing!

Go to any junior parkrun on a Sunday morning and look at the sex segregated distribution of the first finishers.

There are different qualification times for county and regionals swimming for primary school age children. England Athletics athletics awards have different charts with different levels thresholds for girls and boys.

Are you suggesting they're all wrong?

My kids have been to schools that have done it various ways.

Current school (and I'd say the most common way I've seen it) they split the whole school into 6 teams, and races are team races - so mixed sex and age - everyone in the team throwing a javelin (foam), or doing the obstacle course or whatever.

Then there's one 'proper' race at the end (which they tried to do away with this year, but the kids protested, so they made it voluntary instead) where the faster, older kids all race around, and there's a male and female winner (the only sex segregated race, and it's generally the top class kids that would win, although it's open to all)

That works, and neatly bypasses any issues (I don't live in the UK, the issues are still very much alive here)

edit: team sports - football/hockey/rugby etc. are sex segregated from about 6 I think. I know the very little ones all play together, but it splits into separate teams very early.

Sports day is one thing, the most important and the one you should raise is residential trips.

I have gone back and read the peer reviewed scientific papers, I always ignore anything that isn’t so i skipped past them.

There is a minor difference under 8, and my suspicions are correct that in year 5/6 this will increase. As sports day is supposed to be fun I would maybe not say anything this year what’s done is done. OP maybe address it next year a month or so ahead of the sports day as that will have more impact

Absolutely this.

OP, it’s not up to you to prove why the boy SHOULDN’T be in your daughter’s girl’s race, they should be proving to you why he SHOULD.
The outcome might end up being mixed sex races or teams, but you absolutely should push back on them forcing your daughter and all the other girls to recognise this male as female, and make way for him him their category. The principle is fairness here.
As an aside, I can’t believe a primary school is going along with social transitioning so young, isn’t there something in Cass about that?

Be that parent.

You'll find others are not happy, either.

Ensure you use the word 'sex' on repeat. Not 'gender'.

Quote the studies that show members of the male sex have significant unfair advantage.

Find out if the girls are being disheartened, if any are asking what's the point of doing sport, of trying to be competitive, if their chances are taken away from them.

Re the loos and changing rooms aspect - stress the privacy, dignity and safety aspect of forcing girls to drop their boundaries around the male sex bulldozing them.

Normalising and imposing a loss of personal boundaries, short circuiting female instincts for self preservation, could have real implications for girls' safety. It's brainwashing.

And keep citing the recent judgement.

Reality is important.

Boys have a physical advantage above girls even before puberty. It’s possible that SometimesWinning’s school has some relatively weak boys and fast girls but this would be an exception.

You need to ask the school why they’re pretending a boy is a girl and letting him run in girls’ races.

I must say that I didn’t know either that there was a documented athletic advantage at that age, and doesn’t surprise me if others also aren’t aware. I just remember being stronger and faster than lots of boys at different stages pre-puberty, and not being the only girl by any means. I particularly remember this in the competitive sports I did when the girls had started puberty (and had an associated growth spurt) and the boys hadn’t, and would often beat them. Point being I don’t think it’s that unusual to think that the difference comes with puberty, especially as a lot of the discussion about why trans women athletes have an unfair advantage over biological women despite being on hormone treatment is to do with having been through male puberty. I wonder if this perception could be to do with boys being stronger/faster/having higher VO2 max pound for pound (as per the studies helpfully posted), but many girls around, say, 9 or 10 being so much bigger than boys because they start puberty earlier meaning that some of the boys’ advantage is neutralised or cancelled out.

There are a lot of studies linked up thread from @Helleofabore

There are differences from a young age. They don’t need to be large for most boys to be able to beat most girls.

This is settled science, and we don’t need to keep rehashing it. As someone also said upthread, boys and girls have different WHO growth charts.

It’s a separate discussion from whether you believe that mixed sex races are fine because you “know a girl who beats all the boys” and “it’s just fun”.

Try and separate it from whether a boy should also be socially transitioned at this age, if you want to be supportive of that, feel free. Focus on the fairness for the girls who didn’t get their single sex race and are expected to give it up. Again, you’re free to think this is fine and argue for that.

But don’t pretend there’s no physical performance difference on average between boys and girls because it has been studied.

I've helped for a few years at the local playgroup sports day - at 3 the boys mostly are en masse out running the girls with a speed and strength they don't have, and staff quietly 'fix' the mixed group races to put the fast boys in together with the occasional couple of very fast and athletic girls, and the slower boys in girl-heavy races so that the girls don't have the endless experience of mostly losing to boys. Otherwise they do get discouraged, and they do perceive unconsciously, even at this age that competitiveness 'isn't for them'.

We see in gender ideology all the time this belief that girls and women are just props in male lives; a part of the resources and set dressing for the male experience, and this is where it starts. We have to get more alert to the messages given to girls that mostly are happening through wholly unconscious sexism and just not valuing girls as we value boys.

Why should the feelings of one boy, and his need to not be confronted with the fact that he is a boy, be more important than the interests of every other girl in his year? What message does that send?

Yes, it's very hard and uncomfortable (and lets be honest, this is mostly about adults wanting to save themselves uncomfortable and upsetting conversations), to have to gently explain to a boy with gender confusion that he cannot be a girl in all ways as he wants to because he is not a girl, but frankly that conversation is going to have to happen eventually. To avoid such a conversation (and likely with shouty and legally threatening activist parents too) schools have enabled shared toilets, dressing rooms, showers, sleeping accommodations - there is no line of the girls that isn't crossed, to the point of active safeguarding risks that would never normally be considered.

The SC has taken away the ability to hide behind girls just not mattering very much compared to a boy. Schools will HAVE to now draw lines, and it is much easier to help a boy within clear expectations from day 1 that while additional and different resources might sometimes be provided for him, he cannot have the girls' resources and that there are limits to how far a transition can go, because of other people's rights mattering too.

It is a whole lot kinder to teach this from the start at primary than the situation we are now in where there are very angry men who have never encountered a 'no' before, have been strongly enabled to believe that they matter and no woman does and that 'no' is a word they have exemption from, and really don't know how to cope with it.

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

“The main thing for the school will be making sure everyone has a good time and participates....so if the trans kid wants to race against the girls then let him....”

How did you get from the first bit to the second bit?

Agree. The sport needs to be fair no matter what age.

It’s so important girls don’t have to pretend and lie for boys.

Which has what to say about the price of tomatoes? OP has pointed out this boy has won all the girls' races and her DD suffered from this. Also, in the UK, 8 is the age when separate toilet and changing facilities must be provided in schools and OP is worried that this boy will be in the girls' toilet and changing facilities, sharing rooms etc on school trips. Which is now illegal (and always was) since the SC ruling that sex is biological.

the thing is in many ways it doesn’t matter if he won or came last, the point is the race is for girls. He is not a girl therefore it’s not for him

What he’s learning already is that because he’s male the world will shift to accommodate and prioritise his wants over those of girls