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!

Yes.

The equivalent of conditioning girls to suck their hurt and discouragement up and still be kind.

No pattern is. That's surely what pattern means in this context.

Yes, and there being exceptions is only possible because there's a pattern (for there to be exceptions to).

And no, there's not only one opinion you can comment with. Just expect to be challenged if your opinion is... challengeable.

Your experiences of two sports days are obviously a tiny sample size and anecdotal.

Sorry, I forgot one:

Sex Differences in Track and Field Elite Youth

Mira A. Atkinson, Jessica J.James, Meagan E.Quinn, Jonathon W. Senefeld andSandra K. Hunter

https://sportrxiv.org/index.php/server/preprint/view/324/version/419

RESULTS: Males ran faster than females at every age in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 m (P<0.001). When combining all running events, the sex difference (%) was 4.0 ± 1.7% between 7-12 years and increased to 6.3 ± 1.1% at 13 years, and 12.6 ± 1.8% at 18 years (P<0.001). Similarly, males jumped higher and further than females at every age (P<0.001). For long jump, the sex difference was 6.8 ± 2.8% between 7-12 years, increasing to 8.5 ± 1.7% at 13 years, and 22.7 ± 1.4% at 18 years (P<0.001). For high jump, the sex difference was 5.3 ± 5.2% between 7-12 years, increasing to 10.3 ± 2.4% at 14 years, and 18.4 ± 2.04% at 18 years (P<0.001).

CONCLUSION:Prior to puberty in elite youth track and field athletes, there is a small but consistent sex difference, such that males run faster and jump higher and further than females. The sex difference in performance was event dependent and increased significantly from ~12 years for running and 13-14 years in jumping events.

But, hey, it is preprint ...

Of course, if many papers found results that support the very same conclusions of acceptable papers, that also reflect the established knowledge for decades, and the established and published records of children from different countries and international records too, does that mean that maybe, just maybe, the findings are conclusive?

This is so so different to the lovely example you cited.

this is allowing a male in to a female event, on the basis that if he’s trans, he is a girl. If you allow that, then you can have no argument for any single sex anything, because men can be women. That is then rapists in women’s prisons, flashers in women’s toilets, men in women’s races, men in women’s trauma centres.

this IS serious, because it’s where it all starts.

"kindness to child who may well be struggling with their identity trumps competitiveness IMO."

Why is it kindness to affirm a child's philosophical belief about themselves when that belief is not based at all on reality?

Why is it kindness for all the female athletes in those events to just let this male athlete race because he wants to? Why doesn't your own kindness extend to the girls?

You can see it is 'unfair', but you dismiss it because to you, personally, you don't see any value in allowing female athletes to have fair competition when the school has created competitive events for the day.

You discuss 'elite sports' without the acknowledgment that interest and excitement in sport that leads to female elite athletes is not unusual to start in primary school. You wish to protect 'elite sports' while actively diminishing the opportunities for the interest that leads to that level with your personal view that even in a competition that a school has set up, we should make sure that our girls are kind and inclusive first and foremost.

Do you not see the rather stark disconnect in what you seek to protect while allowing harm to occur at the grassroots level?

@LittleBitofBread
I do think a child who is eight and is confused about their sex/gender identity needs support. But I don't think this should take the form of letting them compete against the opposite sex.

agree that the opposing sexes shouldn’t compete…

however, I am not sure that children of eight are confused about their sex / gender identity - I think the adults are confused about how to parent!

A child of that age does not have the emotional maturity to be working out and deciding that they are confused - that very lack of emotional maturity is why these things are seen as abuse - because at that age parents are the ones building their child’s future - they control the rhetoric / steer the feet / choose the path… a child at this age who is ‘confused’ has parents who are either deliberately choosing a trans direction for their child, or who are taking a child who is exploring how to be a boy / girl and mis-interpreting this against trendy societal pressure - either way the parents are to blame for enabling something which will I think be seen very clearly as child abuse…

Yes, I agree it's more likely to be about the parents. I was just being a bit brief as that wasn't the point of my post. But I do think you're right.

No @Talkwhilstyouwalkit just teaches girls at a young age that they have to pretend / lie and swallow unfairness.

It’s really important that doesn’t happen. Other helping stuff is fine.

The school haven’t thought this through to it’s inevitable conclusion where they are allowing an 11 year old boy into the girls toilets, changing rooms and dormitories. OP you really need to help them look beyond appeasing some mad parents with a 6 year old that’s taken on a politically charged identity.
The sports day fiasco is a good opener. You now have proof that here’s an issue and you need to get in a room and make them think.

Be that parent, I’m about to be. Primary school now his mixed sex races on sports day. No girl in the top 3 from year 2 or above. This is not inclusive for girls.

Laura Trott MP, shadow education secretary, was in the news at the weekend about the delay in government guidance for schools navigating the issue.

A child who is confused about their gender is not disabled. And as a disabled person I find that deeply patronising anyway; disabled people of all ages aren't the special pets of the able bodied and they need access to equality, not manufactured awww bless experiences of everyone pretending they are something they're not. As you found, that was largely about the lovely sentimental feelz of the adults involved; the messages in that to that child and all the other children were dire. If the child doesn't know now, they will realise one day that they were had, and it was faked.

No, children should not be taught that some children are very special VIP people that have to be enabled and indulged and sacrificed to. It is not good for the special guest star child - in fact it locks them in to transitioning among other things - and teaching children poor boundaries, enablement and co dependency is a pretty rotten way to create successful future adults. Make those children almost entirely girls, and lets get Anne of the Famous Five out as the movement leader and start teaching the girls homemaking, because this is the good wives and mothers club. We owe girls one hell of a lot better than this.

Im not debating. If I was I’d listen to others anecdotes and life experiences. But I’m good at that. Some posters just implode that I’m not listening to them and agreeing with them.

This is completely inaccurate.

Where did you get your statistics from? Your daughter’s school? 🙄

I don’t think it matters to the poster.

Thats utterly unfair on the girls. Girls drop out of sports and physical activity at a far greater rate than boys. We should be seeking to reverse that. Not disadvantaging girls feom a young age and undermining their confidence with crap like this. Your school has taken a cowards way out rather than doing what’s right for girls

A lot of time would be saved on these threads if people remembered anecdote isn’t data, wouldn’t it?

It’s not a girl it’s a boy.

Ah I see.
I assumed you were interested in discussion.

As you were.

Why is it that only girls are asked to be kind... .. the boys are not told to let the girls win the mixed sex races....

I think anecdote is also welcome in these discussions?

I’ve yet to see a mixed race at primary school be an issue. Sorry. If it was we’d have boys and girls only races. We don’t. I will bet we are not the only school in the country to do this either.

It typically only goes one way.

The male children involved are not told to ‘be kind’. The fact that the girls are is actually on par with the misogyny of allowing any male to identity into female single sex provisions.

But those who advocate for kindness don’t seem to recognise the misogyny at work in the actions they advocate for. For example, the ‘it is just fun!’ dismissal is misogynistic because it really does educate girls to prioritise people above themselves. While that is admirable to keep in decision making criteria, why should girls be taught to forgo their own needs for someone else? Aren’t girls to be valued too?

When you strip it back, girls are being taught to be the service humans. That they are there to service the needs of others.

This is a classic case of what the SC judgement addresses. If they're having races labelled as single sex they have to be genuinely single sex, not mixed sex. At this age, and given it's just a primary sports day, they could just have mixed sex races. But if they have single sex races, then they are committing direct discrimination against both the girls AND the other boys by allowing one 'special' boy to race in the girls race.

Most primary schools have 'honesty' as a school value. Yet they're lying to the kids and expecting the kids to lie about something that is really important for safeguarding - sex recognition.

It's really insidious child abuse, of all the children, for an adult-led agenda pushed by some very, very dodgy people (Stephen Ireland springs to mind).

Ah discussion and debate are different things. I’m not here convincing people that they are incorrect. I’ve put forward a point in a discussion of what I’ve experienced therefore didn’t see an issue.

Not wanting to derail the thread, I also have a disability and you've put this perfectly- while I'm sure the adults felt good, it's humiliating and othering for the recipient of the 'kindness' who had no autonomy in this situation.
With regards to the transchild, it's also another misguided attempt at kindness. The child will one day realise actually most people won't accept him as a girl and this will hit much harder than if people hadn't pretended in the first place.