British Orienteering has peaked!

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/news/6799/british_orienteering_transgender_policy

'Entry Classes for female competitors are prefixed by “W” and are restricted to those whose biological sex at birth was female.
An Entry Class prefixed by “M” is unrestricted by sex.
Those whose biological sex at birth was not female are only allowed to enter an Entry Class prefixed by “W” if they declare themselves non-competitive..'

I have theories on this..... . It's a theory I developed re driviing. The sexist stereotype is that women are poorer drivers/more nervous drivers. I actually think that this is true.....

.... but not because of poor little women's brains being incompetent.

It's because of the way (overall - as always, it's not consistently true), women are TAUGHT to drive and the expectations for them. Teenage girls admitting they are scared of driving are likely to get support, accomodations may be made, they may be "let off" certain things. Teenage boys, overall, less so. There's a subtle, but real, expectation that boys will like driving, be good at it, even be TOO enthusiastic and likely to take too many risks.

Baically, societal wide sexism is so engrained it even affects this. Similarly to that research I saw a few years back that said if you ask girls how good they are at maths, even as young as 7, they'll say they're less good, even if objectively they are performing at the same level as the boys.

And I suspect with map reading, it's that same unconsious bias/sexism at play. This idea of "women being bad at navigation" that then infiltrates everything.

My father had zero tolerance for any suggestion that basic skills like map reading or driving were impacted by our sex. His view was that these were important skills and you needed to learn them, and learn them properly like many other core life skills from reading to cooking.

@Iwanttobeafraser
”My father had zero tolerance for any suggestion that basic skills like map reading or driving were impacted by our sex. His view was that these were important skills and you needed to learn them, and learn them properly like many other core life skills from reading to cooking.”

Your father was, imo, correct. These are all learned skills, and men and women should be equally capable of them - given the same instruction and encouragement. But this is where the societal element tends to let women and girls down.

Sounds like you should be all for abandoning the separate sex categories in orienteering, @FlowersInDenmark rather than supporting the admission of men into women's sex categories.

I'm sure it is an active and interesting question as to whether there should be separate sex catagories in this sport, and perhaps whether we should regard those separate categories as a temporary response to sexism in sportrather than an eternal thing.

But those questions have nothing as all to do with allowing transwomen to parachute into the wrong sex category.

Yay logic.

There should be a pun in every title 100%

“Women can't read maps” is a tiresome stereotype. But not nearly so pernicious (nor likely to be internalised) as the deeply patriarchal assertion that women must at all times be oriented to meeting the needs of others, and must never, ever keep something nice all to themselves.

Why just trans women? Lots of "non-manly" (in sexist eyes) men would appreciate a helping hand from women I'm sure. And after all, wanting to offer a nice helping hand to sad men is a far more laudable personality trait for women than, y'know, wanting to compete and win something, amirite?

Or do you think there's something especially "womanly" (in sexist eyes) about trans women that other men don't share?

In which case as a woman I'd love to know what that is - what do I have in common with that particular subset of male people that is so "womanly" pleae?

.

And this is why we have girls' and boys' choirs in cathedrals (or actually, why we fought to have girls' choirs, but now we tend to have mixed choirs, though at lower levels schools introduce boys' choirs to get the boys to take part in case they are seen as "girly";) why we have boys' ballet classes; why we have Guides; and why we still need girl only classes in chess,

I don't know about anybody else but I hope the social media ban for children includes Mumsnet so we don't have to deal with childish derailing anymore.

Ignoring the 'yay' nonsense... one of the things I love about FWR is the level of expert knowledge that abounds. I have learnt so much about toilet design and have now had my interest piqued (hee hee) around map reading, the auditors under Knotty's guidance have created a magnificent resource and many many more.

We need an 'experts by bloody, not giving up, not giving in experience' type directory so in the event of Ben, Naomi et al needed expertise they know where to come.

“And the aim for actual feminists in orienteering (which I don't think describes any of you for various reasons) should be to decrease societal sexism in order to make orienteering a more welcoming environment and possibly eventually just have open events (or not, we can't know until we get to this utopia”

I would normally post links to point out that we have plenty enough information to be able to model the physical advantages that will always come with a male body, unless there is a dramatic evolutionary change.

But I am just going to laugh because this is bonkers.

When we reach this predicted ‘utopia’ we are going to discover what history, observation, testing and biological modelling as been telling all along. Something you scoffingly dismiss. Male physical advantage is well known, tested and proven. But sure… the utopian era will give us a different answer.

Maybe, aliens will decide to completely change female physiology …

It’s genuinely heartwarming to see TRA arguments have never advanced beyond fallacies and rank misogyny. It’s almost as though they’ve learned nothing over the past 10 years and multiple court cases.

For a pursuit that has to know the difference between North and South, and read a map accurately, not trust to feelz or vibez, it's absolutely gobsmacking they got sex wrong and went off piste.
I've been in a wood with the sun going down, and I'd never throw my OS map away.

I am 62 and learnt to read Ordnance Survey maps as part of my geography O level, and I agree with everyone saying it is something to be learnt, it's not handed down willy nilly to the bewillied ones by the gods.

In which case as a woman I'd love to know what that is - what do I have in common with that particular subset of male people that is so "womanly" pleae?

Oh I think we established this on another page. It's your tendency to like feminine things. You don't have to actually like them. Just have a (possibly undiscovered) tendency towards them. That's what you share with other women.

My apologies. It's important for me to really try on the ideas of the other side, to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They may need to go by age of emotional maturity. I fear that many derailers are chronological adults if not emotional adults.

Ok, you might all be right. I did have an overprotective upbringing which probably did produce the effect of me being passed some stereotypical “girl traits” even whilst my parents were trying to do the opposite.

But I am not convinced. I always considered my own dd (now 16) had inherited her dad’s genetic sense of direction and that this was a bit unusual. I will never forget that at age 3 she corrected me when I turned the wrong way - “mummy this is going to the park, not the doctor.” And she was right of course. She is the map reader for her DofE group, and is exasperated that the other girls in her group and the wider population (30 or more) all seem to get lost very easily. They go to an all girls school so there’s not really a concept of “this is for boys”.

I love the FWR board for this exact reason too. Despite the childish derailing on this thread, I'm now genuinely interested in orienteering, I think it sounds great! Thanks to the posters who have provided such interesting facts and information about this sport.

Also, the hospital reports that Knottyauty did with others was amazing and made me realise my NHS trust was not to be trusted (!), I've kept my own research with that ongoing as well offline, and now I write letters etc, inspired by Knotty et al. Plus all of the threads on the Brighton school singlesexspaces has done and seeing how well he's fought against it plus last but not least, the absolute legend that is keeptoiletssafe who honestly keeps me so well informed with why single sex toilets are important. Her research helped me make an argument to a restaurant manager in Glasgow who had no answer back to me when I cited her resources and why I was uncomfortable with their toilets being "cubicles" and "cubicles with urinals". His response was to tell me I didn't need to come back if I didn't like it, which was pretty childish, but that's all they have really.

I am dreadful with maps, to the extent that I had to line paper maps up with the roads so that I could trace the path as we took it and they made sense. I also managed to end up at junction 7 of the wrong motorway and my first thought was 'weird, they've changed the road sign!', not 'I'm on the wrong motorway in the wrong town.' I also had to teach myself routes discretely, even if they used the same roads. I taught myself the route to Brighton by saying "Go to Chichester but stay on the motorway for another 30 miles'.

Sat Nav was invented specifically for me, I'm sure!

@FlowersInDenmark 'Anyway. You all suck. So much.'

If all else fails, spit your dummy out. That'll show them.

This has made me laugh to be honest. Mantrums all round.

Thank you for those references. There are reasons for my not orienteering which are nothing to do with map reading. As my mother said, Ihave ploughman's legs, thick and slow. (They used to be strong muscles - couldn't run with them, but if I came across anyone who fell into a mire, I was your woman. Not muscles now.)
My dad taught me map reading as a useful skill - I still have his army protractor. I can turn maps in my mind, don't need to turn the paper. Can even turn it in 3D, useful if I know the geology. Or without the physical map, if it's an area I know.
But what really made the difference was walking about Folkestone as a child, with an obvious base line in the hills, which I could always see. I almost never see girl children out playing - we can all imagine why - but frequently see boys, who thus have the opportunity to build their own internal maps, as I did, and still know the location of every girl's house whose mother said she couldn't come and play, 70 years ago. Probably rightly suspecting me of enticing Violet-Elisabeth into damming streams and climbing trees.
I really enjoyed it when the PE curriculum included an orienteering module, not off the premises at Y4, but I think they had as much fun as I did devising it.

Forgive me for going off piste a bit but I can't help wondering if the trans identified man who plays outside second desk in the first violin section isn't allowed to use the ladies in the interval does that mean that women are no good at music?
Or is is genocide?
It's just so difficult to keep up.

Oh come on! It was hilarious!

Great, thank you.