An inclusive environment for all participants
The England and Wales Cricket Board is reviewing its transgender policy before its £20m semi-professional women’s competition starts next year.
Under ECB rules the eligibility of players in women’s domestic cricket is determined by a player’s own self-identified gender, with no medical requirement for those who have transitioned from male to female to lower their testosterone levels.
In other words it’s entirely verbal and unilateral. Player says he’s a woman, he’s a woman, end of story. Shut up you there in the back. Player says he’s a woman, player gets to play on women’s team. That’s inkloooosive. It’s also totally fair because women can do exactly the same thing.
However, Claire Connor, the managing director of women’s cricket, hinted that the policy could be tweaked at the elite level so that any trans woman playing in the ECB’s new eight-team competition would have to bring her testosterone down in line with International Olympic Committee guidelines.
But muscles, skeleton, lung capacity, speed? Pfffff. None of your business, and don’t you want to be inkloooosive? You bitch?
“The ECB’s currently isn’t a medically driven policy. It’s a more socially inclusive policy and we will be reviewing that over the coming months,” said Connor…
To put it another way, the ECB’s current policy is social rather than physical. But sport is physical. The issue isn’t medical so much as it is physical, and the ECB is just blithely ignoring the physical differences between female bodies and male bodies. Being “socially inclusive” is a good in many contexts, but not all of them. Look at ballet for instance. Professional ballet isn’t “inclusive,” because it places enormous physical demands on the dancers, and only those who can meet the demands get to perform before a paying audience. That’s how that works. Sport works the same way, and because humans are sexually dimorphic, it is only fair to divide sports accordingly. The ECB is weirdly pretending to be unaware of any of that.
The ECB later said it reviewed all its policies on an annual basis. “Our position on transgender participation will be reviewed as part of our ongoing commitment to regularly review all governance policies,” a spokesperson added. “In our current policy, the eligibility of players is based on one’s own self-identified gender, with no medical requirement. We are unlikely to make any unilateral changes to this stance. We are proud that this model promotes an inclusive environment for all participants in domestic and recreational cricket.”
But it doesn’t. It promotes an environment that excludes women for the sake of men who say they are women. That’s not an inclusive environment for all participants.
Professional ballet isn’t “inclusive,” because it places enormous physical demands on the dancers, and only those who can meet the demands get to perform before a paying audience.
Interesting thought. I was married to a professional dancer (Australian ballet trained, Queensland Ballet dancer), only 5′ 3″ tall and slight build. The men found her easy to lift, had to work harder on some of the slightly larger girls. Now, imagine Swan Lake with a “male pretends female” and the struggle Prince Siegfried would have lifting Odette. Can Hannah Mouncey dance, I wonder?
So that will no doubt be where the line gets drawn. “Oh no, sorry, we can’t be asking the men to lift you, much as we want to be socially inkloooosive.”
Trans women pushing to be considered for female roles in ballet? Why would they want that – they have no advantage in that role.
This is off topic, but I was just listening to Meghan Murphy interviewing one of the founders of Spinster, a new social media platform that is “A women-first social network. Feminist, federated, and free.” They have been under siege from the right and the left, including near-constant DDOS attempts, but they’re working to stay on line. Mary Kate Fain, the interviewee, was recently fired from her job as a software developer for stating gender critical feminist viewpoints in her free time. The site is interesting in that the moderators do not allow the use of the term “TERF” as an insult or slur.
Holms @ 3 – Some would want to because it’s “gender-affirming” – you know, like waxing Yaniv’s balls. Ballet is all about exaggerated and underlined “femininity” – that’s why only women dance en pointe, and it’s why anorexia is rampant among the women. Which is interesting because some people have noted parallels between the “pro ana” (pro anorexia) movement and trans dogma.
Don’t think you are being entirely fair to the ECB, though they are not exactly being courageous here. The quoted ” The ECB’s currently isn’t a medically driven policy. It’s a more socially inclusive policy and we will be reviewing that over the coming months ” is more or less a direct admission they have an unworkable and disastrous policy that they have been stampeded into, and they have no idea how to move away from it – but are looking to the IOC’s policy to provide cover at the elite level. Unilateral is a real wiggle word.
Not sure if this was brought up in the other recent cricket post, but the ICC rules give larger pitch dimensions for men’s cricket. It would be much easier for a male cricketer to play on a women’s pitch. The sport has very detailed rules including the weight of equipment, bats, balls etc. I wouldn’t want to face a fast bowler that was one or more feet taller than me (with or without added misogyny to fuel them on)
Not sure how this will link – please edit the post is it’s an annoying embedded video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2x_DI7tzNQ
There was an article recently about a transwoman ballerina. I’ll see if I can find it.
I am reminded of Ballet Trockadero, an all-male ballet troupe that uses men in female roles for comic effect.
Do you think we could find another way to divide sports competitors that isn’t based on sex/gender (whatever that means)?
My understanding is that, in boxing, competitors are divided into different (and more than two) categories based on weight… the idea being that people want to watch competitions that are, for lack of a better term, competitive.
Could there be a way to use physical characteristics other than sex/gender to divide up groups of competitors?
Do you think that would be possible? A good idea? A bad idea? Would “traditional” male/female categories be better?
I ask as a male who has never really done sports… Well, I was once on a baseball team but the teams were mixed (men and women, children and seniors) and it was all just for fun.
anon1152, the problem with using a factor such as weight rather than sex is that it still gives the advantage to the male competitors. All else being equal – training, diet, etc., the natural physiological differences between the sexes in terms of muscle mass and distribution, bone density, lung size, oxygen retention, and so-on ensure that pound-for-pound a mature male will be faster and stronger than an equivalent female.
#9 anon
Further to what AoS said… the mean, median and maximum strengths all skew towards the male sex. Pitting men and women against each other within narrow weight subdivisions would still be like giving one category of person mildly weighted dice.
#8
The ‘Trocs’ did dance on point.
Also, I recall hearing Mark Morris say that in his company, any dancer should be able to life any other dancer, and this applied to both genders. Which would involve ‘selecting’ for size and strength in different directions.
Re other ways of splitting people into sports leagues
The purpose of things like the US Title IX were not solely because women couldn’t compete against men, but because women were discriminated against, and were not afforded opportunity to participate in sports. Title IX was extremely effective toward its goal. Moving away from sex-segregated sports, or allowing men to compete in the women’s sports, moves away from that goal, even without considering questions of fairness in the competition itself.
Another reason for sex segregated sports is the vastly greater amount of money that tends to be spent on men’s sport than on women’s, from grassroots up. Men get better equipment, much more expensive training, greater opportunities for sponsorship, better pay….. The list goes on. It would hardly be surprising if a mediocre man did well if suddenly switching to a women’s team even if there were no biological advantages (which there are).
In England, we’ve been celebrating our womens football team recently (well, a bit). But it wasn’t too long ago when they didn’t even have money for a proper football kit. When they finally got a decent kit, they were expected to go on TV and explain how grateful they were.
And I’m sure to look pretty, wear makeup, and smile.
iknklast,
Who can forget Blatter’s brilliant suggestion:
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/sexy-shorts-good-idea-for-women-s-soccer-blatter-1.488140
@11 That’s why I said “another way”, in general. I just used weight as an example.There are other ways that we can and have divided sports competitors. We used to have separate teams for black people and white people. That was seen as a legit division by most (or at least enough) people. Now it’s not. Today some people (though not most, or not enough) think that the traditional ways of sex segregation should be changed.
You mentioned “muscle mass and distribution, bone density, lung size, oxygen retention”. Could things like that be used? Would it work?
@15
“Another reason for sex segregated sports is the vastly greater amount of money that tends to be spent on men’s sport than on women’s, from grassroots up.”
This sounds like we have sex segregated sports because women traditionally get fewer resources. But don’t women traditionally get fewer resources because we’ve had sex segregated sports?
It’s hard to know the “real”/”natural” capabilities of men and women because there has been so much sex discrimination?
And, back to @11, what counts as strength in most sports has been defined by male physiology. In principle, we could have different sports and different definitions of what counts as strength that would benefit women.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49284389?fbclid=IwAR21mDhOc-MDEuqb2IFsk6d04iqyrXLtkFkKXFPwl496WJnYhncXh2unAzw
Anyway. I was just wondering if there would be another way to separate competitors, so that competitions would be competitive, without just looking at sex. If the answer is no, then the answer is no. If the answer is yes, then that might be more interesting. Either way I’ll still be watching sports competitions as much as I do now (so… not at all).
Definitely not – before sex segregated sports, there was really only male sports. Creating a new league specifically for the female sex was a big advance, where resources spent on female sports went from zero to some positive number.
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with making a new sport that plays to the female body more than the male. I don’t think it will change much however, as such events already exist (e.g. rhythmic gymnastics) and are often derided as ‘girly’, or they simply go unnoticed due to the lack of resources they typically have.
Also, regarding the ultra-endurance stuff… it is highly mixed. There are some with records held by women as you note, and there are some with records held by men. Take the Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon as a counterexample… notice that all podium finalists are men (as far as I can tell from the names).
clamboy @ 4 – oh yes, Mary Kate Fain is the one who wrote ‘Non-binary is the new “not like other girls,” and it’s deeply rooted in misogyny’ and got fired for it. I did a post about it last week. I joined that new platform today.
anon #18
That isn’t what I was saying at all. I was saying that this is yet another source of inequality. Men who have played in men’s sport benefit from better equipment, better resources and better (or at least more expensive) training. If they then move to women’s sports, they take that advantage with them, just as they take (at least most of) the physical advantages.
Re #19, “before sex segregated sports, there was really only male sports”
Yes, exactly. Women were not expected or encouraged to participate in sports, and there were few if any opportunities for them to do so. Women’s sports leagues are a means of providing such opportunities and ensuring they go specifically to women. Mixed-sex sports and leagues do not do that.
A side point that may be relevant: in the US, colleges are (now) required to have equivalent spending on men’s and women’s sports. Because American football is all-male, extremely popular, and extremely expensive, many smaller men’s sports have been cut while the number of women’s teams has grown. There are schools that field teams in sports like crew or gymnastics for women only, despite there being men’s competitions in both of those sports.