A legacy of inclusion
I did a couple of posts about “Giulia” Valentino last month: he’s a man who plays football on women’s teams. The Guardian had a Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Trans Ladies piece earlier this month about how mean everyone is to men who compete against women.
Five weeks later, speaking to the Guardian in a first media interview since the controversy, Valentino sought to set the record straight about the tournament final and make the case for including trans people in sports.
Issue isn’t sports. Issue is men muscling into women’s sports.
Commentators had suggested the game they played in, called the Dublin Junior J Shield football final, was for teenagers whereas it was for adults, with junior signifying a lower skill level, said Valentino. “A lot of the misinformation was clearly intentional; they wanted to give the public a specific angle. This is the well-known toxic narrative against trans people we know so well.”
Not trans people; men. This is the well-known dishonesty and manipulation we know so well.
An Italian tech worker who moved to Ireland two years ago, Valentino is a newcomer to Gaelic sports and by her own account not especially skilled, yet she may leave a lasting mark if the GAA and LGFA allow trans players to compete – she has been consulted by the policy review. “I will never be remembered for my sporting results but I’d like to be remembered for leaving a legacy of inclusion for other trans players.”
He may be not especially skilled but he still has a man’s body. Just drop the whole Steal Women’s Sports campaign and that will solve the problem.
For opponents of such inclusion, the photograph of Valentino closing in on an opponent appeared to tell its own story: a bigger, stronger athlete with an unfair physical advantage from having undergone male puberty.
The Guardian agreed not to publish this or any photograph that identified Valentino, who has been harassed. “Safety is a privilege that doesn’t belong to trans people,” she said.
He said. Why is the Guardian so tenderly concerned about this man and so callously unconcerned about the woman he displaced and the women he put at risk?
I have no such qualms about publishing the photo: here you go:
We get the usual gabble about how he’s lost power yadda yadda.
Valentino said that since starting to play Gaelic football in February she had heard no objections from other players in the ladies’ league. “Cisgender women players are our main supporters. I never had an issue on the pitch.”
Gee I wonder why. Could it possibly be because of the massive amount of abuse and bullying women face if they do object? Could it be that he heard no objections not because the women didn’t object but because they didn’t feel free or able to object? Could it be that he should know that and should never have seized the unfair advantage in the first place?
I’m so tired of these cheats and the guardians that enable them.
Throughout the history of the women’s movement, men “haven’t heard” a lot of women’s voices with their issues and complaints. Men are able to ignore women because they are bigger, stronger, and society has given them the additional advantages of being in charge.
When a man says he hasn’t heard complaints from a woman, and the issue is something he wants to do vs something she doesn’t want him to do, I’m afraid I believe him that he hasn’t heard them, but answer back that doesn’t mean they aren’t being said.
“I don’t see what all this fuss about civil rights is about. Our Negroes around here never complain.”
As with the forced birther movement it wouldn’t get anywhere without too many women cheering it on…
I’m a big guy and I used to play rugby. I wouldn’t relish running into him.
iknklast #1
There is a cartoon of an owl and a hawk (portrayed as members of some posh old-timey UK men’s club) that I saw once — one bird of prey asks the other if he has ever heard of one of their fellow predators being a danger and the other bird of prey says no, of course not. Then the first bird of prey nods and says something like “yes, just can’t understand what problem that mouse has accusing good old bird of prey of being dangerous”
OK, it is late, and I can’t find the cartoon, so I am probably butchering the description, but your comment reminded me of that. Predators don’t HAVE to listen to prey, do they?
Unless and until they provide some sort of evidence-based proof of this thing called “gender” everything that they’ve done up to this point, everything they are doing at this point, and everything they will do in the future, is going to be playing along with mass delusion and psychoses.
Southwest88 @ #5
Is this the cartoon you were thinking of?
“…so let’s take it away from young girls.”
My best friend has a teen daughter who plays soccer. She could absolutely run rings around my 50+ geek kiester. But the sheer size advantage I’d have on her in a game would put her at physical risk if any contact occurred, and it would be ludicrous to claim that there would no danger just because I’d taken a few hormone shots and started calling myself “Freesorceress”.