Outrage throughout the league
The Telegraph has the skinny on “Francesa” versus women.
At least four teams in a Sheffield women’s football league are boycotting matches after a club fielded a transgender player accused of causing a season-ending injury to an opponent.
Mexborough Athletic refused to play Rossington Ladies on Sunday night in protest at the presence of Francesca Needham, 31, amid outrage throughout the league at the openly trans player’s alleged connection to an incident that has left a rival out of action for several months.
He’s huge. There are photos. He stands out.
The Needham case has potentially far-reaching implications, with at least 50 transgender players understood to be registered in women’s leagues across England. The Football Association’s policy is to decide gender eligibility for players over 16 on a case-by-case basis, with biological males wanting to play in women’s football required to show their blood testosterone levels are “within the natal female range” for an “appropriate length of time so as to minimise any potential advantage.” These levels are meant to be checked annually.
That nonsense drives me crazy. It’s not just the testosterone! His whole body is different: bigger, heavier, thicker. Would men like it if an adult male gorilla played on the other team?
“We had a Zoom call together and you could feel the emotion pouring out,” a source said. “We’ve been terrified of saying anything. We don’t want to be accused of being transphobic. We don’t want the names of our clubs dragged through the mud. It has been like walking on eggshells.”
In other words they were under enormous social pressure to risk their bodies and well-being for the sake of a man who wants to be able to smash them.
Fiona McAnena, director of sport for Fair Play for Women, emphasised the scale of the debate unleashed by the Needham controversy. “People say, ‘It’s only a few trans players, what difference does it make? Well, here’s one male player in one team, affecting every team in that league – that’s over 150 women. They don’t want to play if it’s so unfair, they’re worried about injury, and some are even talking about giving up football, if this is how it’s going to be.
“There are 50 male players approved by the FA to play women’s football in England – and those are the ones they know about. So this is affecting thousands of women and girls in football. This is happening all over the country. We have raised this with the Equality and Human Rights Commission as a matter of urgency. They need to point out that female-only sport is lawful.
“Many sports governing bodies receive funding from the national sports councils to promote female participation. Surely it is time for the sports councils to insist that sport governing bodies provide fair and safe sport for women and girls – or lose funding.”
How about now?
Never mind ‘case by case’; they should have enforced a ban from the outset.
One element that makes this all truly bizarre is how recently the controls over women playing in men’s leagues were relaxed. Not that long ago, I was involved in assessing whether or not a promising young woman (17 years old) was suitable to play in a Men’s Competitive league. That required three opinions from coaches and an assessment by a panel, deciding whether or not she would be capable of playing. She was faster and stronger than the best level of Women’s Competitive play available to her, and her coaches believed she needed to be challenged to continue to develop. In the end, we decided to let her play despite the physical disadvantages.
It worked out brilliantly for her, playing for the first time she could remember where she was one of the slowest players on the field, not able to muscle players off the ball, easily muscled off the ball, and under constant pressure. When she went off to post-secondary play among women again, she was dominant. The mental aspects of her game had radically improved. Good chance we will see her with an Olympic medal.
This clown wants to make the opposite journey.
Well, if its any help, it is these blokes with male genitalia who like to pretend they are women (ie ‘trans-sexuals’) themselves who are making all the noise and generating the transphobia, about the whole lot of it by demanding entries to women-only facilities. On that basis, I too am a full-on transphobic transphobe, crunching through the eggshells in a pair of army boots.
I do not like the idea of my wife, my daughters and my women friends having to share females-only facilities with the likes of them. This political demand of theirs will if succesful create the perfect.cover for rapists and molesters.
Nothing could be better calculated to generate organised transphobia. It’s Newton’s third law.
Sportswomen are standing up to these cheats in numbers too big to ignore. It’s wonderful to see.
Most adult men would tune in to see that, sure. Some might even be game to go against the gorilla. As long as everyone consents, which is a choice not being given to women.
And this is just one sport in England. How many cheats are there across all sports, and in all of the UK? Small wonder public awareness of the threat posed by TRA politics is increasing there; far from being ‘terf island’, it looks to me as if the British Isles have ceded more female-only spaces to male narcissists than anywhere else in the world.
Skeletor, just interested to know how we could be sure if the gorilla consented.
The problem with “case by case” is it forces the women to defend themselves, on the same grounds (but make sure you supply relevant particulars) over and over and over ad infinitum. We can never be allowed to move on to any more productive uses of our time, because we have to go and defend ourselves, again.
And that it treats the whole idea as acceptable instead of a ridiculous outrage.
So, she exemplified the spirit of competitive sports, working up to achieve a higher level of competitiveness. That’s what Annika Sorenstam, Nancy Liebermen, Kelsie Whitmore, and other women were striving for: to play at a higher level than they could against other women.
These men who pretend at “gender dysphoria” in order to play in women’s leagues are looking to play to a level that allows them to believe that they are excelling. When I look at my times in running in my age group, I could get a 1st place in some of the races (age bracket,) while placing 14th in my age group as in my last race. I wouldn’t find it a thrill, honestly. I do get a thrill out of placing 2nd or 3rd in my age group as a man, and that has happened occasionally. It’s one of the benefits of getting old – everyone else slows down, too.
The spirit of sport (cue Vangelis) is to stretch your goals and it’s the basis of countless motivational posters, themes, and emails from managers. No manager would send out an email with the story of a man who pretended to be a woman in order to lift a cup. It’s not inspirational.
And, womens’ sports are finally starting to get their due. Until the NBA decided that it would be great to back a women’s basketball league financially, people found out how exciting women’s sports really are and soccer, hockey, have professional women’s leagues with television contracts so they can pay their athletes much better salaries than in the recent past and women have options (and fans have options) beyond college sports. I think a vein of the demand for males to be included in women’s sports is at least in part underwritten by those who wish to destroy women’s sports by tainting it with either charges of transphobia when men aren’t allowed, or by the ridiculous spectacle of big “laydees” in women’s uniforms rushing up and down the court.
Keeping trans out is important to maintain the growth of women’s sports.
“Until the NBA decided that it would be great to back a women’s basketball league financially, people found out how exciting women’s sports really are ”
Rewrite:
Until the NBA decided that it would be great to back a women’s basketball league financially there were few options for fans to see women play sports beyond the college level, but then people found out how exciting women’s sports really are
(I think that the incredible teams that U Conn and Tennesee had in college basketball garnered attention towards women’s basketball and convinced the NBA that a women’s professional league would pay off. And it has.)
Sounds to me that a revival of that legendary Mediaeval procedure for checking that a candidate for Pope was truly male could be in order for weeding out trans-impostors from womens’ sports..
As many an inspecting cardinal must have said, in his perfect Italian::: “Youva gotta da donger, so onna da throne you belonga.”
Likewise for womens’ sports. A modern portable dunny seat inside a tent could well be all that was required.for first checking for impostors, and then chucking those found out.
Worth a try, surely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_surrounding_the_papacy
Men who have had vaginoplasty are still men.