Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lord Triesman, the former chairman of the Football Association, has said he is “deeply concerned” that the governing body he used to lead is “not providing women and girls with fair, safe sport” because of its policy of allowing biological males to compete in the female category.

In a sharply critical letter to Debbie Hewitt and Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chair and chief executive respectively, Lord Triesman, who served as the organisation’s first independent chairman from 2008 to 2010, argues that his successors’ approach is not only compromising the integrity of women’s football but creating an atmosphere where many people feel frightened even to speak up about their concerns.

And all for the sake of men who want to trample women. Funny how that works – we don’t see the newspapers and political figures and entertainers lining up to cheer on white people who want to trample brown people, or rich people who want to trample poor people, or bosses who want to trample workers, but somehow when it’s about women the power imbalance no longer matters. Step on those bitches, guys, they deserve it.

The FA has been under significant pressure to change its stance since last December, when it received a letter from more than 70 MPs and members of the House of Lords – including Lord Triesman – demanding urgent action to protect women from the injury risks of playing against biological males. After Telegraph Sport’s revelation that at least four women’s teams in the Sheffield and Hallamshire League were refusing to play against Francesca Needham, a trans-identifying male accused of causing a season-ending injury to an opponent, MPs ordered the FA to “show leadership” and to abandon its position of allowing those born male to register to play in their “affirmed gender”.

As if “affirmed gender” means anything. We don’t have our own “affirmed species” so why should we have an affirmed “gender” aka sex?

The FA said that it was happy to discuss its policy with Lord Triesman. It has consistently defended its position, saying in a statement earlier this year: “Our current transgender policy has been in place for 10 years, and it has helped to enable a very small population of transgender women to enjoy playing football safely in the grass-roots game. This is a complex and constantly evolving area, and our review remains ongoing as we monitor and support the practical application of our policy.”

Oh fuck off. It’s not complex. Men are not women. Calling it a “very small population” doesn’t make it ok, and adding dishonest blather about “enjoying playing safely” also doesn’t make it ok. Men can’t play safely against women, and the fact that they enjoy endangering women is not a reason to let them do it.