The National Post tells us:

In Canada, professors can face discipline for openly claiming to believe in biological sex.

Not really the right wording. Not “claiming” and not “believe.” For openly saying that biological sex is real, would be more accurate.

That’s ultimately what anthropology professor Kathleen Lowrey discovered years into her battle with the University of Alberta, over her 2020 dismissal from an administrative position that she undertook on top of her teaching and research. Lowrey’s great sin: the display of print-outs outside her office door that asserted males could not be female, and her open expression of gender critical views.

There, that’s better wording.

Her punishment: removal from her position as associate chair of the anthropology department (and the loss of future stipends and potential career advancement that would have come with the position). Lowrey and her union fought her removal by taking the university to a labour arbitrator — but in May, they lost.

So…not worthy of respect in a democratic society if that democratic society is Canada?

Lowrey’s union doesn’t appear to be appealing the decision, either (the union didn’t give a clear “yes” or “no” to my inquiry, but a “we are not able to respond at this time as we are following internal processes”). Her ordeal sends a dark message to professors: academic freedom can be trampled on by university administration, dismissed in arbitration, and even shrugged off by the very unions that should be fighting to the bitter end to protect it. Even with the protection of tenure, Lowrey isn’t safe to believe that men are male and women are female.

She probably is safe to “believe” it (and know it), but not to say it. At universities in 2023 academics can’t say that men cannot be women.

It’s important to note here that Lowrey is respectful in what she says and does. She’s not harassing trans-identified students; she’s merely public with her beliefs on gender, which she came to in the mid-2010s.

But they’re not beliefs. They’re knowledge, or awareness, or understanding. Belief and disbelief are irrelevant. I can disbelieve in gravity, but gravity continues to do its thing whether I believe in it or not.

Writing for Quillette in 2020, Lowrey explained her position in a nuanced, rational manner.

“Contemporary gender ideology requires active affirmation of the proposition that men can become women and that women can become men,” Lowrey wrote. “It further asserts that to refuse to assent to this proposition is to do active ‘harm’ to trans-identified individuals. The doctrine requires uncritical reverence for retrograde gender constructs, such as the idea that a little boy who likes tea parties and pretty dresses can be deemed to have been ‘born in the wrong body’ (and so is actually, in fact, a little girl).”

It’s fair to say there are some beliefs in that passage, but the mere knowledge that men are not women should never be labeled a “belief.”

The labour arbitrator in May decided that Lowrey’s dismissal was not an act of discipline and did not violate her academic freedom because, in his view, it was simply a matter of making the department run smoothly. To his credit, he ruled that union protection should apply to professors carrying out administrative roles like that of associate chair (arbitrators of the past haven’t been so generous, so the decision on this front was a win for labour). Lowrey’s expression of gender critical views wasn’t worthy of punishment, he wrote, but it did render her “unable to carry out the job in a way that served … the department’s needs.”

“The associate chair’s role requires a person who can act and be seen to act as a supportive student advisor, a committee chair able to move the business of the faculty forward and so on,” explained the arbitrator in his decision.

Ok, accepting that claim for the sake of argument, what about the need for a supportive student advisor to students who know that men can’t be women? Why does the arbitrator assume that it’s only trans students who need a supportive advisor?

“The disputes over the treatment of transgender students within the university were live and controversial. It would be difficult for anyone to act as a chair or assistant chair that, of necessity, had to deal with such issues, not just as they arise, but in this case once they had clearly arisen.”

But what about all the students who don’t subscribe to the trans ideology? What about their side of that live controversy?

If you’re a mum…

There’s a thing called Jo’s cervical cancer trust, which tells us it’s the UK’s leading cervical cancer charity. Glinner mentioned it yesterday.

It has a page headed Language to use when supporting trans men and/or non-binary people. It explains why this matters.

Using the correct language when referring to someone’s gender identity is a simple and effective way to demonstrate support and recognition. If incorrect language is used without being corrected, it can cause someone to feel hurt or distressed. This may lead them to leave and to eventually seek support elsewhere. 

That’s rather anxiety-producing, if you ask me, because what is correct or incorrect language is constantly shifting and is also different depending on which expert is telling you what the correct language is.

Remember, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. It’s important that you acknowledge them, correct yourself, learn from them, and move on. Dwelling on mistakes could make the person you are talking to feel more uncomfortable.  

Oh dear, more anxiety. I’ll probably get it wrong, and then when I do get it wrong I’ll probably deal with it the wrong way.

This glossary explains some of the words we use in our information or that you might hear used by a patient. This is not a definitive list and we recognise that some people may prefer different words. It is still necessary to check the words or phrases your patient would prefer.

Oh god oh god oh god. I’m too anxious to get out the door now, let alone using language to support trans men.

Anyway…first item in the glossary…

Bonus hole – An alternative word for the vagina. It is important to check which words someone would prefer to use.

Go jump off a very high bridge.

Scholarship? What scholarship? Who cares about that? The important thing is the creed praying five times a day genuflecting facing Mecca hating women DEI. All hail the DEI!

The letter is really rather astounding. It’s not about his scholarship at all, it’s about his politics.

One Alex Kirshner at Slate is very confident that it’s “fair” to let men intrude on women’s sports.

Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports. They’ve spent considerable time investigating the subject, and in general, they have decided against all-out bans of trans competitors. The competitions tend to follow the guidance of scientists and geneticists, who are much less certain of trans athletes’ advantages than are various podcast hosts, conservative media icons, and disappointed parents of high school girls who finished a spot lower than they’d have preferred in a track meet. 

The way he puts it is confusing, and that’s probably intentional. “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports.” That reads as if he’s saying the governing bodies wonder especially if women have any advantages, and he then happily concludes nah. It would have been clearer and more honest to say “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially trans women, have any advantage”…but he didn’t say that. I suspect he muddled it on purpose. I’m so tired of this manipulative sleazy crap in aid of making it easier for men to cheat women in sports.

And then of course he concludes the paragraph by sneering at high school girls who don’t enjoy losing races to boys who don’t belong in those races.

Armstrong is asking the wrong question, though. He’d like to know if a world exists—and it does—where someone could ask a question about fairness in competition and not be labeled transphobic. He has less apparent curiosity about why anyone who takes issue with trans participation might, in fact, get a label of bigotry. If he’d asked that question, the answer would be just as simple: Because a lot of the loudest questioners and protesters of trans women in sports are also preoccupied with shoving trans people out of every other conceivable corner of polite society, and they’re concocting arguments on the fly in order to relocate trans people to those margins. It’s a spectacular coincidence, or none of this is on the level.

Even if that’s true, it remains unfair and wrong to let males invade women’s sports.

The conservative political and media campaigns supporting these efforts have paid dividends. The vast majority of Americans, and even a slim majority of Democrats, now see trans participation in sports as Republican politicians do. Gallup said in May that 69 percent of the public thought trans athletes should play on teams that match their birth gender. 

And you know what else? They’re right.

Originally a comment by Cluecat on An unwelcome queering of disability.

This has been a serious problem in many of the “Autistic Communities” for some time.

Previously, the primary division was between the “Autism Warrior Parents” wanting everything set up to serve them, and the “Actually Autistic” groupings pointing out that autistic children will grow up to be autistic adults, who need a certain amount of representation and support that is focused on adult support needs rather than only young children – not “one or the other”, but both.

These groups did not get on. It was disturbingly common for a certain type of parent to behave as though everyone else was a naughty five-year-old and should just do what the parents told them to do, and stop kicking off about adults making decisions, because we’re too defective, the Normies know best. This included the various quack cures, and attempts to discredit the experience of the adults, since the Warrior Parents always knew best. As a result, a number of groupings split off to focus on various things.

Then there was the whole “Shiny Aspie” thing, where the association was with the brilliant “genius” type (always male) who was just so brilliant he didn’t have time for all that boring, trivial “social stuff”. He was just so special, and didn’t have any major support needs, so all that could be ignored. This is the variant that lots of people wanted to “identify” with – the Outcast Genius, with the few “cool points” that geeks could ever get.

This always ignored those who needed more support, who were never going to be Shiny Genius-types, who still have value but it’s never recognised. The ones who are always left behind by trendy Identitays, because “eww! Who wants to be like that?”

So many of us resent being held up as the Shiny Aspie type, because even when we can just-about function in the Normie world (at a considerable cost), it’s still a disability. Yes, it’s part of why I’m good at what I do, for example, but it still affects everything. There’s a price, and it can be quite high. Some of us don’t really see a big difference between ourselves, and our siblings elsewhere on the Spectrum. We know that it could have been us needing that additional support – it’s more about luck than anything we’ve done, and we try to fight for the recognition of those support needs, because it’s not acceptable to leave our siblings behind. They matter.

The take-over by the Gendurr Brigade is perhaps unsurprising. If there’s any group totally ill-equipped to fight off a coup by a bunch of Cluster-B nightmares and their supporting nitwits, it’s Autistics. We just can’t deal with them. Combine that with the literal, black-and-white thinking that many are prone to, and the idea of someone promising that we no longer have to be stuck on the outside looking in. That we, too, could be heroes, even if just for one day. That we could be the in-group this time, the special ones, the Chosen Ones. Not everyone will be seduced by this – some of us understand that we’re really different and can’t be magically “fixed”, so we accept reality – but many will. Some will do anything to no longer feel broken and defective. To be cool, just once.

The sheer cruelty of promising that everything will be fixed if we just do what these people are saying is beyond belief. All these interlopers wanted the “cool points” of the Shiny Aspie Genius, or the social lassitude to make “mistakes” in conversations, to have people leaping to their defence if they’re rude or cruel to others – “He can’t help it, he’s Autistic!” in those horribly righteous tones, and to re-establish “No Debate” as apparent attacks on Autistic people.

(Note that nobody will ever say “She can’t help it, she’s Autistic” about actual females. That leeway is only ever reserved for males. The one time it might be said is when the dude is wearing a dress.)

The takeover is complete. Those of us who understand reality are systematically hounded out of what were once “our” communities, those who are looking for help and support for their loved ones (such as the example above) are ignored at best, attacked at worst. There is no community left for us.

The Gendurr Monster has swallowed everything.

More from the Trump Would Totally Do His Daughter file:

Donald Trump’s “naked sexism,” including toward his own daughter, is described in a new book by Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who famously wrote a scathing op-ed about the former president under the pen name “Anonymous.”

Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, describes several incidents that made women in the Trump administration uncomfortable in his upcoming book Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, an extract of which was obtained exclusively by Newsweek.

Like for instance drooling about his daughter’s tits and ass and talking about what it would be like to do her.

“There still are quite a few female leaders from the Trump administration who have held their tongues about the unequal treatment they faced in the administration at best, and the absolute naked sexism they experienced with the hands of Donald Trump at worst,” Taylor told Newsweek.

Then they should take their hands off their tongues and tell the truth.

In his book, Taylor describes Trump’s “undisguised sexism” toward the women in his administration, from relatively low-level aides to cabinet secretaries.

He recalls witnessing such behavior first-hand in meetings with Trump and Kirstjen Nielsen, who was secretary of homeland security from 2017 to 2019.

Well yeah secretary of blah blah blah but also a total babe.

“When we were with him, Kirstjen did her best to ignore the president’s inappropriate behavior,” Taylor writes in his book. “He called her ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey,’ and critiqued her makeup and outfits.”

After a crass comment from Trump, he recalls Nielsen whispering to him: “Trust me, this is not a healthy workplace for women.”

And yet, there she was.

Arts Council England graciously apologizes says nyah nyah we’re not sorry and we didn’t do anything anyway.

And to conclude: we’d do it all again. Nyah.

Awesome! You can’t have women being CEOs of organizations for women, that would never do.

But they’re influencers! They identify as enthralling!

Sadly, though, nobody wants to listen to their podcast.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that one podcast idea seriously mooted by Harry [Windsor] was to make an entire series about childhood trauma. Not just his own trauma, because he has obviously got enough mileage out of that elsewhere, but the trauma of a group best described as “world baddies”. As Bloomberg wrote, the concept of the show was as follows: “Harry would interview a procession of controversial guests, such as Vladimir Putin, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump, about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today.”

And Harry is just the fella to do that because…erm…

Netflix is apparently getting ready to give Harry and Meghan the chop, refusing to pay them tens of millions of dollars unless they came up with a hit as successful as their recent six-part documentary. Which they won’t, presumably, because that documentary was literally the sum total of their entire lives.

Well can’t they just do another multi-part documentary about their lives, but in…pink? Yellow? Mauve?

Their current woes, it seems, come from giving up the good stuff too early. As an entity, Harry and Meghan are only interesting for as long as they can destabilise the monarchy. Their Oprah interview did that. Their documentary did that. Harry’s book Spare did that. Archetypes did not do that, and as such was roughly as interesting as listening to changing-room chatter in the world’s most insufferable yoga studio.

That’s it, that’s their next project – Meghan and Harry’s Yoga Studio Changing Room.

Is that right?

No, of course it’s not. There’s no need for a “prefix to describe people who identify with the same gender as their birth” any more than there’s a need for a prefix to describe people who identify with the same species as their birth. It’s a prefix too many.

The point of it of course is to nudge people into thinking there is such a need, and that being “cis” is a form of privilege, and that “cis” people – or to be honest “cis” women – have to admit they are “cis” and feel guilty for it and do everything they can to make it up to people who are not “cis.”

The issue isn’t that it’s “insulting” but that it’s dishonest and manipulative.

Originally a comment by James Garnett on Stay out of the oven.

I want to take just a quick moment to plug your local outdoors club, because they almost certainly offer inexpensive classes on hiking, backpacking, and more. If this father had taken such a course, he would not have made this mistake and his child would most likely be alive today. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the premier club is The Mountaineers. In Colorado it is the Colorado Mountain Club. I’m uncertain what is out east in the USA, but I’m aware that the Appalachian Mountain Club is active and has many offerings. There are multiple clubs doing the same in the UK, and across Europe, and I’m sure they exist in Australia and New Zealand, too. Often these classes consist of one or two evening lectures, followed by a fun weekend outing where you get to practice. Make friends, have fun, learn to survive! They will teach you a lot of things that are counter-intuitive, but which may save your life.

Also, take a First Aid course if you can. I am the membership coordinator for a unit of my local Search and Rescue group, so I’m constantly seeking out first aid offerings to alert our members who need to update their certifications. These courses take about a day, but you’ll not only learn to recognize things like heat stroke, but also how to effectively mitigate them. Here in the USA, the best First Aid courses are often offered through your local Fire Department, and they’re often free. Or you can pay big bucks to the Red Cross, but you’ll at least be able to take the class at your leisure, in that case.

The Telegraph on the Arts Council’s horrible treatment of one of its officials because she doesn’t believe in magic:

Subhead:

Employment tribunal rules Denise Fahmy faced a hostile environment because of her view that people cannot change sex

Her “view” – it’s a “view” now that people can’t change sex. Is it a “view” that people can’t fly, that people can’t walk up walls and on ceilings, is it a “view” that people can’t live underwater, is it a “view” that lions are not crows and fish are not birds?

Knowing that people can’t change sex isn’t a “view,” it’s just reality. The “view” here is that people can change sex, and it’s looney tunes. The earth is frying and melting and here we are regressing to the middle ages where we can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Denise Fahmy took Britain’s biggest arts funding quango to an employment tribunal after she resigned as a grants officer having challenged a decision to withdraw funding for LGB Alliance, a group that represent gays and lesbians.

The group had been given £9,000 to make a film for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to celebrate how the lives of gay men had improved under the monarch’s 70-year reign.

But the funding was withdrawn by ACE in spring 2022 amid “hostile” claims the group was neo-Nazi and transphobic – a claim LGB Alliance denies.

For the very simple reason that it’s not true. See that’s a view – that LGB Alliance is neo-Nazi. It’s a little story the fanatics tell themselves. It’s a view through a very muddy windowpane.

Simon Mellor, the deputy chief executive, held a Teams meeting in April 2022 in which he expressed his “personal view” that LGB Alliance “has a history of anti-trans-exclusionary activity” and so funding them was “not within the spirit of the Jubilee fund”.

His comments prompted Ms Fahmy, 54, to then question why the funding had been removed, what message that sent about “freedom of speech” within the organisation and ask what protection there was at the council for gender-critical beliefs – the conviction that people cannot change their biological sex.

There again: it’s not a conviction. Of course people cannot change their sex. You can test this easily at home. Try to change your sex. Finished? Did it work? This is what I’m saying. It can’t be done. Fahmy isn’t the one with the “belief” and the “conviction”; the bullies who bullied her are the Believers.

Leeds Employment Tribunal has found Ms Fahmy, from Huddersfield, was the victim of harassment after a colleague then circulated an email and petition on the ACE intranet targeting those deemed “anti-trans”. The petition, which contained some extreme comments, remained up for 26 hours. The judges felt it should have been taken down sooner.

One email claimed “gender-critical views were seen as a cancer… [which] needs to be removed from our organisation”.

All because she knows people can’t change sex.

H/t Alan Peakall

Hey listen up, influencers want to tell us a thing.

LGBTQ Celebrities & Allies Call on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter to Stop the Flow of Anti-Trans Hate & Malicious Disinformation About Trans Healthcare

Celebrities! Well then! If celebrities call we must answer.

As celebrities, influencers, and prominent public figures with significant followings on social media, we the undersigned are calling on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter to

Let me just interrupt for a second. Can you imagine calling yourself an “influencer”? Or a “celebrity”? Or a “prominent figure with a significant following on social media”? Because I can’t. The very idea makes me cringe until I’m no bigger than a spider. Yuck. The pomposity of it, the self-flattery, the conceit. So right from the outset I think this is a bunch of fools and their Letter to the Masses is worthless.

we the undersigned are calling on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter to fulfill the promises you’ve made to transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conforming and all LGBTQ users in your terms of service. There has been a massive systemic failure to prohibit hate, harassment, and malicious anti-LGBTQ disinformation on your platforms and it must be addressed.

But of course what they mean by “hate” is anything that’s not instant enthusiastic deafening approval of The New Laws of Gender, so their InterVention is worthless as well as conceited and laughable.

There are several more paragraphs of drivel and then a long list of names, almost all of which are of obscure entertainers and “influencers.”

Excuse me, I gotta go influence some blueberries.

Joan Smith at UnHerd:

Time and again, women are having to go to court to protect themselves against trans activists.

The cowardice of organisations that won’t stand up for free speech and women’s legal rights is one reason for this. The latest institution to be shamed for its behaviour towards people who hold gender-critical views is Arts Council England (ACE), which has just lost a claim brought by a former employee, Denise Fahmy. The Leeds Employment Tribunal came to the unanimous decision that Fahmy, who had worked for ACE for 15 years, was subjected to harassment because of her gender-critical beliefs. 

In other words a woman was subjected to harassment by Arts Council England because she knows that men are not women. You couldn’t make it up, as the saying goes.

Read Joan’s account of the details.

All of this is scandalous. ACE is a publicly funded body, which means that the cost of defending the case — and Fahmy’s compensation — will be paid for by taxpayers. It’s been clear for more than two years, thanks to the Maya Forstater judgment, that a belief in biological sex is protected in law. So why did ACE waste public money to oppose Fahmy’s claim, instead of offering an apology and asking itself how such a toxic atmosphere was allowed to develop within the organisation? 

The irony is that ACE is widely regarded as a “liberal” institution, prepared to take risks on what should be regarded as art. But we know from bitter experience that “liberal” organisations, including Left-wing and centre-left political parties, have been among the first to genuflect before trans activists. They appear to be afraid of their own staff, raising questions about how far gender ideology is influencing other decisions.

It’s the new theocracy and I say the hell with it.

Originally a comment by latsot on Rainbow autism.

The forced-teaming of T with medical conditions and disabilities has been going on for quite a while. We’ve seen it most with DSDs (for the obvious reason) and with autism. In the latter case it is certainly at least partly because of autistic people being over-represented in the newer part of the alphabet community, as others have said. I’ve spoken about this to quite a few people with autism and they say there’s a strong sense that autism is completely captured and perhaps now intractably tangled. They feel that autistic people like them, especially children, are targeted because they are more susceptible to the concept of a magic bullet and less likely to change their minds…. and that messages like these are an aggressive and disturbing part of that targeting.

Messages like “no [condition or disability without the alphabet]” are relatively new (the past year or so) but are increasing in frequency and scope. In the last few months I’ve seen it directed at all sorts of conditions and disabilities and most often at disability in general.

This is very obviously an unwelcome ‘queering’ of disability, which is unlikely to have a good outcome for disabled people. Be clear: the claim is not that Gender Dysphoria is a disability or mental illness; that is still a forbidden message. The claim is that, like disabled people, trans (etc) people need certain help in order to live their lives on a somewhat level playing field to everyone else.

I’ll leave you to speculate on what I think about that claim.

The main problem is that so many of the medical condition and disability charities (especially the latter) are 100% captured. A large number of alphabet people have or claim to have disabilities. So it’s proving hard to resist the forced-teaming.

Sites like the revolting Steph’s Place were quick to capitalise on this. I won’t link to it, but the intention is rather clearly and prominently spelled out, there. It says something along the lines of “there will always be transphobia, but you can’t criticise disabled people…”

It’s saying that’s why being trans should be considered a disability, because then nothing trans can be criticised. It’s No Debate 2.0.

Originally a comment by Papito on Rainbow autism.

The prevalence of autistic kids among those who self-identify as trans is much higher than that in the population at large. Sometimes it seems the entire complex taxonomy of gender identities and rules was created by autistic people; who else could be bothered. As you mentioned here in February, Barnes says, in Time To Think, that the Tavistock ignored evidence that 97.5% of the kids showing up there were autistic, and 35% of them moderately to severely so, versus around 2% in the general population. The Venn Diagram is practically concentric circles.

Growing up autistic – especially if you don’t know it – can be exhausting, alienating, and confusing. A simple answer like Trans comes along and promises everything is magically better if you transition, plus you get this incredible Pokemon-like complexity of definitions and transforms, and you to get to yell at everybody to follow your complex rules, and everybody will clap for you.

The associations representing autistic people and kids have been taken over entirely by TRAs. You can’t go seek community, as an autistic person, without encountering such cheerleading. You can’t run an autistic support group without bowing to them.

This tweet could be read as “I will immediately lose my job working to support autistic people if I’m not also trans-affirming.”

Jesus christ. I remind Jane Caro that women are vulnerable to male violence as opposed to the other way around, and she replies with stats on trans v “cis” people. I could swear she used to be a feminist.

Yet another idenniny we have to affirm and respect and fight for:

So autism is somehow linked to LGB now? Also TQ+?

How? Why? What is the link?

I started out thinking there was no link, apart from the sweeping “different,” which applies to everyone in some way, but it occurs to me that maybe the link is literalism. Trans ideology is pathologically literal about the fictitious gendered soul, and autism tends toward literalism in general. Could that be the link?

Canada is out of its tiny little mind.

From September 2020:

RUGBY CANADA PROVIDES UPDATE ON FEEDBACK TO PROPOSED TRANSGENDER GUIDELINES [pdf]

Rugby Canada has completed their feedback submission to World Rugby as part of the consultative process regarding circulated draft transgender guidelines. The submission included the full version of Rugby Canada’s Trans Inclusion Policy, as well as documented lived experiences of Canadian rugby trans participants that were consulted as part of the feedback process.

What about the documented lived experiences of Canadian rugby female participants? And what about biology and physics and what we know happens when a huge muscular man crashes into a woman?

The criterion that matters here is Trans Inclusion and not Women’s Safety.

Why?

Why is it worth breaking women’s bones and giving them concussions for the sake of trans inclusion? Why do men who say they are trans even want that? Why doesn’t the very idea make them want to puke, instead? What is wrong with people?

Rugby Canada CEO Allen Vansen stated, “Our trans inclusion policy was written and developed by Sport, Law & Strategy Group, and is aligned with the guidance document ‘Creating Inclusive Environments for Trans Participants in Canadian Sport.’ Participation in community rugby in Canada is encouraged based on the gender in which a participant identifies and is not to be subjected to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes.”

Why???

Why is the inclusion of men in women’s rugby more important than the safety of women in women’s rugby? Why does male entitlement trump women’s safety? How do these damn fools sleep at night?

“As a national Union of a G7 nation, we recognize our leadership role in this area,” said Rugby Canada Board Chair Tim Powers. “Rugby Canada believes that all individuals deserve respectful and inclusive environments for participation that value the individuals’ gender identity and gender expression. We want to ensure that all participants have access to programming and facilities in which they feel comfortable and safe, and will continue to take all steps necessary to do so.”

But what about women? And their safety? How are women supposed to “feel safe” when they’re having to play rugby against men?

I’ll never understand this.