Keenly aware
This reads more like a letter from a hostage than a policy statement from a sporting institution.
IRFU Updates Transgender Policy
The IRFU will amend its gender participation policy for rugby from the forthcoming season, based on medical and scientific evidence and in line with World Rugby guidance.
The IRFU is keenly aware that this is a sensitive and challenging area for those involved and the wider LGBT+ community and will continue to work with those impacted, providing support to ensure their ongoing involvement with the game.
Ok? Ok? Ok? We’re keenly aware, we promise we are, so so so aware, we totally get how sensitive and challenging and agonizing and torturous and sensitive it is, have we grovelled enough yet?
When has any organization ever talked about women’s concerns in that anxious caring hand-holding way?
Recent peer reviewed research provides evidence that there are physical differences between those people whose sex was assigned as male and those as female at birth, and advantages in strength, stamina and physique brought about by male puberty are significant and retained even after testosterone suppression.
You don’t say. Recent peer reviewed research reiterates what everyone already knew, which was why women had separate sports in the first place. I mean yay research, but the default should have been the obvious all along.
Anne Marie Hughes, Spirit of Rugby Manager, who has worked on policy development in this area since 2014, said,
“The IRFU is committed to inclusivity and has worked with the players and other groups in the LGBT+ community to explain that this change is based solely on new research related to safety. This is a particularly sensitive area, and it is important that respect is shown to all members of our rugby family and the wider community.
“We will continue to work to be as inclusive as we can be and to explore areas such as tag and touch rugby, which we know some of our players are already considering, refereeing, volunteering, and coaching.
“We continue to stand with the LGBT+ community, and while we accept that today some may feel disappointed in this decision, we want to again underline to them – there is a place for everyone in rugby, and we can all work together.”
So much grovelling and apologizing and wringing of hands just because they’ve decided not to let men trample all over women in rugby matches.
Also there is no LGBT+ community. There’s an LGB community, up to a point (since women and men often have competing interests), but the T is a different thing altogether. The + is just stupid. (How can people sign up to the + when nobody knows what it is? We don’t have Feminism Etc because we would need to know what the etc stands for before agreeing to it; the same ought to go for the +.)
Oddly, “male assignment at birth” turns out to be a pretty good predictor that male puberty will one day follow…
Who knew?
LKR #1
I know, right? Unless male-borns prevent their puberty altogether, male puberty is the sole option open to males. Even if males decide to stunt their growth and development to remain pre-pubertal, they are still males, and they are still ineligible to play in women’s sports. The men’s division is fully open to them. If they chose to sacrifice their adult development, that’s on them. Any inability to participate with skill in the men’s division was a wholly voluntary decision. It’s not the women’s job to cede their own places in their own sports to assuage the feelings of men who chose not to grow up and mature.
There’s a fantasy series (The Sword of Truth) I read in college that had a couple books (most notably Naked Empire) in which certain nations succumbed to untenable ideologies. Those ideologies gained power largely by exploiting rhetoric of sympathy/empathy/care/privilege. Many reviews remarked on how unrealistic and unbelievable this was. No one, it was argued, would be moved to adopt a social system reminiscent of Harrison Bergeron or an uncompromising pacifism by guilt or peer pressure. Such obviously bad ideas would be rejected out of hand. Well …
Sorry to burst your bubbles, bubs.
Maybe take that idea a step further – maybe their sex wasn’t merely *assigned* as if a doctor decided randomly to hand them a card for Team Blue or Team Pink.
I see that LKR had much the same thought in comment #1
I look forward to the day we hear about *recent peer reviewed research* which has indicated that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. What a discovery that will be!
Yes, and those who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual can try out for the team that matches their sex. No problem. Here’s where forced teaming goes to work. By grafting itself onto the L, G, and B, the T can claim that this proposed ruling is “an attack” on the “comunity” when it is nothing of the sort. It’s like Grand Fenwick roping some Great Power into fighting a war from which the hapless, hornswoggled Power derives no benefit whatsoever. If the Trans can get banks to fund a festival for them without the LGB, then the latter should be able to cut loose their erstwhile “community members” to fend for themselves regarding “inclusive” sports. After all, LGB people are already included. Fighting for trans “inclusion” is going to be detrimental to lesbians, as it is women who lose out in including TiMs on female teams. Why should they fight for that? To be kind? Fuck that. Kindness is always only ever a one way street when it comes to trans demands for “inclusion.”
Women have their own races to run and games to play without being bullied into putting their own interests in a distant second place to those who won’t offer, or merit, similar courtesy and consideration. Funny how women are expected to fulfill the obligations of their socialized role of self abnegation, while TiMs get a pass for the decidedly “unladylike”, male-entilted, self-centered, browbeating emotional blackmail they use in order to rewrite the rules so they can legally cheat.