Everybody has won
The BBC on the other hand finally manages to get it right.
Transgender women banned from playing international women’s cricket by ICC
Transgender women i.e. men, but I don’t expect the conventional media to start saying that any time soon.
Following a nine-month consultation process, the governing body said its new policy, which takes effect immediately, was based on “protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion”.
It shouldn’t take nine minutes to figure out that letting men play on women’s teams is not fair, but there it is.
“The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and is founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review,” said ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice.
“Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players.”
Now, wait a minute. What does he mean by that? How can “inclusivity” be important to competitive sport when the whole point of the competitive bit is to exclude everyone who doesn’t win? Exclusion is the whole point. It’s not unjust exclusion, it’s just what competitive sport is. I’ve never liked it much, as a participant or part of the audience, because I can’t seem to care very much who is more skilled at [whatever the sport is] than someone else, but that’s just me. Lots of people love it, and let’s be real: it’s the winning and losing that makes it exciting. So inclooosivviteee just can’t be “incredibly important” to people in charge of running a competitive sport. You can’t have everything.
Excellent choice of images…
Thenk you.
They’re using the word “inclusivity” as a synonym for “non discriminatory,” which is in turn being interpreted as “not unfairly discriminating using irrelevant factors such as race or sexual orientation.” But of course they’re sliding that over into legitimate areas of discrimination. It all ultimately hinges on whether transwomen are a type of man or a type of woman — which can’t be properly discussed since stating the first position commits an act of genocide.
That last bit always provokes an Alice-in-Wonderland image in my head, in which a frustrated Alice turns on the Queen of Hearts and her army:
`Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) `You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
Upon which the whole pack rises up in the air, flies down around her — and disappears. Gone. Eliminated by recognizing the truth, and saying it.
‘
Sastra, …but just as important is recognising that slightly earlier moment when the dream delusion begins to unravel – beautifully captured by Carroll when the Knave of Hearts, asked to confirm that he cannot swim, shakes his head and sadly replies “Do I look it?” [“which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard”]. Dare we hope that we might be approaching that point now?