Somebody so oblivious

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lisa Nandy should surely have taken the hint when, having worn a “protect the dolls” T-shirt on a transgender rights march in August, she found herself roundly eviscerated.

Dolls, a slang term from the 1980s for men trying to pass themselves off as women, had long been viewed as misogynistic, a description that succeeded only in objectifying femininity. Except now the Culture Secretary has gone a step further, making the fatuous suggestion at this week’s Labour Party conference that biological men should still be allowed to compete in certain women’s sports.

“There are three things that we’re trying to achieve,” she said on Wednesday. “The first is inclusion, the second is fairness, and the third is safety. And there are some sports where it’s perfectly possible to include everybody and still meet those principles around fairness and safety.”

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

If you “include everybody” then you exclude women from their own sports, so no, it is not “perfectly possible” to include men in women’s sports while still meeting any principles around fairness and safety.

The instinctive reaction to these remarks is to despair that somebody so oblivious to the reality of sex, and to why immutable male advantage means that the integrity of the women’s category in sport must always be protected, could have been elevated to an office of state. It is as if this year’s Supreme Court verdict never happened.

It’s also to despair that this somebody so oblivious to immutable male advantage is herself a woman and in the government.

“Inexcusable,” said Sharron Davies of Nandy’s latest statement. “Women’s sport is not a consolation prize for non-conforming males. Women’s sport belongs solely to females.” Tracy Edwards, the round-the-world yachtswoman, said: “It is beyond depressing that we finally have so many women in government and most of them don’t know what a woman is.”

Or, worse, pretend not to know at the behest of a lot of entitled women-hating men.

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