Matt Walsh’s question for the age has been answered it seems, by the Australian Football League (AFL). According to the logic of their guidelines for transgender inclusion, a woman is definitively a second-rate man.
They can determine whether a person is a woman or a man by looking at their sporting metrics. In short, a woman is a person (any person of any biological makeup) too weak to compete against top male athletes. Thisrevelation comes to light as a case study in an ABC (Australia) news report on the release of Australian Sports Commission (ASC) guidelines for “The inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport”.
The guidelines were originally published in June 2019, but came up again in the context of statements by the Australian Sports Commission CEO Kieren Perkins, concerning domestic sporting organizations compliance with the Sex Discrimination Act, which makes it “unlawful to discriminate, harass, or victimise on the basis of sex or gender identity”
ABC news (Australia) reports that: “The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) has released its guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse athletes in high performance sport, reminding sports governing bodies of their commitment to promoting a ‘spirit of inclusion’ and abiding by Australian law.”
The report, and the position of the ASC, was publicised with a rash of emotionally laden language about how hard things are for transgender athletes.
“There is a misconception that a man can wake up one morning, decide he is female and be free to compete in the women’s category under inclusion guidelines” said ASC CEO Kieran Perkins.
Perkins, despite the emotionally manipulative language designed to pressurize women athletes into acquiescence, completely ignores the case of University of Pensylvania swimmer, Lia Thomas, who switched from the male swim team to the female swim team overnight, and thereby graduated from average swimmer to all-round champion.
In an effort to placate women who may be concerned with being displaced from competitive places by stronger athletes who have the obvious advantage of male biology, the report cites a case study which indicates that only inferior transgender athletes will be allowed compete against the women.
Women need not worry that their skulls may be cracked by a more muscular and heavy boned man as these will be judged on a case by case basis, it seems.
For instance, the report reads “The Australian Football League’s (AFL) elite transgender eligibility policy includes an assessment of trans athletes’ height, weight, bench press and squat capabilities, 20 m sprint time, vertical jump, game-specific GPS data and 2 km run time.”
This is the actual position of the AFL, the governing body of a sport (Australian Rules Football) whose marketing image emphasizes its hard hitting full contact nature.
So there you go ladies, a woman is anyone not good enough or strong enough to compete against top level male athletes. This includes biological males who are just not as strong as the top biological males. The B-grade male athlete who doesn’t do as well in the ‘assessment’ can switch those lower scores over to a transgender athlete’s position it seems.
.This is the position of some “reputable” sporting bodies. this standard, could Joe Blog (a hypothetical person) who plays with the junior footballers in Tallaght, line out for the Dublin Senior Ladies team? She (joe) is definitely good enough.
But the classification of women athletes as sort of B-level male athlete leads to another awkward dilemma for the ASC and other woke sporting regulators.
What if a biological woman should exceed these arbitrary, or “assigned” to use a linguistically twisted woke term, performance metrics? Are the Williams sisters, regarded as the greatest women’s tennis players of all time, women? Would this assessment hold they are not, if we were to measure their grip strength, serving speed etc. Or their “bench press and squat capabilities, 20 m sprint time, vertical jump, game-specific GPS data and 2 km run time” – the things that the AFL have determined would classify a biological male as a woman.
In some outdated patriarchal societies where people with wombs are considered women, they would still be classified as women, even if they could outperform their male counterparts.
The case of Giulia Valentino, a six footer balding man playing Gaelic football against 100 lb girls, who brought this preposterous notion of transgender “women” competing in the ladies code into focus in Ireland last year, and elicited severe pushback from the public. However, the LGFC still would not take a stand on excluding biological males from ladies football and opted to pressure the captains of the ladies county teams to avoid the issue if ever questioned.
While transgender activists say that the exclusion of biological-males from women’s sports is discrimination, many other people have pointed out that the inclusion of transgender competitors in women’s sports is ruining the sporting organizations at a grassroots level, prompting young women to stop participating as they ask “whybother”.
In the genre of "this isn't happening" and "it's a right-wing fake moral panic"… https://t.co/cc7gOfTwVh pic.twitter.com/6gYJ4SLvxe
— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) June 20, 2023