by Oliver Brown, Telegraph
Female fight for basic fairness in sport is entering its next, and hopefully final, phase
A little over one year ago, the Supreme Court declared that the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. This was not, as sport’s more supine governing bodies appeared to believe, some arcane and frivolous ruling, ripe to be discarded. It came about purely because of the tireless resolve of For Women Scotland to enshrine the immutability of sex in law, and it had immediate practical implications for everything from prisons to changing facilities to sport.
Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, could not have spelt this out more starkly. Asked last April if it was now straightforward that “trans women”, namely biological men, could no longer take part in women’s sport, she replied: “Yes, it is.” And yet 12 months on, too many of sport’s rulers are still vacillating, using the Government’s continued dithering over “guidance” to persist with policies inimical to fairness for women.
As such, the decision by Sharron Davies, Tracy Edwards and their Women’s Sports Union to threaten these bodies with legal action is both timely and necessary. Bodies such as Swim England and the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) have repeatedly shown that they value vapid talk of “inclusion” above the imperative to protect the female category. I have seen correspondence in which an RYA officer suggests, in response to one female sailor’s deep concerns about changing in front of a trans-identifying male in the women’s changing rooms, that “cisgender women” should “explore the reasoning behind the thoughts” and whether they might be “discriminatory, based on an opinion, prejudice, dislike or hatred of trans people”.
This is the lunacy that has taken root in sport, where a tiny minority’s need for affirmation has somehow trumped the right of half the population to dignity, safety and a level playing field. One of the organisations targeted by the legal action is Parkrun, which in 22 years has morphed from a casual meet-up in a London park to a global phenomenon, with almost 11 million registered participants worldwide. And yet its policy is that male runners can register as female based on their “identity”.