gender non-conforming women in women's bathrooms

I am large woman, mom, and grandmother. I don't look dainty and I dress for utility and comfort. On more than one occasion, I have been yelled at or threatened by gender-critical warriors who have tried to tell me that I was in the wrong bathroom. Once, I was even afraid of being attacked, as the women who tried to identify me as a man called men outside the bathroom to come inside and remove me. I did nothing to these women. I am just of above average weight and height, and my body shape resembles a potato more than an hour glass. However, in their zeal to attack trans women, they also came after me.

[*Moderator's note: I included this submission because it is relevant to how the social uptake of gender identity ideology has impacted women's use of women-only spaces. If we could be sure that only female people were using women's spaces, then we could be confident that even a masculine-looking person in such spaces was in fact female. But we can't be confident of that today - a lot of the masculine-looking people using these spaces (although not all) are in fact male. So women are more vigilant, and gender non-conforming women are negatively impacted. A solution? Third spaces for men with gender identities, women's spaces for women.]

reclaim the night perth deplatformed from march 4 justice

women sustaining injuries playing sport against men

As a 14 year old (circa 1987) I was playing representative netball when a transgender team were permitted to play in our competition, they were large Maori men. Looking back, it was totally inappropriate in many ways... large strong large men, playing a semi-contact sport against young women, zero consultation with parents. I still remember the physicality and the force with which they defended. Thankfully they moved on to another association where we played them infrequently at senior rep carnivals.

Fast forward to circa 2008, I was playing AFL in Sydney. Two transgender players were permitted to play, to my knowledge with no checks and zero records kep of injuries sustained by their opponents.

Approx 30% of my team were employed by Army/Navy/Airforce, they would often play against the transgender players (I think to protect smaller team-mates… much smaller team mates, most players would have been under 60kg). Generally, my team avoided attempting to tackle or run near the transgender players out of fear of injury. I recall one player in my team sustained multiple broken bones in her foot when one transgender player decided to deliberately stomp on her foot (affecting her work in the Army), and another player was punched in the face after she addressed the rough play (in a different game). Through my eyes… I was watching a man punch a woman in the face... it was very confronting.

It seems that there is an unconstrained vision of inclusion at the expense of biological women, the focus needs to be on the rights of girls and women. Women are being erased, it’s a very sad situation.

#australia #sport #transgender #strength #injuries #safety #womeninsport