aussie rules footy

I am part of a new women’s masters Aussie rules footy competition and it was such a beautiful safe environment for older women to finally have the chance to play in.

Now we have transgender women wanting to join our competition. We finally had the chance to play footy on our own merit, and now this safe place is threatened by transgender women. We have had transgender women play in social matches and in every game they have dominated to the point where it has impacted the women who have played directly against them. Not only have they felt unable to be competitive, but they have felt more physically vulnerable.

I personally have taken one hit from a transgender woman attempting to tackle me and I literally felt like I had been hit by cement, a feeling I had never experienced while been tackled by a woman before.

If we were to be forced to allow transgender women to play in our footy competitions in the future I would certainly lose my feeling of safety on the playing field.

Can a transgender woman not start their own competition to make a level playing field for them?

Women have fought so hard to finally have a respectable platform for playing footy for it to be stripped away from us.

#australia #football #sports #womeninsport

12-step women-only trauma survivors' group

The group folded after two men dressed as women started to attend. There was a big emphasis in the established group on appropriate sharing and safety boundaries. One of the cross-dressers repeatedly broke the group guidelines through relaying horrendous rape narratives that provoked women’s PTSD. When asked to desist, they repeatedly ignored the requests.

When women tried politely to initiate a discussion post-meeting, about their perceived entitlement to be there plus that some regulars felt very unsafe with men in the room, one in particular became threatening and used stand over and other abuser tactics to intimidate women.

The men eventually stopped going but by then, the group had effectively lost its core supporters. A couple of the male-centred women, not recognising the abuse tactics nor unwilling/unable to stand up to the men’s bullying, felt uncomfortable at confrontation. Some women stopped going because they felt unsafe, some didn’t like division, whilst others didn’t want a mixed sex setting.

The men never sought the consent of the group before attending nor would they hear the concerns of many of the women at their presence. The group eventually folded. It was a sad loss as it had taken a lot to get it established and it was perceived as a safe space for women. It hasn’t been replaced.

#australia #sydney #traumasurvivors #recoverygroup #supportgroup #malesocialisation

colonising the concept of 'woman'

I'm worried that women's general tendancy and beliefs in caring for marinalized peoples, and in fighting for their own rights as the marginalized sex under patriarchy, is being turned in part against them since transwomens' rights are being pushed for full acceptance under law.

It's as if women are perceived as being uncaring, or worse still, as selfish and exclusionary female terriority defenders, if they have any legitimate worries, questions or concerns whatsoever about transwomens' rights impacting on their own rights, spaces or personhood in negative ways. How ironic.

If a man self-identifies as a woman, are biologically born females automatically supposed to accept this as part of what is generally understood as the shared experience of womanhood?

Why are transwomens' rights now also about women having to incorporate, or about women being pressured and forced to incorporate, the womanly identity belief of a man as if that belief were equated exactly with BEING a woman? I find transwomen's insistence that "they ARE women" horrifyingly aggressive and imposing, not simply a simple statement or assertition of self-identity.

There is concerted pressure on women by transgender activists and supporters to accept the belief that 'transwomen ARE women', to accept it as a reality and to do it as a gesture of womanly inclusiveness and care (i.e. our caring attributes being double-binded against us) as if to do so, it is assumed by ethics of inclusion, could have no possible negative impact on women. We are being pressured to accept, without objection, that some men are really women, as if that pressure couldn't possibly be an aggressive colonising assertion by a man toward women.

#concepts #woman #idenitfyingintowomanhood #colonisingwoman