Australian Polity, Volume 9 Number 3 - Digital Version

male puberty to give more height, muscle mass, bone
density and other attributes advantageous in sport.
Peer-reviewed research demonstrates that lowering
testosterone after puberty is nowhere near enough to
offset the major performance advantages males have
over females.
In many sports, it’s not just fairness but safety which is
at risk for female athletes when males are included in
their competitions. The international governing body for
Rugby Union undertook a significant research project
to determine whether trans women could safely be
included in women’s rugby but found that there was
a 25-30 per cent increase in the risk of serious head
and neck injuries to female players when tackled by
a biological male. On the back of this research, World
Rugby understandably found that trans women should
not be eligible to play women’s rugby. However, in an
extraordinary display of recklessness, national governing
bodies including Rugby Australia dismissed World
Rugby’s findings and ruled that transwomen can play
women’s rugby. Other sporting codes in which safety
of women’s players is at risk have followed suit, backed
by Sport Australia and the Australian Human Rights
Commission’s inclusion guidelines which recommend,
on behalf of the government, that “participation in sport
should be based on a person’s affirmed gender identity
and not the sex they were assigned at birth”. Such a
statement displays an embarrassing and dangerous
lack of regard for the very purpose of women’s sport
and the safety of female players.
The AFL’s gender inclusion policy even goes so far as
to explicitly say that at community levels (the level in
which the vast majority of its participants play) ‘inclusion’
outweighs any fairness concerns for female players, and
that trans women seeking to play women’s community
football are encouraged to do so. This foolish policy
is exposed by the AFL’s separate inclusion policy for
‘elite’ football, which allows administrators to prevent
trans women from playing in women’s state leagues and
AFLW competition. It was on this basis that prominent
trans athlete Hannah Mouncey was prevented from
entering the AFLW draft or playing in the top-level
women’s competition but is allowed to play women’s
football at lower levels against smaller, less skilled and
less experienced women and girls. It’s hard to escape the
conclusion that the AFL knows this is unsafe and unfair
but figures they can get away with increasing the risk of
injury to women as long as it’s not televised.
For a sport just beginning to grapple with the lifelong
health repercussions of head injuries, exposing female
players in local communities to a known increase in
serious head injury risk is unbelievably callous and
reckless. We cannot overlook that they’ve been led to
this policy by taxpayer funded agencies and lobby groups
which are financially backed by dozens of Australian
Government Departments.
Trans-Lobby Tactics
Why is it, then, that bureaucracies have led the charge to
promote biological males in women’s sport, to replace
references to women and mothers with ‘pregnant people’,
‘chestfeeders’ and ‘vulva owners’? It’s one thing for woke
left figures such as the US Democrat Congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to refer to women as “people
who menstruate”, but why are public servants reporting
to centre-right governments singing from the same
hymnbook?
In the UK, the reason for this trend is beginning to be
understood, as the tactics of the trans lobby group
Stonewall are exposed by media, LGB groups and feminist
organisations. Like most of the major ‘Pride’ groups
around the world, Stonewall has in recent years become
narrowly focused on promoting the gender ideology
of trans rights. Through the creation of its ‘Diversity
Champions Scheme’, Stonewall signed up hundreds
of government agencies, universities, businesses
and media organisations and each year ranks those
participants – for a handsome fee – on how well they
perform in meeting Stonewall’s demands for things like
pressuring employees to promote their pronouns in
email signatures, making staff toilets gender neutral, and
creating media opportunities which promote Stonewall
and their ideology. If participating departments and
businesses adhere closely to Stonewall’s demands, they
can win awards and market themselves as ‘Diversity
Champions’.
Do something that Stonewall isn’t so happy with, and
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