PDF Québec's Comprehensive Defense of Women's Sports
A fantastic resource to share far and wide!
Recently, my friends at Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec) informed me that their excellent brochure about defending women’s sports had been translated into English and is available for download. I received the French version on March 8th at the Reality Based Women Unite! event. Not being bilingual like the lovely ladies at PDF Québec, I couldn’t read it! (Though I could tell it was an excellent resource).
I was super excited to receive this brochure, and you’ll see why if you take a look for yourself.
English version download link.
This comprehensive document looks at the issue of trans-identified men in women’s sports through the lenses of fairness, safety, opportunity, and privacy.
PDF Québec believes that people identifying as trans have, as does everyone, the right to participate in sports, whether simple recreational ones or competitive sports such as student or elite sports. However, we believe that it is essential to maintain an equitable playing field for everyone and to ensure that women benefit from the support and respect they are due regarding their integrity, dignity and humanity.
It looks at the differences between men and women, limited not just to testosterone but including everything from average height to pelvis shape. It compares distance and time records for men and women at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, which paints a stark picture of those differences.
Faster than Flo Jo. What’s 10% between males and females? Flo Jo is around 10m behind [Usain] Bolt as he crosses the finish line, but there’s always some bloke who limps home last to great cheers and many congratulations for trying – would she beat that guy? The short answer is ‘no’.
The risk of injury to women and the loss of spots in competitions and on podiums is also explored, as is the simple fact that women and girls deserve their privacy in the changing room.
[W]e need to ask ourselves why a man’s discomfort with the idea of changing in the presence of other men should take precedence over women’s discomfort with the idea of changing with a man.
The 20-page document touches on every aspect of the sports debate, distilling each part into its most salient points. As someone who has been very interested in this aspect of gender ideology, I am thrilled to have all of this information collected in one place for easy reference. It’s going to be a lot easier for me to write articles on the topic while having it handy.
So please download to use for your own reference and share widely!
Thanks for the links. As you noted it’s invaluable to have a condensation of the information.
It is striking how asymmetric this is. The publications cited are wise to consistently use the term male and female. It makes stark the unfairness of the situation.
With Trump's election, some moderates on the left (including Never Trumpers) have been willing to discuss whether the Democratic Party has gone too far in its unquestioning support for every element on the trans agenda. The fact some conversations took place in which gender critical voices were not automatically censored does not mean that there has been a sea change in liberal and progressives' attitudes and beliefs toward gender identity ideology and the trans issues that have been the focus of sex realist activists recently.
One such conversation generated over 800 comments in the corresponding comment section. Unfortunately, the prevailing view among the trans allies in this group of commenters is that the matter of trans-identifying men's participation in women-only sports has been greatly overblown. Showing the sort of message discipline commonly found only among Republicans, commenters contended that so few trans women are actually competing against real women that the topic does not merit discussion. (Who was the first Dem to come up with that?)
Some attributed centrist's gender critical views on men in women's sports to their having consumed too much right wing media. This reflects trans activists' ignorance (real or feigned) of the sex realist movement on the left led primarily by British feminists. None of the commenters were willing to engage in a discussion on the merits of the sex realist position, i.e., that males' physiological advantages make it unfair for them to be on teams with real women. In other forums, defenders of trans women in sports meandered into irrelevancies such as the supposed hypocrisy behind the lack of objections to variations in physiological advantage within groups of women.
Obviously, many people, including educated young Democrats and Independents, just do not grasp the unfairness and injustice to real females when males who identify females as are allowed to compete against real females. What will it take? Boycotts are a great start. Exposing attempts by coaches and school administrators to silence and bully female athletes who do not want trans women on their teams would also help increase public opposition to the practice.