Transgender athletes
Which brings me to last week’s rant about “hate-bait” and the regular unleashing of murderous media mayhem on those who have no ability to defend themselves, in this case – STOP THE PRESSES, and SOUND THE ALARMS! ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! – a 13-year-old transgender student competing in a school carnival in Adelaide, sometime last year. Inevitably, and you could set your watch by it, I became the target of a little hate-bait myself – like I care – which at least meant they were picking on someone their own size for a nice change.
I honestly couldn’t be bothered to do more than glance at it, but the guts of it, I gather, is the notion that I am indeed all in favour of male truck-drivers in tutus, swarming and storming their way through girls dressing-rooms and back fields across our brown and pleasant land.
Yeah, nah. I am actually in favour of not monstering a 13-year-old kid who wants to be included in the activities of her school community, though being transgender. If the school and school community didn’t have a problem with it – and we know they didn’t because they were happy for the teen to compete, and the story didn’t emerge for months – who the hell are the spitting shock-jocks and professional haters to carry on like the world is coming to an end?
I’d also invite the aforementioned to have a look at the calibre of people supporting their position on social media. When those getting all around you on an issue are that level of nasty, plumbing those depths of bigotry, transphobia and homophobia, there’s a clue there.
I repeat, there is a sane discussion to be had about transgender athletes in sport, particularly at the elite level, and I’m happy to have it. It’s why all sports have protocols preventing transgender athletes gaining outrageous advantage.
Sometimes they get it wrong, no doubt – mostly they seem to get it right. It is for the serious sports administrators whose job in life it is to do exactly that, to sort it out, in consultation with their communities. But on this issue both media and politics have a track record of being like slavering and starving bulldogs going after a piece of sausage – desperate for there to be huuuge problems, even where few truly exist. Hence, why, in this country, there has been such carry-on over one transgender athlete in a minor sports carnival, last year! If this was a genuine huge issue in Australia, wouldn’t we be getting stories like this every week? Well, we ain’t.
Politically, Scott Morrison made it an election issue by weaponising fear of transgender athletes. Yeah, nah. It was something for American politics, maybe, but we Australians were more disposed to live and let live.
President Donald Trump hands out pens after signing an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women’s or girls’ sporting events.Credit: AP
This February in the USA, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing, particularly focusing on college athletes. Guess how many transgender athletes there are in American colleges. To judge from the media hullabaloo, the op-eds, the carry-on, there’d have to be THOUSANDS, wouldn’t there, wreaking absolute havoc and winning everything? Actually, last December, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified that there were “less than 10” transgender athletes among the more than 530,000 student-athletes across NCAA member institutions.
As it happens, Australia has about that same number of netballers, a rough half million between friends. Know how many complaints there were from them about transgender athletes when Netball Australia last put out a questionnaire wanting to know any issues they had? Zero. Hole-in-the-doughnut.
Hence why the haters go so hard after a 13-year-old competing in a school carnival, last year.
Guys? Give it a rest. It’s pathetic.
What they said
Lachlan Galvin, after scoring a try for the Bulldogs on debut: “Full credit to the boys . . . I love going out there and playing with them.” He’s got the whole repertoire, I keep telling you! Football’s a funny game, Lachlan. Let your football do the talking, and rugby league will be the winner on the day.
Tottenham statement on Ange Postecoglou: “Following a review of performances and after significant reflection, the club can announce that Ange Postecoglou has been relieved of his duties. This has been one of the toughest decisions we have had to make and is not a decision that we have taken lightly, nor one we have rushed to conclude.” In sum, in the third season they decided to kill the “lead character”.
Postecoglou in response: “The opportunity to lead one of England’s historic football clubs and bring back the glory it deserves will live with me for a lifetime. That night in Bilbao was the culmination of two years of hard work, dedication and unwavering belief in a dream.”
Sacked by Tottenham Hotspur: Ange Postecoglou.Credit: Getty Images
Jonathan Liew, in The Guardian, in a weirdly harsh and personal piece, lined up “our Ange”: “There may never have been a manager better at defining his own terms of achievement; a managerial reign so evidently built upon a towering silo of nuclear-strength bullshit.” Well, we never.
Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer reacted to the sacking by posting on Twitter: “What a stupid game football is!”
An emotional Novak Djokovic after he lost in the semi-finals of the French Open: “This could have been the last match ever I played here – I don’t know. That’s why it was a bit more emotional at the end.”
Coco Gauff on winning the French Open: “I didn’t think honestly that I could do it. But I’d like to quote American rap star Tyler the Creator, who said: ‘If I ever told you that I had a doubt inside me, I must be lying. I think I was lying to myself, because I could do it’.” Must be the way he said it? And you had to be there at the time?
Gauff celebrates as she holds the trophy.Credit: AP
Aryna Sabalenka on how she will recover from losing to Gauff in the final: “I already have a flight booked to Mykonos [to enjoy] alcohol and sugar. I just need [a] couple of days to completely forget about this crazy world and this crazy – if I could swear, I would swear right now – but this crazy thing that happened today. But yeah, [there will be] tequila, gummy bears, and I don’t know, swimming, being like the tourist for couple of days.”
Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick not happy with a valiant defeat against Geelong: “We don’t take any honourable losses. That’s not us any more.”
Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard ahead of their World Cup qualifier against Australia: “The door is closed, but we have to try to qualify even if it is through the window.”
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Billy Slater on bringing Tom Dearden into the Queensland team to replace Daly Cherry-Evans: “We just want Tom Dearden to do his job and be the best version of Tommy Dearden that he can be.”
Olympic swimmer Mollie O’Callaghan on her friends: “I noticed I don’t have friends outside of swimming because I have dedicated such a strong amount of time from school to now.”
After 16-year-old Sienna Toohey secured her spot at next month’s World Aquatic Championships by beating all the veterans home to win the women’s 100m breaststroke at the Australian Swimming Trial, she enthused: “All of these people being my idols, now I get to be on the team with them.”
Team of the week
Coco Gauff. Won her second grand slam title.
Summer McIntosh. The 18-year-old set three world records at the Canadian swimming trials this week – including slashing a staggering 1.2 seconds off our own Ariarne Titmus’s mark in the women’s 400m freestyle – and appears to be the next big thing.
Erin Phillips and Daisy Pearce. First women inducted into AFL Hall of Fame.
Jannik Sinner/Carlos Alcaraz. Played out one of the best finals in a tennis major. In the fourth set, when trailing 3-5 and 0-40, Alacaraz stared down three match points before going on to win the whole thing in five hours and 29 minutes, the longest final in Roland Garros history.
Socceroos. For the first time since 2014, didn’t require a playoff to qualify for the World Cup! I don’t quite know why, but they and the Matildas, both seem to have come good – ish – all of a sudden?
The Socceroos are through to a sixth straight World Cup.Credit: Getty Images
Novak Djokovic. Hasn’t won a grand slam title since 2023 US Open. I’m calling it: Father Time and Mother Nature have finally caught up to the last of the Big Three. In terms of winning any more majors, he’s done. (I’ve done what I can, Novak. Good luck at Wimbledon.)
Haumole Olakau’atu. Stood himself down from the NSW Origin squad, after telling coach Laurie Daley that he preferred birth to Perth, as his partner’s due date clashes with Origin II. Bravo.
RIP Johnny Shakespeare.
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RIP Stu Wilson. Former All Black Captain died age 70.
Number of the week
59,878. That was how many spectators turned up for the Bulldogs/Eels match last Monday, the second-largest regular-season attendance in the league’s history. The Bulldogs won going away, and Lachlan Galvin scored a try on debut off the bench.
X/Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
