In this week’s cornucopia of insults to women and girls, the demand for a boy to play in the girls’ football league really does demand a comment.
It’s a standout moment because this boy and his parents are not claiming that he is a girl, simply that he has the right to play in the girls’ league because he’s not good enough for the boys’ league.
We’ve moved from an ideological claim about the nature of what it means to be male or female with demands to believe someone’s feelings about who or what they really are to a new level of entitlement and demand. These are the children to whom nobody has ever said no.
Until the West Riding Girls Football League and the girls who play in it said no.
The response from the Football Association has been, for want of a better word, “interesting”. They threatened the West Riding Girls Football League with sanctions and a possible suspension unless boys are permitted to play in the girls’ league. Even though the girls threatened to quit en masse.
Officially, the FA wants more women and girls to be involved in football whether playing, coaching, refereeing or volunteering (because there’s always room for volunteers in any multi-billion pound enterprise).
And to encourage more girls to play, the FA have partnered with another multi-billion pound enterprise, Barclays, to #LetGirlsPlay football in schools.
On the face of it, the FA is all for girls having their own league. But they’ve been Stonewalled.
A quick look at the FA Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy dated October 2021 (which is full of all the usual platitudes) offers up this gem:
LGBT community engagement: The FA marching at Pride in London for the first time, while delivering role model and allyship programmes in partnership with Stonewall
Coupled with their promotion of Stonewall’s Rainbow laces money making scheme, and a “Reporting discrimination” page that centres the progress flag, it’s clear which way the wind is blowing.
As part of the Stonewalling process, the FA appears to have allowed activists to write their Policy on Trans People in Football, which requires under 16s teams to be mixed sex if any participant wishes it.
Under 16
1. Pursuant to FA Rule C4(A)(xiii) on mixed football, any person playing football in the age ranges Under 7 to Under 16 may play in a match involving boys and girls, without restriction. There are therefore no conditions regarding any individual playing in a match under their reassigned/affirmed gender in these age ranges.
Did anyone consider that a boy who did not consider himself to be “trans” might use this to impose himself on a girls’ team? Probably not.
But isn’t this exactly the problem with self-ID? Because this boy who prefers the girls’ team because he’s not very good at football isn’t materially different from the boy who wishes he was girl. Open the door to any boy, and the door is wide open to all boys.
Good policies, like good laws, require scrutiny or they won’t deliver the desired outcomes.
Bad policies, like bad laws, are open to abuse.
I am enraged by the absurd demand by this boy to be allowed to play in the girls’ football league and outraged by the Football Association’s acquiescence in his tantrum. His parents have not brought him up to respect girls’ boundaries and this is a massive red flag for the boy, his family and any future relationship he may seek with some poor Yorkshire lass; or indeed lad.
Why does he not look for a different sport which he might find better suited to his capacities? I always used to be a calm and accepting person but the last six or seven years have left me gasping with the self-indulgence, entitlement and sheer arrogance of the men and boys demanding huge buckets of involuntary kindness on the part of women and girls. This is the last straw. Let’s march on FA headquarters and scrag the lot of them!