What is absolutely remarkable about the brief is that it is an equally good argument for protecting sports for females. One could almost regurgitate it, replacing just a few words, and submit it in *defence* of HB500.
It appeals to the value - personal, social, academic - of sports participation, the importance thereof for physical and mental well-being.
It’s always worth revisiting the benefits of sport, but HB500 is not to prevent participation. Do they realise this?
They appear to be ignorant of the premise that the wonderful benefits of sports *should be equally available to females*.
In fact, there is a federal law called Title IX to ensure that is the case.
The brief, quite simply, misses the point, and a clever lawyer might consider batting it straight back at them.
It is, fundamentally, pages of ‘be kind’.
There is nothing of substance in there that will further understanding of the nuances a case like this encompasses.
There is no mention of sex-segregation, competitive structures, protection from male advantage.
All of the females signing this have themselves benefitted from a protected sports category established by their civil rights law.
I know Rapinoe has goddess-like properties on the field (and an attitude off the field to match), but she must know - she simply must - that she wouldn’t stand a chance against a decent male who wanted her place.
Right here in the introduction, starting from a false premise that renders the following pages obsolete.
The brief would therefore make a *better* argument for protection of female sports.
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Jon rejects a cost-benefit analysis - the oft-repeated ‘balance’ of safety v fairness v inclusion:
‘What amount of ‘fairness’ ought to be sacrificed for what amount of increase in ‘inclusion’?’
Instead, Jon argues that World Rugby (and other ‘combat’ sports) have a special duty to manage risk:
‘[I]t is particularly incumbent on World Rugby to be alert to increased risk, and to oppose any increased risk that is not an ineliminable part of the essence of the game.’
Anyone wishing to spot changes from our pre-print:
1. We included a section on pre-pubertal differences (that is, even young boys outperform young girls, thus the performance gap is not solely down to pubertal T).
2. We extended our analysis of CV capacity changes and potential impact on endurance performance (although we had acknowledged a likely effect, we have drilled deeper into mechanism).
@MondayStory The words ‘male’ and ‘female’ have scientific definitions, and describe reproductive biology related to ones role in propagating the species (for almost all complex species on earth).
@MondayStory My husband and I, for example, have qualitatively-different roles and, correspondingly, qualitatively-different reproductive anatomy.
The word to describe my body type is ‘female’. The word to describe his is ‘male’.
@MondayStory Now, if you are going to say that both of us can be described, in some context, as ‘female’, then the word ‘female’ no longer describes my reproductive anatomy or any specific medical needs I have, and it decouples humans from standard nomenclature across evolutionary space/time.
"In the 1920s, in concert with many other American states, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed the Butler Act, making it illegal for state public schools to: “teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.”
In other words, this law banned schools from teaching the theory of evolution.