The daily stroll last week took us down Claremont Avenue where large picture window affords a passing glimpse into a college classroom at Barnard. A young teacher was talking while on the large screen was a slide headed “Principles of Democracy”. Only the top bullet had been revealed – “Inclusion”.
Perhaps I jumped to a wrong conclusion but that gave me the sinking feeling that what was coming next might well include what I consider to be the antithesis of inclusion: The denial or erosion of the sex-based rights of women and girls.
I remembered that moment when The Inclusion Delusion from Fair Play For Women dropped this morning.
Watch it.
Fair Play For Women is a campaigning and consultancy group that raises awareness, provides evidence and analysis, and works to protect the rights of women and girls in the UK.
DEI: Deny, Exclude, and Intrude
When it comes to women and girls, DEI Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (sometimes re-ordered as EDI) — too often means Denial, Exclusion and Intrusion.
The denial is of the reality that sex is immutable and that there are significant biological differences between male and female bodies. Sometimes – as in competitive sports that involve strength, speed, and stamina – sex difference matters.
The exclusion happens when males are able to leverage that physical advantage and enter women’s sports. or when they enter award categories set aside for women that were intended to redress historical bias, discrimination, inequity, and exclusion. Every male included means a female excluded.
The intrusion happens when males consider they now have the right to insert themselves into single-sex spaces and places. The problems when that happens are well documented. Unfortunately, that documentation is frequently ignored and/or dismissed at the expense of women and girls’ safety and privacy
If you are interested in protecting women’s sports and Title IX, then go here to see what you can do about it. :
Title IX (Athletics): Current Proposed Law and Regulations Resources and Sample Text
Featured image: Roman women engaged in sports. Mosaic at the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily.
How much time have you got Josie?!! A very interesting and important debate! Sharon
On this topic – plenty!
Cheers.
I attended a Title IX celebration at Harvard last month and this topic was, for the most part, carefully avoided because it is so challenging legally and emotionally.
When I was in high school, a cute boy (and his less interesting family) appeared at our church. They were on sabbatical from Australia where he played field hockey. He suddenly joined the girls’ team at my school and one of the girls got demoted to JV with me (I was dreadful but enjoyed being on a team). Her parents were very upset but there was no boys’ team and he was very talented. I remember one of our opponents said he should have to wear a kilt like us instead of sweatpants! When we got to the state tournament, the coach benched him so no one could challenge us later and possibly make us forfeit any games. Not sure that was fair to him but maybe there were other challenges I don’t remember. Some of the girls on the team were mad he wasn’t playing because they felt we’d have gone further in the tournament.
I do agree that DEI can be exclusionary but I think it is very complicated trying to be equitable to everyone. The need to protect transgendered people from discrimination is important but I have mixed feelings about how that should take place in athletics. And what about admissions at Barnard, my grandmother’s alma mater?
Hi Constance,
I think that when it comes to competitive sports – where male bodies have physical advantages – the answer is simple: they must be kept single-sex for safety and fairness.
In the interesting example you described the boy’s needs and feelings were given priority over the girl’s. That was not fair, just, or equitable.
I think once you accept the notion that there are only two sexes, that we are all one of the other, that no one has ever changed sex, and that sometimes sex really matters (sports, single-sex areas where privacy and safety matter – prisons, rape shelters, toilets, changing rooms etc.) then it really becomes much simpler.
Finding ways to accommodate the needs of men and boys who identify as women can be met in ways other than including them in the category of women and girls. The answer should not be that women and girls should just have to give up their needs, places, spaces, awards, etc. to accommodate males. That is inherently unjust and inequitable. Many people have worked on solutions for the issues and the answers are out there.
In terms of girls’ schools and women’s colleges, I think the answer is simple. Sex is a biological reality. Gender is an idea in the head. It is absurd for those schools to accept males who self-identify as female because of an idea in their head, hormone treatments, or body modifications. It’s not as if there are not many co-educational and all-male institutions that can provide an appropriate education.
What would help would be to broaden the bandwidth of what it means to be male to accommodate all males in ways that are accepting and safe. Ditto widen the bandwidth of what it means to be female to accommodate the full range of female expression.
We need more acceptance of non-conformity and less of saying that someone must be the wrong sex because of the choice of toys, clothing, sexual partner, etc.
Thank you for a note of sanity when the people around here seems to have lost their minds. Suddenly women are once again shoved aside in sports just as they finally had established a foot hold.
Yes. It’s madness. And the entire Democratic Party seems to have turned its back on women and girls – leaving this as a freebie “cultural war” issue for the GOP.
We live in strange times. but they are not good for women and girls that is for sure.
My concern is for the leaders of our schools when faced with the dilemmas involved in the gender choice argument. Whilst views are as polarised as at present there cannot be any easy answer – damned if you do develop gender-free toilets, and damned if you don’t; criticised if you allow the selection of alternative pronouns, condemned if you don’t , and constantly aware that judgment by the press one way or the other can ruin school and staff reputations.
Hi Derek –
I completely agree with you.
It’s a potential legal and PR nightmare for schools and colleges.
That was one of the reasons I wrote on the sports issue here https://www.josieholford.com/title-ix/ asking for clarity from the US government.
“The Department should not expect recipients to understand how to navigate this, and it is not necessary in order to achieve the twin goals of inclusion and fairness. Recipients, particularly public schools and universities, are already overburdened. The regulation, as currently designed, will not only add an additional burden, but also, no matter what a recipient decides to do, will unnecessarily expose the recipient to litigation over the interpretation of the ambiguous language of the regulation.”
https://www.josieholford.com/title-ix/
Obviously, that is in the context of the US situation but much of it is relevant to the UK as well.
Without clarity in the law and from the government, school leaders are at the mercy of activists and pressure groups. And when that happens, no one is happy .
There are some areas of life where sex (not “gender”) makes a difference. and schools need help in doing the right thing.
And with the Cass interim report explaining that social transitioning in schools is not a neutral act schools need clear guidance on that too.
Aren’t you glad you don’t have to be dealing with these impossibly hot potatoes? I bet you had more than enough to deal with back in the day but I don’t envy any school leader having to deal with this constant and fractious drama.
Thanks for the comment.
Just doing some work on school leadership situation in Sweden – we aren’t alone, but you are right in that I left the ‘battleground’ I so much loved, at the right time.
Yes. Counter-productive.
A “funfair spinning out of control” expresses all this madness well.
All decent people want to be “fair “and “inclusive”. But when those important values conflict we must take a look at what is happening.
And of course, everyone should be able to play sports.
No one should be excluded.
I totally support a person’s right to identify themselves as whatever they please but a male who has transitioned is still, in fact male and this gives the person unfair advantage in sports competitions. Why does the majority always have to suffer to cater to the minority? All that is happening is that instead of people coming around to accepting transgender, they are unsurprisingly getting totally hacked off about it.
The funfair is spinning out of control!