By Cathy Larkman
Ah Cardiff! Capital city of Wales and home to the Millennium rugby stadium, the Cardiff Devils ice hockey team and the Sport Wales national centre, as well as the second-best football team in the country too. It can seem that the whole country is sport obsessed at times and not just during the Six Nations.
It seemed only fitting therefore that when several WRN Wales members descended on the capital for a snap street survey that one of our questions should be sport related. Brandishing an impressively high-tech piece of cardboard, along with sheets of sticky dots, we asked the question;
“Is it okay for men to compete in women’s sports”?
It won’t surprise anyone that the answer was a big fat “NO”, and that men and women alike were outraged at the very suggestion that a man should compete in a female sports category. They couldn’t wait to get their hands on our sticky dots (stop it) and the NO side of our cardboard survey filled up quicker than the rugby club toilets at half time.
What was surprising was the amount of knowledge that this was happening ALREADY under the guise of “self-identification”. “That gigantic weightlifter” was mentioned several times, as was “that great big unit of a swimming bloke”. So, thank you Laurel Hubbard and Lia Thomas for services to peaking the nation. You made our job that day so much easier with your very visual manliness and the very obvious unfairness. We love you (not). Have a gold medal for peaking.
But there’s always that one chap isn’t there? And why oh why, does he always have a beard? Step forward beardy bro, who declined a sticky dot but was very much up for lecturing the WRNer holding the sports board at that time. Overhearing his words “as a cis het man”, booming across the street, I was intrigued to hear more of his words of wisdom.
What a treat! Beardy bro lectured us both about the importance of inclusion, about his “trans friends” and basically told us what great big meanies we were not budging up and surrendering our sports. “As a cis het man” got mentioned time and again. I was quite cis hetted out at this point and decided to test him. I asked him what would happen if he self-identified as a woman and participated in a woman’s rugby team. What would that look like if he was to tackle me? Cue sharp intake of breath and panicked scramble of thoughts. He conceded that it could be unfair, but surely it would be OK for smaller players to participate?
He shifted uneasily and I sweetly asked if it was similarly OK if I chose to self-identify into a disabled sports category, or even into a child’s sports team. Ah that’s completely different, says beardy bro. How so? says mischievous WRNer. Surely, it’s just self-identification and you appear to be a great big fan of it. Explain why it’s different.
It was at this point that self-proclaimed “cis het” beardy bro decided he had a sudden and very pressing appointment that meant he couldn’t possibly engage further and off he dashed, away from the scene of the sticky dots. What a shame! We were having such a nice chat, and he hadn’t been in any sort of rush until the awkward questions had started. If he’d stuck around, he could have given us his opinion on our other questions too.
We were also asking the public about men in women’s prisons, changing rooms, and hospital wards. He might have liked those better.
Thankfully, reality and common sense returned with AJ. This lovely man not only stopped and interacted with all of our questions, he told us about his concerns for his daughter and his worries about her being required to share single-sex spaces with men. AJ really cared about the implications for her privacy and her safety. He represents all the dads, husbands, brothers and sons out there who see the issues very clearly for the women and girls that they care about, and the ones they don’t know. He was also happy to briefly talk about this on camera.
Yay AJ! What a shame he couldn’t have spoken to beardy cis het bro.
It was an incredibly good day, with overwhelming support, as has been seen by other WRN groups running similar street surveys across the country. But women face a huge challenge. We absolutely must fight for our single-sex spaces and services, but so many politicians choose not to hear us or to deflect our real concerns as a ‘culture war’. They are presiding over the destruction of our rights.
So, we need MORE AJs to realise the danger to their daughters and to speak out - and we need our politicians to start listening to them, and to us. Our collective voices must become a roar that can’t be ignored.
Now I’m off to order more sticky dots.
