Posted by Dear
, Hello. We read your comments in today’s Sunday Times in which you advocate for the inclusion, on a ‘case-by-case’ basis, of trans-identifying males in spaces reserved for women, with dismay. Dismay, Mary Lou, because we wrote to you in May last year to bring your attention to the Ladies Gaelic Football Association’s policy of including males, on a case-by-case basis, into our sport. We pointed out that the case-by-case model on which the LGFA’s policy is based cannot be balanced against safety and fairness for women and girls. That this model was trialled and subsequently abandoned by Irish rugby after reviewing medical and scientific evidence and guidance from World Rugby. That esteemed sports scientists and sports ethics academics have asserted that case-by-case assessment is unlikely to be practical or verifiable for entry into gender-affected sport and therefore undermines the principles of fairness and safety. You didn’t respond to our letter; now we know why. You say in the article that ‘lived experience matters’. May we tell you about the ‘lived experience’ of female athletes who have been forced to play Gaelic football against males? Namely, the women (from a senior ladies team which we will not name here) who were forced off the pitch after being injured by male players. Though upset and distressed, these women and their coaches chose not to raise a concern for fear of being labelled ‘bigots’ and because they had no expectation that the LGFA would listen to them. Then there’s the woman who quietly quit the sport she loves after being injured by a male player because she, too, feared stigmatisation and was terrified her employment would be negatively affected if it became known she had raised an objection. And then there are the parents involved in coaching an underage girls’ team who stood, helpless, on the sidelines as they watched their daughters struggle to compete against juvenile males with a clear physical advantage. We spoke to one of those parents – a mother – and will never forget the terrible catch in her voice when she told us she felt she had no option but to tell her own daughter, who had come to her in distress during the game, to ‘play on regardless’ because those male players had been given the right to play by the LGFA and therefore no rules were being broken. 30 parents involved with that team have since signed a letter urging the LGFA to rethink its policy in order that their daughters can be afforded fair and safe sport. They have sent it to the GAA, the LGFA, the Gaelic Players Association and Sport Ireland. These parents have not done this because they wish, as you say in your article, ‘to divide, demonise and marginalise’; they have done so because the first duty of a parent is to ensure the safety of their child and they are unable to do so while a situation exists where their child is being exposed to physical and social injury. Because, as you quite rightly say, ‘everybody is concerned about children and protecting children’. So, Mary Lou, if you truly mean it when you say you ‘reflect on things, and assess things’, please take the time to consider the overwhelming medical and scientific evidence available to you. Your
colleague Michelle O’Neill, along with others in your party, have already done so and have taken the unequivocal position that including males in female sport undermines fairness and safety for women and girls. Please don’t put your personal relationship with your sibling ahead of your duty as a public representative; please act on behalf of those whose best interests you have been sworn to uphold. #savewomensport
Who Watches the Watchers? 