The U.K. has devoted taxpayer dollars to a group that claims transgender women (biological males) should be allowed to compete against biological females without medical checks, a report says.
The tax-supported group, Sport England, has been working with a radical trans group called Gendered Intelligence, a group who clams that opposition to trans women competing against biological women is nothing but “irrational fear.” The group also seems to argue that no medical requirements should be imposed and that transgenders should be allowed to compete just on their say so.
Sport England (SE) is a quasi-official civil service group that is financed by the government to make policy suggestions to the country’s sports leagues, both private and state-sponsored. But according to the Daily Mail, SE has paid the transgender activist group $33,400 to counsel sports organizations to accept trans athletes with no restrictions.
For most sports, trans athletes are required to meet testosterone and physical requirements to be accepted as the gender they identify as, but Gendered Intelligence calls this a form of discrimination and is telling leagues to drop all requirements, according to documents that the newspaper reviewed.
For instance, one policy paper, entitled “A Social Inclusion Model for Trans People in Sport,” demands to know, “Why are we worrying about what medical intervention they may or may not have had? They are a woman, within women’s parameters.”
Gendered Intelligence (GI) is registered as a charity organization and claims to have performed trans-acceptance training to 16,000 people.
GI denounces the “exclusive” policy of requiring trans athletes to provide medical evidence before competing. Instead, they are demanding that U.K. sports move to an “inclusive” model that “assumes everyone can play unless there is a clear, objective reason for them to be excluded.”
For its part, Sport England says it has not crafted its own official transgender policy, but it is promising to do so soon. The group released a statement saying, “Sport England is committed to ensuring that everyone can benefit from the benefits that leading an active life can offer. That’s why we have been working with Gendered Intelligence since April to support the sector to be better equipped to include trans people.”
But criticism of allowing biological men claiming to be trans women is growing, both in England and across the world.
Dr. Nicola Williams, who represents the women’s rights group Fair Play For Women, said that by hiring GI, Sports England is “sneaking out” a transgender policy by stealth even though it claims not to have an official trans policy.
The Mail also spoke to Cathy Devine, a specialist in sport policy for women, who said that Sports England might even be breaking British law.
“The Equality Act says that people with the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ can be excluded from female sports categories for the purposes of fairness and safety,” Divine told the paper.
The controversy comes on the heels of the mounting success of transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon, who has been trouncing natural-born female competitors in race after race.
McKinnon has been tearing through the female cycling world since competing as a transgender woman. McKinnon won the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles in 2018, among other events.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @WTHuston.