What a difference a Supreme Court ruling makes. Just a couple of weeks ago, sporting bodies in Britain were still trumpeting their proud commitment to ‘inclusivity’ in the field of trans rights. Now they’re practically falling over themselves to announce that women’s sports are for biological women only.
Quickest off the mark was the Football Association, which confirmed on Thursday that anyone born male would be barred from women’s matches from June. Later the same day, English Netball introduced a ban to start in September. Slightly slower was the England and Wales Cricket Board, which didn’t make its announcement until Friday – but perhaps compensated for its tardiness by prohibiting trans women “with immediate effect”.
And of course the news of these changed policies was welcomed by Keir ‘the windwatcher’ Starmer, newly rebranded as the UK’s TERF-in-chief. His spokesman declared of the FA ban – not entirely (or, indeed, at all) accurately – that “we have been clear that biology matters when it comes to women’s sport”. The apparatchik added that “we will continue (sic) to ensure women and girls across the country can enjoy sports and we will continue (sic) to support bodies to protect the integrity, fairness and safety of the game”.
At first sight, all these U-turns by sporting administrators (and Prime Ministers) might just seem either hideously shameless or almost funny. But they’re also damning proof of the existence, before the Supreme Court’s judgment, of a de facto speech code in many British sports: one that was rigidly – and sometimes cruelly – enforced.
Last October, for example, a 17 year-old female footballer was banned for six matches, four of them suspended, after asking a bearded transgender opponent, “Are you a man?” The girl was charged by her county FA after the opposition club lodged a complaint, and had no legal representation when she was found guilty by the FA’s National Serious Case Panel, after weeping as she was being questioned.
As the FSU’s Director Lord Young pointed out in the Spectator, another shocking feature of the story was that the girl has autism. “It’s a good illustration,” he wrote, “of the iron rule that the more an organisation professes to care about the suffering of beleaguered minorities, the more likely it is to inflict cruel and unusual punishments on them.”
Then in January came news of another teenage girl undergoing a depressingly similar ordeal. The 18 year-old, understood to have both ADHD and learning difficulties, was charged by her county FA over comments made to a referee about two opposition players.
An investigation into her remarks required her to provide a written statement, which she reportedly needed help to write. In it she said she’d sought guidance from the referee due to her trans opponents’ “extremely aggressive” style of play. She also admitted trying to ask opposition players if their team-mates were biologically male after failing to get clarity from the ref, who threatened to send her off if she carried on quizzing him. The girl added that she had not taken her ADHD medication that day because “another medical condition” had prevented her from doing so.
At her National Serious Case Panel hearing, she was banned for six matches, two of them suspended, after accepting the charge brought under FA rules which – in those soon-to-be-vanished times – allowed people born male to play in women’s matches. She was also forced to undergo an “online education course”, and her club was handed seven disciplinary points.
Speaking to Telegraph Sport on condition of anonymity, the girl said the ban “kind of made me hate football”, and expressed fears that she’d now been gagged from raising concerns about playing against those born male. “If I say anything else, I get another six-game ban,” she explained. “So I can’t even stand up for myself.”
And there, in a nutshell, is the proof of that de facto speech code. Until only a couple of weeks ago, girls could be punished not merely for protesting about playing male opposition, but even for asking if they were doing.
One person who, unlike Sir Keir, stood firm through all of this was the former FA Chairman Lord Triesman. Responding to the first case in the House of Lords, he told peers: “I say with regret this afternoon, shame on the Lancashire County Football Association, backed up by the FA itself because an autistic 17 year-old girl has been banned for asking about whether a large, and really quite aggressive bearded trans woman, was authorised to play in the competition in which she was playing.”
He also pointed to the fact – still an awkward one at the time – that during his time as FA chairman between 2008 and 2010 games involving both those born male and female had “tended to produce an unfair competition” and “a very, very significant number of injuries”.
Now, reacting to FA’s announcement, he’s welcomed the “change of heart” – but would like a lot more acknowledgement from the organisation of how wrong its behaviour was before the Supreme Court more or less forced its hand: “First, they should write and apologise to all those, perhaps especially the neurodivergent young women, who raised proper questions and were subjected to hearings, expunging the findings and cleaning the records. And there must surely be consequences for the most senior FA officers. No one can have such a shallow regard for the integrity of the sport. This is truly a matter for resignation and apology.”
The implications of last month’s ruling will surely rumble on for a while yet. But one that already seems clear is something that the FSU has long argued: the problem with speech codes is not only that they’re repressive and usually unlawful, but also that they tend to backfire spectacularly – as the FA and others are now finding out.
