Success for Save Women's Sports Australasia.
Sport NZ removes their 'trans' inclusion guidelines for community sport.
Australasia is the word for Australia and New Zealand combined, but today success goes to the New Zealand contingent of Save Women’s Sports Australasia. Today, Raelene Castle, CEO of Sport NZ, announced that their ‘Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People in Community Sport’ had been removed from the website.
For a while, it appeared that Sport NZ was going to defy the instructions issued nine months ago from former Sports and Recreation Minister, Chris Bishop, to update their ‘trans’ inclusion guidelines to prioritise fairness and safety. Whether or not Save Women’s Sports Australasia’s subsequent open letter to the current Sports and Recreation Minister, Mark Mitchell, expressing disappointment in the lack of action on that instruction had anything to do with it, we may never know.
In reporting on today’s announcement by Raelene Castle, some mainstream media are still popping in the inevitable ‘poor trans’ implication here and there. On RNZ’s (Radio NZ) Morning Report, where the removal of the guidelines was discussed, one listener reported that they only read out the texts they received which opposed the removal, and none in favour of that.
Luckily, we now have independent media and bloggers who can tell us what the mainstream media won’t. Ani O’Brien is one such person, and begins her blog about the matter with: “This morning, CEO of Sport New Zealand, Raelene Castle, released a statement that read like it had been issued with a gun to her head.”
Read more here -
NZ Govt instructs Sport NZ to ditch trans guidelines for community sport
After hearing Chris Bishop's explanation of this move, I'm not quite as excited as I would have liked to have been. Yes, the removal of the guidelines on Sport NZ's website is great, but Chris said that it doesn't compel local sports clubs to exclude "trans" women from their women's teams, and that they are free to consult their local communities on the issue and decide for themselves. Let's face it - having biological males included in your women's team is going to give you a definite advantage against other all-women teams, if you can get away with it.
Well done to all those who campaigned continually on this. Raelene Castle should be sacked. Anyone with a modicum of sporting knowledge knows that allowing biological males into women's sport is stupidity. Any sport's administrator who 'decides' to allow men into their codes should be removed from their role.