Shame on those who whip up hate against trans athletes for clicks and votes

The Age

a day ago

'We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren's participation in the girls' track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.'
Brava, brava, brava. What decency. And what a wonderful stand to take.
Closer to home, last month we had our own major tabloid/talkback story about a transgender athlete at a South Australian Catholic school, who, it was breathlessly reported, had run riot at an athletics carnival. One father was quoted, saying the student 'broke a number of records competing against girls at a recent sports day ... breaking all the girls records'.
It was great hate-bait, and the usual suspects on talkback and tabloid went hard. Got some hate you want to spread? Our lines are open!
The former Liberal MP Gary Hardgrave certainly opened up on Sky News.
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'In the end,' he said, 'weak men want to compete against women and they put on the skirt and say, 'I'm a woman now, and I want to compete against you'. But even weaker men support those people in that kind of decision.'
I repeat, great hate-bait! Manna from heaven.
Did anyone pause, ever, to think what effect this has on the target of the hate-bait? This week, the ABC show Media Watch did, and made enquiries. And whaddya know? Most of it was nonsense.
There was a school athletics meeting last year, creating precisely no controversy in the school at the time. Yes, the 13-year-old transgender athlete did indeed break a record, but it was another girl who actually swept the day breaking seven records.
And the effect on the child in question from the pile-on? Devastating.
'No child or family should have to experience the trauma or fear that we have been through,' the mother of the child told the ABC. 'My child's privacy and innocence has been violated without consideration or empathy for the devastating lifelong harm this can cause. It's hard to express how horrific it is to read hateful articles about your child and have them used as clickbait for a political agenda created by adults and forced down the throats of kids who are just trying to be kids.'
Read it and weep.
Yes, yes, yes, occasionally the issue of an unfair advantage by transgender athletes in sport does arise – usually only at elite level – and is one to be discussed and sorted out by serious people.
But that ain't this. The point is that we need to call this kind of stuff for what it is. It is not a genuine attempt to achieve fairness in sport put out by people who have a genuine track record of earnestly examining that very thing. It's just hate-bait, no more, no less, put out by people whose job in life is to stir up big trouble way above and beyond what the actual problem is.
It's just hate-bait callously thrown out there to bring in swarms of bone-stupid groper fish who live off that very hate – to boost your ratings, clicks and votes – and to hell with the trauma it causes to their targets.
For shame, you bastards.
For shame, you bastards.
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Joe Montemurro, new coach of the Matildas: 'I've followed their incredible journey closely and am energised by the passion, resilience, and identity they've built. The only promise I make is that we will play an exciting brand of football and that the integrity and the level and the respect of the Matildas will always be at the top of my thinking.'
Tennis player Daria Kasatkina on her first major tournament after switching allegiances to Australia: 'To feel the support from the stands so many times. I don't know if everyone who was screaming, 'Aussie', were from Australia, but I felt this support . . . So this is the kind of support which I honestly didn't have before, it feels like it's something new to me — but it feels so nice.' Oi!
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Kath McCann, the Tasmanian Devils' general manager of marketing, corporate affairs and social impact on alternative stadium options: 'This is Plan A and there is no Plan B.'
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New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on the 'run it straight' tackle challenge that has gone viral on social media after a teenager died from a serious head injury: 'All I can say to young adults who are participating is you've got some personal responsibility in this. You're hearing the advice from police, from the medical fraternity, from government, from principals saying don't do it. To the adults that are involved in more formal organisation of it and are influencing it and leading this out on social media, I think you need to stop and I can't be any clearer.'
75-year-old runner British runner Sarah Roberts, who took up running just eight years ago, and now holds the over 75 world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road: 'I'd like people to think that they should always try something. You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you're too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.'
Australian 100m sprinter Lachlan Kennedy has broken the ten-second barrier: 'It's so good. I can finally say I run nine.' Here we were, thinking he was going for Best Supporting Actor. He thinks he's the star, and going for Best Actor – and he might be right!
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Team of the Week
Callan Ward. The career of this fellow, the heart and soul of GWS could be over after he tore his ACL – a badly buggered knee, to you and me.
Alex Johnston. South Sydney speedster notched 200 NRL tries. Just 12 behind the all-time record held by Ken Irvine.
Reds and Brumbies. Good luck to them in the Super Rugby Pacific finals. The Waratahs, meanwhile, have shown some improvement, but finished disappointingly.
Australia/South Africa. Competing in next week's World Test Championship final at Lord's.
Socceroos. Beat Japan for the first time in 16 years with a thrilling last-minute winner in Perth and as long as they don't lose to Saudi Arabia by five goals early Wednesday morning, they qualify directly for a sixth straight World Cup – an extraordinary turnaround from recent grim times.