Australian Senator calls for Transgender Women to Be Prohibited from Participating in Female Sport at All Levels.
Claire Chandler, Federal Liberal Senator, claimed that sex discrimination laws are being used to harass community sports organizations.
She will introduce to parliament a private member bill that would protect single-sex sports for Australian girls.
Senator Chandler wants to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to reintroduce the biological sex-based definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ that were removed from the law by the previous Labor government.
Claire Chandler, Liberal Senator is working on a bill to ensure that local codes and clubs don’t face legal action for having female-only sports teams.
“Sporting codes, clubs, and volunteers may be sued for providing single-sex women’s sports,” she said.
A 31-year-old Tasmanian woman said that single-sex should be legalized for both women and girls. She also suggested it be promoted, encouraged and celebrated at every level.
After recent controversy surrounding transgender athletes participating in women’s sports competitions, her push is a result.
Northern Beaches Mermaids BG Volleyball Association expressed concern in September about a competition that featured females self-identifying. The association claimed they were unfairly ahead of other competitors and should therefore continue to participate in existing’mixed” competitions.
In the same month, Queensland Suns’ under-17 male netball team won convincingly against all female opponents in the Queensland State Netball Titles.
After claims that Iran had fielded a transgender goalkeeper in order to win an important international women’s match, Jordan and Iran clashed this month.
Senator Chandler is pictured together with her husband. She stated that the laws currently in place, which ignore biological differences, could lead to women’s participation in sports.
Zohreh Koudaei (Iran goalkeeper) saved two goals from a penalty shootout, which resulted to a victory of 4-2 against Jordan – qualifying them as the Women’s Asia Cup.
Jordan requested a “gender verification” check on Koudaei, but Iran stated that all of the players had undergone ‘hormone’ tests ‘to avoid any issues’.
Under Senator Chandler’s proposal, trans people would not be banned from playing sport but individual clubs and sporting leagues would need to offer options for both single-sex teams and teams with trans players at all levels of sport which ‘supports participation for everyone’.
Sporting clubs can be sued if they offer single-sex sports for women. Labor introduced transgender athletes provision in the Sex Discrimination Act.
Senator Chandler stated that the law was being used as a tool to force sporting organizations to operate on the basis of’self-affirmed female gender identity’. Her bill was meant to protect women’s sports.
She stated that no one, regardless of whether they are the biggest sporting codes in Australia or volunteers at a local footy club will violate Commonwealth Law by providing single-sex women’s sports.
Iran’s national women’s football team have been accused by rivals Jordan of playing a man as a goalkeeper (pictured: Iran keeper Zohreh Koudaei) during an Asian Cup qualifier
Senator Chandler stated that current laws are complicated and should be simplified to make sure all levels of sports understand the rules.
She stated that codes and sporting clubs shouldn’t be required to employ teams of doctors, lawyers and scientists in order to show they are able to keep the women’s sports’ competitions and teams singlesex.
Liberal senator Hollie Hughes took it a step further, stating that women’s sporting events were in danger of being cancelled.
Sky News: “It is a complicated issue, but we can’t negate women’s biological traits and have trained hard to compete,” she said.
“A lot of the competing men are pre-operative, which means they identify as women and are not yet experiencing a hormonal shift. This is causing huge problems.
The picture shows the goalkeeper. She has already defended herself against Iranian media.
This week, the International Olympic Committee relaxed its regulations regarding transgender athletes.
The IOC reversed its 2015 guidance that transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s sport provided their testosterone levels are below a certain limit for at least 12 months before their first competition.
The report stated that there wasn’t a definitive answer to whether testosterone gave trans women an advantage and its effect on success varied from sport to sport.
This decision, which is part of the new Beijing Winter Games framework, was widely welcomed by LGBT+ advocates and human rights activists as an attempt to increase inclusion.
However, some scientists argued that leaving difficult decisions on whether intersex and trans women have an unfair advantage over sports federations was “unreasonable” and only added to the confusion surrounding an already contentious topic.