Sport is not the place for social engineering

We of course are not perfect and we’ve all seen ugly incidents but what warms the heart is our ability to call this out and deal with it without a government-mandated ‘process’.

We don’t need the HRC to tell us that bullying – for any reason – is wrong.

Any compassionate person, of which I believe most Australians are, will be sensitive to a young person working through issues of sexuality or gender identity.

But without recourse to a free and open conversation about how we might accommodate them, the HRC’s guidelines require sporting clubs to allow men and boys identifying as women to use the toilets, showers and change rooms of their chosen gender.

This is not a suggestion, it is a legal requirement under the Discrimination Act, according to the HRC.

The key question is, are the mums and dads of Canberra comfortable with their daughters sharing intimate facilities with males (no surgery is required according to the HRC guidelines) who have decided to identify as females or indeed no gender?

The ‘T’ in LGBTIQ is used to describe these people as Transgender and of course it applies to women identifying as men.

Those pushing for change argue there is no threat to women and girls from allowing men with penises, who identify as women, to share their intimate facilities.

For most this is probably true. But we are talking about a very new social phenomenon about which there has been little community debate before the HRC stepped in with its legislation-backed “guidelines”.

The Washington DC based conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, recently documented 130 incidents of men in North America using new-found access to women’s facilities for acts of voyeurism.

It is naïve to think that girls and women will not feel uncomfortable and vulnerable to abuse through such an ill-thought out law.

The HRC, like many of the political activists pushing for change, conflate the heart-breaking physical issue of babies born with ambiguous genitalia – a condition known as intersex – to push for transgender rights.