Following revelations this week that gender critical charity Sex Matters were joining For Women Scotland’s sports campaign in launching a campaign to “map” trans women participating in women's sport there was a degree of public backpedalling by some, suggesting that this campaign was simply looking for teams and organisations which allow trans women's participation rather than creating an illegal database of trans individuals.
However, further investigation makes it clear that both Sex Matters’ sport advisor Mara Yamauchi and FWS Scotland are clear that the intention of this campaign is to catalogue members of a vulnerable minority in particular participating in women's sport in general.
A few days ago on October 1st, Mara Yamauchi said “do you know of males competing in the female category in sport? Please tell FWSSport and Sex Matters about them - who they are, which sports, how many positions, medals etc they've stolen from females & injuries they've caused”.
Following this up, FWS Sport campaign on Friday 4th October responded thanking one anonymous supporter calling for a hunt for “Warlocks lurking in our midst. Ladies, if you know of a dude trying to hide in plain sight in women's sport, pass it on!”
There can be absolutely no doubt — this is not a debate over sports governance and policy, this is a targeted campaign to draw up watchlists hunting members of a minority characteristic. The followers and supporters of these GC organisations clearly understand this from their response to the call to action and the organisations themselves are thanking people for carrying this witch hunt out.
For trans people, this campaign represents an escalation from a pretence by GC activists of “reasonable concerns” compatible with human rights to differing beliefs in a democratic society into the territory of privacy invasion and attacks on human dignity of trans athletes and their access to sports.