One of the first things we try to teach children, when they become vocal, is to always tell the truth. Children, in early socialisation, find it quite hard to lie, and pointing at things and correctly saying the words for them is one of the main drivers of language acquisition. 

One of the cruellest things we can therefore do, as those children grow towards young adulthood, is to suddenly compel them to repeat things they know to be untrue. This is a form of abuse, and nothing could be more abusive than asking a child to lie on behalf of an adult, for example by requiring them to lie and say that men are actually women. 

A 17-year-old girl, playing on a women’s football team, has just endured a gruelling, and humiliating investigation process by the Football Association’s “Serious Case Panel”. She was accused, via the charity “Kick It Out”, of making “transphobic” comments amounting to a charge of discrimination against another player in her FA league.

Her “crime”, which has resulted in a six-match ban, was to ask a player on the opposition team during a match, “Are you a man?”. The player was in fact a man, reportedly sporting a beard, but claiming he is a woman. 

The charity took a complaint from the opposition team, who had fielded a male player, accusing the girl of discriminatory remarks which they suggested amounted to “hostility”. Even faced with what they know is basic unfairness for girls and women, namely having to compete against boys and men with an inherent physical advantage, it is the girl telling the truth who they decided to persecute. 

The charity has the capacity to disregard such a complaint, sinister as it is, and yet they chose to forward it to the Football Association, who in turn treated it as a serious case. All of this is unfathomably misogynistic and so blatant in its choice to favour the identity choices of men against the safeguarding of women.

FA policy currently allows men who say they are women to play on women’s football teams on a “case by case” basis. This is without any question utterly unfair. There is no case where a man has changed sex and become a woman. Women’s sport should be reserved for females as a matter of safety and fairness, and the FA must look again at their stance. They have forced a girl to capitulate to the lies a man is telling about himself, rather than allowing her to question him and demand her own safety in a contact sport. 

In this latest horrendous case against a vulnerable young woman, the outcome was that truth was punished and lies rewarded

The world witnessed clear evidence, at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, that if men can get away with stealing medals from women, they will do it. They will steal their sporting achievements and sporting places, they will injure them, and they will threaten those challenging them, as the boxer Imane Khelif did to J K Rowling. 

In this latest horrendous case against a vulnerable young woman, the outcome was that truth was punished and lies rewarded. She was made to cry because a man had invaded her sport, passing himself off as a woman, but it was she who was interrogated and punished for knowing and repeating the truth. She has then been denied the opportunity to play the sport she loves. 

Any men pushing themselves into women’s sporting teams know that they are cheating, whatever words, or accessories, they choose to dress that up in. This man wore jewellery, we are told, to present himself “as a woman” but women don’t believe that a necklace makes you female and this young woman had the temerity to say so. A man was in front of her, and she said so. The FA and ‘Kick It Out’ should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

In light of this appalling decision against this young woman and her disgusting punishment, a group of women calling themselves “Twelve O Five”, have declared that they will protest outside the England v Republic of Ireland match, from 1.30 pm at Wembley on Sunday 17th November. 

The group most recently organised a protest in London against the introduction of Self-ID law in Germany which brought hundreds of protesters to the street outside the German Embassy. They are confident that they will bring hundreds to Wembley Stadium, the home of English National football, to let the FA know that their policy of allowing men to compete in women’s sport is intolerable and unsustainable. 

The group, swift at organising, and revolutionary in tactics, are a collective of determined and courageous women working together to target any areas of injustice for women, forced upon them by men pretending to be women. They are willing to do this in person, at short notice, and to confront those who are stripping women of the right to single sex spaces, sports and organising, directly. The group appear to be startlingly different in style and strategy. 

Aleks, one of the leaders of the group, told me:

Women’s rights have always been won in the streets, and we will take them back in the streets once again.

It will be interesting to see if the Football Association will engage with the group. The charity “Kick it Out” was humiliated online yesterday, as a result of tweeting that they had no responsibility for the decision, even though they engaged in the referral of the girl. Gary Lineker the sports pundit has received similarly embarrassing treatment after refusing to engage with women, Martina Navratilova amongst them, about whether it is fair for men to compete against women in women’s sport.  

Women objecting when they see a man entering a women’s sport where he should not be, is not hostility, it is required. Women are now willing to take to the streets to tell these men to play amongst themselves.