FQT 26 February 2022

Feminist Question Time with speakers from USA, Canada and UK

Women's Declaration International (WDI) Feminist Question Time is our weekly online webinars. It is attended by a global feminist and activist audience of between 200-300. The main focus is how gender ideology is harming the rights of women and girls. You can see recordings of previous panels on our YouTube Channel.

This week’s speakers:

Mother of Swimmer - USA

Mother of young woman who swims for Ivy League speaks out

Cynthia Millen - USA

How can the Ivy League be so stupid? In sports, but especially in swimming, bodies compete against bodies. Boys and men will always have immutable advantages over girls and women in terms of lung capacity, skeletal size, increased circulation, and the number of fast twitch muscles. No amount of testosterone suppression will change this, and boys/men who are equally trained will always win over girls/women. This is why swimming has always been divided by sex. Men don't magically become women because they've lowered their testosterone, and it is an insult to all women for any man or organization to support this line of thinking. Furthermore, women and girls deserve privacy and the opportunity to share their uniquely feminine biological/hormonal/psychological experiences with other women and girls. It is degrading to permit biological males into women's locker rooms. Most importantly, girls deserve the opportunity to play to win. It is patronizing to girls to expect them to deny their dreams. By permitting biological men to compete against women, we are pushing girls back to the sidelines and out of the competition.

Bio: Former County Prosecutor (B.C.-- before children) now children's book author (C.M.Millen). Married for 40 years and Mother of 5 who was a national swim official (USA Swimming, NCAA, International Paralympic) for over 30 years. Women are not men with low testosterone.

Coach Linda Blade - Canada

Update on Will Thomas and the Struggle to Save Women's Sports By now the entire world of sports knows about Will Thomas, the male swimmer at University of Pennsylvania who self-identifies as a woman and has now dominated women's NCAA swimming races. The question is: What impact has this had on the continued struggle to establish boundary lines for fairness and safety in women's sports? Will advocates for female sports finally be given a seat at the table when international sports federations re-examine their trans inclusion and eligibility policies? The answer offers a glimmer of hope in the midst of this bleak situation.

Bio: Linda Blade is a former National Champion of Canada in track & field (heptathlon) with a PhD in Kinesiology. For the past 26 years, she has run a private consulting business as “Sport Performance Professional” coach in Edmonton, Alberta working with athletes in over 15 sports (beginner to elite). Since 2014, Linda has also served as President of the Board for Athletics Alberta, where she has a duty to represent the province of Alberta at Canadian national sport policy meetings. In a bid to increase public awareness of the threat posed by gender ideology, Linda has partnered with journalist Barbara Kay to author a new book, titled: UNSPORTING: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport.

Emma Hilton - UK

Fairness in female sports - after Tokyo Review of historic rules, latest news on fairness from UK and IOC, case study of swimming.

Bio: Academic developmental biologist, director of Sex Matters, special interest in fairness in sports, consultant with sports federations, author of one of the most popular scientific papers ever published (COVID aside)

For more information: www.womensdeclaration.com