Football in Denmark: My Daughter will not be Allowed to Play
The Danish Football (Soccer if you're North-American and reading this. >:) association, known as Dansk Bold-spil Union (hereafter DBU), has adopted a new approach. As of 2024, they will permit boys/men who self-identify as girls/women to participate on teams traditionally designated for biological females.
In early 2023, DBU established a group heavily populated by LGBT+ supporters. This group had one purpose: to formulate a strategy for the inclusion of trans, non-binary, and other gender-identifying individuals in the Danish football world.
Not surprisingly, they returned with recommendations to include trans self-identifying individuals on teams aligned with their gender identity. This means that any boy/man can assert that he is a girl/woman and gain access to the female team and locker room. Only at the elite level will additional criteria, such as actual transitioning, be taken into consideration.
Trans-identifying Men in Female Sports, Football in Denmark: A Parent's Perspective on Football Participation
For me personally, this means that my soon-to-be 10-year-old daughter will not be allowed to play football. I have no issue with her playing against boys; however, she is becoming increasingly aware of the biological differences between girls and boys. Soon, her body will begin to develop into that of a biological woman, with everything that comes with it. She deserves to have a safe place to change and shower when participating in sports.
The report produced by the DBU workgroup does mention the issue of changing facilities. However, I was not in any way surprised to see that they had only consulted individuals of genders other than biological females and males regarding their feelings about the situation surrounding changing facilities.
The workgroup did not ask biological females how they feel about sharing locker rooms with biological males with intact male genitals. Trans-identifying males might even, as some of them do these days, call themselves TRANSbians because they’re sexually attracted to women. This makes me wonder how DBU will react when a biological female steps forward to express discomfort. We all know what happened when Riley Gaines did just that – and that was at the elite level.
Unanswered Questions: The Future of Gender Inclusivity in Danish Football
Where is the line for what shall be accepted in the name of self-ID? What will happen when a Danish version of Nicholas Cepeda shows up? Will they allow such an individual to self-ID his way into a locker room with underage girls?
The LGBTQ+ people in the workgroup also seized the opportunity to slap the cis label for those of us who are simply the gender we were born as. I was not given a gender when born; my gender was observed as female. I am now a 45-year-old woman, an adult human female who has no use for a label I never asked for.
For the past year, I have said that gender ideology had yet to fully rise up in Denmark. Now I'll tell you it is here. Now the question is, when will The Red Tent Collective add the first red tent to Denmark on the Grand Map of Non-Happenings?
