Women's World Cup 2023

I think you could CGI-swap any England men’s team into this game and everyone would believe that they were the ones delivering the sort of ponderous fluff they always like to bring to the group stages.

Women’s football has come on so much in the last few years. Really enjoyed watching the England v Haiti game.

Haiti could have got something from that but either couldn't finish, or chose the wrong pass at the crucial point in the move.

I gave it a go and watched some of the USA/Vietnam game and was bored senseless. It was a very poor match.

Having said that Tiffany Rodman is a very attractive woman… Altjough having Dennis Rodman as your father in law would be very odd indeed.

Chicago: Still willing to give things a try.

Father, isn't he?

I think Chicago was projecting to a fantasy world in which Ms Rodman became his wife. Although for that to have any chance of occurring he should probably start by getting her name right (it's Trinity, not Tiffany).

Ohhh that makes sense. The more bonkers the jump, the more more legitimate Chicago.

Did the Beeb recruit some out of work red toppers?

www.thepinknews.com/2023/07/25/bbc-morocco-gay-womens-world-cup-2023/

I feel like this is probably a minefield I shouldn't be entering but ( www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66299441 ) Quinn is trans and non-binary. Should they still be eligible to play for a women's team?

This is a question for JP.

Quinn’s birth sex is female. Gender is non-binary. Not taking testosterone.

Crack on.

She's still a bird, but thinks she's a bloke. I'm not calling her "they" because she's only one person and that confused me all the way through the article.

If she'd rather be called "he" I'm happy to do so, or "it" which is still singular. If she starts medical gender reassignment she should not be playing women's football, but as she isn't we're good to go.

They don’t think they’re a bloke. They are non binary which, as far as I’m aware means they don’t think they are a bloke or a bird. And given they don’t appear to have taken any medical steps to change the way they were born, I’m not sure it’s actually terribly notable or record setting.

Yes indeed. Non-binary means, kinda, opting out of gender. Some people might have surgery (I think a fair few chesty non-binary folk have their norks lopped) but if someone is biologically female and hasn’t been on blokeifying drugs there’s not the slightest issue with them competing in female sports. It is entirely unlike the more thorny matter of people biologically male competing in them (which, for the record, every single trans person/advocate who isn’t an idiot recognises is complex and necessitates rules based on physiology, not psychology).

Ms noodlé is non-binary and prefers they/them (and is absolutely not, in fact, a Ms) and has dumped the birth name in favour of something ambiguous. It’s a social change, not a medical/physical one.

I know they/them feels clunky… but, really, the ‘singular they’ is very ordinary indeed and everyone uses it often. We’ll get used to using it for people who we’d previously have used a gendered pronoun for.