Today I have been busy emailing and writing letters to various politicians and shooting bodies about Trans Equality in Shooting Sports (TESS) as well over the airgun licencing campaign. I will quote some of the passages from the letters in this post and they will be surrounded by quote marks.
The emails and letters went to the Prime Mnister, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Maria Miller, Micheal Fallon (my own MP), Richard Ashworth MEP, Nigel Farage MEP (both MEPs for the South East England) the President of the European Commission. the NSRA and the ISSF.
The fist part of the letter concerns airgun licencing in England and Wales campaign. For that I used one of the template letters. The main part of this post is about TESS. It seems that the powers that be don’t care about this issue as it does not affect them. Well it does affect them. I have emailed the Department of Culture media and Sports twice without reply over the equality issue which is why I have written to the Secretary of State.
I have been is contact with the Equality Advisory Service and they tried to answer my questions but went away with more questions. They haven’t been in contact since.
‘UK Sport did contact me back and said they had no list of what sports were gender-affected. Who actually defines when a sport is gender-affected? UK Sport told me it is the sport’s governing body. That can’t be right as it gives that sport carte blanch to discriminate. ‘ Since when did Government allow non government agencies to decide how they would obey the law?
‘Thomas Bach said in his speech that ‘Respect means that we all fight together against any form of discrimination on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender, sexual orientation or any other prejudice’. Clearly this is a false statement as is the statement he made a little later on ‘we can proudly say: The Olympic Movement stands for the human right to play sport, stands for global solidarity, stands for equal rights for all the athletes of the world’. What about the rights of Trans athletes? After all they are human beings and protected under the law. ‘
What Thomas Bach said during the opening of Sochi 2014 is clearly rubbish considering the iOC’s own rules on trans competitors. Does he know his own organisations discriminatory rules that ban certain people from sport. I have written to him but have got no response. I will contact him again after the current Games are over.
‘The sport of shooting has had a health benefit as it has helped me reduce my blood pressure. Why should the enjoyment of my chosen sport and my health suffer because of discrimination that is sanctioned by, perhaps, the most powerful sporting body in the world? Yet no Government seem to be able to or wants to challenge them on this blatant piece of discrimination against an already marginalised section of society. Is this right or fair? Of course it is not but why do people keep quiet about this? Is it because that it doesn’t affect them? Well I’m not keeping quiet. I want to be able to compete in the sport I love.’
What more I can say about that paragraph. Is the IOC above the law because no Government wants to say ‘hang on, this blanket ban is wrong and illegal under our laws. You need to rethink this rule.’
I will keep on fighting because it is my human right to participate in sport and my right to shoot and no one will take that right away without one hell of a fight.
Before I close I would like to thank the team of Firearms UK for a) supporting my campaign and b) inviting me to join them. It has proved to me that I am not alone. thank you guys.
Kate G
