Identity politics meddling has gone too far

The government has funded gender propaganda for disaster plans, and Allan Border’s name was stripped from awards due to gender sensitivities. Is nothing safe from social engineering, asks Miranda Devine.

Allan Border is too humble to say so but it is a shabby slap in the face to Australia’s greatest cricket captain to strip his name from the sport’s premier awards night as punishment for the grave sin of having been born male.

To appease undisclosed gender sensitivities, and under the cover of the silly season, cricket’s night of nights quietly was renamed the “Australian Cricket Awards”.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Can we quit with the gender whining?

The night has always been named the Allan Border Medal awards, rightly in honour of the legendary captain who was responsible for cricket’s golden years through the 1990s and 2000s and who still holds the record for the number of consecutive Tests played in world cricket.

Cricket Australia slipped through the name change the week before Christmas, claiming it was necessary in recognition of women’s cricket “to reflect the evolution of the sport [and highlight] the achievement … of our women’s and men’s players”.

Allan Border’s name has been stripped from cricket’s premier awards night. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty

No offence to female cricketers, but it is the achievement of male players which made the national sport great, which draws crowds and pays the bills.

I’m sure women cricketers don’t want to be accorded patronising achievements they haven’t yet earned, nor to play a part in insulting a respected elder of the game.

Grudging tokens by silly sports administrators trying to meet their diversity KPIs is as much an insult to women as to men.

Border was characteristically good-natured about the name-change in December, saying that, although he had been “totally chuffed” when the award was named after him, he had found it a bit embarrassing, too.

“I was fully consulted,” he said in December. “There’s no real dramas”.

As we know, in Australian parlance no “real” dramas is not an endorsement but a polite way for a decent man to say he’s always been a team player and isn’t going to kick up a stink about such a moronic decision.

It’s not just cricket which has cravenly capitulated to the “toxic masculinity” push, either.

The Prime Minister yesterday paid tribute to “the incredible efforts of the emergency workers, police, defence personnel and volunteers” who came to the rescue of people hit by the 2009 Black Saturday fires as well as the current floods in northwest Queensland and bushfires in Tasmania, Victoria and WA.

Scott Morrison’s government has funded gender guidelines for emergency services management. Picture: AAP/Dave Acree

But his own government has been funding pointless gender propaganda to be injected into emergency services management which will provide a potentially dangerous distraction from safety priorities in future.

The National “Gender Emergency Management” (GEM) guidelines, developed by Victorian women’s groups, tell emergency service agencies to “enhance” the current system by: “Authentically involving women and people of diverse gender and sexual identities, acknowledging and addressing domestic and gender-based violence in times of emergency, raising awareness of the gender spectrum and the way gender assumptions and gender stereotyping can contribute to trauma, creating awareness of gender or cultural practices which may endanger women and people of diverse gender and sexual identities in times of disaster.”

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Keep gender politics out of our military

On and on it goes, including providing transgender bathrooms in emergency evacuation shelters.

I’m sure it’s a comfort to know when you are facing a natural disaster that your rescuers will be using a “gender lens to ensure the different needs of women, men, and everyone of diverse gender and sexual identities, including LGBTI people, are covered in preparing for an emergency.”

How exactly will anyone be made safer with this nonsense? When you’ve lost your house and your life is in danger, identity politics is an irrelevant distraction.

Is there no corner of the earth safe from meddling social engineers?

@mirandadevine