When I was a kid, I used to love my dose of Saturday morning cartoons, and one of my favorites was Space Ghost. The costumed space adventurer was a pretty typical heroic male figure; tall, broad-shouldered, with a face that looked like it was chipped from a block of granite, with very little of the granite removed. He was big, assertive, and capable, and later in life, when I was musing about the possibility of a live-action Space Ghost movie - those kinds of adaptations being popular at the time - I thought that Patrick Warburton would make a great live Space Ghost, as he had most of those same physical attributes but could still be able to inject some humor into the piece.
Rugby, it seems, is a sport that also requires some of these same manly attributes, and it is of rugby that I write in this piece; specifically, a Canadian rugby team, which has a member with those same manly attributes: Size, broad shoulders, an impressive jawline.
There's just one problem. He's playing on a women's team.
Maeryn Gellhaus, 48, joined the senior women's team for the Edmonton Clansmen Rugby club in May, just four months after starting to transition from male to female, reported Reduxx.
Video of Gellhaus' first match with the team on June 22 shows her towering over the other players as she enters the scrum. Many of her teammates appear to be in their mid-to-late 20s.
After learning that several were worried about being injured while playing with Gellhaus, she took to Instagram claiming they had made her feel unwelcome.
A quick look at the photos of Gellhaus in the linked article, as well as the video included, presents a very real picture as to why his teammates are worried about being injured - the guy is huge!
During Gellhaus' first match with the women's team on June 22 she was seen towering over the ... https://t.co/eQwEowrkIo via @MailOnline
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) July 1, 2024
This isn't some barely pubescent, skinny, pale middle school boy that you would have a hard time telling from a girl of the same early age. This is a man, man.
Gellhaus is huge, especially when compared to the young (actual) women on his team. He has a head like an Easter Island statue and a jawline that would make Bruce Campbell envious. This man - and yes, transgender agenda or not, this is most emphatically a man - has no business playing on a women's team. This is just ridiculous.
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His fellow team members, who actually are women, are not amused.
Members of the Clanswomen's team said they were not consulted about Gellhaus joining team and many have safety concerns.
'It’s safety and fairness of sport. It’s pretty f****d up that one person’s "feelings" trump legitimate concerns of safety from our women. Our opinions and feelings don’t matter,' an anonymous player told Reduxx.
'In an aggressive contact sport like rugby, where your only required protection is a mouth guard, why do we have to argue over safety and explain the risks of women versus men?'
Several of the women said they approached Canada's governing body for rugby, Rugby Canada, about the issue but were told they must comply with the current policy.
"Pretty f****d up" is something of an understatement, if anything.
So, women who have played rugby against other women for years, who are dedicated to the sport, are expected to just let this monster play on their team - or else get out. Their concerns do not matter when measured against the "woke" requirement to let this enormous man LARP as a female. This man, by the way, went through male puberty - decades ago - and has only just started on hormone therapy, which is of questionable effectiveness and will not begin to diminish the physical advantage of a big man over even bigger-than-average women.
"Sorry, ladies," Rugby Canada is apparently saying, "But you'll just have to let this big guy beat you up, eh." This whole incident has driven this controversy into the realm of the absurd, and the best and most justified thing the women on the team (and on opposing teams) could do would be to walk away and refuse to compete with this hulking brute on the team - but why, we may ask, are they being put in a position where they have to make this choice? They signed up for a women's team, to compete against women, and it is not unfair that they expect to continue playing only against other women.
But here's the most egregiously un-self-aware statement by Gellhaus:
I want to be celebrated, not tolerated.
Cheating cannot and should not be celebrated, or tolerated. That's what "Maeryn" Gellhaus is - a cheater - and there should be no celebration, or even tolerance, for this hideously unfair practice. The whole idea of allowing dudes to play on women's sports teams, allowing them in women's locker rooms and women's bathrooms, has never passed the Stupid Test. If the hulking, granite-jawed "Maeryn" Gellhaus has taught us nothing, he has taught us that.
