The transgender issue is often controversial for whatever reason and I usually try and side with the person inside their body as they tend to know what’s best for them – provided they’re not harming anyone else of course – but this latest episode in Finland seems all kinds of stupid to me.

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The European Figure Skating Championships kicked off in Espoo, Finland last Wednesday and the organisers decided to feature 59 year old Minna-Maaria Antikainen in the opening ceremony. Minna-Maaria has defined herself as a gender-neutral woman since the age of 50 and aslo took up figure skating a few years ago, so was included in the opening ceremony to try and promote diversity within the skating community.

Whilst the organisers said that the ceremony was supposed to highlight skaters of all skill levels, I don’t think it’s doing anyone any favours when the trans skater comes out and looks as if they can barely make it across the ice, let alone falling over and spends a few hopeless seconds slipping around before a young girl come and helps her up. Surely that isn’t helping the trans community or the skating community or even people that are just learning to skate in the slightest?

You can take a look at the footage below and see what you think, and then read what Executive Director of the Finnish Figure Skating Association and Secretary General of the ISU European Figure Skating Championships, Outi Wuorenheimo had to say about it underneath that:

Figure skating is a very conservative sport with various strict rules. In international competitions, same-sex skating pairs are not allowed, and there is no category for non-binary skaters. I hope that every country will start working for equality and diversity in the field.

We want to change the figure skating world by showing that talking about a skater’s weight is not the top priority, but muscular, healthy athletes may also succeed at the top level. It is important that we have different-looking skaters of various sizes in the competitions.

If we want to change the world, we have to actively and visibly work for it and create rules that match our values. This is just the beginning of the journey, but we have the possibility to go on and lead the way.

Yeah like I said I want to help and be safe with the trans community, but this really does seem like a bad idea from the organisation because everyone is just gonna ask what the point of it was? Trans people are probably gonna say that it’s a terrible representation of them and anti trans people are just going to say ‘FFS look at the state’ or something similarly derogatory.

Moreover, it’s achieving the exact opposite of what it’s trying to as it pretty much proves that skaters of different shapes and sizes can’t exist at the highest level. If there was an absolutely badass trans skater out there making a mockery of that idea then I think that might have worked or at least had some merit, but this stunt just seems like a completely dumb idea that moves the conversation backward if anything. Sorry.

For more of the same, check out this transgender man who still breast feeds his daughter hitting back at his critics. You tell them buddy.