Sharron Davies, former Olympic swimmer, is a woman driven by a sense of injustice. It haunted her as top level Olympic competitor when East Germany was sweeping the boards for gold medals with drug-enhanced entrants and the IOC did nothing. At the Moscow Olympics, where she won her silver, East Germany claimed 90 per cent of the women’s swimming medals. Her coach father was banned from international sport for speaking out against the doping cheats. In later years the gold medal winners offered to return their fradulent medals and the IOC refused.
Recently she has also campaigned vociferously for transgender women to be prevented from joining female competition and applauded the Fina (water sports world governing body) ban for women’s elite events for any who have undergone male puberty. There will be a separate event for transgender swimmers. Davies now wants this extended to cover all sporting categories. “I think we have got to a point now where the female athletes need to stand up together to say: ‘We want fair sport.” She said she empathised with anyone who has gender dysphoria but “we have to find better ways of being inclusive rather than throwing women’s sport under the bus.”
All of which is context for an interesting but difficult chart.
She was born 1 November 1962 in Plymouth and is a super-determined Scorpio Sun conjunct Neptune – Neptune being a surprisingly common highlight in athlete’s charts. And her Sun Neptune squares a disciplined, hard-edged Saturn in Aquarius opposition Mars North Node in Leo. There’s a wealth of description in there of leadership ability from the Leo North Node. Resentment and anger about unfair treatment from Mars Saturn, which tends to attract negative experiences of unfairness in life but would also give her the ability to withstand the punishing training required for top level sport.
Scorpio for determination beyond the norm. A showbizzy, publicity-attracting Mars Neptune for a later media career. She also has a super-confident and adventurous Jupiter opposition Pluto Uranus. And an unaspected Mercury in Libra and Venus in Scorpio which will make her single minded and obsessive.
Not an easy personality and she has been married three times. But a born fighter against injustice.
The tide is indeed turning.
Who knew it would be the prospect of burly intact men competing directly with women?
I would have thought that using experimental drugs on children to block their puberty (same used to castrate criminals) would have been what did it.
Elective double mastectomies on teenage girls, should have given us pause.
Certainly admitting men into women’s prisons and shelters should have been stopped without question.
“Be kind” was obscuring quite a lot. Has Neptune shifted in an important way?
I would have thought so too, from any decent person at least.
It’s been an eye opener thats for sure.
Well done to Sharron and all the other women, who publically have fought for women. Especially those who were abused on social media and the ones who lost their jobs. It has been an horrific story trying to balance women’s rights with transgender rights the last four years. Terrible so many politicians have let women down. Even today many refuse to acknowledge that female is unique to female and claim anyone can claim to be one.
The Olympic Games leave me cold. When I was growing up, working men who walked, ran, lifted, swam, rowed, shot or whatever for living were excluded. In any case they couldn’t afford to give up paid work for a few weeks of attendance at the Games. So the Games were for the amateur toffs, the public school boys who trained at Eton etc and were offered the best coaches/PE teachers in the country.
It was particularly galling to know that Soviet and Asian competitors were supported financially by the State. Even US atheletes were offered ‘sport scholarships’ and had the opportunity to train full time. In fact I think that was probably the turning point in British athletics, when young men, and black young men in particular, were offered sports scholarships in the US.
It was mid 1980s when the tide started to turn and gathered steam until by the early 1990s most events were open to professionals/working men and women though some sports still held out (eg tennis and boxing).
Sharon deserves all the recognition she has been given for her fight for equality and justice. In fact I am not sure why she hasn’t been made a dame. I am not really into such honours but if they are to be given out then Sharon should get one.