#XX #SaveWomensSport
Update 419 Free Speech and Women's Boxing Special #BeMorePorcupine
My paid work got deferred plus there is a lot of stuff to report on, so here I am again. I have a lot of reports about the NHS which I hope to include in the following update.
In the wake of the boxing farce at the Olympics, Terven ladies are being encouraged to take photos of themselves doing the X symbol and post them around Twitter ( it will get confusing if I call it ‘X’ 😊) and elsewhere with the above hashtags. You don’t have to show your face, of course. Go on, ladies 😊
Thanks to a friend for sending me this great photo.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Stop Press
Imane Khelif has won the final by unanimous decision against Yang Liu of China.
Lang Yiu should get the gold medal, of course!
Get those photos rolling!
Free Speech
Before I get on to the Woolympics, in the wake of the awful riots that have occurred (which I’m sure you would all condemn regardless of who is carrying out the rioting), the new and perhaps more pressing concern is that the Labour Government are going to use this as an excuse to clamp down on free speech. Before I get to that, there has been one piece of potential good news ( I know, I know, seeing will be believing but it will be nice if loads of us Terfs don’t end up in court!).
Dominic Penna in The Telegraph ( Labour will not make misgendering trans people a hate crime 09 August) reports:
Labour will not make it a hate crime to misgender trans people, The Telegraph can reveal.
Sir Keir Starmer made comments as leader of the opposition that led to speculation the expression of gender-critical views could become a criminal offence under a Labour Government.
In 2022, when in opposition, the Prime Minister said that “every” LGBT+ crime should be treated as an aggravated offence, which could carry a jail sentence of up to two years.
This may have covered the refusal to use “she/her” pronouns for trans women, who were born male, alongside offences such as assault and harassment motivated by gender identity.
But Labour appeared to row back on its stance when asked by Baroness Jenkin, a Tory peer: “What plans they have to make it a criminal offence to misgender an individual?”
Responding to a written question tabled in Parliament, Lord Hanson, a Home Office minister and Labour peer, replied: “The Government has no such plans.”
In 2022, Sir Keir told the PinkNews awards ceremony his party would introduce tougher legislation to punish alleged hate crimes against transgender people.
He said at the time: “It’s time for tougher hate crime laws, so every LGBT+ crime is treated as an aggravated offence.”
However, he has significantly hardened his position on gender identity in recent years having initially struggled with the question of what a woman is.
In 2021, Sir Keir claimed Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, was wrong to say only women have a cervix. He was later mocked for claiming “99.9 per cent” of women did not have a penis.
In 2021, Sir Keir claimed Labour MP Rosie Duffield was wrong to say only women have a cervix - Julian Simmonds for The Telegraph
He shifted position last year by declaring “biology matters”, and during the election campaign agreed with Sir Tony Blair that a biological man has a penis and a woman has a vagina.
The full article is here:
In terms of the threat from the Labour Government to freedom of speech, I agree with all that is stated below by Baroness Fox and Andrew Doyle plus I would add that ‘hate crime’ should be abolished. All thoughts gratefully received.
Baroness Claire Fox writes on the Academy of Ideas site:
Censorship won't address the riots
In the face of extreme violence, we must stand strong in defence of freedom of speech
Aug 09, 2024
The UK feels like it’s falling apart. For over a week, riots seemed to spring up all over the place - some organised, some seemingly spontaneous. Then there was Wednesday night, when supposedly planned riots numbering in the hundreds failed to materialise. Instead, groups of anti-racist protesters filled Walthamstow market, while masked-up groups of counter protesters marched around Bristol and Croydon and other areas looking for the non-existent far right. While celebrations of the ‘defeat’ of the rioters might be premature, many are celebrating the numbers of people turning out in solidarity against racism. And yet, the atmosphere remains tense - something significant has shifted in the public feeling.
After a slow start, there has been swift, specific police action to target criminal behaviour. However, beyond repression and clampdowns, the official narrative about the roots of this ugly civil unrest seems unconvincing, shallow, short-term and hesitant. However, the one policy politicians seem sure of is plans to ban, ban, ban.
As with all difficult political situations, the knee-jerk response is to censor and silence all discussion of recent events online. Politicians and commentators have been calling for blanket bans on social media. Indeed, the director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has warned that individuals could be arrested if found to ‘repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial/religious hatred’. That’s potentially a police visit for simply reposting footage from the riots - this is bordering on the hysterical. And forget Tommy Robinson, according to some it’s Elon Musk who is behind the riots, having spread ‘disinformation’. Even a secretive government agency used to ‘spy on’ anti-lockdown campaigners during the pandemic has been deployed again to monitor social media amid the riots.
Unfortunately, such approaches look like two tier illiberalism. On the one hand, the disinformation surrounding the Southport attacker was widely criticised as dangerous (in fact, one woman has been arrested for a post on X suggesting the Southport attacker was an asylum seeker called “Ali Al-Shakati”, although qualifying the post with “if this is true”). On the other hand, the fake news ‘hoax’ list about Wednesday’s planned ‘far right’ protests, which terrorised so many and led to town centres effectively locking down, was heralded by some as almost a good thing because the equivalent of The Good Lie inspired anti-racist messages to prevail in the morning headlines. Likewise, while there was widespread condemnation of the riots in Southport, Rotherham and Tamworth, where ugly white identity politics was often on display, there has been less willingness to condemn the violence in Birmingham, where young Muslim men in masks attacked a pub.
Untangling the dynamics of what is going on is not easy; we need as wide and deep a public discussion as possible. That is why the government’s anti-free-speech drive, supported by its cheerleaders in the commentariat, is a worryingly dangerous direction of travel. Of course, throwing bricks, torching buildings and shouting racist slurs is not engaging in political debate. But there are lots of people NOT out on the streets causing trouble who want to talk about what is going on and why so many feel so frustrated and alienated. Many feel their views on everything from immigration and Islamism to soft policing of Gaza protests and Just Stop Oil activism are being ignored. The weaponisation of the Online Safety Bill, or calls to create new terror offences, will stifle this desire to have conversations about difficult things further.
Indeed, even one of the ‘heroes’ of Southport, John Hayes, who was stabbed in the leg while trying to intervene, has criticised Keir Starmer for refusing to engage in these deeper issues. Either these riots are simply a belch of violence from mindless thugs overheated with summer sun, or there is something more complicated going on. If it’s the former, a bit of no-nonsense and equal-handed policing is required. If it’s the latter, we need to be able to talk about things without fear of Yvette Cooper telling us we’ll be locked up for our Twitter conversations.
No-one is saying it is easy to understand what is behind these recent weeks of unrest; simplistic sloganeering on any side doesn’t cut it. And things have moved on rapidly: this is no longer just a response to the horrific murder of three little girls in Southport. But what is clear is that the violence on display has deep roots - with questions to untangle about policies relating to immigration and multiculturalism, policing and so-called ‘left-behind’ communities.
Like many of you, we at the Academy of Ideas are still working through what we think. Simply comparing these riots to the events in 2011 is no good, neither is calling on social-media companies to ban any discussion of what is going on. But many of the questions raised by current events relate to long-standing issues and debates, ones we will be returning to at the Battle of Ideas festival on the 19 & 20 October this year. In the meantime, here is a list of some media some of us have done talking about the riots, and some articles and resources we’ve found useful in trying to pick apart what is really going on.
The full piece is here:
Brilliant piece by Andrew Doyle on his substack and I trust he will forgive me for posting the whole piece since it is very powerful ( and, in any event, I do recommend his excellent substack):
These are dark times for free speech
The riots are being exploited to justify state censorship.
Aug 09, 2024
The true test of a government’s commitment to freedom comes in times of crisis. The riots that have erupted throughout the United Kingdom are to be condemned unequivocally, the perpetrators prosecuted, and the safety of the affected communities restored. This ought to be followed by serious discussions about why such widespread resentment has been generated, and how best to address the legitimate grievances that, in some cases, have translated into illegitimate behaviour.
In the meantime, we need to be vigilant. The current Labour government comprises of culture warriors who mistrust freedom of speech and will take any opportunity to impose restrictions. Whereas many perpetrators of violence have rightly been arrested and prosecuted, increasingly we are seeing police knocking on doors for social media posts that contain “disinformation” or the potential to “stir up hatred”. Words and violence are being casually conflated, and this is where the real danger begins.
Consider what happened after the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in October 2021. Rather than debate how best to tackle the growing problem of Islamist terror, MPs instead used this atrocity as a springboard from which to launch a campaign for further online censorship. Unpleasant tweets had nothing to do with this murder, and yet the actual problem – violent religious extremism – was completely overlooked. This was political opportunism disguised as compassion.
In situations of this kind, it is always best to consider how short-term solutions can jeopardise our long-term goals. Virtually all of us are disturbed when we read social media posts that display animosity towards minority ethnic groups, but empowering the state to set the limits of permissible thought and speech is an even greater danger. We are right to vehemently criticise the man who posted the phrase “Filthy bastards” on Facebook along with emojis of a gun and an ethnic minority person, but we are also right to express concern that he has been jailed for 12 weeks. Defending free speech means defending the rights of those we find most abhorrent. There are larger principles at stake. Once a precedent has been set that enables the government to control the speech of its citizens, the pathway for future tyranny has been cleared.
This is why we should also be troubled that Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has said that police officers are “scouring social media” for anyone sharing details of the riots that might “incite racial hatred”. He has claimed that he will even seek extradition of offending social media influencers from overseas, saying that they “must know they are not safe and there is nowhere to hide”.
These are not merely idle threats. Police in Cheshire have arrested a woman for sharing misinformation about the perpetrator of the horrific stabbing of children in Southport, wrongly identified in this case as a Muslim asylum seeker. It goes without saying that anyone deliberately sharing false information to promote their own cause or ideology deserves nothing but contempt. But once we accept that misinformation is sufficient to warrant prosecution, where does that end? After all, many elements of the mainstream media have been guilty of precisely the same thing. Will the police be dispatching forces to the offices of the Guardian, the Metro or the BBC any time soon?
All of the evidence would suggest that the police forces of the United Kingdom have fully bought in to the notion that words lead directly to violence, in spite of the fact that six decades of research into “media effects” theory has produced no evidence for such a correlation. This is an ideological position to justify censorship, one that the Labour government is fully behind. It has already jettisoned the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act which was approved by parliament in May 2023. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced her intention to see the Act repealed just one day before parliament went into recess, thereby avoiding any debate on the subject. The whole affair was grimly surreptitious.
Even before this, Phillipson had announced that she wants to compel free schools and academies to teach the national curriculum, and to have it rewritten by Professor Becky Francis, an academic whose “intersectional” activism is clear with even a cursory examination of her publication history. Labour is also currently considering implementing a new definition of “Islamophobia” that would see the criminalisation of those who wish to criticise certain religious views and practices. We now have a culture war government, fully committed to proselytising on behalf of the new state religion, and prepared to implement its dogma with the cudgel of the law.
Again, it is worth emphasising that violence cannot be tolerated and those responsible for the riots should be held accountable. But a more pressing threat comes from a government that is determined to use this violence as a pretext to impose authoritarian policies. Every tyrannical government in history has appealed to “safety” in order to justify restricting the liberties of the public. There is nothing new about any of this.
Our politicians seem to believe that cracking down on freedom of speech will resolve the tensions that have fomented this current crisis. But of course much of the resentment has come about because those who have attempted to raise their concerns have been silenced or smeared. “When the conversation ceases”, says Daryl Davis, “the ground will become fertile for violence”. I do not think that violent protests are ever justifiable, but unless we attempt to understand why people have resorted to such measures we cannot hope to prevent them in the future.
This is something that the Labour government ought to understand, given that Keir Starmer was an open advocate of the Black Lives Matter movement, even as its supporters were rioting and committing acts of violence on the streets of America. “We kneel with all those opposing anti-Black racism”, he wrote, observing the activist decree that the “b” of “black” must be capitalised.
While I have no doubt that Starmer would have opposed the violence and the murder that took place under the auspices of BLM, he was also aware that the riots were a symptom of a broader cultural malaise that required attention. Why should the same principles not apply to the recent unrest in the UK? There are certainly far right agitators exploiting the current situation, but there were also violent far left agitators exploiting the BLM movement. In both cases, it is perfectly possible to address the concerns that have led to civil unrest while simultaneously condemning illegal misconduct.
Inevitably, social media companies are now under pressure to censor posts that our politicians find objectionable. In Scotland, First Minister John Swinney has appealed to tech giants “to make sure that individuals in our society are not subjected to this speculation, this alarm, this unease, which I recognise is taking place today”. Journalist Paul Mason has demanded that the government “enact the full Online Safety Act now” and summon the executives of X in the UK “to explain why their CEO is personally boosting hate speech, incitement and disinformation – and pull the plug on the service until this stops”.
Mason is not the only media commentator now openly declaring war on free speech. Edward Luce, Associate Editor of the Financial Times, has railed against “Elon Musk’s menace to democracy” and accused him of attempting “to stoke racial conflict and civil breakdown”.
There should be little surprise here. Whistleblowers at the Financial Times have exposed the extent to which Luce’s publication is ideologically captured, leaking its “Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit” to writer James Esses. And when author and journalist Joan Smith was commissioned by the Financial Times to write a review of a new book about violence against women, an editor instructed her to insert a deliberate untruth to promote the tenets of gender identity ideology.
The ideology of Critical Social Justice (usually known as “wokeness”) is essentially authoritarian in nature; fundamental to this belief-system is the postmodernist view that language shapes reality, which means that words must be controlled in order to guarantee social justice. When the Financial Times reviewed my book Free Speech and Why It Matters, the writer Henry Mance included this chilling phrase: “Sometimes the answer to bad speech is not ‘more speech’; it’s to unplug the speaker’s microphone”. When a newspaper is commissioning an authoritarian to review a book on free speech, you know that something is amiss.
But this attitude is hardly restricted to the ideologues of the Financial Times; it is now the norm among virtually all mainstream media outlets and the government itself. This is why so many are now openly calling for X to be shut down, or at the very least to see it censored. By eliminating the de facto public square, they will be better placed to control the narrative.
For many journalists, truth is only a secondary priority to what is politically expedient, and some of the most important reporting in recent days has come about through posts on X. Would we have even heard about the supposed “anti-racist” rally where Labour councillor Ricky Jones brandished rioters as “disgusting Nazi fascists” and said “we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all” if it weren’t for Elon Musk’s platform? One suspects not.
And better still, Musk’s implementation of “community notes” has meant that facts can be verified for accuracy in real time. When the Guardian misrepresented the details surrounded the “Wi Spa” scandal of 2021, we relied on social media to get to the truth. (This piece by Josephine Bartosch for The Critic outlines the full grisly story.) Nowadays, community notes would have exposed the deception within hours.
Up until relatively recently, the mainstream media has been able to distort reality with impunity. Elon Musk’s X represents a direct threat to the dominance of the mainstream media because the public can now bypass the gatekeepers and seek the truth out for themselves. It’s reminiscent of the Church’s efforts to ensure that the Bible was not translated into the vernacular, meaning that the people relied on those in power to act as mediators.
In the case of the recent riots in the UK, it is clear that preventing the free exchange of views has been a major catalyst. We have an ideologically captured media that is no longer trusted, we have a police force that applies its standards according to the principles of the intersectional cult, and we have a government that is hellbent on controlling the speech of citizens. To impose further restrictions on speech will only exacerbate the problem. It would be like getting drunk to cure a hangover.
The solution to this problem is to drive out this authoritarian and identity-obsessed ideology from our major institutions. We need to open up discussions that have previously been stifled. Above all, we must reassert the primacy of free speech in a liberal democracy. Without this foundational principle, our civilisation is lost.
The full piece, including some video clips, is here:
The Woolympics
Here's the moment when Taiwanese male boxer Lin Yu-ting delivers what appears to be an illegal rabbit punch to the back of Turkish female boxer Esra Kahraman's head, with her neck pressed against the rope, during their semi-final bout which Yu-ting won unanimously.
https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1821430646851711367
Excellent interview by Andrew Gold with Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist, of Sex Matters who gives us a definitive explanation of the science.
Great piece on his substack from Arty Morty:
A media meltdown of Olympic proportions
The IOC has doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on letting biological males compete in women’s sports, and the left-wing media have lost their minds trying to defend it.
Aug 08, 2024
The International Olympic Committee has ignored the growing global consensus around fairness and safety for female athletes, instead choosing to open up women’s Olympic sports to anyone who wants to compete in them. This comes at the same time that many global sporting authorities are moving in the opposite direction, taking steps to protect the category of women’s sports from being redefined to the point of meaninglessness by ever-more-absurd calls for “inclusivity.”
All around the world, sporting regulators are reaffirming that the sole raison d’être of women’s sports is rightful exclusion: they exist to be a separate category for athletes with female bodies — that is, to be very specific: women’s sports exclude bodies which have the undeniable physical advantages that male puberty gave them thanks to the abundance of testosterone produced by a functioning pair of testicles.
The IOC has instead kept in line with the radical identity politics of the social media-fuelled transgender movement, which seeks to suppress any acknowledgement of individuals’ inborn, immutable biology in favour of everyone’s self-declared “gender identity.”
This year, IOC officials went so far as to announce that biological sex is entirely a “private” matter, and that any kind of test at all to verify athletes’ biological eligibility to compete in women’s sports would be “unfair” to male athletes who wish to compete against women. To the astonishment of sports & performance scientists, the IOC declared that the sole criterion for eligibility to compete against women is that the box on their passport is marked with an “F”.
(It should go without saying, but a passport is not a scientific document and the administration of passports varies significantly from country to country. In most countries it’s not at all difficult for males to get their passports marked “F”.)
This has put the IOC — as well as the trans activists and media outlets backing it — in an indefensible position. Things quickly spiraled out of control when two athletes entered the women’s Olympic boxing ring despite having been previously disqualified from women’s competitions after lab tests confirmed that they’re male. According to the IOC’s rules, this is perfectly fine — and this is to be expected — given that the IOC has been loudly advertising that anyone is welcome to compete against women in the Olympics, no questions asked. Of course males will turn up if you advertise that you won’t do anything to challenge them.
But the optics of males punching women in the face live on television — even though this is entirely in accordance with the rules that trans extremists and their media sycophants have been lobbying for — are such an obvious violation not just of fairness but of women’s safety — and human decency — that a full-on meltdown has ensued. Once-respectable news outlets are lashing out at everyone in an attempt to distract us from the shameful mess that they themselves have made.
It’s utterly hypocritical, but with no better line of attack available, the media and the IOC have gone after the credibility of the genetic tests which showed the boxers, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, to have male (XY) chromosomes.
Remember: the IOC and the media insist that there’s no need for sex verification tests in the first place, so it’s absurd for them to now confer so much importance on the supposed falsity of Khelif and Lin’s test results when they simultaneously insist that those test results have no relevance anyway. To the IOC and their media backers, sex is all in the eye of the beholder (of a passport). It’s a sign of desperation, and of an absence of moral grounds to defend their position, that they selectively decided to get involved in the matter of sex testing only now that the public is concerned about their laissez-faire policy toward males punching women in the face for sport, and only insofar as to try to muddy the legitimacy of the test results, because they have exposed trans activists’ ideals as unfair, outrageous, and untenable in the real world.
Nevertheless, even though it does nothing to change the absurdity of the IOC’s policy one way or the other, it bears noting: there is absolutely no basis to contest the tests’ credibility — both boxers are indisputably male.
Each of the boxers took two DNA tests: the first while participating in championships in Turkey in 2022, and the second in India in 2023. (The results of the 2022 tests were delayed and didn’t come out until after the championship was over. They came back ‘male’ but it was too late to halt that year’s event. As soon as the athletes returned to compete the next year, a new set of tests was immediately ordered — and this time the results came back in time to expel the men from the ring.) The tests were handled by their respective countries’ independent national laboratories, all fully certified and accredited by the international Court of Arbitration for Sport — ironically, the very same body that arbitrates drug testing for the Olympics. Tellingly, the boxers both declined to appeal the results, and both dispatched letters from their lawyers refusing permission to release the details to the public, citing medical privacy. Nevertheless, the full lab reports have leaked, and they’ve been seen, vouched for, and described in detail by highly respected journalists, including here by Alan Abrahamson, formerly of the LA Times and NBC Sports.
The test results are ironclad and conclusive: the boxers are male. This has been a matter of public record for over a year, and it was given widespread media coverage when the athletes were disqualified from the New Delhi championships last year. The Algerian ambassador even got involved, but ultimately failed to persuade anyone that his athlete’s disqualification was unjust. For good measure, a formal letter was sent to the IOC, giving them a year’s warning in advance of the Paris Olympics that these two male boxers were likely to try to compete in them as women.
And remember: the test results aren’t supposed to matter anyway because according to the logic of trans activists, the IOC, and the media outlets that back them, biological sex is irrelevant in women’s sports.
The sole basis of the media’s attempt to discredit the genetic sex tests is the fact that they happened during competitions that were organized by the International Boxing Association, whose president is Russian, and an ally of Vladimir Putin. The IBA is admittedly a mess. It’s caught up in a number of unrelated controversies, and it’s locked in a bitter dispute with the IOC over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So the strained logic implied by the media is that the tests were staged as part of a Russian-orchestrated plot that has been playing out since 2022, a massive conspiracy to reputationally damage the IOC and of course to (supposedly) put vulnerable transgender people in danger.
None of which makes a lick of sense, considering that nobody but the IOC is to blame for its own stubborn policy of refusing to acknowledge that biological sex matters in women’s sports and eschewing screening tests in favour of what amounts to taking people at their word, even in dangerous combat sports like boxing.
The full piece is here:
https://artymorty.substack.com/p/a-media-meltdown-of-olympic-proportions
Ben Chapman in GB News (Imane Khelif ‘has 162% advantage’ as Mara Yamauchi blasts IOC ahead of Olympics final: 'Absolutely appalling!' 07 August) reports:
Imane Khelif has a “162 per cent advantage” going into her [ HIS!! Come on, GB News!] Olympic gold medal clash on Friday, according to former GB marathon runner Mara Yamauchi.
She spoke to GB News about the ongoing controversy surrounding the Algerian boxer who was disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) after she [ HE!] was reported to have failed gender eligibility tests.
The IOC (International Olympic Committee), which suspended the IBA in 2019 because of concerns over its finances, governance, ethics, refereeing and judging, said on Saturday there was “never any doubt” Khelif is a woman.
But Yamauchi argued on GB News that Khelif is enjoying the physical capabilities of a male, which means she [ HE!] should not be allowed to compete.
Imane Khelif and Mara Yamauchi© GB News
“It’s self evident that males have massive advantages compared to females, in boxing it’s 162 per cent”, she said.
“This is completely unfair and unsafe. Khelif will get at least a silver. It’s absolutely appalling.
The full article is here:
Michael Foran addresses the issue on his substack Knowing Ius:
The IOC policy on female sport
Aug 09, 2024
Two boxers have been allowed to compete in the Olympics despite failing sex verification tests conducted by the International Boxing Association in 2023. The IBA has stated that a lab test was conducted, with its president stating that both boxers have XY chromosomes and that the tests conducted were not testosterone tests. The IBA differentiates categories according to inter alia biological sex and excludes males from the female category, where males are determined by reference to the possession of a Y chromosome. Neither athlete has taken an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
In November 2021 the International Olympic Committee issued its Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. The Framework encouraged international federations to develop eligibility criteria for the female category in their sport which reflect the particularities of their sport but includes as much as possible athletes who identify as women, regardless of their sex, gender identity, or variations in sex characteristics.
Principle 3.2 of the Framework establishes this presumption of inclusion on the basis of Self-Identification, so long as the eligibility criteria are consistent with the principle 4, fairness. That principle states that:
‘Where sports organisations elect to issue eligibility criteria for men’s and women’s categories for a given competition, they should do so with a view to:
a) Providing confidence that no athlete within a category has an unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage (namely an advantage gained by altering one’s body or one that disproportionately exceeds other advantages that exist at elite-level competition);
b) preventing a risk to the physical safety of other athletes; and
c) preventing athletes from claiming a gender identity different from the one consistently and persistently used, with a view to entering a competition in a given category’
There is therefore a rejection of a ‘pure’ self-ID approach here because of the requirement to consistently and persistently ‘use’ a gender identity in the past. Beyond that, however, there is no recommended limitation on the self-ID approach because the IOC rejects the presumption of male athletic advantage:
5.1 No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.
5.2 Until evidence (per principle 6) determines otherwise, athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.
On one reading, this principle has nothing to say about sex. It could be understood to establish a presumption that there is no unfair advantage conferred upon, for example, biological females merely because they identify as male, appear male, or have a disorder of sex development (DSD). On this interpretation, the Framework does not explicitly reject the presumption of male advantage and makes no recommendations that would prevent an international federation from maintaining the female category on the basis of biological sex - thereby excluding males - so long as it draws no unevidenced inferences from transgender identity, sex variations or physical appearance.
This reading presumes that biological sex is immutable such that trans women remain biologically male and that trans men remain biologically female. It also presumes that sex variations can affect males or females and that a feminine appearance does not necessarily determine whether an individual is female. On this view, the exclusion of athletes from the female category can occur on the basis of sex - because an athlete is male - not on the basis of transgender status. Females with a transgender status who identify as men or as non-binary could be included within the female category, thereby establishing that any exclusion would be based on sex, not transgender status.
However, it seems clear that the IOC does not intend this principle to be understood in this way, given it’s own practice of not conducting sex verification tests and the repeated reference by spokespeople to the fact that both boxers involved in this current controversy are identified as female on their passports. It seems that the IOC understands these references to unverified advantage to include any advantage that may exist between trans women or other males and females. This would amount to a presumption that there is no male advantage in sport. Indeed, in the presentation of the framework by the IOC, it is clear that this principle refers to the androgenic hormone testosterone and that there should be no presumption of advantage in the female category due to concentrations of testosterone in the male range.
In January 2022, the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations issued a joint position statement in response to the IOC framework. It criticises the IOC framework as “not scientific or medically-based”, noting that “there is little doubt that high testosterone concentrations, either endogenous or exogenous, confer a baseline advantage for athletes in certain sports”. It concluded that “it is clear to uphold the integrity and fairness of sport that these baseline advantages of testosterone must be recognised and mitigated”.
It is possible for someone to have XY chromosomes without also having a clear performance advantage, as is the case with Swyers syndrome and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. Others who have XY chromosomes and a DSD may appear to be female, particularly prior to puberty, but nevertheless go through a form of male puberty that does confer a competitive advantage.
We do not know what DSDs these boxers have, if indeed they have DSDs at all. What we know is that the International Boxing Association’s initial statement said that they not only failed the sex verification test but also that they were found to have competitive advantages over female competitors. We don’t know how this was determined. The IOC spokesperson has said that this is not a transgender issue, having initially said that it was not a DSD issue prior to a correction.
In a sense, that distinction is not relevant because the IOC policy is not based on any sex verification tests. It’s based on passports.
Sex Matters reports:
Olympic boxing row: the facts (09 August)
The women’s 66kg (welterweight) boxing final at the Paris Olympics is scheduled for 9:51pm this evening.
The International Olympic Committee’s decision to base eligibility for the female category on “passport sex” means that two boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, who were barred by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing a sex test, are competing in women’s boxing.
Khelif will compete for gold or silver for Algeria, while Lin, in the featherweight class, will contest the final for Chinese Taipei.
At a press conference on Monday, IBA chief executive Chris Roberts said that the organisation had been told not to release the test results by sports officials in Algeria and Chinese Taipei.
Allowing male athletes to compete in women’s combat sports is unsafe and unfair. Italian boxer Angela Carini, who fought Khelif, claimed she had “never felt a punch” like Khelif’s, and Bulgarian boxer Svetlana Staneva made XX signs with her fingers after losing to Lin.
Khelif and Lin probably have a disorder of sex development (DSD), similar to South African runner Caster Semenya, meaning they have XY chromosomes, internal testes, and male levels of testosterone, but were incorrectly recorded as female at birth.
Sex Matters has been producing videos and documents to clarify this, counter misinformation and explain why the IOC’s stance is ideological rather than scientific.
From The Countess in Ireland:
The IOC is failing to protect female athletes.
August 9, 2024
After seeing much misinformation and confusion around the current situation within women’s boxing at the Olympics, in particular the inclusion of two boxers who were deemed ineligible for women’s boxing after eligibility testing, The Countess sports working group has put together this short explainer on why the female category exists, how it interacts with disorders of sexual development (DSDs), and how it should be protected.
The category of female within sport exists to give women and girls access to safe and fair competition. Males, especially post puberty, are conferred with physical advantages such as ability to run faster and jump higher or longer and denser muscles resulting in more powerful punches. If there were no female categories in sports competitions, opportunities for women to excel in sport would not exist. This is the reason we call for clear entry criteria to the female category in every sport, based on sex at birth, as confirmed by cheek swab testing in elite sport. There should be no males, regardless of transgender identity or otherwise, allowed to enter the female category.
The female chromosome pattern is XX and the male chromosome pattern is XY. It is the Y chromosome that triggers male development. There are some extremely rare cases where normal development does not occur and these are called disorders of sexual development (DSDs). Within sport, the most relevant DSD is XY 5-ARD. This is a male-specific disorder where the male fetus is unable to respond normally to testosterone in utero and develops female-appearing or ambiguous external genitalia. It is usually detected shortly after birth but can remain undetected, where the medical infrastructure is less technologically advanced. In this condition, the male infant will still have internal testes and thus will produce his own testosterone, to which his body then responds normally. He will experience male puberty and develop male physical attributes like increased muscle mass and normal male height. He will have a normal male level of testosterone (he will not be “a woman with high testosterone”). This male puberty confers the same advantage as if he did not have the DSD.
Because some athletes who have been identified as female at birth are later found to have these DSDs, The Countess, along with many other sports organisations for women, have called for the immediate re-introduction of eligibility screening tests. These tests should occur when athletes commence elite competitions or at age 18. Most female athletes support the use of sex screening tests. These are simple tests, conducted by swabbing the inside of the cheek, that can identify if an individual has a Y chromosome. A cheek swab test that indicates the presence of a Y chromosome should prompt further investigation and confirmation of the type of DSD present. If the DSD is known to confer male advantage, the athlete should be advised to enter the male or open category. It is unfair and unsafe for women to allow males into their sporting category.
This kind of discrimination was found to be both necessary and lawful by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case of Caster Semenya versus the International Association of Athletics Federations, for reasons of fairness and to protect the integrity of the female category.
The eligibility for the female category in some Olympic events, e.g. athletics, swimming and cycling, is determined by the sports international governing bodies, with World Athletics, World Aquatics and the Union Cycliste Internationale all protecting the female category at this year’s Olympics.
The recent scandal has arisen around boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting precisely because the approach of the IOC is to NOT test the eligibility of athletes in this way. The IOC said in its statement that “As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.” It is worth noting that the previous Olympics also had its own internal (IOC) governance for the boxing competition so, essentially, they are following their own rules and not those of the International Boxing Association (IBA), who define female as having XX chromosomes. The IBA tested the two boxers, on two occasions, and found that they did not qualify for entry to the female category. The IBA are legally bound to keep the type of testing and the results confidential, and the boxers plus their country federations have sent legal notice to this effect.
Because the boxers refuse to release the results, and because neither appealed to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, we cannot be certain of the reason for their disqualification (i.e. if they have a DSD or a normal male phenotype). It is assumed by many that they have the 5-ARD DSD mentioned above. In any case, these boxers have been determined to be male and to be ineligible for entry to IBA women’s boxing competitions.
It is the ideological stance of the IOC that safely and fairness for female athletes are far less important than the right of “inclusion’” as evidenced by its own framework. It is this ideological stance that has put female boxers at risk, excluded two women from their own competition and allowed the advancement of two male boxers to the finals in their respective weight categories. It has also led to much speculation as to the private lives of the two boxers and some negative online commentary. All this could have been avoided if the IOC heeded the letter written by the IBA before the games and excluded these athletes. Alternatively, the IOC could have tested all the athletes and in this way ensured that there would be no males in the female category of any event and avoided singling out these two boxers.
We do not wish to see any individuals being abused; however we cannot be silent when the risks to women are so great. A male punch is up to 160% stronger than a female’s punch. A woman’s risk of concussion and brain injury is already higher than a man’s. Women should not have to choose between the sport she loves, her chance of an Olympic medal, and a risk of severe injury. She should be protected and have safe and fair sport.
It’s time to bring back sex testing and protect the female category.
TDLR:
The IOC are running boxing at this year’s Olympics.
The IOC do not test athletes who enter the female category, instead they use what’s on their passport.
The IBA tested two boxers and found them ineligible for women’s boxing; these boxers are therefore assumed to be male. The boxers did not appeal the IBA bans.
The IBA informed the IOC – the IOC acknowledged this.
The IOC do not wish to exclude anyone from women’s boxing, even if they are male.
The situation is dangerous and unfair.
Most female athletes support sex eligibility testing (over 90%).
We need a bit of humour in the midst of this madness. Over to Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman:
Smokey starts practising for the next Olympic Games.
Aug 08, 2024
Smokey was delighted to learn that he can now participate in the Olympics as Queenie, and as such, has started practising for the dive competition in the next games. He knows he’ll never be up there with the elite boys, but should be able to knock a few girls out of his way to getting a medal.
A ‘Queen’ is an unspayed female cat, but that’s not fazing Smokey. The International Olympic Committee has said that all he needs is a passport to say he’s Queenie, and they’ll believe him. His ‘gender’ won’t be questioned - at least not by them. It’s true that a cat-gender competitor might raise a few eyebrows amongst others, but he’s also sussed that there’s a very vocal and influential element of completely bonkers humans called ‘wokesters’, who will stick up for him.
Smokey is no amateur in getting what he wants from humans, whether they’re bonkers or not. He’s been manipulating them forever with cutesy poses and plaintive miaows, so spotting the easy marks and wrapping them around his little claw will be no problem at all.
In the event the International Olympic Committee decides before the next games to implement sex testing, to ensure that those who enter as females are actually females, Smokey’s not bothered. If that happens, he can just go back to being a boy - if he wants to - and get another passport to say so.
He might have to bow out of competing with the boys, of course. He knows he’s just not good enough for that, so there’d be no prize money there for him. Oh, well – larping as a girl would have been worth a try, after all what are loopholes for if not to be exploited? Especially when money and status were up for grabs if he pulled it off.
Whatever happens, Smokey will still have all his finely developed skills of cutesy poses and plaintive miaows, which he will just put to other uses. As sure as the sun rises and sets, there will always be humans in the world he can play with. And they’ll love him for it.
Memes
Some great memes from Rex Landy 😊
https://rexlandy.substack.com/p/where-are-we-61f
Endpiece by Liz
#BeMorePorcupine
#XX
#SaveWomensSport
Really love this. Don't you miss the concept of a principle? I blame hipsters.
What a brilliant photo 👏👏👏 and thanks as ever Dusty for your 🥇work.
#XX
#SaveWomensSport