Professor of Philosophy @OU_Philosophy. Political philosophy and the ethics and metaphysics of sport. @OU_GCRN (RT ≠ endorsement, all views personal, obvs.)
Hove UK
- Tweets 40,662
- Following 7,212
- Followers 33,877
- Likes 273,062
Update: Steve lost the byelection to the Greens.
The by-election was caused by the resignation of Milla Gauge.
pshebrighton.org/in-the-news…
As a member of @bhlabour I want to say clearly that I think Steve is wrong.
Being 'trans positive' is pretty meaningless, but the argument about sex and gender is not 'merely a political football'. Some of the local issues are:
1) The scandal of WellBN - harming teenagers in the city - but supported by the City Council.
2) The absence of same sex (women only) provision for victims of rape and sexual violence.
3) Implementation of the law, following the EHRC guidance including within council facilities
4) Female only sport in the city's schools: council policy deprives girls of the right to fair sport
5) Internally and procedurally, the undemocratic hostility shown to Cllrs Thompson and Gauge who raised criticism of the labour group's stance and were sidelined and ignored.
6) The likely illegal 'trans tool kit' which has been abandoned by many other councils.
7) Plans for mixed changing - a changing village - in the replacement for the King Alfred Centre, contrary to best practice and legal precedent.
These are concrete, serious issues with which the Council will have to grapple. You can't close them off with meaningless declarations of solidarity. I am disturbed by the lack of honesty and accountability in party circles about these matters.
In raising these concerns I am largely motivated by concerns for the Labour administration, which I otherwise support. We have lost all three councillors in Queens Park, and, even though peopel are whistling to keep our spiritis up, I'm not confident about the result of the byelection.
A failure to think through policy, and to have open and honest discussion of these matters is deeply damaging.
The background for the byelection is here: pshebrighton.org/in-the-news…
2
4
29
4,102
... But here's the non-barking dog. In this, the IOC official report on online harassment at Paris, neither Imane Khelif nor Lin Yu Ting are mentioned.
There is no mention of 'misgendering'.
Under the 'LGBTQ+ rubric they talk about homophobic language ...
1
5
53
847
Here, for example is some particularly terrible reporting from @CNN , and a report of the IOC's position.
1
1
50
900
And with boring predictability, the journo responsible responds as you would expect.
Althouigh it's a little annoying, overall I'm quite content with this approach from the opponents of fairness for women's sport. Publish incoherent, inaccurate articles, smear your opponents as Nazis, close your ears to argument, ignore your critics, double down and block.
Because that's working so well to win the policy argument, isn't it?
Carry on.
So, today's @ObserverUK didn't publish any letters in response to that painful article last week attacking the WTA sex testing policy.
Even this one, apparently.
Shame, because I think it's spot on. 🤔
30
211
1,006
30,759
So, today's @ObserverUK didn't publish any letters in response to that painful article last week attacking the WTA sex testing policy.
Even this one, apparently.
Shame, because I think it's spot on. 🤔
70
547
2,149
84,225
And, of course, the corollary. The 'more than 8k signatures' should be completely ignored. They count for *absolutely* nothing. 'Jean', 'Martin', 'Brenda' and 'Christine', if they exist, are wasting their time and ours. They are just handing over their email addresses to the GLP for future soliciting emails.
3
8
78
2,191
... the letter raises concerns about CAS arbitration given the "permanent" nature of decisions. But this goes back to the point about the female category being a sex category.
1
7
109
934
... and this bit is just nuts. 'Let's pretend there's no scientific consensus, because we find the consensus uncomfortable.'
2
15
140
1,308
... The letter treats the variability of male advantage across sports as if it were important or decisive. But that only matters if the female category is a performance category — admission by demonstrated advantage or 'performance gating'
2
8
124
1,254
... and the UN letter makes the weird claim that the Policy "leaves no real or viable choice" to the athlete:
Every eligibility rule in sport is a condition of entry, not a means of coercion. A boxer tries to make weight. If the boxer fails, then they are ineligible. That's not a bodily-autonomy violation — it's what a category is.
3
12
153
1,300
On testing itself, the letter says the Policy "reinstates the abandoned practice of mandatory sex testing":
This is a one-time cheek swab (or blood draw). Athletes already submit to more invasive anti-doping testing routinely.
2
14
158
1,420
...The UN letter wants "individualised, sport-specific assessment" instead of a blanket rule:
But neither fairness nor safety can be secured one athlete at a time. That's not a marginal refinement — it's the abandonment of the category of women's sport.
4
13
161
1,398
... the letter complains that the IOC has abandoned the 'Framework Document' and wonders why this happened. This is why:
1
21
205
2,380
... and in the meantime, men should play in female sport so as to be kind to them
Here's Yannis Pitsiladis, in a paper published last month:
5
26
251
6,064
A few people expressed consternation of my apparent endorsement of the term 'Trans Youth'.
There's a very interesting Youtube video on exactly this topic presented by @_CryMiaRiver with @byrne_a and Moti Gorin. Recommended.
piped.video/watch?v=NGFru6BJ…
6
23
2,713
... But, well, life comes at you fast. The paper was written in January this year, but was published in June, after the new IOC policy was announced. This gives it a historic and poignant character. Here's what Pitsialdis recommends:
2
71
1,818
... Second, he expresses the view that the presence of a male in the women's competition at Paris did not add any 'meaningful dimension' to the safety risk posed to people like Angela Carini. ...
3
15
90
2,579
... He has a quite a go at the Framework document, which is a bit rich, given that he put his name to the position statement endorsing it.
1
4
78
2,364
... And he is cross with the IOC: He thinks that the now discredited and abandoned Framework Document in 2021 should have been imposed on International Federations. ...
1
3
71
2,456
... and it contains some of the usual weird claims associated with Pitsiladis. For example, he seems to sugges that being male has no correlation to performance.
4
6
87
2,666
I live down the road from WellBN and know some of the people involved in this. I have gnc kids who grew up in BandH (who were not affected). It's effing horrific, and @BrightonHoveCC has turned a blind eye.
Please read the whole thing which @nickwallis links to.
NHS Gender Doctors Harmed Children
(my take on the report into WellBN published today)
genderblog.net/nhs-gender-do…
16
176
509
14,711
This is a small update, and I like it. I think you can almost hear the sighs of exasperation from Lausanne in this part: ...
The Frequently Asked Questions page on the IOC Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport has been updated, with additional questions and answers:
olympics.com/ioc/athletes/me…
5
55
208
8,666
... The relevant science then, and the relevant philosophy, is not directly to do with sports performance, but sex. You can see FIMS go wrong on this right in the first paragraph. ...
2
6
83
1,266
... You can see one of the reasons implicit in the press release. The FIMS approach is to keep insisting on the complexity of factors that promote athletic performance:
1
6
87
1,702
... The new policy is much more in line with the judgments of CAS (especially including Semenya vs IAAF 2018/19) than the old policy.
Here's the bit that you may be sick of me posting ...
1
4
107
3,263
I'm watching this: it's very good. Ofc, I agree with (my pals) @DerryBanShee and @FondofBeetles. The discussion of female disadvantage is ethically important. It's interesting, slightly disconcerting (on CAIS), food for thought.
piped.video/watch?v=d5JBYq2o…
8
58
226
25,833
There's a real ethical problem here, because I'm sure there are some good people @Slate.
But this?
This is just false. You are simply lying.
The Olympics just succumbed to a ridiculous gender panic. Here’s who it’s really going to hurt. slate.trib.al/5xP1vEj
Community note
Article is full of misrepresentations, e.g:
Nobody is "banned" from competing, merely required to do so in the correct sex category
Males, whether they identify as 'trans'/have DSDs or not, have performance advantages over females
Imane Khelif has the SRY gene, so is male
stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document…
lemonde.fr/en/sports/arti
39
167
1,099
34,059
IOC Prezzer now going. KC very proud of the policy. Over to Jane Thornton
piped.video/watch?v=qcwDZ389…
1
6
43
2,868
... 'well, if its a choice between an in-practice fair policy and an accurate glossary, then I'll take the policy and let the genderists have the ideological glossary.'
But, would you look at this?🙂
7
11
110
3,666
Some will say that this means a 'ban' from the Olympics. They are, of course, wrong, perhaps maliciously so. Fortunately the IOC saw this coming. The actual policy document says this:
False reporting. Poor show @AP
"Trans women" are not banned from the Olympics.
7
177
831
20,257
The 2021 Framework document was one of the worst bits of thinking I've ever read about fairness in sport. I'm no longer a Trotskyist, but 'into the dustbin of history' seems apt.
I'll be opening some fizz later on because of this sentence:
15
50
231
14,234
This is the link for the live IOC press conference this afternoon, 15:15 UK time, 16:15 CET:
piped.video/watch?v=qcwDZ389…
3
9
18
1,497
'Gender policing and exclusion harm all women and girls, and undermine the very dignity and fairness the IOC claims to uphold' intones Andrea Florence, keeping a straight face, along with a bunch of activist NGOs.
'non è giusto' says Angela Carini, a female athlete.
I know which side I'm on.
#nonegiusto
4
15
132
1,859
I have no problem with you reading this statement, and I'm not sure it needs an immediate critique from me. It' laughable, desperate, and silly, roughly in thirds. You'll know, by now, how to parse the critical suggestion:
4
12
113
5,698
... I should hope that the proposals contradict the 2021 Framework document, because that is one of the most confused - to put it kindly - policy statements I've ever read. It claimed, you may recall, that there was 'no presumed advantage' of males over females. ...
3
10
97
2,986
... (I would say something rather stronger than that it was 'problematic at the time' but fair enough.)
And this is what they have to say about the 'politically untenable' claim
1
8
52
1,278
... It concerns specifically the World Athletics policy of SRY testing and how this was implemented for the World Championships in Tokyo. (The answer to how is - without any real problems)
Here's what they say about the rationale of the new policy ...
2
5
48
1,773
'Female' is a sex term that refers to, and picks out, a particular biological kind. It is essential to our understanding of the world that we have this term with clear meaning and reference. This means that it is just about possible to 'identify as female' but impossible to 'transition to female.'
The suspect was not female, but male. It degrades our language to suggest otherwise. @BBC
33
224
1,377
22,600