June 21, 2022 - 4:21pm
When FINA announced that natal males would not be able to compete alongside women in swimming, it was rewritten by much of the press as well as trans activists as ‘trans women banned from competing’. But no one was ‘banned’, the rules have simply been clarified.
The rules are now clear; a person of the male sex that has gone through any stage of puberty is not allowed to compete against females, which puts a stop to the unfairness that Olympic medallist Sharron Davies has spoken out about. FINA has also established an ‘open’ category, as Davies has advocated for, where transwomen can compete.
The MMA fighter Fallon Fox was invited onto BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to comment on the decision. The BBC was apparently unaware that Fox, who previously served in the armed forces, had boasted about injuring their opponents. As a biological male who was the first openly transgender athlete in MMA history, the fighter’s style was so aggressive that Fox sent female Tamikka Brents to the hospital with a crushed skull, needing surgical staples. As Fox tweeted: ‘For the record, I knocked two out. One woman’s skull was fractured, the other not. And just so you know, I enjoyed it. See, I love smacking up TEFS (sic) in the cage who talk transphobia nonsense. It’s bliss! Don’t be mad,’ adding winking and kissing lips emoji.
The BBC’s Justin Webb, who interviewed Fox, later tweeted that he and his producers had ‘no idea’ about Fox’s past, before adding that the issue needed to be treated ‘fairly’. This is a big admission from one of the BBC’s most well-known journalists, and hopefully it marks the beginning of a sea change.
But I’m not holding my breath. In recent years the corporation has allowed itself to be hijacked by a small but vocal minority on this issue. Fox’s appearance was just one example; previously a BBC report saw the words of a rape victim changed to accommodate trans activists, changing the male pronouns she used to describe her rapist to ‘they’.
Yet perhaps the most irritating element of all was Fox’s attempts to hide behind other minority groups to make the case for the inclusion of males in female sports. Black people, and gay people were all used to argue that anybody who disagrees with the inclusion of males in female sports is a terrible bigot.
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SubscribeThe basic tenants of liberalism state that if an action does not cause, or have significant potential to cause, direct harm to others, such as altering your physical appearance through plastic surgery to ameliorate your desire to be the opposite sex, it should be tolerated and not discriminated against. However, once your actions cross this line, such as granting an unfair advantage in sporting competition or allowing an individual who is anatomically capable of rape into a female only environment, then clearly harm or potential harm has been caused and therefore a liberal society should step in to prevent this. It’s depressing that what I would consider to be a common sense liberal approach to this issue should now be condemned as bigotry.
It is condemned as bigotry by bigots. Those who are not ideologically infected agree with you.
wxcellent
Kindly, it’s TENETS, not tenants.
Fallon Fox also fought a couple of MMA fights against female opponents before officially disclosing that they were male, so there’s also the issue of being a dangerous loon who thinks that the other fighter is not entitled to being fully informed of the risks beforehand.
Why on Earth give it the implied respect of “they.” He is a louse who enjoys beating up women.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure offhand on Unherd’s policy on the topic, so thought my post might get nuked if I was not carefully neutral. I have no issue with referring to him as male.
Jeremy Vine was discussing this on radio 2 this afternoon.
He referred to some one being born in a male body. What this entity that was put into male body was he didn’t say. Perhaps “They” refers to this entity and the body it is born into by some process or other.
Use of the term ‘they’ for an individual makes me think: this person has a split personality. Or pretensions of grandeur – do ‘they’ use the royal ‘we’?
If I am to refer to an individual with a plural pronoun, I reserve the right to add ‘et al’ whenever I use their name.
And I’d enjoy beating up him, ‘for the record’, ‘wink, kissing lips’. About time someone did, by the sounds of it.
Oh someone did. It’s rarely referenced, but it’s on YT. Her name is Ashlee Evans-Smith. And she whooped his butt. But she said later, that he should never have been allowed to fight with women. And that she had never experienced a hit to the head as hard as he had hit her. The only reason she beat him, was because she had superior technique, and she trained with a man, months before the fight. Fox only wins through brute force. He’d never win against another man, because his technique is actually quite crap.
*Fallon Fox also fought a couple of MMA fights against female opponents before officially disclosing that he was male.
I often get the impression that some trans activists are true misogynists. Whether it’s crude anatomical references, threats of violence, or in this case relishing causing serious damage to a woman, they seem to get away with a level of misogyny that wouldn’t be tolerated from anyone else – including other women.
Julie Birchall has referred to transwomen as ‘incels in wigs’, which I thought was wicked at the time. But I wonder if some of the aggression and ‘hate’ directed at women by trans activists is because women are not sexually interested in (and may be perceived as being dismissive of) men who present as women.
It seems odd that anyone would expect heterosexual women to be attracted to someone disguising their masculinity, and equally odd that lesbians would be expected to choose a male-bodied partner.
So just maybe there is resentment and frustration from some in the trans community towards those women who openly challenge the ‘mindset’ (which, for some transwomen, seems to incorporate a belief that ‘I am desirable’)?
Others have suggested that some transwomen compare themselves favourably to born women and are highly critical of ‘real’ women’s bodies and of those less overtly ‘glamorous’ or adorned than themselves.
Julie Birchall has referred to transwomen as ‘incels in wigs’, which I thought was wicked at the time.
Amusing by wicked you mean it is quite a clever comment, surely that depends on whether it is right or not. Compared to the rest of the population, are transwomen unable to find sexual partners? I have no idea.
Was Bindel giving any reason to suppose this is so?
No, I was using it in the sense of ‘cruel’. It hadn’t occurred to me till then that there was any truth in it. But I suspect there is and am suggesting that this might explain the hostility of trans activists towards women (especially those who might appear to be ‘unsympathetic’).
Regarding Fallon Fox and men who identify as women with the intention of competing against them (and physically dominating them), I think it would be naive not to question their motives, whether conscious or not. This would seem particularly necessary where men are actually intending to lay hands on female competitors.
There has been a sustained attack on lesbians for years by males who identify as trans. Those males have harassed, doxxed, stalked, threatened, coerced, manipulated and assaulted lesbians for saying no to sex/dating. There is much messaging from the gender ideologues attempting to shame and other wise coerce same sex attracted women into sex and dating with males. All under threat of being targeted as a ‘bigot’ and ‘transphobe’, for the most heinous crime of not consenting to sex with males. The incel take doesn’t seem to be too far fetched in the circumstances.
They could simply date each other, since they are all women but for some reason they still demand actual women. Almost as if they are simply het males who know exactly what a woman is, otherwise they’d happily date the “woman with a p***s” just like them.
Most trans identifying men are AGP, (autogynaephiliacs who get their sexual pleasure by pretending to be women.) This used to be a private, dirty little secret but, on the back of the gay rights movement, the AGP’s have seized their moment. They are sexually aroused when “passing” as women. Sexually aroused when using women’s single sex spaces. Sexually aroused at competing in women’s sports. This is the reason for their misogyny. They hate and envy women because they can never be women. They are indeed incels in wigs and frocks. It’s a shame nice respectable, allegedly intelligent, people can’t see the truth.
“They hate and envy women”… but still want to have sex with them? The one trans individual I knew well (he detransitioned after 10 yrs) was a kind and gentle soul whose desire to be a woman actually seemed like a homage to them. If you read Debbie Hayton’s musings, I think you’ll agree there’s not much evidence of hatred there either.
However, there were reports from the Standing for Women protest last weekend that some of the masked trans activists were visibly aroused as they threatened the women. And there were the usual placards saying: Terfs, Suck my D**k.
“Fallon Fox also fought a couple of MMA fights against female opponents before officially disclosing that they were male”
According to the standard rules of the English language, in that sentence the word “they” must refer to some previously mentioned plural noun, i.e in this case “female opponents”. Thus the meaning would be that the female opponents were male. Only later on does it become apparent that “they” bizarrely refers to a singular noun, Fallon Fox. This post has made a complete dog’s breakfast of the English language and is highly likely to have conveyed to the reader a meaning unintended by the OP. Clearly we need some vestige of sanity brought back into our use of the English language, so that once again it can be used as a means of conveying accurate information rather than of conveying confusion.
I had a revelation today when I read about Elon Musk sacking those Woke letter writers in SpaceX. It is this: the Baby Boomers are to blame for tolerating the Woke nutters.
Maybe it is because the Millennials are their kids and so they indulge their idiocies but it is high ranking people the age of Justin Webb (61) that allow this BS to pass without laughing. A man calling himself a woman and fighting female boxers? Give me a break!
The exciting thing is that Musk (50) is a generation down and as the boomers reach retirement they will be replaced at the top by Gen Xers. Those of us raised on Viz and Loaded magazine and Pulp Fiction etc don’t take the opinions of our snotty-nosed Millennial underlings seriously.
I’m 48 and for the next twenty years my people will be at the top and God help you if you want your pronouns respecting. You will be laughed out of the office or off the campus.
Back to your safe space you overgrown toddlers.
Davies speaks with more knowledge and integrity than BBC’s entire payroll. I doubt FINA would have had the courage to do this without her articulate, passionate and science-based campaigning. For evey Sharron Davies, dozens fear speaking out because of being no-platformed and/or destroyed financially.
She and others still await their rightful gold medal – 400 m individual medley (1980, she wasn’t even 18) – denied by East German drug cheats. One that would have been earned by natural talent, hard work and dedication within their peer group.
Transman or transwoman? Only one way to find out: FIGHT!
The BBC needs to be called out on every single instance of its Woke-determined misreporting, so that more people become aware of its manipulations. Yesterday in its hit-piece on Elon Musk, the reporter “baselessly” (to use a favourite word of mainstream journalists trying to deflect news that doesn’t fit the Woke narrative) rubbished what he/she called Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The Woke lie is in the made-up title. The ACTUAL bill – House Bill 1557 – the “Parental Rights in Education” bill – as de Santis has tirelessly pointed out (and humiliated a few Woke journalists in doing so) – states that classroom instruction “on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”. The reporter perpetuates the narrative lie by offering his/her own interpretation of that bill thus: : “This controversial piece of legislation restricts schools from teaching students about sexual orientation and gender issues”. This is simply not true. Unherd readers need to call out these examples of Wokery gone mad. Another example: the BBC has not yet apologised for its gross misreporting on the proven falsehood of its proclamation about the purported remains of 215 dead babies in Kamloops, where in actual fact NOT ONE body has been found.
The FINA decision is welcome, but I fear they’ve left room for hair-splitting and quibbling – they’d have been better-off just renaming the competition categories as “Male”, “Female”, and “Open”.
It may have been a mistake but deeply revealing about the effect of former males in contact sports. The obvious pleasure Fallon Fox took in inflicting pain and injury on women says something about her motivation for taking part. The BBC always bangs on about its pubic service role this broadcast in some ways fulfills that function if only by warning women not to go into a ring with former men.
”his” motivation …
Stop calling him ‘her’. You’re only encouraging this madness.
‘FINA has taken a brave stand against the inclusion of males in female sports’
Don’t you think that ‘brave’ is rather overstating the case? ‘Sensible’ would have been a better word. After all, FINA is not some vulnerable individual but a large, powerful, well-funded organisation. No one is going to cancel it, cause it to lose its job or dox its address.
I wonder if the was sabotage by woke researchers? It seems inconceivable that no one googled the man.
“The BBC was apparently unaware that Fox, who previously served in the armed forces, had boasted about injuring their opponents.”
*The BBC was apparently unaware that Fox, who previously served in the armed forces, had boasted about injuring his opponents.
“previously a BBC report saw the words of a rape victim changed to accommodate trans activists, changing the male pronouns she used to describe her rapist to ‘they’.”
So did you. Pillocks.
I thought it was appallingly sloppy journalism. The programme researches had clearly done zero research before inviting Fallon on air. Even a simple Google search would have revealed him to be a nasty person who should under no circumstances be given the ‘oxygen of publicity’.
Please stop using the horrible bad English of “advocate for”. “Advocate” does the job all on its own
So do you think “advocate Johnny Depp” or “advocate Trans Rights” works without “for”?
If not, maybe nuance your stance a bit more, describing when the “for” is appropriate and when you consider it redundant.
So the trans-phobic activists have got their way in swimming.
This could ripple through the sports world.
More fireworks to follow… nobody seems prepared to be reasonable about this issue.
Nothing transphobic about keeping biological men put of women’s sport if they have gone through puberty before presenting as women. But keep stirring if it makes you happy. It makes you stand out as a misogynist.
If they were trans-phobic they would advocate for banning trans folks (trans women, trans men, non-binary people) from sports. But in general, they support amab people competing in male or open division, and afab people competing in female or open divisions, which is hardly a “ban”.
Or often, they even accept afab people competing in male sports, because they get no unfair advantage from that, even if they are trans.
In other words, the pushback is about not wanting biological males who have gained advantage through undergoing male puberty, to compete against biological females.
Many “reasonable” people who support the civil rights of trans people and who want to protect them from real harm, nevertheless think that bio males should not be competing in leagues based on the biological differences of biological females. If you call them “trans-phobes” for that nuanced postion, for long enough and strongly enough, their support for your cause in other areas will diminish. It’s already happening, but this could snowball if reasonable trans leaders do not take more prominence within the trans rights movement, and support compromise.
Alas, the incentives within most political organizations today (left and right) align more with extremism than with “reasonableness”.
As you suggest, we need more reasonable people; but labeling anybody who respects the biological differences of male and female bodies as “trans-phobic” is not going to attract reasonable people.
“amab”? “afab”? Might be a good idea to use English words when posting here. Unless of course you’re not interested in conveying your meaning to readers here. In which case, why bother posting?
No one’s ‘assigned male at birth’ our sex is observed and recorded by medical staff at birth and can often be ascertained before birth. Biological sex is binary and immutable, that’s at the crux of many of the disagreements between the genderborg and those of us who are gender critical
By “reasonable” you presumably mean “willing to acknowledge that no-one, now an adult, born male, should be allowed to compete as a female in any sport,” because to permit them to do so would be grossly unfair to real women, normal women, genuine women. And anyone promoting the idea that adult males should be allowed to compete as a female in any sport is in effect saying to every genuine woman “We don’t give a **** about you. You are expendable for the greater good of men who wish they were women. We don’t care how unfair that is to 50% of (wo)mankind: the tiny, tiny proportion of men who wish they were women are far more important than you.”