Fair Play for Women tell us more about the government of Taiwan’s efforts to control their speech.

Taiwanese authorities are trying to censor the comments we made about male boxer Lin Yu Ting following the Olympic boxing scandal. The office of the Taiwanese ambassador, Vincent Yao, contacted us on Tuesday to express their “gravest concern” that we had chosen to “verbally attack a biological female” and asked that we “put an end to the act of spreading disinformation and harmful comments.”

Which is odd, at best. Do ambassadors really not have better things to do? Do ambassadors generally think they get to tell random people what to say about the ambassadors’ compatriots?

What the ambassador’s office said:

We are writing to express our gravest concern over the recent statement made by Fair Play for Women on social medias regarding the gender issue of Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu Ting, who just won a gold medal in Olympics 2024.

In response to Fair Play for Women’s false comments, we would like to clarify that Lin Yu Ting’s eligibility to participate in women’s boxing in the Olympics has been clearly confirmed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

It is deeply regrettable to see that Fair Play for Women, an organization aiming for promoting women’s rights, has chosen to verbally attack a biological female based on unfounded accusations, misinformation and her appearance. Such action will only jeopardize the solidarity of women and undermine the genuine spirit of feminism.

Therefore, we sincerely urge you to pull out those inappropriate posts on social medias such as X in respect of Ling Yu Ting, and to put an end to the act of spreading disinformation and harmful comments.

Fair Play for Women didn’t “attack” Lin Yu Ting. It’s not attacking to point out that a man is a man.

Lin Yu Ting is not “a biological female.”

Men who pretend to be women in order to win sports competitions (thus depriving women of the chance to do so) are not doing that for the sake of “the solidarity of women and undermine the genuine spirit of feminism.” They couldn’t give two shits about women and feminism; if they did they wouldn’t be cheating this way. The “genuine spirit of feminism” is not about letting men steal prizes from women.

We sincerely urge the Taiwanese ambassador to mind his own damn business and leave UK women alone.

Nicola Williams replied to the ambassador, asking him to “confirm that Lin has XX chromosomes and an ordinary female phenotype, including testosterone levels in the normal female range.” His response:

Regarding your question and request, President Thomas Bach of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has made it clear that Ms Lin Yu Ting is born as a woman, raised as a woman, has a passport as a woman and has competed for many years as a woman.

Yet again. Yes, Thomas Bach said words. We know. Words are not magic. Assertion is not evidence. As a woman is meaningless. Williams requested confirmation of physical facts, not burbling about passports and cheating for many years.

Of course no such confirmation was forthcoming.

In related news…

Surrey Pride founder faces child sex abuse charges

The founder and former director of Pride in Surrey has been charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse against children.

Stephen Ireland, 40, and David Sutton, 26, both from Addlestone, were arrested on Wednesday. Mr Ireland founded Pride in Surrey in 2018. Mr Sutton was a volunteer with the organisation. The pair were suspended in June this year.

When the Beeb said multiple counts it wasn’t kidding.

Mr Ireland and Mr Sutton face a series of charges including six counts of conspiracy to sexually assault a child, conspiracy to kidnap a child, voyeurism and arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

In addition, Mr Ireland is facing a further 22 charges, including rape of a child under 13, sexual assault, making indecent photographs of children, and possession of an extreme pornographic image. Mr Sutton is also charged with a further seven offences, including making indecent photographs of children and distributing indecent photographs of a child.

Grim.

Update: Oh look there’s more.

He’s a diversity trainer – of course he is. He gives DEI training to the police – of course he does.

Uh oh uh oh he failed a doping test, he’s out.

Jo Phoenix wrote an article a week ago titled Talking about Asian grooming gangs: some history and a few realities.

On Sunday 4th August I accused Kellie-Jay Keen (KJK) of being a populist extremist hell bent on inciting violence. She reposted a video made a few years previously about Asian grooming gangs in a tweet that said “the left would rather you be a rapist than them be accused of being racist. Women and girls don’t matter. # Rotherham”.

At the time she posted this tweet and video, a group of approximately 750 anti-immigration ‘protestors’ had surrounded a Rotherham Holiday Inn which accommodated asylum seekers. The ‘protest’ had already turned violent. The hotel was in the process of being smashed up and rioters were trying to set fire to the hotel. I was horrified both at what was happening in Rotherham and by Kellie-Jay Keen’s tweet and video.

So that’s part of the background to this open letter I blathered about earlier. It makes more sense of it.

Just to remind readers – the recent riots were started by disinformation about the identity of the boy in Southport who attacked a girls dance party, knifing many and killing three small girls. The disinformation was that he was Muslim, a migrant, on an MI5 watch list. Many of the populist extremist accounts spread this disinformation. As of today, there has been at least one arrest for incitement to racial hatred and false communication.

I received a lot of criticism for my tweet, most of which boiled down to this: you can’t call us racists for talking about Asian grooming gangs. Some of the responses horrified me almost as much as KJK’s original tweet – especially in relation to the highly negative racial stereotyping (let’s call it what it is – racism) that was [in] play. Asian grooming gangs and ‘Muslim Pakistani’ men were treated as though they were to blame for the problem of child sexual exploitation in England and Wales and the tragedy of Rotherham was treated as an example of the problems of immigration.

So I tweeted a few of these responses and said that I considered them racist. I was asked by one individual how we are supposed to talk about Asian grooming gangs if even mentioning it is seen as racist. This blog is my attempt to answer that question. It is long but the length is necessary so as to counter the misinformation that extremists are using to manipulate people’s discontents.

I recommend it, length and all.

He’s not wrong.

Frankly my dear

Taiwan tries to force everyone to pretend the guy is not a guy.

Taiwanese authorities are attempting to censor leading UK women’s rights campaigners from raising concerns about the Olympics gender furore. Nicola Williams, director of Fair Play For Women, has alerted the Foreign Secretary after being asked by the state to delete posts on social media.

London-based officials from the Taiwan embassy also wrote to The Telegraph to claim reporting “wrongly” referred to their nation’s boxer Lin Yu-ting, along with Algerian Imane Khelif, as “biologically male fighters”.

Since when do countries try to micromanage other countries’ journalism on matters of sport? The Telegraph is not a government body and not answerable to Taiwan. Taiwan has no jurisdiction over UK newspapers.

“President Thomas Bach of the IOC has made it clear that Ms Lin Yu-ting is born as a woman, raised as a woman, has a passport as a woman and has competed for many years as a woman,” officials added.

Ffs. People saying things is just people saying things. It’s just assertion. It’s not self-evidently truth. President Thomas Bach of the IOC is not in a position to know that Lin “is born as a woman”; being “raised as” X is meaningless; “competing as” X is also meaningless.

Williams, meanwhile, was warned of Taiwan’s “gravest concern” after her campaign group posted “the IOC has failed women” after “a second male boxer” became female Olympic champion. Lin, who represented Taiwan under the title “Chinese Taipei” at the Games, is described in the post as “XY”, with Fair Play For Women adding that “male power smashes female talent AGAIN”.

The “Taipei Representative Office in the UK” has now also written to Williams to accuse her of attacking “a biological female based on unfounded accusations, misinformation and her appearance”.

“Such action will only jeopardise the solidarity of women and undermine the genuine spirit of feminism,” the author added. “Therefore, we sincerely urge you to pull out those inappropriate posts on social medias such as X.”

Therefore we sincerely urge you to mind your own damn business. You’re not the boss of us.

The letter to women’s campaigners came as other leading figures to speak out also faced threats. Laura Woods, the ITV and TNT host, has received death threats since complimenting an article on the furore by The Telegraph’s chief sports writer Oliver Brown.

Yeah well. She’s a woman. Women deserve death threats. Unless they have dicks, of course.

Williams, meanwhile, said she was “genuinely shocked to receive this email from the Taiwanese embassy”. “Not only are the Taiwanese authorities wilfully ignoring that established facts about Lin’s male biology are in the public domain, but it is outrageous for it to label well-founded and legitimate concerns as ‘harmful’ and an ‘attack’,” she told Telegraph Sport.

“Our posts stated that Lin is a male and XY, and I would challenge Taiwan to find anything genuinely harmful in that statement. It’s laughable that a country which put a man in the ring to punch women feels entitled to lecture a women’s rights organisation about the ‘solidarity of women’ and ‘spirit of feminism’.

“The fact that a foreign government is trying to strong-arm a British civil society group for not going along with its propaganda should send shivers down the spine of anyone concerned with UK autonomy and freedom of thought and speech.”

It does. Also turns my stomach.

Speaking of the BBC…

Ceri Dupree’s decades of divas, frocks and cabaret

At the bottom of a back garden in south Wales lies something quite unexpected – a treasure trove of more than 600 dazzling stage costumes.

Weird. There’s some back garden in South Wales that has a pile of stage costumes lying there getting mildewed? Why is that more unexpected than literally anything that’s not grass or plants?

This is the home of Ceri Dupree, who for the past 42 years has been making a living impersonating some of the world’s most iconic women. His repertoire features everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Tina Turner and Queen Camilla to Shirley Bassey, with some colourful costumes costing more than £6,000.

What exactly are “iconic” women? I guess the reporter means familiar or recognizable? Because celebrity entertainer? Man dresses up as famous female entertainer; how very fascinating and not at all familiar or over-reported.

Oh goody, another schism. You’re far right no you’re far right.

I’m definitely not far right nor am I a fan of Tommy Robinson, but I’m not going to pretend that Islam is good for women and/or that Islam can’t be criticized lest we encourage Tommy Robinson.

I’ve been to this rodeo before. I heard a whole lot about it when Does God Hate Women? was published. I even got to defend it in a BBC Radio 4 panel discussion this one time. No, Muslims should not be persecuted; yes, Islam is hostile to women. Both those claims can be true or reasonable or fair or all those.

Which end of the egg do you crack open?

Hatred of women chapter 11 billion:

Holding candles, hundreds of thousands of women marched through the night in cities across India, to protest the brutal rape and murder of a young female doctor in a hospital that has fueled anger over a lack of safety for women despite tough new laws.

A 31-year old trainee doctor was raped and murdered inside the medical college in Kolkata where she worked on Friday, triggering nationwide protests among doctors and drawing parallels to the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.

She’d gone to sleep in a seminar room after working 36 hours straight.

She was found dead on Friday. Police said she had been raped and murdered and a police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.

…

The victim was found bleeding from her eyes and mouth, with injuries to her legs, stomach, ankles, her right hand and finger, a doctor’s inquest report Aug. 9 and accessed by Reuters said.

Yes but what about trans women? Why aren’t we talking about how this affects trans women?

In protests called “Reclaim the Night”, women marched across several Indian cities from midnight on Wednesday, on the eve of the country’s 78th Independence Day, to protest against the lack of safety for women in India, especially at night.

“As a society, we have to think about the atrocities being committed against our mothers, daughters and sisters. There is outrage against this in the country. I can feel this outrage,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an Independence Day address to the nation on Thursday.

Brilliant, Modi. “We” of course are one and all men, who have to “think about” those weird unreal creatures called “women.” People are men, and they have relatives who are called “women” and are sort of like insects, and sort of like bacteria. We men should think about them sometimes.

H/t maddog

Sometimes Human Rights Watch does know what a woman is.

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is the only country where girls are banned from education beyond the sixth grade. The Taliban have also violated women’s right to freedom of movement, banned them from many forms of employment, dismantled protections for women and girls experiencing gender-based violence, created barriers to them accessing health care, and barred them from playing sports and even visiting parks. The United Nations special rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has described the situation as “an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity, and exclusion of women and girls.”

Actual women and girls, here – the kind the Taliban knows to bully and limit and confine.

Since January 2024, the Taliban have detained women and girls in Kabul and other provinces for what they call “bad hijab” – that is, for not abiding by the prescribed dress code. UN experts have reported that some of those detained have been held incommunicado for days and subjected to “physical violence, threats and intimidation.”

What is the prescribed dress code? A sack. A vast enveloping sack that makes women look like parcels or vertical furniture rather than people. What is the goal? To make women look like walking tents rather than human beings. Otherwise, you know, they’ll be rutting in the streets and no men will know who their children are.

Taliban restrictions on women and girls have impeded access to health care, jeopardizing their right to health. The Taliban’s education bans guarantee future shortages of female health workers, Human Rights Watch said. Donor countries need to find ways to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis without reinforcing the Taliban’s repressive policies against women and girls.

Look at HRW knowing that women and girls need health care and education and that female health workers are needed. Look at them not pausing to tell us that trans female health workers will do just as well if not better. Look at them knowing which people are female when the chips are down.

Also there’s this guy.

Trump’s people seem to be confusing him with someone else.

Allies of Trump see his conspiratorial messages and insults based on race as anything but productive. They want him to focus his attacks on policy issues, such as immigration and the economy, rather than personal attacks against Harris.

But personal attacks are the fun part for him. Talking about policy issues is work, and talking smack about people is sheer play. He’s not a spinach before dessert kind of guy.

This by Mireia Garcés de Marcilla in the LRB is what used to be known as “too clever by half”:

All the same, those of us who are concerned about the reactionary weaponisation of gender might do better to rethink rather than cement our commitment to the category of womanhood. We should ask what being a woman means, how womanhood is defined, and against what (and whom) womanhood is ‘defended’. Instead of insisting that Khelif is a ‘real’ woman, we should ask how dichotomous ideas of gender have been solidified in the discourse that is being mobilised against her. We should interrogate the colonial roots of medical accounts of female and male embodiment, and the construction of femininity through (and conflation with) whiteness. We should listen to athletes whose womanhood is doubted not only because of their outstanding athletic performance, but because their bodies are at odds with Western notions of femininity. In 2009, when Semenya was banned from competing for eleven months after winning the 800m at the World Championships in Berlin, the head of South African athletics asked: ‘Who are white people to question the make-up of an African girl?’

Puhleeze. As if we haven’t been ordered to do all that a billion times already. As if we haven’t been doing that for decades.

Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” – i.e. knowing that women are not men and that men are not women – we can’t defend or argue for women’s rights. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t effectively campaign for our rights, we can’t challenge misogyny and sex-based exclusion, contempt, indifference, hostility. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t say what’s so fucking horrible about the Taliban. Without a “commitment to the category of womanhood” we can’t have feminism.

A serious commitment to fairness and equality has to resist the drive to read bodies along racialised gendered lines.

Oh shut up. No one is doing that. Women don’t have biceps like Khelif’s or necks like Khelif’s or shoulders like Khelif’s. Male puberty is real, and pretending otherwise is the opposite of a serious commitment to fairness and equality.

An obsessive focus on physical traits that can been read as proxies for gender overlooks the extent to which being a competitive athlete is not only a matter of anatomy but also of resources and access. In order to become Olympians, athletes need a healthy diet, the time and space to train, opportunities to compete and financial support.

No shit, Sherlock, but it does not follow that the physical traits don’t matter.

U.C.L.A. Can’t Let Protesters Block Jewish Students From Campus, Judge Says

What is this, Nazi Germany? Of course it can’t.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred the University of California, Los Angeles, from allowing protesters to block Jewish students from having access to the campus and facilities such as libraries, classrooms and gathering places.

You mean like…

Judge Mark C. Scarsi’s preliminary injunction order came after three Jewish students sued the university over protests in the spring concerning Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The demonstrations roiled the campus, and more than 200 people were arrested after pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israel counterprotests turned violent.

During those demonstrations, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment with plywood and metal barricades in Royce Quad, a major thoroughfare. The judge said they had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them,” blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel” from entering the encampment and other areas of the campus.

Sometimes it’s a wristband, other times it’s a yellow star. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.

Trump has become boring.

(Of course, he’s been boring all along, but also morbidly interesting the way a fire or an earthquake is interesting.)

It began with 40 minutes of technical difficulties and only got worse. In more than two hours of aimless ranting and ego-stroking with Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump garbled through the greatest hits of his grievances, praised strongmen like Vladimir Putin, and painted his opponent Kamala Harris as an existential threat to America: “If she’s going to be our president, very quickly, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said to Musk—whose X campaign launch for Ron DeSantis last year was beset by similar technical issues. Absent from the proceedings? Anything coherent or compelling. “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself,” the Harris campaign said in a statement afterward. “Self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

The Trump Show has, indeed, grown old and stale, and lately, the Republican presidential nominee finds himself desperate to regain any of the momentum he lost once Harris became the Democrats’ new star.

…

He had hoped to regain his footing Monday night with Musk, who has become one of his most prominent backers. Instead, he underscored the personal “weirdness” Harris’s campaign has sought to highlight—and the extremism of his agenda, as seen in his praise of Musk firing striking workers, his vow to shutter the Department of Education, and his comments in support of climate change because, he said, global warming will mean “more oceanfront property.”

Billions of people dead, but more oceanfront property. Good tradeoff.

Musk said Monday that his goal with this livestream was to help people “understand how [Trump] talks when it’s a conversation, rather than an interview.” “Nobody is quite themselves in an interview,” Musk posted, “so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like.” Turns out, though, that Trump is always like this—and after eight years of the same old bullshit, perhaps Americans are finally ready to move on.

Surely we already knew that Trump is always like this. We saw him being always like this for four horrible years, so it’s no surprise that he’s still like it.

The workers retort.

U.A.W. Files Labor Charges Against Trump and Musk Over Interview

It won’t succeed, but it’s a good poke in the eye.

The United Automobile Workers union filed charges with federal labor regulators on Tuesday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk of threatening workers during a livestreamed conversation a day earlier.

The union, which has backed Vice President Kamala Harris, accused Mr. Trump of violating the law by voicing support for the practice of firing workers when they go on strike, an approach the former president suggested Mr. Musk had embraced.

In the glitch-delayed conversation on X, Mr. Trump described Mr. Musk as the “greatest cutter” of workers. He claimed Mr. Musk has responded to striking workers by saying, “That’s OK — you’re all gone.” Mr. Musk, the billionaire leader of Tesla and SpaceX, laughed in response, but did not directly address Mr. Trump’s remark before the former president changed the topic.

They mean, before the former president lurched into a totally different subject because he has the attention span of roadkill.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Brian Hughes, called the complaint against Mr. Trump a “shameless political stunt intended to erode” the former president’s support from American workers.

It’s fascinating that he doesn’t call Trump’s “Hahaha you’ll just fire them all hahaha” a shameless political remark but does call a reaction to it a shameless political stunt. Which of the two is the more shameless? For real?

Refugee Olympic Team’s historic first medalist Cindy Ngamba hopes to inspire millions

The story of Cindy Winner Djankeu Ngamba is one of resilience. Living up to her middle name, she became the first-ever athlete to win a medal for the Refugee Olympic Team, claiming bronze in the women’s boxing 75kg class at the Summer Olympics in Paris.

Born in Cameroon, Ngamba faced many challenges growing up. At the age of 11, she moved to the United Kingdom in search of a better future. After arriving, she struggled to gain citizenship and was sent to a detention camp over paperwork issues.

Around the age of 15, she discovered her passion for boxing. “Every day is a learning day in boxing. You have your ups and downs, just like in life in general,” Ngamba told CNN Sport’s Amanda Davies.

Discovering a passion for something can be a lifeline.

The Refugee Olympic Team gives forcibly displaced athletes an opportunity to participate on the highest sporting stage. Made up of 37 athletes at this year’s Games, the team wants to demonstrate to the world that refugees are an enrichment to society.

Being a refugee is not as much fun as you think.

H/t Blood Knight

Brilliant news.

All sympathy must always be for the male. No exceptions.

Nobody should be “it”. Pet owners are offended if a beloved dog or cat is called “it”. Yet that’s how Khelif would have returned to Algeria, had a significant number of public voices had their way. As an “it”. Dehumanised, dispossessed.

Except that nobody advocated for Khelif to be called “it”.

Yet no thought appears to have been given to Khelif’s existence outside the boxing ring. No discussion of how a person might conceivably exist going forward has been inspired by this story.

A person? No. You mean a man. Your empathy is all for the man; the women who were battered and cheated by the man don’t intrude on your attention for a second.

We heard a lot about mortal danger in Paris, yet nobody dallied greatly on the mental wellbeing of a competitor arriving a woman and denounced as a man. A punch hurts, but it is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen to a boxer if sport does not handle this issue with care. 

Says the man cheerfully, on account of how it’s not his face that would take that punch, it’s just some bitch’s face. The punch will hurt her but who cares, because she’s just some bitch.