Tag: Jolyon Maugham

  • It’s just wrong

    Jolyon Maugham continues to be petulant and self-admiring instead of actually listening to women who point out [what ought to be] the obvious.

    Hi Janice, It’s just wrong for you to suggest I am indifferent to women’s safety. There is no reasonable basis for that suggestion. It’s also wrong of you to smear me because I hold a view (shared by most sporting regulators) regarding the participation of trans women in sport.

    That was in response to Times reporter Janice Turner:

    It’s clearly unfair for those who’ve gone through male puberty to compete against women. But this is actually dangerous. What will it take, Jolyon, the legion of silent men & woke sports bodies, to persuade you women’s lives matters. A woman with a broken neck? A dead woman?

    It’s hard not to conclude that some men are enjoying this. They’re amused that women are losing places in their own teams, that women get splattered in contact sports or 40-year-old mediocre ex-men beat young female weightlighters. If you DON’T think its funny, say something.

    Of course it’s not wrong for Turner to say he’s indifferent to women’s safety, given the content of that BBC article that giggled about the potential for the male-bodied player to injure women. Maugham’s tweet sharing that horrible article said only “How the simple joy of sport can transcend fear and hate. Wonderful reporting.” He overlooked or deliberately ignored the several mentions of the danger to women. He told Turner, self-righteously, that “There is no reasonable basis for that suggestion,” but there is reasonable basis: his indifference to the dangers that the article itself mentioned. That’s the basis, and it’s reasonable.

    Also notice his careful distortion of the issue:

    It’s also wrong of you to smear me because I hold a view (shared by most sporting regulators) regarding the participation of trans women in sport.

    But it’s not about “the participation of trans women in sport.” It’s about male-bodied people being allowed to play against or compete with women, thus depriving them of places and depriving them of any chance to win. The women Maugham is ignoring and misrepresenting are not trying to prevent trans women from participating in sport; it’s gruesomely dishonest of him to claim we are.

    I keep on about it because it’s so unnerving, seeing how determinedly blind people can be while still insisting they’re on Team Right and Good.

  • Oh alas, he is simply too nuanced for this hard world

    Jolyon Maugham has returned to the fray.

    A friend asks why I speak on the rare conflicts between trans and natal women’s rights: twitter is not a space for nuance, she says, and you persuade no-one.

    But when we abandon a space to absolutists we allow stances to harden, and progress and resolution become tougher still.

    Oh, he’s the one doing nuance, is he.

    This was the nuance:

    How the simple joy of sport can transcend fear and hate. Wonderful reporting.

    That was the “nuanced” tweet linking to the BBC’s ridiculous and insulting article on the huge man who is playing rugby on a women’s team, the article that laughed at the danger that he would injure some unfortunate woman. Where exactly is the nuance in “wonderful reporting”?

    As for absolutists…absolutist about what? Not wanting men to force their way onto women’s teams or into women’s competitions, thus endangering them and depriving them of opportunities to play and compete? We should compromise on that, should we? Just give up that whole women’s sport thing because women are the co-operative sex? Is that the nuance we’re missing?

    Poor Mister Nuance, he’s having a struggle.

    So, despite all the abuse I receive – the complaints to my Chambers, the tagging of my family members, the demands I be removed from advisory boards – I will continue to argue for tolerance and respect for the rights and dignities of both trans and natal men and women.

    But which rights? The rights for men to take places on women’s teams and in women’s competitions? But then what about women’s rights?

    It’s not always possible to argue for both, because some of the putative rights that trans women claim are in tension with rights women have fought hard to attain for decades.

  • The simple joy of sport

    Jolyon Maugham QC thought that BBC story about the male rugby player joining a women’s team was just lovely.

    How the simple joy of sport can transcend fear and hate. Wonderful reporting.

    Mm. Can it also transcend the male physical advantage? The ability to fold a female opponent “like a deck chair”? The risk of injury to opposing players that the male manager treated as a joke? The woman who doesn’t have a place on the team because the man does? Many people asked, but Maugham did not enlighten.

    No one – not her, her opponents, her team mates, the sporting regulatory authorities – is complaining in this piece. All are trying, with dignity and care, to adapt to a world that is not binary. A pity some of my respondents are unable to do the same.

    Yes, if only we would adapt to men taking women’s places in sport. If only we would adapt to the obvious unfair advantage. If only we would adapt to the risk of injury to women. Why are we so obstinate?

    Hadley Freeman asked:

    She’s going to be a good player, as long as we can stop her injuring players in training.” I guess all those injured female players should transcend their pain by celebrating the joy of sport, right?

    Maugham declined to care:

    You missed out that that (explicitly) was a joke. And that she is friends with the only person at the wrong end of a size advantage she can do nothing about. And that she feels guilty about her size but can do nothing about it.

    I wonder who, and what, you are arguing for?

    That’s easy. Women. What is Maugham arguing for? Men displacing women.