Good lord. The head of the IOC is shocked, shocked, that people are publicly talking about the sex of competitors in Olympic sports. That’s PRIVATE. How very dare you. It’s PRIVATE. You filthy meddling bad people talking about who is or is not a woman; it’s PRIVATE.

New and important from morning presser: @marq and @iocmedia condemn whistleblowing as an invasion of the boxers’ human rights.

Indicates that the competitors’ sex should remain private.

Context: This is a common or garden trans advocate position, not a sports science position. https://t.co/mKxpXS3EkA

— SEENinJournalism (@JournalismSEEN) August 4, 2024

… Read the rest

Riots, clashes, two-tier policing, communinnies, violence, fires, cops.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said violent protesters who had targeted Muslim communities would swiftly face the “full force of the law” as he sought to quell days of anti-immigration rioting.

The stabbing to death of three young girls in the northwest English town of Southport last week has been seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, with disinformation spread online and amplified by high-profile far-right figures to spark disorder in towns and cities.

“Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest, it is pure violence and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” Starmer said on Monday after an emergency meeting with police and prison chiefs.

More entrenched than ever.

This is a frenzy intensifying by the day, the further Khelif advances towards an Olympic title and the more desperate the IOC obfuscation becomes. Just a few hours after Thomas Bach appeared confused as to the basic differences between transgender athletes and those with differences in sexual development, Khelif continued to cut a swathe across the competition, demolishing Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori.

The sense of extreme polarisation at ringside was uncomfortable. Outside the venue, public disquiet increased over how an apparently biological male had been permitted to punch women. Inside, a 600-strong Algerian contingent made sure the dynamic was sharply different, bedecking an entire stand in the green, red and white of their national flag.

Still stuck in the playpen.

Donald Trump broadsided Kamala Harris in a string of derisive social media posts on Saturday, focusing his attacks on the vice president’s intellect after a week that saw her both out-fundraise him and surpass him in some battleground state polls.

In a succession of Truth Social posts after calling off his planned ABC debate with Harris, Trump called Harris “low IQ,” “dumb,” and said she lacked the “mental capacity” to debate him.

Hm. I don’t know either of them personally, but just going by what I’ve seen of the two, I would not give him the job of evaluating her intelligence.

The former president’s remarks indicated a sustained ratcheting up of the rhetoric

The cheating continues.

Trying to burn migrants alive:

A far-right mob have set fire to a Rotherham hotel used to house migrants as police brace for more violence across the UK on Sunday.

Masked rioters, some draped in England flags, assembled outside a Holiday Express hotel in Manvers, South Yorkshire, as they clashed with police. After thugs threw bricks and smashed windows, footage emerged of a fire raging from a bottom-floor window as hotel guests looked on from the top floor. It is unclear if they were migrants.

It comes after at least 90 people were arrested after riots rocked major cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Hull and Stoke on Saturday, leaving destruction in their wake.

A library was torched in

Trump says no let’s have the debate at my house.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposed to debate Democratic U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Fox News on Sept. 4, and the Harris campaign said Trump is trying to back out of a debate that had been set to run on ABC.

…

Trump and Biden had agreed to a second debate on Sept. 10 on ABC News which the former president had suggested should be moved to Fox, the most popular network with his followers. Harris, who on Friday secured the delegate votes needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 5 election, said on Saturday that she plans to participate in the originally planned debate.

Now this is how you do it.

[Updating to add: from 2012]

Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was just a few feet from the finish line, but became confused with the signage and stopped, thinking he had completed the race.

A Spanish runner, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was happening, started shouting at the Kenyan to… pic.twitter.com/3TRUQ3kjzt

— African Hub (@AfricanHub_) August 1, 2024

A Spanish runner, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was happening, started shouting at the Kenyan to continue running. Mutai didn’t know Spanish and didn’t understand. Realizing what was taking place, Fernandez pushed Mutai to victory.

A journalist asked Ivan, “Why did you do that?”

Ivan replied, “My dream is

Janice Turner explains:

After taking questions on the women’s boxing furore with his usual huffy condescension, the International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams strived for a little consensus. “I hope,” he said, “we are all agreed we aren’t going to go back to the bad old days of sex testing.”

Actually, we are not. Adams was perpetuating the myth that sex testing was archaic, cruel and degrading, involving athletes dropping their pants for doctors to check they had the “right” genitals. In fact, a sex test was conducted only once in a female athlete’s career: a quick cheek swab with a cotton bud revealing biological sex was added to her permanent record. Anti-doping tests are far more intrusive and

And the winner is

Khelif has secured a medal with that win against Hamori/15 pic.twitter.com/SSCwOscrT9

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2024

… Read the rest

The IOC was warned.

A Hungarian sports official has come out and stated that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is not female. István Kovács, the European Vice President of the World Boxing Organization and former Secretary General of the International Boxing Association, told Hungarian press that he had warned the International Olympic Committee about males participating in women’s boxing as early as 2022, but that nothing was done.

In a shocking statement made to Magyar Nemzet yesterday, Kovács confirmed the speculation surrounding the Algerian boxer, adding that it had been known as early as 2022 that Khelif was biologically male.

You’d think two years would be enough to come to terms with the news and then act on it.… Read the rest

This is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe.

How do we know he’s a woman? Because we keep saying so. What more could anyone possibly need?

Thomas Bach, IOC President, on the boxers, in the last few minutes.

Professional analysis: this is unlikely to calm the situation. pic.twitter.com/g4JHNx5eqP

— SEENinJournalism (@JournalismSEEN) August 3, 2024

… Read the rest

Patronizing creep. “The lady who” ffs. Dude, the word is “woman” and you are not one.

Via Sex Matters, I learn that the IOC has a Portrayal Guideline [pdf] so I hasten to read it.

It is, of course, a sour joke.

The Introduction starts with:

Sport is one of the most powerful platforms for promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls, and sports coverage is very influential in shaping gender norms and stereotypes.

So…that’s why they insist that some men are women. Okaaaaaay…

The two weeks of Olympic coverage are a rare time when women’s sports and sportswomen – irrespective
of nation, race, religion, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status – are likely to make the headlines. But outside that period, both the quantity and quality of women’s sports coverage remain inconsistent and limited in

Sex Matters zooms in on the problem:

…with disorders of sex development (DSD) that led to them being registered female, and that they are bringing male advantage into the female sporting category, which is precisely what the female category designed to exclude.

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) August 2, 2024

This is the condition Caster Semenya has, which leads to a male child appearing female or of ambiguous sex at birth, but going through normal male puberty and developing a male adult physique. It appears likely that this is also the condition that Khelif and Lin have.

— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) August 2, 2024

Which is why the IOC’s flapping its hands and telling us they’ve always identified as female is … Read the rest

Time magazine lets us know Taiwan is super mad at JK Rowling.

Local politicians and journalists are taking jabs at Rowling, some Harry Potter fans have vowed to boycott her products, and social media users have defended Lin Yu Ting, the 28-year-old Chinese Taipei women’s boxer who has found herself at the center of a raging debate about biology and sports.

As boxing events kicked off at the Olympics in Paris this week, the eligibility of Taiwan’s Lin as well as Algeria’s Imane Khelif has been questioned by critics claiming that they are men pretending to be women for competitive advantage. (Both have identified as women since birth, and both have competed and lost to women in international

Second man wins women’s boxing round.

Lin Yu-ting, one of the boxers at the centre of a gender row at the Olympics, won her opening bout in the women’s featherweight category by outpointing Sitora Turdibekova.

The participation of the Chinese Taipei fighter and Algeria’s Imane Khelif at these Games has invited intense scrutiny, with the pair disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.

…

Lin, the top seed in the women’s -57kg category, breezed into the quarter-finals with a unanimous decision win although Turdibekova proved a tough opponent and won one of the rounds on one of the scorecards.

Ultimately, the taller and rangier Lin recorded victory

Trump was outraged to be expected to tell the truth.

Moments before former President Trump took the stage at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago on Wednesday, the organization’s president was called back to address an issue.

Why it matters: Trump did not want to be fact-checked live and was refusing to go on stage, NABJ president Ken Lemon told Axios.

• “[Trump’s team] said, ‘Well, can you not fact check? He’s not going to take the stage if you fact-check,'” Lemon said.

That’s so interesting. Why would he not want to be fact-checked? Silly question. Because he lies constantly, so he would look pretty ridiculous being interrupted every few words for a fact check.

The Q&A

The insults just keep rolling in.

Former president Donald Trump is facing criticism for recent comments made about the Jewish community in which he claimed a Jewish American who votes for a Democrat is “an absolute fool.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), a global Jewish advocacy group, condemned Trump’s comments. “At a time when antisemitism is at record levels, the statement by the former president is divisive and potentially dangerous,” the AJC told ABC News in a statement.

What did the insult comic say this time?

In a July 30 interview with New York radio host Sid Rosenberg on the radio station 77WABC, owned by Red Apple Media, Trump said that “any Jewish person that voted for her or

Of course he was.

The official at the centre of the Olympic boxing gender row was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s best men at his wedding.

Mark Adams, the spokesman for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has known the Prime Minister since the two men were at school together.

Naturally. They grew up together in the leafy suburb of Womendontmatterby (pronounced Smugbro).

Mr Adams expressed concerns earlier this week about a “witch hunt” against boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, who have previously failed gender eligibility tests.

Mr Adams expressed no concerns about the consequences to women of allowing male boxers to fight women. Mr Adams expressed irritation at being pressed on the subject.

Khelif and Yu-Ting were