The International Boxing Association speaks up.

The IBA sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee in June last year, warning of the safety risks that women could face at the Paris Games against a fighter who had already failed sex tests. But the IOC took no action, instead allowing Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, a second boxer whose results suggested the same difference in sexual development, to sweep to Olympic titles without losing a single round. Three months on, as the IOC pours scorn on fresh reporting in France about “unverified documents whose origin cannot be confirmed”, the IBA is mounting a staunch defence of the accuracy of its testing procedures.

“It was a chromosome test, to check for XX or XY, and these two boxers didn’t meet the eligibility criteria, because they both fell into the XY category,” Chris Roberts, the IBA chief executive, tells Telegraph Sport. “They were tested twice, in 2022 and 2023. When you receive a secondary laboratory test with the same results, demonstrating that both boxers are ineligible, it’s clear. What comes with it is our obligation and our duty of care to the other athletes.”

A serious obligation and duty of care, because if you put a male boxer in the ring with a female boxer, you are putting the female boxer in extreme danger.

Roberts is unsparing in his argument that the IOC failed to uphold any such duty, with president Thomas Bach insisting with increasing desperation that womanhood could be determined by passport status alone. “In my opinion, Bach has taken two gold medals away from the other two finalists,” he says. “He has a heck of a lot to answer for. I find his comments totally disrespectful. How do you compete as a woman based on a passport? You or I could change our passports to do that.

“We support women’s right to compete against women. In a hard sport, women shouldn’t be subject to anything outside those criteria. When women are going to compete for a gold medal at the Olympic Games, they don’t need another obstacle in the way, an obstacle that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And these two boxers ended up winning gold medals in both categories.”

It wasn’t fair, and it was dangerous.

There is also the question of why the IOC remains so dismissive about sex tests as a concept, given that Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said last month that they should be mandatory so that women’s events were ring-fenced for those born female.

I’m afraid it’s the usual reason. Women don’t matter. Women aren’t really among the downtrodden, they just pretend to be because they’re Karens.

In a report presented to the General Assembly in New York, she wrote: “There are circumstances in which sex screenings are legitimate and proportional in order to ensure fairness and safety in sports. At the Paris Olympics, female boxers had to compete against two boxers whose sex as females was seriously contested, but the IOC refused to carry out a sex screening. Current technology enables a reliable sex screening procedure through a simple cheek swab with non-invasiveness, confidentiality and dignity.”

Why did the IOC refuse?

Oh goody goody, another first.

State Sen[ator] Sarah McBride will be Delaware’s next representative in Congress, becoming the first transgender person elected to federal office in the history of the United States.

But not, by quite a long way, the first man elected to federal office in the history of the United States.

That’s part of the fun of trans for men, you know – getting to playact being oppressed and ignored and shoved aside All This Time. When you pause to remember they’re men the game crumbles into nothing.

She will assume the congressional seat vacated by U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who will replace retiring U.S. Sen. Tom Carper.

Man replaces woman. Big news.

The tribunal ruled that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had to apologize to Roz Adams.

The rape crisis centre says it is committed to balancing the views, needs and wants of all its service users.

Does that mean “including the male ones”?

Because if so, that’s the same old problem. A rape crisis service shouldn’t be “balancing” men’s needs and wants with women’s needs and wants. Some men’s “wants” include raping women.

Naomi Cunningham explains:

The point is this. Single-sex spaces for women can’t have men in them, because if they do, they’re not single-sex. 

I told you it was simple. It’s like the “no peanuts” rule for a peanut-free dish. If you label a dish “peanut free”, you have to leave the peanuts out. All of them. The fact that lots of people like peanuts is no answer. Peanut-free dishes aren’t about those people: they’re about the people who may go into anaphylactic shock and die if they eat a peanut. It doesn’t matter if the peanut has been mashed to a paste, moulded into the shape of a walnut and scented with walnut oil, so that no-one looking at it, smelling it or eating it would dream that it might be a peanut. It doesn’t matter if it’s got a special certificate that says that for legal purposes it’s a walnut. It still needs to be left out of the peanut-free dish, or the peanut-free dish ain’t peanut-free. 

Anaphylactic shock, sexual assault – not the same things, but both are unwanted.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Historians will.

…knowingly pushing Genderist (or other generally divisive) policies, ideology, and rhetoric prioritizes support for those things over victory.

The bolded part is the part I don’t get, and is the core ingredient of the dictum I’ve noted here on a number of occasions: “Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.” How is it that these institutions (or at least some sufficiently powerful, decision-making fraction of them) have been able to so completely delude themselves that genderism is in any way progressive, and are willing to maintain that belief in light of the manifest harms to women, children, lesbians and gays, (whom one would expect to be the normal beneficiaries of progressive attention)?

They can’t not know that these harms are happening. Depending on their degree of support for the trans “rights” that are causing these harms, they have to discount, downplay, or ignore them. They also now have a vested interest in getting others to do the same, whether it be through (mis)information, or actual enforcement. This deliberate institutional suppression and disregard for the injury and distress caused by their support of trans “rights” will often run counter to the organization’s original mandate and reason for being. It inevitably results in a bewildering, Kafkaesque “opposite world” of inherently contradictory and antithetical consequences for the “allies’” own operations. We end up with self-censoring news media failing to report fully and honestly about gender issues; prison systems offering incarcerated male sexual predators more female victims. Health systems eroding the clarity and accuracy of communications by removing the word “women” from bulletins nominally meant to alert women of health risks; sports federations forcing women and girls to play alongside and against men, thereby risking injury and disability; rape crisis centers refusing to offer exclusively female care or spaces; organizations originally established to win and protect the rights of gays and lesbians which have dropped same-sex attraction in favour of enforcing a homophobic same gender attraction based agenda. All of these end points are perverse inversions of the original, normal functions of these bodies. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. TWAW.

Again, I return to my real question. I can almost see what the gender zealots within these bodies and agencies get in return for essentially destroying the credibility and reputation of the organizations they’ve shackled to the cause of trans “rights”: woke cookies and the happy glow of militant self- righteousness in fighting for a Good Cause. I imagine that people have betrayed more for much less than that. But what’s in it for the captured and subservient institutions themselves? What’s the payoff? Why do they let this happen in the first place? Why do they let it continue, once the price being paid (by both the institutions and the innocent victims they’re supposed to ignore) becomes clearer? How far will sunk cost fallacy take you away from what you’re supposed to be doing before you finally admit the costs are truly sunk? How does an organization benefit from having its purpose turned around 180 degrees to make it go backwards? Who outside of trans activism (and the trans medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex), actually benefits from associating themselves with this cause?

All too goddam true.

I get the point, and it’s not wrong, but.

First, the issue isn’t the victory for the people who voted for him, the issue is the victory for him.

Second, and more urgent, the issue isn’t that the people who voted for him are clearly stupid and evil, the issue is that HE is clearly stupid and evil, especially the evil part. The issue is why do so many people embrace such a blatantly obviously unmistakably horrible person? One with no redeeming qualities? Honestly it’s hard to find people with no redeeming qualities at all – there’s usually something – good jokes or a bit of charm or occasional generous impulses. Something.

So yeah. It does bother me – profoundly – that so many people love such a howling wilderness of awful.

Whatever else happens, people will still be punished for violations of The Orthodoxy.

A female footballer with suspected autism has been hit with a six-match ban after asking a “bearded” transgender opponent: “Are you a man?”

The 17-year-old cried as she was found guilty of “discrimination” by a national serious case panel over remarks made during a match against a trans-inclusive club.

Serious case forsooth. About as unserious as it gets, if you ask me. Do I think the bearded opponent was genuinely wounded in his feelings? No I do not.

The panel is understood to have found the young woman repeatedly asked whether the alleged victim was a man after she had already been informed the opponent was transgender.

Yes, and? “The opponent is transgender” doesn’t answer the question, now does it.

That hearing was branded “farcical” by one of those present on the call, who said the alleged victim was repeatedly “misgendered” as “he” by panel members, and was also said to have been asked repeatedly: “How many LGBQT+ players do you have in your team?”

Her parents were outraged both by the hearing and the outcome, with her mother telling Telegraph Sport: “We’ve always taught our daughter to ask questions, and if she doesn’t feel comfortable or she doesn’t feel safe then she should go to somebody in charge and ask the question. In safeguarding training at places of work, you’re always told that you should question everything but she’s been told and effectively sanctioned by the FA for doing so. She asked, ‘Are you a man?’, and she admitted to that. The FA is essentially saying that no woman, when faced with what appears to be a male on the pitch, is entitled to ask a question.”

Yes, the FA is saying that and trans ideology in general is saying that, loudly, angrily, often. Women are not allowed to avoid men in any situation or setting whatsoever.

Behold – a piece of good news on this day of horror. Roz Adams wins £70,000 and a public apology from Edinburgh Bully Rape Victims Centre.

A trauma specialist has been awarded almost £70,000 and won a public apology from the rape crisis charity who forced her out of her job in a row over women-only spaces.

The payment to Roz Adams was twice the anticipated figure and came after a tribunal found she was the victim of a “heresy hunt” at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), where her “sex realist” beliefs were at odds with those of Mridul Wadhwa, the trans activist who was the centre’s chief executive.

The trans activist and man.

Adams suffered harassment after she stood up for a female victim who wanted assurances she would receive counselling from a woman, with Wadhwa identified as the “invisible hand” behind the counsellor’s persecution.

For 16 months under Wadhwa, who identifies as a trans woman but has no gender recognition certificate, the ERCC had no women-only spaces. Referrals to the centre have been paused while its safeguarding procedures are revamped.

Honestly the fact that Wadhwa has no gender recognition certificate is really beside the point. I know it’s not beside the point legally, but in terms of reality, it is. You can’t change sexes with a certificate. You can’t do it at all, and claiming to be able to do it with a certificate is like claiming you can do it with a paper clip or a bottle-opener or a tablespoon of baking soda.

At an earlier redress hearing, Adams argued that Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS), the umbrella organisation for 17 centres across Scotland, was at fault for failing to have a clear definition of “woman”. She urged the tribunal to make a ruling that would affect centres nationally.

McFatridge declined to make a ruling with wider implications. He said: “It is clear … that this is an area where people hold strong beliefs and individuals on both sides of the argument hold strong views that the other side are wrong or misguided or indeed that these opposing beliefs are dangerous.”

Well, yes, but that seems beside the point. Legally speaking maybe it’s not, but ontologically speaking it is. People can hold strong views about anything, and they can simply be wrong, including obviously blatantly undeniably wrong. People who think what sex a person is is a matter of self-declaration as opposed to a brute fact are just wrong. It doesn’t matter how strong their belief is, it matters how well it maps onto the reality.

Strength of belief surely just can’t be a criterion in law, can it? When humans are notoriously able to believe any damn thing they feel like believing?

All right. At such times one must cling to any consolation one can find.

The consolation here is that Sultana is an MP, which is not as disgusting as the return of DT, but it’s still very disgusting, and not our fault.

It’s not looking good.

Harris needs Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and it doesn’t look as if she’s going to get them.

Return of the Toad. I can’t stand it.

Trump finishes his campaign by calling Nancy Pelosi an evil sick crazy bitch.

Standing at his final rally of the 2024 campaign, former President Donald J. Trump in the first minutes after midnight on Election Day used a crude sexist remark to attack Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who is one of his longstanding political rivals.

“She’s a bad person,” Mr. Trump said at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich. “Evil. She’s an evil, sick, crazy —” He made an exaggerated face, his mouth open wide to draw attention to the next syllable: “Bi—”

Then he held up a finger dramatically, feigning that he’d caught himself. “Oh no,” he said. As the crowd of thousands began laughing, Mr. Trump mouthed the word into the microphone. “It starts with a B, but I won’t say it,” Mr. Trump added. “I want to say it.”

As the crowd roared even louder, some of the attendees began to supply the word he’d barely omitted, shouting, “Bitch!”

Hawhawhaw. I bet quite a few of them went home and punched the first female human they saw.

Mr. Trump has used misogynistic language to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris and has fostered an environment at his rallies where speakers and attendees feel comfortable making the kind of gendered insults that, in another political era, would have been unthinkable to say in public.

He’s normalized abusive misogynistic insults (as well as racist ones). That’s his legacy.

Mr. Trump has argued that Ms. Harris, who would be the first female president if she wins, lacks the stamina and intelligence to lead the country. He appeared to embrace a remark shouted by a rallygoer that insinuated Ms. Harris was a prostitute. And he voiced some approval of an audience member’s idea to put Ms. Harris in the ring with the boxer Mike Tyson.

In Reading, Pa., Mr. Trump was telling an off-topic aside on Monday about Mr. Tyson when a man in the crowd used it as an opportunity to demean Ms. Harris. “Oh, he says, ‘Put Mike in the ring with Kamala,’” Mr. Trump said. “That will be interesting.” The crowd cheered.

He’s trash. Here’s hoping we can dump him at last.

Well, now, if you can’t or won’t define it, then why are you making policy and laws about it? How are you providing services to it if you don’t know (or refuse to say) what it is? Please explain.

Remember Dr Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who buried evidence that puberty blockers don’t reduce gender dysphoria?

She may end up regretting it.

The finding that the PUBERTY BLOCKERS don’t make children with gender distress less distressed “might be weaponized” – i.e. might prompt medical people to stop blocking children’s puberties on account of how it doesn’t make them any less unhappy. It seems Olsen-Kennedy wants the children to keep on not having a normal puberty even though she now knows it won’t make them less unhappy. “Oh, it doesn’t work? Well, we have to keep doing it anyway, or the bad people will win.”

You’d have thought the whole point was to make the kids less unhappy, right? But oh no. The point was…uh…the point was to normalize blocking puberty, so that more and more kids will do it, even though it won’t make them any less miserable.

So now I know this is a thing.

Sigh. President of Humanists UK.

I guess women aren’t human enough.

Hmm.

Iowa.

I was waiting outside the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, North Carolina after Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally when my phone started to blow up. Ann Selzer, the vaunted pollster of Iowa, had just dropped a poll showing that Harris was leading Trump by three points in the Hawkeye State — a state Trump had won twice. Everyone in the political world wanted to talk about it.

The Trump campaign knew how bad this news looked. Tony Fabrizio and Tim Saler, the Trump campaign’s data men, released a memo challenging the findings almost immediately.

Not long afterwards, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Harris leading in North Carolina, as well as Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. If Harris wins all four, she would not even need to win Pennsylvania, Arizona or Michigan in order to win the entire election.

Interesting.

30 hours or so and we’ll know.

Wait a second.

I’m reading an article about heterodoxy and how goony both the left and the right can be and yadda yadda but then I stumble to a stop.

Until recently, within the heterodox slice of the cultural spectrum, opposition to Trump was the obvious response to his singularly reckless and destabilizing political presence. The number of self-described centrist “Never Trumpers”—starting with Trump’s current running mate, who once compared him in this magazine to “cultural heroin”—were legion. But as the race tightened in recent months, I’ve been struck by a palpable shift in attitude among many liberal and centrist voices—a slackening of vigilance, and a softening on Trump.

This is not to be confused with the 180-degree pivot of prominent MAGA converts such as Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Bill Ackman, as well as writers and journalists such as Naomi Wolf—erstwhile Democrats who’ve become outright Trump fans. What I observed this past summer, as Joe Biden’s campaign self-immolated and Kamala Harris seized the nomination, was a more general exhaustion among many heterodox thinkers, and a disinclination to support the alternative to Trump that was now on offer. Harris, many agree, is not an ideal candidate. But given the enormous stakes, I wanted to understand how anyone not already ensorcelled by the cult of MAGA could hesitate to support her.

I just can’t understand that – that disinclination. I can’t understand even if you think her policies are worse than whatever actual “policies” Trump favors.

The reason I can’t understand it is (as I keep saying, to the point of tedium) because he’s such a horrible human being in every way. I couldn’t vote for him even if he had better policies. Or at least I can’t imagine doing so – maybe if the reality were different I would change my mind, but here and now, I can’t imagine ever voting for him because he is such a pulsating tower of mindless sadistic cackling greedy self-dealing ruthless vengeful horror.

How do “heterodox” types manage to see him any other way?

Despite his fears of Trump’s fascist tendencies, [Coleman] Hughes found the reality of the Trump administration much less dramatic. “He governed a lot more like a normal Republican,” he said. “In fact, many of his policies would be seen as not right-wing enough.” He’s learned, he told me, to “discount” much of what Trump says: “It’s basically just his businessman instinct. He literally talks about this in The Art of the Deal. You start by saying something crazy, and then you walk your way back to a point of leverage in negotiations.”

No. Wrong. You can’t “discount” what he says, because what he says is what he says. I don’t care what he says in his ghostwritten book; the point is that people at the apex of government shouldn’t say horrible sadistic bullying dangerous crap. Nobody should ever “discount” a head of state who does that – especially one who does it every waking minute of every day. He’s a bad man. It’s a terrible mistake to install a bad person as head of state.

In 2020, Hughes voted for Biden, whom he viewed as a moderate liberal and a politician with a record of reaching across the aisle. This is not at all how he perceives Harris, whom he sees as aligned with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, and “deeply destructive to the long-term flourishing of the country.” When it comes to foreign policy, “I haven’t seen even a 10-second clip of her impressing me by analyzing anything going on in the world related to geopolitics, foreign conflicts and so forth,” he told me. “I have basically zero signals of her competency as a manager or executive.”

While Trump, on the other hand?

I give up.

So. It’s in the news that Imane Khelif is indeed a man. Also, dogs can’t read.

Maybe now men will stop saying women should be beaten up for saying a man is not a woman?

No, of course not, now it will be women should be beaten up for getting it right too early, kind of like the premature anti-fascists of last century.

Baddy Kennedy in charge of public health: now there’s a plan.

Donald Trump suggested vaccines could be banned if he becomes president, in the clearest sign yet of a radical shake-up in public health policy should he put his ally Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of it.

Trump on Sunday told NBC that Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump, would have a “big role in the administration” if [he] wins Tuesday’s presidential election. Trump said he would talk to Kennedy about vaccinations.

Why? Why talk to Dumb Kennedy about vaccinations? He’s not a doctor or a researcher so why talk to him? Why treat a public health issue as a political football instead of a public health issue?

Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, a theory scientists have debunked. He has also said in recent days that Trump has promised him control over a broad range of public health agencies if he returns to the White House, potentially putting him in a position to implement his most radical theories.

Trump did not contradict that claim and held open the possibility of banning certain vaccines. “Well, I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” the Republican nominee told NBC.

One, no, he’s not very talented, two, strong views are not what’s needed on technical questions.

Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s campaign, gave further credence to the weight Kennedy’s views might carry in an administration when he told CNN that he could be given access to federal data on vaccines safety. He also appeared to endorse Kennedy’s opinions on the supposed risks of vaccines.

“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe,’” Lutnick said. “Let’s give him the data. I think it’ll be pretty cool to give him the data. Let’s see what he comes up with. I think it’s pretty fun.”

Ah yes, that’s what destroying public health is, it’s “pretty fun.”