Not done reading the article yet, but I wanted to say that I hope that all the female contenders going forward will forfeit like Carini did so that Khelif looks like the total cheat that he is (even if he doesn't see himself as a cheat) and the whole thing shames the IOC for allowing this travesty to happen in the first place. Women athletes shouldn't have to forfeit to make a point, but in this climate, what is their other option?
I don't think anyone can say for sure whether he sees himself as a cheat or not. I agree though that they (he and that other boxer) are "naturally" doping, and that wouldn't be tolerated if they weren't people with DSDs and in this case males with DSDs. They know what's happening and what could happen to their female opponents in any case, and they don't seem to care. Anything to win must be their motto. Therefore they can f off, in my opinion.
Until all the athletes and the spectators, both male and female, stick together and walk away, this will continue. It may possibly end without a sports walkout, but it's going to take years. I'm done with this and will not engage or do business with any who support male worship and misogyny.
I used to spar in martial arts and I was good. At one point, I probably thought I could go head to head with a man the same weight as me. I would have relied, naively, on the officials to make sure the categories were fair and as we see now, they cannot be relied on to make the right, fact based decision...I have experienced incredible force from kicks and punches, even when men were going easy or were a much lower rank than me. This truly sickens me. I thought combat sports would be the easy sports for officials to justify separating males and females!
After posting about this on Facebook I have been called out by several women frenemies for my 'anger that's not healthy' (they don't know the half of it), and told that 'sex is a spectrum'. And to illustrate this, one has pointed to the Williams sisters having much higher muscle tone than other women, and saying that other athletes have other advantages, like more flexibility. I shared - as calmly as I could - Serena's comment on Letterman where she tells him she wouldn't win one point against Andy Murray (white male), as 'the male game' is 'a completely different game', with their serves being much faster, etc. Muscly women are still women. Skinny men are still men. In sports involving tests of strength and speed, the skinny man will beat the muscly woman every single time. The other male boxer in Paris has now beaten his female opponent too. :( I think these men are groomed for women's sports from a young age. Here's Serena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzHBsvj6C0
It's fascinating to consider that Carini has been punched literally 1000s of times over her sporting career but had obviously never received a punch from a man over her whole life. It took 2 punches over 10 seconds for her to realise she was so unevenly matched that she was in danger of harm and that there was no competition.
The female sports category was fought for from the beginnings of the modern Olympics and created precisely because until a few minutes ago every human who has ever lived understood men are stronger than women. What is the Olympics about other than to celebrate the peak of human physical prowess in a fair competition? The 2024 version is a travesty to these principles.
Calling all TERFS! We need to stage an intervention. We need to rent a boxing gym somewhere near Paris and stage a parallel women’s boxing competition and call it “The Real Women’s Olympics.” I’m serious. Let do this for Angelina, and all the other female athletes.
Let’s take dramatic action in the form a protest that will really count. How can we coordinate this? Can ICONS contact the athletes? Can someone like Sharron Davies or Jennifer Sey connect with the boxing associations and coaches? How do we get the word out?
I’m tired of posting comments. I want to create real change.
I appreciate your enthusiasm. For my part, I think complaints to the powers concerned who are making these misogynistic policies need to hear from us, FWIW, even though we may be a small constituency. Also for my part, I dislike boxing for women and for men -- same as the way I feel about American football. We don't have to go into all my reasons for this. But that said, I agree that women who want to box only with other women should get the respect they deserve. This is a requirement for any sports, not just the Olympics.
” Nancy Hogshead, an American Olympic gold medalist, posted on X. “Gender ideology will get women KILLED.” They want us killed, bloodied, on our keens, subservient, obedient. Did you read the way CNN portrayed this in an article? It's horrific. Never mentions the obvious, and states confusion over why the fight ended so quickly. This all reminds me of North Korea. Kim Jung Un is deemed a god, and the people must uphold this lie, or die. The history books have been rewritten with this fairytale, and whomever states the obvious is, "problematic." I'm just going to keep fighting with the truth. Please god let the pussy- grabber win, whom will restore our rights. At least he knows what a woman is.
I agree with all you said, except that the "pussy-grabber" is no friend to women, even if he does know what a woman is. We are well and truly F'ed (imho) either way we vote or even if we don't vote. I pray every day to God (or to whom it may concern -- my ancestors who love me?) that things don't turn out as bad as they seem to be going, in more ways than just the disastrous Olympics.
Not to get all political on you, because we're really on the same side, but Joe Biden was accused by his own daughter of sexual abuse, and Tara Reid had to leave her job as Biden's aide because he was sexually harassing her.
Many (most?) powerful men behave badly where women are concerned. FDR was cheating on Eleanor, so she found solace elsewhere. Lyndon Johnson was a sex addict who fathered a child while married to Lady Bird. John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton were infamous womanizers. You get the picture. We could make a Netflix miniseries!
If I have to choose between Dems and Republicans solely on the trans issue, the Republicans understand the problem but the Dems refuse to do so. It's a calculated, ideological, political choice. It's corrupt, and it stinks.
That's okay, you can talk politics with me, it's a political issue. I feel politically homeless myself. With Trump, women would give up their right to choice, with Biden, now Harris, they give up their right to female-only spaces and sports. That was my point in the original post, that we're screwed either way. With Trump, the environment/natural world is screwed, and frankly it's not all that much better with the Democrats. Of course I could go on with other important issues. But in any case people need to do what they feel is best and vote (or not) according to their own consciences. Also, just want to say again: Thanks to Kara for her Substack and all her hard work! And for letting us discuss back and forth in the comments.
Trump is like every politician, a person who wants to win and therefore will pander to his base. I had never heard him utter a syllable about religion until the Republican convention. Suddenly, he's throwing around the obligatory "god" word every ten minutes to the cheers of his supporters. Suddenly, his surviving an assassination attempt is a miracle from God. Regarding abortion, Trump was never opposed to it and has reiterated his view that it should be decided by the individual states. (This was also Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opinion, by the way. She was not in favor of Roe v. Wade because she thought it would foist an opinion on a country that was too divided to be of any use.) The upshot will be that the Red states will continue to ban abortion and women will have to travel out of state to get one. But this would end up being the rule no matter which Republican became president, because this issue is so central to the party. It looks like Trump will simply give his base what they want without debate. I'm not defending him, exactly, and I'm also not voting for him, by the way, but I understand where he's coming from.
Well, I'm not relying on fate or faith, I'm voting to restore my rights, and the pussy- grabber has pledged to restore them. So yes, he is a friend to women. There's no other alternative. Literally.
You got it, Dee!! That list is a good reminder of how far women have come and how recently. I told a friend that it was legal for a husband to rape his wife in some states as recently as the early 1990s (actually in some states there are loopholes that make it legal still). She didn't know that and was aghast. I reminded her that we ought to thank feminists for their efforts over the years, because without them... So many women just don't get it, and that's pathetic. How effective the backlash has been.
“But in a society struggling to accept gender pluralism — let alone contemplate how to include athletes who don’t fit into our tidy male-female sports structure — it doesn’t take much to make people panic. When Khelif made quick work of Carini, the disingenuous were ready to pounce. The usual instigators chimed in: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, author J.K. Rowling. The boxers’ gender identity wasn’t as important to them as their appearance. If it simply looks unfair, that’s plenty effective. Such a thought is chilling because, in the United States and throughout our supposedly sophisticated world, there is an embrace of potentially abusive policies that allow the gender of athletes to be challenged on mere assumption. In sports, extraordinary physical traits have always been considered a blessing, but what happens when others are permitted to discriminate openly against young girls and women who have done nothing wrong except have the nerve to be dominant?”
PS: I decided even to do a little weigh in on my blog that about 15 people read😎 (I don’t mind, at least it gave me an outlet for my frustration with this—and I did think that Sex Matters video was superb): https://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-will-it-take/
I just watched it. Now I'm in a rage. This shit is unspeakable.
On a related note, I'd like to give a big shout-out to British journalist Janice Turner, whom you quote in your article. She's the first journalist I know of who was reporting on the sudden epidemic of autistic girls and gay girls identifying as trans in the U.K., going back to at least 2017. She had interviewed a gender therapist named James Caspian, who wanted to do an academic study on detransitioners, which he had just discovered was a "thing," but his university blocked his research.
Turner's reporting backed up the complaints of the gender therapists at the Tavistock, and soon after Lisa Littman released her ROGD study. Turner didn't win the Orwell Prize for Journalism for nothing. I'm glad to see she's still going strong.
Turner has been terrific! I only became acquainted with her work in the past year or so, so it’s great to learn the back story, thanks. She is one of the reasons I now subscribe to the London Times (Hadley Freeman another, and now Kathleen Stock writes there, too!).
Oh yes, this is the official line and you will read it everywhere now. We're officially in Clown World. Women's sports are done.
I'm looking for a link to a snippet of footage on X, which I couldn't bear to look at at the time, showing Khelif grabbing Carini's breast at the end of the match. When I find it I'll post it here.
Not done reading the article yet, but I wanted to say that I hope that all the female contenders going forward will forfeit like Carini did so that Khelif looks like the total cheat that he is (even if he doesn't see himself as a cheat) and the whole thing shames the IOC for allowing this travesty to happen in the first place. Women athletes shouldn't have to forfeit to make a point, but in this climate, what is their other option?
Honestly, given the facts of biology and physics, all the women boxers need to forfeit to make sure they stay alive.
But the IOC doesn’t care. They are unconscionable.
He doesn't see himself as a cheat because he's an entitled man.
The same can be said of Caster Semenya, who also has XY chromosomes and testosterone in the normal male range. Both of them are "doping."
I don't think anyone can say for sure whether he sees himself as a cheat or not. I agree though that they (he and that other boxer) are "naturally" doping, and that wouldn't be tolerated if they weren't people with DSDs and in this case males with DSDs. They know what's happening and what could happen to their female opponents in any case, and they don't seem to care. Anything to win must be their motto. Therefore they can f off, in my opinion.
Until all the athletes and the spectators, both male and female, stick together and walk away, this will continue. It may possibly end without a sports walkout, but it's going to take years. I'm done with this and will not engage or do business with any who support male worship and misogyny.
I used to spar in martial arts and I was good. At one point, I probably thought I could go head to head with a man the same weight as me. I would have relied, naively, on the officials to make sure the categories were fair and as we see now, they cannot be relied on to make the right, fact based decision...I have experienced incredible force from kicks and punches, even when men were going easy or were a much lower rank than me. This truly sickens me. I thought combat sports would be the easy sports for officials to justify separating males and females!
After posting about this on Facebook I have been called out by several women frenemies for my 'anger that's not healthy' (they don't know the half of it), and told that 'sex is a spectrum'. And to illustrate this, one has pointed to the Williams sisters having much higher muscle tone than other women, and saying that other athletes have other advantages, like more flexibility. I shared - as calmly as I could - Serena's comment on Letterman where she tells him she wouldn't win one point against Andy Murray (white male), as 'the male game' is 'a completely different game', with their serves being much faster, etc. Muscly women are still women. Skinny men are still men. In sports involving tests of strength and speed, the skinny man will beat the muscly woman every single time. The other male boxer in Paris has now beaten his female opponent too. :( I think these men are groomed for women's sports from a young age. Here's Serena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzHBsvj6C0
It's fascinating to consider that Carini has been punched literally 1000s of times over her sporting career but had obviously never received a punch from a man over her whole life. It took 2 punches over 10 seconds for her to realise she was so unevenly matched that she was in danger of harm and that there was no competition.
The female sports category was fought for from the beginnings of the modern Olympics and created precisely because until a few minutes ago every human who has ever lived understood men are stronger than women. What is the Olympics about other than to celebrate the peak of human physical prowess in a fair competition? The 2024 version is a travesty to these principles.
Excellent point and so well said!!
Calling all TERFS! We need to stage an intervention. We need to rent a boxing gym somewhere near Paris and stage a parallel women’s boxing competition and call it “The Real Women’s Olympics.” I’m serious. Let do this for Angelina, and all the other female athletes.
Let’s take dramatic action in the form a protest that will really count. How can we coordinate this? Can ICONS contact the athletes? Can someone like Sharron Davies or Jennifer Sey connect with the boxing associations and coaches? How do we get the word out?
I’m tired of posting comments. I want to create real change.
How can we do this?
I appreciate your enthusiasm. For my part, I think complaints to the powers concerned who are making these misogynistic policies need to hear from us, FWIW, even though we may be a small constituency. Also for my part, I dislike boxing for women and for men -- same as the way I feel about American football. We don't have to go into all my reasons for this. But that said, I agree that women who want to box only with other women should get the respect they deserve. This is a requirement for any sports, not just the Olympics.
” Nancy Hogshead, an American Olympic gold medalist, posted on X. “Gender ideology will get women KILLED.” They want us killed, bloodied, on our keens, subservient, obedient. Did you read the way CNN portrayed this in an article? It's horrific. Never mentions the obvious, and states confusion over why the fight ended so quickly. This all reminds me of North Korea. Kim Jung Un is deemed a god, and the people must uphold this lie, or die. The history books have been rewritten with this fairytale, and whomever states the obvious is, "problematic." I'm just going to keep fighting with the truth. Please god let the pussy- grabber win, whom will restore our rights. At least he knows what a woman is.
I agree with all you said, except that the "pussy-grabber" is no friend to women, even if he does know what a woman is. We are well and truly F'ed (imho) either way we vote or even if we don't vote. I pray every day to God (or to whom it may concern -- my ancestors who love me?) that things don't turn out as bad as they seem to be going, in more ways than just the disastrous Olympics.
Not to get all political on you, because we're really on the same side, but Joe Biden was accused by his own daughter of sexual abuse, and Tara Reid had to leave her job as Biden's aide because he was sexually harassing her.
Many (most?) powerful men behave badly where women are concerned. FDR was cheating on Eleanor, so she found solace elsewhere. Lyndon Johnson was a sex addict who fathered a child while married to Lady Bird. John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton were infamous womanizers. You get the picture. We could make a Netflix miniseries!
If I have to choose between Dems and Republicans solely on the trans issue, the Republicans understand the problem but the Dems refuse to do so. It's a calculated, ideological, political choice. It's corrupt, and it stinks.
That's okay, you can talk politics with me, it's a political issue. I feel politically homeless myself. With Trump, women would give up their right to choice, with Biden, now Harris, they give up their right to female-only spaces and sports. That was my point in the original post, that we're screwed either way. With Trump, the environment/natural world is screwed, and frankly it's not all that much better with the Democrats. Of course I could go on with other important issues. But in any case people need to do what they feel is best and vote (or not) according to their own consciences. Also, just want to say again: Thanks to Kara for her Substack and all her hard work! And for letting us discuss back and forth in the comments.
Trump is like every politician, a person who wants to win and therefore will pander to his base. I had never heard him utter a syllable about religion until the Republican convention. Suddenly, he's throwing around the obligatory "god" word every ten minutes to the cheers of his supporters. Suddenly, his surviving an assassination attempt is a miracle from God. Regarding abortion, Trump was never opposed to it and has reiterated his view that it should be decided by the individual states. (This was also Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opinion, by the way. She was not in favor of Roe v. Wade because she thought it would foist an opinion on a country that was too divided to be of any use.) The upshot will be that the Red states will continue to ban abortion and women will have to travel out of state to get one. But this would end up being the rule no matter which Republican became president, because this issue is so central to the party. It looks like Trump will simply give his base what they want without debate. I'm not defending him, exactly, and I'm also not voting for him, by the way, but I understand where he's coming from.
Well, I'm not relying on fate or faith, I'm voting to restore my rights, and the pussy- grabber has pledged to restore them. So yes, he is a friend to women. There's no other alternative. Literally.
You got it, Dee!! That list is a good reminder of how far women have come and how recently. I told a friend that it was legal for a husband to rape his wife in some states as recently as the early 1990s (actually in some states there are loopholes that make it legal still). She didn't know that and was aghast. I reminded her that we ought to thank feminists for their efforts over the years, because without them... So many women just don't get it, and that's pathetic. How effective the backlash has been.
If anyone here wants to see astonishing ignorance on display about the boxer issue in the mainstream US press, here is an absolute doozy from the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/08/02/olympic-boxing-culture-war-imane-khelif-lin-yu-ting/
Here’s how the article ends:
“But in a society struggling to accept gender pluralism — let alone contemplate how to include athletes who don’t fit into our tidy male-female sports structure — it doesn’t take much to make people panic. When Khelif made quick work of Carini, the disingenuous were ready to pounce. The usual instigators chimed in: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, author J.K. Rowling. The boxers’ gender identity wasn’t as important to them as their appearance. If it simply looks unfair, that’s plenty effective. Such a thought is chilling because, in the United States and throughout our supposedly sophisticated world, there is an embrace of potentially abusive policies that allow the gender of athletes to be challenged on mere assumption. In sports, extraordinary physical traits have always been considered a blessing, but what happens when others are permitted to discriminate openly against young girls and women who have done nothing wrong except have the nerve to be dominant?”
We can only hope that one day this comment will win First Prize in the 21st Century Orwellian Hall of Fame.
Surely it is a contender, though it may now have been topped by Tom Bach at the IOC. Did you see this pig’s breakfast of a statement: https://twitter.com/iocmedia/status/1819656419592770004
Here's the clip from X showing Khelif groping Carini's breast:
https://x.com/nicholelizaq/status/1819035576559120743
PS: I decided even to do a little weigh in on my blog that about 15 people read😎 (I don’t mind, at least it gave me an outlet for my frustration with this—and I did think that Sex Matters video was superb): https://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-will-it-take/
I just watched it. Now I'm in a rage. This shit is unspeakable.
On a related note, I'd like to give a big shout-out to British journalist Janice Turner, whom you quote in your article. She's the first journalist I know of who was reporting on the sudden epidemic of autistic girls and gay girls identifying as trans in the U.K., going back to at least 2017. She had interviewed a gender therapist named James Caspian, who wanted to do an academic study on detransitioners, which he had just discovered was a "thing," but his university blocked his research.
Turner's reporting backed up the complaints of the gender therapists at the Tavistock, and soon after Lisa Littman released her ROGD study. Turner didn't win the Orwell Prize for Journalism for nothing. I'm glad to see she's still going strong.
Turner has been terrific! I only became acquainted with her work in the past year or so, so it’s great to learn the back story, thanks. She is one of the reasons I now subscribe to the London Times (Hadley Freeman another, and now Kathleen Stock writes there, too!).
Excuse me, Susan, but am I mistaken in thinking that Prufrocks Dilemma is your blog?
No, you weren’t mistaken. It’s my little blog.
I saw that! Yech!
Oh yes, this is the official line and you will read it everywhere now. We're officially in Clown World. Women's sports are done.
I'm looking for a link to a snippet of footage on X, which I couldn't bear to look at at the time, showing Khelif grabbing Carini's breast at the end of the match. When I find it I'll post it here.