John Oliver on trans athletes

Excellent rebuttal by She Won; https://archive.fo/l11gb

''She Won recently made an appearance on Last Week Tonight. John Oliver stuck to his tired recipe: dishonest sanctimony wrapped in a thick coating of self-deprecation (all the easier to swallow), this time about male athletes in women’s sports and specifically about our org. 🧵1/n:
First, John Oliver leads viewers to believe that the content on is directly published by random people on the internet. This is totally false. We encourage people to submit tips, and our team of volunteers reviews each entry before we publish anything.
We only publish what we can verify from primary and secondary sources. We state this methodology clearly on our website...''

What you don't implicitly consent to are injuries or risks stemming from people breaking the rules or acting in a dangerous and 'unsportsmanlike' manner. So if someone breaks the rules and does a hard tackle on you, which causes a fracture, you can sue them.

IANAL, but I think this is only a partial (or maybe I should say, theoretical) right. By and large, it doesn't happen. If you're playing football and you get kicked on the ankle hard by foul play, whether you're a billionaire superstar or just playing in the local park, players don't, with very rare exceptions, sue each other. They take it on the chin, and if you're too injured to work as a result, that's part of the risk. I think there are good reasons for this.

In negligence law, people who play sport (both amateurs and professionals) consent to taking on a higher risk of injury that is inherent in the sport. So if you race horses you implicitly consent to the risk of falling off the horse, if you play football you implicitly consent to the risk of being tackled. What you don't implicitly consent to are injuries or risks stemming from people breaking the rules or acting in a dangerous and 'unsportsmanlike' manner. So if someone breaks the rules and does a hard tackle on you, which causes a fracture, you can sue them. The issue about sex/gender has not been tested in a negligence context. It might be argued that if you play in a women's only sport, that you consent to only play against women. But if you knew there were males on the team, and you accepted that, it might be argued that you took that risk upon yourself. There is also the difficult question about whether including a male on a female team is breaking the rules or is inherently dangerous such that it becomes negligent.

Oliver Brown is on fire in the Telegraph! He's a sports journalist who absolutely gets it, and is incensed by the unfairness of it all.

Title: "Women’s final between two biological men shatters defence for transgender athletes"

Subtitle : "Viral rants by comic based on bad logic and morals cannot hide injustice of females always bearing impact of ideological drive for inclusion"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/snooker/2025/04/07/womens-pool-final-between-two-biological-men-transgender/

https://archive.ph/gDWXc (archive version)

I loved this paragraph:
"To anybody still demanding why we cannot all just be kind and inclusive, consider this: the adverse impact of this inclusion drive is endured, without exception, by women. You do not see women trying to make it in men’s cycling, or swimming, or fencing. You do not see women gatecrashing the final of the men’s pool. And that is because basic biology dictates the benefits in sport flow in only one direction, with mediocre males annexing victories and medals once they start masquerading as female."

It's a good read, he covers all the bases well.

Started with Gillard’s change to the Anti-discrimination act in 2013 (iirc) after she came back from the Yogyakarta conference.

I cannot see Gillard as any women’s ambassador.

Another thing he often says: instead of just repeating Orange Man Bad, it might be worth thinking about why Orange Man is so popular with people who used to vote for us.

That the penny hasn’t dropped with them on this, second time around, is just mind-boggling. That they’re doubling down on these smug, misleading arguments about women’s rights seems a complete throwback to five years ago, as well. Things have to move on. Seems JO, as a $1m-per-show ‘trusted’ media name, is a big part of the problem now unfortunately.

Thanks for the information. How depressing.

I am intrigued by why the Democrats have doubled down on this as a hill to die on. Is it all about money?

Unfortunately, in Australia, sex doesn't exist in law. There is only gender protected.

I wish I knew more about how consent works in sport - like you consent to risks within the sport, but is there also an implied or explicit consent when you sign up to single sex sport that you are not consenting to play with or against the opposite sex?
In countries where sex and gender are different in law this could matter. (it matters everywhere, but legally).

I haven't watched it. If I was on twitter, I would post the picture towards the bottom of the linked article

The other women look so tiny playing full contact sport against this big girl, Hannah, a 6'2/ 188cm, 100kg former male athlete.

People. Can. See. The. Problem... you can't make words obliterate pictures.

I would also thank JO for helping Hannah, she plays Australian Rules Football in the women's state league, but she has to sue the professional league for leaving her out, poor love.

https://www.perthnow.com.au/sport/afl/afl-lawsuit-looms-as-transgender-footballer-hannah-mouncey-calls-out-new-aflw-policy-ng-b881771519z

Exactly this. Mind blowing they are doubling down on this stuff when it played a big role in losing the election. Ordinary voters know men aren’t women, don’t want men in women’s sport, don’t want men in women’s prisons and definitely don’t want their tax dollars paying for boob jobs for rapists. The US left has convinced themselves that these entirely reasonable points are extremism. If they don’t change, well, President Vance here we come.

I don't think this is true, and he is normally very good on human rights. His show's deep dives into the prison industrial complex, and medical debt etc have been eye opening.

Have they though? Because for me, if he can’t get a simple concept like “men have sporting advantage over women” right, it makes me seriously question any of the other stories he and his team claim to have “researched”.

In the same vein as "if a politician will lie about TWAW what else are they lying about?", if a John Oliver/Jon Stewart/other will do little to no research in the cause of not spoiling their jolly little rant about wimmin, don't assume they research any other features.

Not surprised, tbh.
I stopped listening to the Bugle due to JO, JG et al.
It's just so....depressing.

I tried. I can't watch that shit.

Yes. The hypocrisy of that line really did seem to escape him considering the length of the segment he did.

Talk about complete lack of self awareness.

You think the stock market is more important than dismantling the rights of 50% of the population? Because it's not your 50% of the population Mr. Oliver? Give me one reason why a man should have the right to replace a woman in a tournament for women. And if you think it's not that bad because it's just a few would you think the same about slavery? Just two or three slaves per state wouldn't be so bad? You think nobody would care?

These are excellent points. The other obvious riposte is that, if it's not that important, then why are you banging on about it? Transactivists love accusing feminists of being "obsessed" despite the fact that they endlessly harp on about this shit themselves. And if it genuinely does no harm to women to allow a "tiny minority" of men compete in women's sport, then by the same token, it wouldn't do any harm to men to be excluded, would it? After all, it's only a tiny minority.

I listened to an interview with Lauren Fleshman. She spoke about the difference in women's bodies, how women don't reach peak form until much later than men, about how badly sportswear companies treat women they sponsor... book out about how hard being a female runner is 'in a man's world'...then said sport is divided by gender not sex, that women participate in single sex sports to affirm their gender (!) and be part of that community, enjoy that social aspect, and TW have a right to that too. I was gobsmacked. Seriously couldn't see how women lost the very thing she'd just sung the praises of if they let men in, aside from the competative unfairness.
It's on Fi and Jane Off Air 30/01/2023 if anyone wants a reference.

A but off topic I know but I'm still angry 2 years later, and I'm someone in the only runs for fun and is never going to win category.

It's not dissimilar to the "men pretending to be women should be allowed in women's prisons so they can hang out with women and thus learn how to become more womanly" argument.

Iremember a few years ago, here in Canada, seeing a terfy woman on a discussion panel lament how the CBC had become so partisan and unreliable and condescending.

A conservative guy in the discussion said - It's always been like that, you just didn't notice."

I think that's an important lesson that is best understood when you experience it.

It's clear to me now, the trans issue having snapped me out of my bubble, how damaging this partisan mainstream broadcasting can be and has been in the US, going back to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. These shows, including all the late nights, make no secret of the absolute loathing they have for half the country.

I'd say that the thing is, even after the 2016 election smart Democrats were saying, how could Hillary have lost the working class vote to a guy who lives in a fucking golden tower? There were plenty of pollsters - Ruy Teixeira has been banging on about this for years - who told them they needed to be less insane and try to appeal to the median voter.

But there were about 2 million Democrats who lost their minds. They preferred to double down on the insanity and cosplay as if they were dissidents in Nazi Germany. I quantify it as 2 million because I assume it's more or less the same people who watch Stephen Colbert. John Oliver's audience overlaps pretty heavily. Unfortunately that's the same people who are concentrated in the universities and media, and have outsize influence in the party.

I don't like Keir Starmer, but I see the logic of what he did when he became Labour leader. He did not say, what we need to do is appeal more strongly to people who watch Novara Media.

One of the places I go to catch up on US politics is the Morning Meeting on the 2way platform. That's got Mark Halperin (veteran non-partisan journalist) in the chair, along with party operatives Dan Turrentine (D) and Sean Spicer (R). They have good constructive conversations. Turrentine is a smart guy who worked on the Hillary campaign, and he's said repeatedly that Democrats need to stop digging themselves deeper on genderwoo. They don't need to reverse position completely, just to stop looking insane.

Another thing he often says: instead of just repeating Orange Man Bad, it might be worth thinking about why Orange Man is so popular with people who used to vote for us.

'Ordinary' Democrats see it, like ordinary people do everywhere, the UK included, but it is the 'educated, liberal-minded types - the people who work in universities and the media' who run the world. I do see comments in US media along the lines of "the Europeans and the Brits are having second thoughts about this, perhaps we should pay attention to them", though, so hopefully pennies will drop eventually.