Rest is Politics Seb Coe: Corruption, gender, and the geopolitics of sport

[Theinnocenteyeballsinthesky]

Thought FWR might be interested in this especially given TRIP hand waving away of any issues around TWAW and their beee kiiiind stance to date.

apparently released today

The Court of Arbitration of Sport set out the principles of segregation of sport into male and female categories based on sex, very clearly on 30 April 2019.

'Accordingly, the purpose of the male-female divide in competitive athletics is not to protect athletes with a female legal sex from having to compete against athletes with a male legal sex. Nor is it to protect athletes with a female gender identity from having to compete against athletes with a male gender identity. Rather, it is to protect individuals whose bodies have developed in a certain way following puberty from having to compete against individuals who, by virtue of their bodies having developed in a different way following puberty, possess certain physical traits that create such a significant performance advantage that fair competition between the two groups is not possible.
....
The only factor that is available only to men is exposure to adult male testosterone levels. The IAAF submitted that if the purpose of the female category is to prevent athletes who lack that testosterone-derived advantage from having to compete against athletes who possess that testosterone-derived advantage, then it is necessarily “category defeating” to permit any individuals who possess that testosterone-derived advantage to compete in that category. '

There is no reason why these principles should not be applied to every level of sport, they are no less relevant in a seniors 5km race with no prizes or a local U16 Football tournament.

Does fairness only apply if it's a televised event or if there is prize money at stake - are we back to where money, power and share of voice are the only things that matter? If men can't see it.. it doesn't matter?

it's for only the Elite Sports so I will die in a ditch over the ability of transgender competitors to be involved in participatory sport we're talking about a very very few at the elite level and I have to protect the female category.

So he'll fight to the death for men to compete in non elite sport?

How does he think women get to elite level? By allowing men to compete, women will be excluded from the sport before they have chance to develop.

He's going to act confused when the number of women entering elite sport falls, and commission an expensive enquiry.

We should not have to twist the argument into a realm which makes men open their eyes (risk of injury, lack of elite athletes..) it should be obvious that if the principles have been established, they should apply at all levels of sport.

Doping is banned at all levels, at least in principle, even if not actively tested for. Example from a national UK sporting organisation.

'The anti-doping rules of England are the rules published by UK Anti-Doping (or its successor), as amended from time to time. If you are a member of England then the anti-doping rules apply to you, regardless of what level you participate at.

Players at amateur are required to sign an anti doping declaration.

(I have obscured the sport due to a misplaced sense of paranoia!)

I honestly think to get it taken seriously in all sports at all levels that it will take a woman getting seriously hurt, suing and the insurance companies wising up and refusing to insure sports clubs/grounds who allow men in womens sports

I have no faith that insurance companies or the court systems will support or take the side of women in this..

Sporting insurance offers small pay outs for injuries, most have more male participants than female and women are less likely to have recourse to funds and support to fight such a claim as well as being socialised to accept the status quo / pay off / threat of action.

'I honestly think to get it taken seriously in all sports at all levels that it will take a woman getting seriously hurt, suing and the insurance companies wising up and refusing to insure sports clubs/grounds who allow men in womens sports'

And if / when that happens, no doubt geniuses like Campbell, Stewart and Coe will be asking 'where were the feminists?' Utter arseholes

What a load of bloody nonsense.

Gender identity isn't relevant to sport in any way. A trans woman's gender identity is only relevant to that trans woman. It has nothing to do with any female athletes competing in sport, and even if it did (i.e. the female athletes all agreed that they shared the same gender identity as a trans woman), it still wouldn't be relevant to sport because we play sport with our sexed bodies, not our gender identities.

Trans women are completely free to compete in any sport with members of their own biological sex, i.e. males.

If they aren't good enough at sport to be competitive against other male athletes, or if they have deliberately suppressed their testosterone levels which has an impact on their athletic performance, TOUGH SHIT. THIS SHOULD NOT BE WOMEN'S PROBLEM.

We don't let men who smoke compete in women's sport on the grounds that smoking has a negative impact on their performance, so why should taking cross sex hormones be any different?

If the need for sex based categories can be as clearly laid out as this, why is this understanding not repeated ad nauseam by every single person involved in athletics? I’m getting to the point where I really hate men. Despite being married to one I’m rather fond of.

This crystal clear explanation came from Seb Coe's organisation.

He understands ok, he just doesn’t care, because it’s only women. He doesn't want to take the flak from the TRAs and Left wing/liberal media for doing the right thing, the elite sport thing is so visible it can’t be conveniently brushed under the carpet and ignored in the same way. Shame on him, the sneaky wimp.

Standing up for the right thing and being in the news for offending the be kinders might stop him getting the next plum job in athletics management.

Another one who stopped listening to TRIP due to their awful sexist attitude. I wrote to point that out (and that AC's patronising twatty pronouncement that only old gammons who'll die out soon believe TWAM founders on the reality of me, and many many other terven, being younger than him. And that his own advanced age doesn't seem to be a problem when he wants to lay down the law).

Didn't get an answer, of course.

I noticed that TRIP's slipped a couple of places in the podcast charts since then. Did wonder if losing a bunch of female listeners might be related. I'd like to think so.

How have they got this tight grip? Do they bribe people like Alastair Campbell and Seb Coe or do they threaten them?

I suspect it really is not much more complicated than the entire establishment believing that men are more important than women.

So men, even the ones who claim to be women, must be accommodated, even if it is at the expense of women.

I suspect it really is not much more complicated than the entire establishment believing that men are more important than women.

Yes, and as a pp said, they don’t want the considerable flak that will come their way.
That makes those sportspeople who do speak out about it all the braver.

so I will die in a ditch over the ability of transgender competitors to be involved in participatory sport we're talking about a very very few at the elite level and I have to protect the female category.

This made me genuinely LOL.

He’s a coward, he knows what has to be done to ‘protect the female category’ but he wants to do it in the background and not have to absorb any personal responsibility.

(as an aside my youngest DD, the cancer-y one started at a local girls high about halfway through the autumn term and it’s been MARVELLOUS for her. It’s
made me especially resolute in my terfiness, seeing just how positive the camaraderie and competition of an all girls environment can be. We live in a big English city so the pupils are from all faith and no faith backgrounds with family heritage from pretty much all over the world. I can imagine how electrifying it is for female athletes to train and compete in all-female environment, especially at international competitions)

Oh Seb, that started badly there is no 'gender' category in sport it is a sex category (at least it should be) and quickly got worse the 'ditch that you will die in' is men being allowed to complete against women? So he is in favour of mixed sex amateur boxing is he? Does he think there will be future Nicola Adams and Katy Taylors if that is the case? Not good enough Seb, not even close.

I lost him from his first line when he said there were two aspects - age and gender. No Seb, age and sex.

He was also wrong about age. You can be a child Olympian , skateboarding for one plus swimming etc. what you can’t be is an adult competing as a child but you could be an Olympian child. Sen said you can’t be an Olympian. But that is not an age category

Yep he was totally unclear that people over an age category can't compete in that category but that categories don't tend to have a minimum age, hence the 16 year old currently taking darts by storm, teenage tennis grand slam winners and Olympians and teenagers in 'full' international squads rather than just the under 21s.

It’s particularly disingenuous because the big sports federations actually talk about ‘Sport Sex’ (which can be different from legal sex and/or biological/chromosomal sex) so they know that it’s not ‘gender’ that’s relevant.

The entire argument in Coe’s world is where the defining lines of female ‘Sports Sex’ are.

(eg a trans man with a GRC who hasn’t taken testosterone can be female for sport sex purposes, regardless of their male legal status in their home nation, a person with XY chromosomes and high serum testosterone can be considered female for sports sex as long as she has CAIS - complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and thus has not had a male puberty, whereas 5ARD, Caster Semenya’s DSD, does involve vitalisation at puberty, hence all the arguing as to whether Semenya’s legal sex, female, or bio sex, male, should be Semenya’s sport sex (obviously it should be male but the legal wrangling is over this categorisation)

https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/de/sport-sex-before-the-european-court-of-human-rights/

(there is some debate re: CAIS athletes but they have a much sounder argument than 5ARD athletes)

So yes, It can be (medically, legally) complicated with DSD athletes but trans athletes are not at all complicated, their change of legal sex should be considered separate to their sports sex (although obvs trans men cannot take testosterone as that’s a Performance Enhancing Drug).

There are so many niche categories in the Paralympics that it surely wouldn’t be too difficult to carve out something there for DSD & trans athletes?)

We should go back to cheek swabbing all Olympic female athletes and anyone who is found to have XY can then make their own private, medical and legal case arguments.

Once you get to 16 without menses it’s a red flag that needs to be checked by a doctor anyway, coaches should ensure their young charges are tested before they get to a
level where testing becomes compulsory, so that the adolescent finds out privately rather than on the world stage (at the moment coaches are incentivised to recruit and exploit DSD athletes, rather than protect their wellbeing)

Athletes of both sexes have to wee in cups in front of doping monitors, so it’s not as if they have much privacy or dignity anyway.

Using words from a sporting organisation which I would bet appear across many sports in one form or anotheh

England %%%%%% proudly supports Clean Sport and believes that all athletes have the right to participate in %%%%% knowing that they, their teammates and their opposition do so without the use of prohibited or recreational substances

Why then do women do not have the right to participate in sport knowing that their teammates and opposition do so without posessing a testosterone derived advantage?

I would love someone to ask these questions to him.

It's interesting that Sebby should comment on corruption. I mean, I know that he was whitewashed cleared, but:

https://www.playthegame.org/news/iaaf-president-denies-bbc-claims-that-he-mislead-mp-s/

Speaking at a parliamentary select committee meeting in December 2015, Lord Coe stated that he did not know about the doping allegations before they became public. However, according to the BBC, Lord Coe received an email four months before appearing before the committee, claiming that senior officials at IAAF, including Papa Massata Diack, the son of the former IAAF president, Lamine Diack, and former IAAF marketing consultant, had been involved in corruption, extortion and bribery.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jan/10/sebastian-coe-athletics-corruption-undermined-dave-bedford

Sebastian Coe will defy a summons from parliament to answer further questions concerning when he first heard about corruption within the corridors of the International Association of Athletics Federations and the extent of Russia’s doping problems because he believes he has no fresh information to give MPs.

Bedford, the former race director of the London marathon, told MPs he made several attempts to tell Coe about the Shobukhova case in August 2014 – including a phone call, an email with an attachment detailing what had gone on, and text messages. He also told MPs that when he spoke to Coe on 21 November at a British Athletics Writers’ Association lunch he “had no inkling from that conversation that he was not aware of the subject matter in general terms”.

Coe is a politician. It’s all about what’s best for No 1 (limiting as far as possible his involvement in a messy public argument about TW). He didn’t want a row with Russia in 2014 by the sound of it and he doesn’t want a row with the TRAs and the liberal press now.