Taiwan Tries to Silence Fair Play For Women

[mb2512cat]

Fair Play For Women has been approached by the Taiwan embassy in the UK to remove their posts describing Olympic boxer Lin Yu-ting as ‘male’.

Dear God, they just need to show us the karyotype results with ‘XX’ and this all goes away.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/boxing/2024/08/16/taiwan-womens-right-campaigners-gender-row-boxer/

https://x.com/fairplaywomen/status/1824478183422402569?s=46&t=WBUCdrv9BwgG-lsI3-uNuQ

Discredited by whom?

https://www.iba.sport/news/iba-clarifies-the-facts-the-letter-to-the-ioc-regarding-two-ineligible-boxers-was-sent-and-acknowledged/

Did you participate in any of the multi-part threads that discussed the topics? If you didn't, you might find them instructive.

Cracking response by Nicola Williams.

David Lammy had better be having a quiet word with the Taiwanese ambassador...

Not necessarily true:

In the UK, the burden of proof in a libel case is on the defendant to prove that the allegations are true, but not beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, the defendant must prove the allegations on the balance of probabilities. If the defendant fails to prove the allegations, the court may consider any evidence or media coverage the defendant used to substantiate the allegations as factors that increase the damages.

Here are some other things to consider in a UK libel case:

Truth
The defendant can use truth as a defense, but the truth must be actual. For example, the defendant can't justify a publication by pointing to another press report or allegations in a police arrest warrant.

Peer-reviewed statements
The defendant can use peer-reviewed statements in scientific or academic journals as a defense if the statement relates to a scientific or academic matter.

Other defenses
The defendant may also be able to use other defenses, such as honest opinion, publication on a matter of public interest, or privilege.

What we know to be true beyond reasonable doubt - Lin Yu-ting was banned due to failing a test. There wasn't an attempt to challenge this.

We don't know the exact details but there is enough that it public in terms of the nature of the tests to suggest Lin Yu-Ting is male - noting that the threshold required is lower than the 'beyond reasonable doubt' bar in a criminal case. This has been disclosed by official bodies not just speculation in the press, and the disclosure from Khelif's team about abnormal chromosomal results won't help the cause.

There is a lot of speculation around way, but there a fair argument that it is in the public interest to talk about this and unfairness in women's sport on the basis of sex. This alone is a reasonable defence in the UK.

There are also implications to allowing another government to silence free speech in the UK by trying to intimidate in this way. The UK government would be stupid to stand for it, on principle, because of the precidence it sets for other governments to try and do the same when they hear something they don't like.

They have several different lines of defence.

The first line is the government telling the Taiwanese to piss off before it goes anywhere near a court.

Nope. Your info is about a week out of date.

Fingers crossed the libel accusation against FPFW goes to court though. I love court rulings - gets everything out in the open.

"“The fact that a foreign government is trying to strong-arm a British civil society group for not going along with its propaganda should send shivers down the spine of anyone concerned with UK autonomy and freedom of thought and speech.”"

And there I was worrying for Taiwan under the shadow of Chinese domination.
Seems they already use the same playbook.

Remember that group of CCP threatening the piano player at a London train station?
And beating up Hong Kong dissidents?
I profoundly object to these incursions on our freedom of expression by dictatorial corrupt entities.
I hope our government tells them where to go.

However awful the rest of it is, the idea that a foreign government would try to curtail free speech in the UK is worse. If the Taiwanese Government doesn’t like what FPfW is saying, they need to demonstrate that it isn’t true - that’s how democratic societies work. Trying to silence them is pretty sinister. I had been wondering why IK was taking so much more flak than LYT.

Why Fair Play for Women? Why not any of the many other organisations that have told the world Lin is male?

🤣🤣 at the idea of a libel case. As if the Taiwanese government or Lin or Khelif or anyone involved would dare, given what we know.

I think FPFW are the only ones currently coming out fighting. It helps their campaigning to highlight this publicly rather than ignore it or take posts down.

Streisand effect and all that.

I’m not on Twitter/X but are FPFW more active or tweeting more about it? The Sun has published an article on it. So has the Telegraph. So are FPFW disproportionately going for it? Why isn’t the Taiwanese government telling the UK government to get the Sun to pull JHB’s article, for instance?

Seems odd they’d go after FPFW other than seeing someone they think they can bully more than the others.

“Seems odd they’d go after FPFW other than seeing someone they think they can bully more than the others.“

Why do they particularly object to a campaign group called “Fair Play For Women”?

Hmmm. That's a real head scratcher isn’t it….

Well, I look forward to the doubt being dispelled in court, then.

Some of the posts on this thread seem to be about the Algerian boxer IK not the Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting.

I'm surprised there has been far less scrutiny of YuTing in the UK media (is that racism?). He was the one who illegally rabbit-punched an opponent. And as medical care is better in Taiwan, there should be more awareness of DSDs etc.

I doubt this Ting bloke's got evidence to prove that it isn't.

David Lammy is the person who described women as "rights hoarding dinosaurs" so I doubt there'll be much help coming from that quarter.

I know all about DL.
But he is the Foreign Secretary and this is a case of a foreign state attempting to interfere with the rights of British citizens in Britain.

It’ll be interesting to see his response.
Will Labour (through Lammy) allow a foreign nation to try and influence UK freedom of speech because they don’t like the people being silenced? That would be a slippery slope.

Otherwise Lammy will have to defend FPFW when we know he believes GC women are beneath contempt.

Yes, I think it’s because we understand from the IBA that the two boxers were subjected to exactly the same tests and for the same reasons, so it is reasonable to rely on commentary and interviews about IK and infer they apply to LY-T? I’m bemused also as to why one is getting more coverage, but I think it may be because IK was aggressive, posturing, face pulling, army saluting in the ring exemplifying hyper-masculinised behaviours whereas LY-T was rather lower key and poker faced?

The curled tongue into the lower lip/finger wagging thing that Ik does is an utterly repellent gesture in a male, let alone a ‘woman’ - IK has done themselves no favours…And I say that as someone who has several female friends who are ex-navy, one of whom was a sniper in NI and has body-guarded for Saudi royalty - the women - so I’m not comparing to the performative ‘femininity’ of perfume ads whose products I would avoid on principle now.

Why is IK getting more coverage than LY-T?

IK was up first, so got the initial coverage and the Italian AC made a public point of it which didn't happen to LY-T which helped to 'make it a story'. Then, partly as a result of that IK and team have Streisanded much harder than LY-T. This has also been amplified by Algerians and Algerian supporters. Culturally it's not the done thing in Taiwan to make a fuss in the same way Algeria and Algerian supporters have, which will also play into the noise around this.

I don't think it's racism. I think the racism card is an anti-west trope being thrown around which is very Algerian in nature anyway (I have a good friend married to an Algerian and it's very much part of his attitude and we've had lengthy conversations about it). It's got a lot to do with getting news from alternative sources to British ones. It's definitely something being pushed by someone with a particular agenda to try and drive a wedge and gather support for Khelif by creating a 'with us or against us' propaganda technique for use over a wide range of subjects not just this.

Here’s the thing - they were disqualified by the IBA for failing “gender eligibility tests” when they were both on course for a medal in the world championships last year. They either did not appeal or dropped the appeal.

The argument against the IBA is that it is dodgy in some unexplained way. (Maybe Russian?)

Ok - so I am me and I have trained for years as a boxer and suddenly - when Inam on course for a world championship medal sudden some corrupt body says that I am not a woman. Would I say “oh ok then” and slink away with my career in tatters or would I do whatever it takes to prove that I am one. Hmmm - I’d be there calling press conferences and offering swabs to any journalist who wants to take one in order to prove that I was a woman.

The fact that they didn’t - to me - proves that they knew they couldn’t win if the facts were established.

I suspect that these boxers do have some kind of DSD and they may have initially been believed to be female at birth. But, in fact, this is just a genetic mutation that some men have.

I have a genetic mutation. I only have 3 incisors at the bottom of my mouth. My brother only has 2 at the top of his. Humans have 4 at the top and 3 at the bottom. I happen to know that aliens from the planet Zog only have 2 or 3. But I am not an alien from the planet Zog. If you were deciding who is human and who is Zogite from the number of teeth they have then you may - erroneously - think that I am a Zogite (which would be seriously cool - would I get my own spaceship?!?!) But I am not. I am just a boring old human with a genetic mutation that means that I am missing a bit.

Terrible typo!!! Humans have 4 incisors at the top and 4 at the bottom. Only Zogites (and me!) have 3 at the bottom.

I can't see David "men can grow cervices (cervixes? Cervixen?)" Lammy doing his job over this one. I also can't imagine it leading to an actual court case - but would definitely do some gardening if it did and would love to see the verdict.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · Yesterday 23:43

IBA could have simply disclosed their decision to disqualify.

They did, they stated that they had failed on grounds of "gender" eligibility. The tests have been leaked and experts have seen them and explained that the two men were found to have male chromosomes.

And IOC has overturned the IBA decision as their review found the test to be fundamentally flawed.

They have no scientific grounds to have ignored (not overturned, they don't have that capability) the tests. They ignored them and allowed two males to fight women, on ideological grounds, no science was involved.

Both labs were approved by the IOC and endorsed by the ISO.

We'll see. But whatever he thinks about the trans issue, he really should be telling the Taiwanese to back off.

Not quite sure what point you are making here - that a genetic mutation doesn’t make them male? ‘Cos you’d be wrong. Especially as male and females are a distinct biological categories whereas Zogites are make-believe… not unlike the belief that men (with DSDs or ‘feelz’) can be women.