The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of the Guardian

[RoyalCorgi]

The Guardian's chief sportswriter, Jonathan Liew, is supporting a boycott of the Afghan cricket team: "We are warned not to punish the richly gifted men’s team for the sins of their government, as if the dignity and humanity of 20 million Afghan women were simply acceptable collateral damage against the wider backdrop of Rashid Khan’s availability for the next T20 World Cup."

Just in case you were wondering, yes, this is the same man who thinks having men play in women's sport is just great, and that women who don't like it are all evil right-wingers and, in his own words, "giving some of society’s most marginalised groups a chance to express their talent doesn’t harm anyone. Because trans women are women. And sport, I’m afraid, is only sport."

They really are trolling us now.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/jan/07/afghanistan-women-cricket-icc-taliban

Odd then that you ignored my post and the many other posts who had already answered Bishy's facile question.

If you disagree with the answers then engage with them. "Agreeing" with a point makes sense. "Agreeing" with a question you also want to ask makes sense. But "agreeing" a question that has already been answered just makes it look like you haven't kept up.

(I'm sure you'll find this answer tedious as well. Clarity and careful thought is so much less fun than dismissive one word responses. I have no doubt that if you bother to reply to this at all it will be a clever little dismissal that again avoids engaging with my or the other postsers who have already addressed the question's actual points).

It's difficult to say whether he is hypocritical or not since we don't have a window into his brain.

But it must take a certain degree of cognitive dissonance to reconcile the view that trans women in the UK are (a) women and (b) particularly oppressed women on the one hand, with having an informed and empathetic stance on the current plight of women in Afghanistan on the other hand.

How can you see and comment on the horrendous abuse being endured by Afghan women, who have no possibility of identifying out of their own, very real, very sex based oppression, and not at least ask yourself whether it actually makes sense to say that trans women in the UK who were born male but have decided they want to be female are less privileged than women in the UK who were born (and always will be) female?

Kudos to you Bishy for asking questions and genuinely engaging in discussion. That’s not foolish, that’s genuine debate of which there has been far too little allowed in the public sphere on this subject.

Agreed. I called Bishy's question facile assuming it was the usual "come in with an agenda, plop the worst possible bad faith reading and run". Having seen her most recent post I see I called that one wrong. Bishy, thank you for engaging.

As I started the thread by accusing Liew of being hypocritical, then I might as well explain my reasoning, which is fairly simple: on the one hand, he is claiming to support women's rights, on the other he is supporting a profoundly misogynistic ideology that fundamentally undermines women's rights.

Exactly. The idea that 'woman' is a feeling in a person's head rather than an immutable biological fact is profoundly misogynistic. If you follow trans reasoning all the women in Afghanistan are denied human rights based on their inner feelings which is clearly ludicrous as well as offensive.

There is a reason the term 'TRAliban' was coined.

In terms of outlook, TRA ideology does have a lot in common with the Taliban's ideology. The female sex are not really real humans with their own inner lives deserving of equal dignity to men. 'Woman' is merely a costume females choose to wear, not linked to the immutable facts of their female bodies.

The idea that women - real ones - should have to miss out on sports so that male bodied people can be accommodated is batshit. Why can't they just play with their sex? They can wear a skirt if they want, these days I doubt anyone will notice. Why should women accept men defining them? That's what TRAs do. That's what the Taliban do.

He's just another man who thinks he is the arbiter of who is a woman and which ones are deserving of his pity. In this situation it's the women he is content won't interfere with his ideological beliefs or inconvenience him personally in any way.

Expressing empathy for western women who have their sporting careers ruined by men might spoil his standing amongst the liberal dinner party set.

I guess objecting to the Afghan cricket team is a worthy position to hold in his world but men playing men's cricket is barely the problem with the Taliban. I doubt the Afghani women give a shit whether the men play cricket or not because their degrading and suffocating oppression will continue regardless.

The problem is the male sex doing whatever they wish to the female sex because they collectively view us as their chattel and support humans. Liew holds that view also, he's just not as far down the spectrum as the Taliban and either not introspective enough to understand it's all part of the same spectrum or he does know and doesn't care (other than performatively if he gets something out of it).

I salute you FlirtsWithRhinos - call me soppy, but I really love like it when posters take a ..er.. strong? position and then re-assess and say 'OK I see where you're coming from now, my reaction was wrong'. Sometimes plus 'Sorry', in this case a 'Thank you for engaging'.

That doesn't happen much in online discussions, and I value it here.

I hope that BishyBarnyBee now realises that
'But obviously that's not the view of most posters on the thread and it was probably foolish to comment in the first place.'
it was not foolish to comment - you stated your opinions, as you predicted most posters disagreed with them, but you were engaged with, and even the 'facile' comment - not the most offensive online putdown ever, I think you'll agree! - was explained and withdrawn.

It's weird seeing the view of the Guardian on here, and then going on pro-trans sites where people are moaning about how horrible TERFy it is. I think the reality is that they allow people to express a range of views on this issue (at least when you include the Observer articles published under the Guardian heading on their website), which is of course the perfect situation for both sides to denounce you.

Beautifully put.

I know discussion has moved on, and you've commented a few more times, but I just wanted to address this.

No one is in any doubt that some men are very vulnerable in prison. Gay men, old men, disabled man, paedophiles, sex offenders, etc.

Which is why there is a vulnerable prisoners unit.

Acknowledging and accommodating vulnerable male prisoners is necessary and laudable.

It just often feels rather blind to think that vulnerable women should be the resource utilised to do it.

And it seems to be a bit of a theme.

Women's sport should be decimated so mediocre men can succeed. Women's changing rooms and loos should be used as validation for men (for a number of reasons, including fetishism.) Because, as we all know, it's not the room, it's the women in it who provide the validation. Their presence is crucial.

and of course it goes on. Reducing words like mother, infiltrating breastfeeding groups, the WI - anything to do with women. It's women who are being used here.

women, just like anyone else (!) can understand and emphasise with the vulnerability of some men.

But the wholesale demand that women, individually, and as a class, be disadvantaged and consistently made more vulnerable in order to used as a balm for a handful of men, is getting a little tired.

This response is all over the place and its hard to know what you are actually trying to communicate, other than you seem to feel you are a bit kinder and more empathetic than women who take the uncomfortable stance of upholding women's basic human rights.

The TIM I know well is very vulnerable too. It's why I am so angry with the gender ideologues who sold this poor young man the lie that the answer to his many and complex and deep rooted problems is becoming a woman.

Gender ideology also sets people up to fail by telling them they can literally be the the opposite of what they are and everyone who disagrees is against them. Its an appalling narrative to have sold to vulnerable people.

A position where everyone can accept their sex, live as they please, but respect single sex spaces is the ideal trans activists should have been aiming for. Instead they set up an high level conflict by insisting on unthinking adherence to a counter-reality position that harmed women and girls in particular.

Everyone should be safe in prison and that can never be achieved by making women unsafe to protect a sub-set of men. I'm not 'misunderstanding' how terrifying prison can be by saying that. I'm just not saying women should be put more at risk to protect some men. A better solution is needed than that misogynistic one.

And the whataboutery of you can't be upset about the destruction of women's sport unless you are simultaneously talking more about the women in Afghanistan?

Does that mean that those posters who support the women in Afghanistan simultaneously support the destruction of women's sport in the UK??

As an either/or concept, it's an odd one.

Thank you for engaging with my post. I tried really hard not to be dogmatic (I can be!).

I think it is less about him being hypocritical and more about his being victim of a sort of cultural cognitive dissonance that has been promoted under DEI. If we are to be kind to trans persons, then we are required to ‘believe’ for intellectual purposes that they are the gender they claim to be and we then box ourselves into an intellectual paradigm that looks like Eschers stairs. If you follow a line of thought informed by the idea that a man can simply identify as a woman and that this necessarily means for all intents and purposes that he is one, it creates obstacles or removes the grounding that inform our position on actual biological women. Our frustration is that writers like him don’t see that, they simply continue navigating the labyrinth, pretending they do not see that they are getting nowhere or going in intellectual circles.

As another poster says above, you cannot simultaneously advocate for women who are physically/socially/psychologically oppressed by virtue of their biological sex whilst also believing in the tragic oppression of men who are privileged enough in Western society to be able to simply identify into an oppressed demographic on a whim, without any physical/clinical or socio-economic sacrifice. Even where such men have mental illness or a history or abuse in their past… it is still a privilege to be able to opt into womanhood. Female victims can’t opt out of social oppression, unwanted pregnancy, infertility after botched abortions etc. By failing to recognise this writers such as Liew are at best disappointingly disingenuous and, at worst, hideously uninformed whilst holding themselves out to be authorities in this area.

I think Liew is suffering from a misperception which is surprisingly common - that men are not very much more physically powerful than women.

A man takes œstrogen, feels weak, thinks he's as weak as a woman. No.

A woman, who has never been attacked by a man, thinks that she would be able to fight one off with her sheer determination. No. (This sort of thinking is probably behind some victim-blaming in rape cases.)

The situation in Afghanistan ultimately derives from the physiological differences between the sexes, but because it's enforced by the state this type of oppression could equally well have been turned on males (say, male Uighurs in China), which obscures the true origin of the problem.

In "After Dark", the dystopian novel set in an England where men are strictly controlled with tasers, ankle tags, curfews etc, there's a scene where a schoolgirl is fulminating about the misandry of society. Her teacher gets her to arm-wrestle her male best friend, with predictable results. The girl is then angry, which feels psychologically believable, although I can't quite put my finger on why.

(I say dystopian: I thought it sounded lovely.)

It's weird seeing the view of the Guardian on here, and then going on pro-trans sites where people are moaning about how horrible TERFy it is.

Which of these perceptions seems more reasonable to you, really? TRAs also think the BBC is horribly transphobic, because no dissent whatsoever is permissible in their world, and nothing but 100% compliance and condemnation of non believers is enough.

(I say dystopian: I thought it sounded lovely.)

The Power had me the same way.

To this day I can't decide if it's genuinely a good book, or it was that the theme appealed to me so much I raced through it.

Our frustration is that writers like him don’t see that, they simply continue navigating the labyrinth, pretending they do not see that they are getting nowhere or going in intellectual circles.

This. And it happens a lot.

Holding two opposing and contradictory concepts, but you'll be able to sort it out because of, oh I don't know, common sense, or rationality, or we'll weigh it up as we go along, case by case. It's just not that bad.

They don't actually see much of a conflict. Because the people who are missing out in that conflict don't really matter. So headspace isn't necessary.

And they don't really matter in such a complete and comprehensive way that only dogs can hear the otherwise deafening bell of cognitive dissonance.

Even if some men (and women) listen, if they genuinely believe they listen, they still can't hear it.

Because they're both mealy-mouthed, avoid reporting some things, tiptoe around the issues, and restrict commenting. @MarieDeGournay upthread had it right that the quality of debate here is much better because posters are willing to work hard to see others' point of view and maybe even change their minds sometimes.

As ever, the zealots have the reasonable people on the back foot. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. The centre cannot hold.

(Obviously, there's no centre ground here because humans can't change sex. But it should be possible to accommodate 'trans' people without harming anyone, and that conversation is not allowed.)

For most men any person who is so distressed in themselves that they would be prepared to cut off their dick is SO alien to them, they might as well be women. At the very least, let them pretend. Even very clever men fall for this, including my hero Richard Dawkins, as well as others.
Liew goes further though, because he actually sees no problem with women not being able to have fair sports.

Quite enjoying the backlash against liew’s latest ramblings on London coffee shops somehow resembling the Israel/ Palestine conflict. Amazing how many men who hate women also hate Jewish people. Particularly good put down in the Spectator:

Jonathan Liew writes like someone who wants to be liked, keen to hit all the right notes so that people he regards as high-status regard him as one of them. It’s hardly the gravest sin. Most people want to be liked. The error of judgement here is on the part of the Guardian. A good editor would have read this and refused to let Liew embarrass himself or the paper.

https://spectator.com/article/the-real-reason-the-guardian-is-so-hostile-to-gails/

Nothing good has ever followed the words ‘we need to talk’, ‘terms of service update’, or ‘by Jonathan Liew’

In the last case, never a truer word spoken. Whether on his 'specialist' topic, sport, or anything else, he's guaranteed to talk bollocks. I remember an especially nauseating piece a while back about how female athletes ought to be prepared to stand back for the stunning and brave cohort.

🤮

Yeah, that's the one! 😡

It has been hammhorraging money for years, but it's all funded by the Scott Trust, so they can stick their fingers in their ears and blah blah blah away in their own little bubble.