Rachael

Mum. Lawyer. Nature. Love. Springers. Remainer. Travel. Fairness. #Kindness

[Hannah Price @HannahPrice___]

Latest ✍️ A further 65 women have contacted the BBC saying they were abused by Mohamed Al Fayed, with allegations stretching far beyond Harrods and as far back as 1977.

https://t.co/FMgbs6CQvs

[ParalympicsGB @ParalympicsGB]

Not bad, not bad at all.
#ParalympicsGB 🇬🇧

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

‘According to a new book about Musk’s takeover of Twitter by two New York Times journalists, the platform’s new owner wanted Twitter/X to be more like Pavel Durov’s Telegram, which had an user base of 800m and only 30 staff

Durov’s arrest, in Musk’s mind, is an act of censorship rather than one of law enforcement—because, in the Tucker Carlson/Musk world, free speech trumps all, and there are absolutely no harms that should be weighed in the balance against it. A platform with three staff per 100m users is literally a lawless public space. Good luck with John Stuart Mill’s “free and open fight” for truth there.’

https://t.co/NkDU8o1Ayv

[Rachael @RWellby]

@Juliest101 @KirstieMAllsopp Agree. Sheltering kids from risk, when they're capable of taking it, only fuels the anxious generation. Supporting kids in taking reasonable risks, boosts confidence and helps grow skills. It isn't for every 15 yr old, but good parenting is knowing what works for your child.

[Helen Staniland @helenstaniland]

From the Amnesty website. It's just insulting to the women and girls of Afghanistan - and actually everywhere - to even hint at their oppression under the Taliban being due to 'identifying as a girl' rather than being born female. @amnesty

[Habib Khan @HabibKhanT]

The Taliban’s new decree bans women’s voices from being heard by men outside their family. This regime has progressively banned women from work, education, travel, media, and public life, reducing their existence to mere reproductive functions with no voice or face.

[Rachael @RWellby]

@GadSaad This isn't misinformation, it's incitement to racial hatred, a crime in the UK.

[pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism]

I absolutely despise essay-posting but as the co-owner of the outlet (@reduxx) that broke the news about Khelif and Lin and started this wildfire, I feel compelled to put to bed some of the bullshit surrounding this story.

A rapid-fire FAQ:

1. "L & K are just women with high testosterone!"

Khelif and Lin were never tested for their testosterone levels.

The claims that they were disqualified from the 2023 Women's World Boxing Championship due to simple testosterone abnormalities were made by their respective national sporting bodies, who, obviously, have some motivation to lie here.

2. "L & K have female ID!"

Khelif and Lin are not believed to be transgender, and @reduxx made that VERY clear in our July 28 article.

They are believed to be impacted by a Difference of Sexual Development, in which there is a developmental abnormality in secondary sex characteristics. This is a medical condition which can manifest with children being born with ambiguous or disfigured genitalia. Male children impacted by DSDs are often "assigned female at birth" due to these genital defects, as there is a genuine assumption they are girls.

Thus, their identification documents would be completely irrelevant in this case. As is the fact they were "raised as girls." That's entirely expected for male children with DSDs.

Even more so for male children with DSDs in socially conservative countries.

Is a boy without a penis more likely to be raised as a boy or a girl? Exactly.

3. "The IBA never said they had XY chromosomes!"

On March 25, 2023, IBA President Umar Kremlev said that the boxers disqualified at the championships had XY chromosomes. He said this in a statement to TASS News.

There were only two boxers disqualified at the championships: Lin and Khelif.

4. "But Kremlev could be lying!"

Over the last 72 hours, the IBA has released two separate statements confirming that Khelif and Lin were not subject to testosterone testing, but had instead been subjected to a separate test validated by two independent laboratories.

That test confirmed they were not eligible to compete in women's boxing as per the IBA guidelines.

Crucially, the IBA defines "woman" as "an individual with XX chromosomes." In their guidelines, they also indicate that the gender tests they use to determine if a person is eligible to compete with women is a chromosomal test, not a hormone test.

In their second statement, the IBA condemned the IOC for allowing Khelif and Lin to proceed as they believed it was putting female boxers at risk and that they did not support "boxing between the genders."

5. "Why doesn't the IBA release the test!"

They cannot. It is protected medical information. They would be sued.

Khelif and Lin, however, can agree to have the laboratories release those tests themselves... Why haven't they?

6. "The IBA didn't let L & K appeal their disqualification!"

Yes they did. They have no choice in the matter. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is a fully independent tribunal which oversees all disputes in elite athletics. Every athlete has a right to bring a case to the CAS.

Lin did not challenge the disqualification.

Khelif challenged the disqualification but withdrew the appeal before it could proceed through the court.

Please ask yourself why. If they were genuinely female, why would they have chosen to refuse their opportunity to establish that in an irrefutable and legally binding way at a fully independent venue? Literally none of this would have happened had they simply submitted their tests to the CAS.

Buuuut... Consider that all decisions at the CAS are public information. It was through a CAS challenge that the world became aware that Caster Semenya had XY chromosomes, for example.

If Khelif and Lin had proceeded through the CAS, there would have been irrefutable evidence, documented by an independent body, that they were either male or female.

So why? Why did they not want the CAS to examine their tests? Why did they not want this information to be public? I think the reason is obvious.

7. "But the IOC approved their eligibility for 2024!"

The IOC stopped sex testing athletes in 1999. Since then, they have deferred to individual sporting bodies to ensure athletes were eligible.

HOWEVER, for the purposes of the 2024 Paris Olympics, there is no formal oversight body for boxing. This is the first time this ever happened.

As a result, the IOC created an ad-hoc boxing unit to temporarily oversee the boxing competitions in Paris. This unit has no guidelines for gender eligibility, and has apparently just been allowing boxers to compete "as females" if they have female gender markers on their passports/legal documents.

8. "The IBA is corrupt and cannot be trusted!"

The IOC has long had an issue with the IBA because the IBA has refused to disqualify Russian athletes on the basis of their national identity.

Claims of the IBA's "corruption" can basically be summarized to "Russia bad, Russians evil." The IBA has literally no history of bullshitting about the sex of boxers involved and it doesn't benefit them in any kind of way to do so.

9. "The IBA only disqualified L & K because they beat Russian boxers at the 2023 championships!"

No they did not. I started seeing this weird, completely false claim circulating over the last 24 hours.

Khelif beat Thailand's Janjaem Suwannapheng and was set to compete against China's Yang Liu for gold in the Welterweight category.

Lin beat Bulgaria's Svetlana Kamenova Staneva for bronze in the Featherweight category.

They were scheduled to fight no Russian boxers in either one of their categories, and only one Russian boxer won a gold medal in the entire championship (Anastasiia Demurchian, Light Middleweight).

India won the most gold medals (4) at the 2023 Women's Championship. China won the most medals overall (7). Kazakhstan won the second most medals overall (6). Russia only won 3 medals at the championship.

Also worth noting that another Taiwanese boxer, Huang Hsiao-wen, won gold in the Bantamweight category. So for all the Taiwanese mouthpieces claiming Lin's disqualification was just "discrimination against Taiwan"... lol no.

10. "L & K were only singled out because they don't look feminine!"

This idea that Lin and Khelif were singled out for not meeting some "western feminine beauty standard" is atrocious and quite easily refutable when you look at literally any of their competitors, most of whom do not meet that arbitrary standard themselves because boxing is a physically demanding sport for robust people, male or female.

Below is Khadija El-Mardi of Morocco, for example, who likely would be accused of failing to meet this supposed "western feminine beauty standard." El-Mardi won gold in the Heavyweight category at the 2023 World Championships. She is advancing to the quarter-finals in Paris as we speak. She's one of the best female boxers out there.

She is a woman. Her features and tall stature literally do not matter. She is biologically female. Sex testing would return an XX.

Women are adult human females. This is true regardless of their external appearance.

Likewise, men are adult human males. This is true regardless of abnormalities or defects in their secondary sex characteristics.

[Femi @Femi_sorry]

How we can call ourselves a "democracy", if an elected MP can lose their seat, if they don't swear unconditional allegiance to an unelected royal?

Democracy comes from the ancient Greek: "People power". Not "Bend the knee"!

Clive Lewis should not have been put in that position!

[Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky]

26-year-old Kyle Clifford is being hunted by police.
It’s a fast moving situation and there’s a lot we don’t know.
But there is one thing that we DO know. And it’s depressingly, devastatingly familiar.
Three woman are dead.
They were killed in their home.
A mum, she was 61, and her two girls, 25 and 28, both in their twenties - that decade when you’re working out who you want to be and where you want to go with your life.
But for them, that’s now over.
A woman is killed by a man every three days in the United Kingdom.
That number has been remarkably consistent for the last twenty years.
Women are also much more likely to be killed by someone they know - two thirds of them are killed by a current or former partner.
“Domestic” – that word that somehow doesn’t feel adequate – because terror can also happen in the home.
Remember the three women killed at home in Bushey were still alive when the emergency services got there.
Yvette Cooper – the new Home Secretary – has said the killings are “truly shocking” – and she’s being kept fully updated on the case.
During the campaign, she said that violence against women and girls will be treated as a national emergency under Labour.
And less than a week into the job… three women killed at home. It certainly feels like an emergency.

[Rachael @RWellby]

@DrProudman Please everyone, consider supporting your local women's shelter if you're able. So much incredible work goes on supporting victims and educating on male violence and under funded as always. 😔 https://t.co/vxG0Eyw4Zu

[Rachael @RWellby]

@supertanskiii Please consider supporting your local women's shelter if you're able, so much work to be done supporting victims and educating on the issue of male violence. 😞 https://t.co/vxG0EywCP2

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

I’m stunned. I really mean that.

Rishi Sunak has, since his loss, transformed into an eloquent, measured, witty, gracious, sombre statesman who is truly interesting to listen to… attentively.

Where was this man before? I’m asking in all seriousness.

[Lisa Timoney/Kate Storey/Naomi Williams @LTimoneyWrites]

Can you #help please? My elderly parents have gone missing in #Venice They got separated & my dad (with Alzheimer’s) has both their phones. They didn’t arrive back at the pick up point & no one knows where they are. They’re called Bronwen and Stan. Please share!

[Beth Rigby @BethRigby]

NEW: senior Lib Dem source tells me they think LDs will take Harpenden (for the 1st time in 100 years) and Esher (Dominic Raab's former seat)

[Edwina Currie @Edwina_Currie]

It wasn't a cake, Tom.
It was lots of parties.
It was allowing them to happen during lockdown.
It was employing dozens of witless idiots in Number 10 who thought it didn't matter.
It's about trust, Tom.
And I'm a Tory.

[My Life My Say @mylifemysay]

🚨 BREAKING: As of 8PM, 450,315 people registered to vote today alone! There are 4 critical hours left to #RegisterToVote so tell your friends, tell your nan, tell your pets (maybe not your pets).

Don't get caught out, register now: https://t.co/ayK8L7Cb78

#GiveAnX 🗳️

[Rachael @RWellby]

The world owes a great debt to Stormy Daniels. Let's hope this is the start of a changing tide.

[Channel 4 Dispatches @C4Dispatches]

“All I see is destruction.”

@Hind_Gaza is a Palestinian journalist reporting from Gaza. Over 200 days, Hind and other Palestinian journalists filmed Israel’s military assault on the Gaza strip for a @C4Dispatches special - made by @Basement_Films.

[Jess Phillips @jessphillips]

He's standing down isn't he.