UN expert: ‘males must not compete in female sports’ to prevent abuse and injury
Female sport categories should be exclusively accessible to biological females, with men who identify as trans women to compete in an open or male category, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls has found.
The United Nations General Assembly in New York will formally receive the explosive report on Tuesday which demands sports organisations – from the International Olympic Committee to grassroots organised events – “ensure that female categories in organised sport are exclusively accessible to persons whose biological sex is female”.
The UN special rapporteur Reem Alsalem has slapped down both the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic – witnessed recently in Paris – of allowing biological males and competitors with XY chromosomes to compete against females.
Imane Khelif and Lin-Yu-Ting both won Paris Olympic boxing gold medals despite being banned by the International Boxing Federation for having XY chromosomes. In the Paralympics the biologically male Italian runner Valentina Petrillo was allowed to compete in the women’s T12 400m and 200m.
The issue of biological males in female spaces and accumulating female records through self-identification has accelerated in recent years, even filtering down to silent protests about the by concerned females during the Saturday morning community event Park Run.
Ms Alsalem writes in her 24 page report that “in cases where the sex of an athlete is unknown or uncertain, a dignified, swift, non-invasive and accurate sex screening method (such as a cheek swab) or, where necessary for exceptional reasons, genetic testing should be applied to confirm the athlete’s sex.”
She says those competitors who do not wish to compete in the category of their biological sex can participate in sport through the creation of open categories where sports convert the male category into an open category.
Ms Alsalem said there was in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males.
“According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports,’’ she said.
Of utmost concern, Ms Alsalem’s report has found that females have been put at increased risk of sexual harassment, assault, voyeurism and physical and sexual attacks in unisex locker rooms and toilets where sports have removed single sex spaces.
She said the insistence on maintaining female-only spaces, along with safeguarding and risk management protocols, arises from empirical evidence demonstrating that sex offenders tend to be male and that persistent sex offenders go to great lengths to gain access to those they wish to abuse.
She also found that female athletes are also more vulnerable to sustaining serious physical injuries when female-only sports spaces are opened to males, citing examples in volleyball, basketball and soccer including instances of adult males playing in teams of underage girls resulting in concussions broken legs and skull fractures.
According to scientific studies, males have certain performance advantages in sports, she wrote. One study asserts that, even in non-elite sport, “the least powerful man produced more power than the most powerful woman” and states that, where men and women have roughly the same levels of fitness, males’ average punching power has been measured as 162 per cent greater than females.
She found that even where sports federations mandate testosterone suppression it doesn’t eliminate the comparative performance advantages biological males have already acquired and the testosterone levels are at best “not evidence-based, arbitrary and asymmetrically favour males”.
“To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,’’ she wrote.
Further in the report Ms Alsalam notes that women and girls in sports are rarely consulted on the sex-separation issue and they have faced negative repercussions when reclaiming their right to single-sex sport, “in efforts to silence them”.
Australia, along with Canada, is considered an outlier in the protection of women’s spaces, but the country was mentioned in the report for encouraging bystanders to prevent sexual assaults and Gymnastic Australia’s apology to athletes and families who had experienced abuse.
Ms Alsalam refers to various legal mechanisms underpinning her report: Articles 2 and 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; article 2 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, article 1 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Articles 1 and 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, Article 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
She also stressed that under international human rights law, differential treatment on prohibited grounds may not be discriminatory if it is based on reasonable and objective criteria; it pursues a legitimate aim its effects are appropriate and proportional to the legitimate aim pursued and it is the least intrusive option to achieve the intended result. “Maintaining separate-sex sports is a proportional action that corresponds to legitimate aims within the meaning of article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and does not automatically result in the exclusion of transgender persons from sports, nor does it require invasive sex screenings,’’ she wrote.
“When combined with other measures, such as open categories, fairness in sports can be maintained while ensuring the ability of all to participate – a course of action followed by several professional sports associations.”
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Monopolies in the labour market
See Saw Margery Daw,
Jacky shall have a new master;
Jacky shall earn but a penny a day,
Because he can’t work any faster.
The first reference to this rhyme is 1640. It describes an iron law that payment must be related to productivity. This is inevitably so for the economy as a whole, and is even conceded by many of the politicians and IR experts who foster legal machinery to boost workers’ earnings above those that would emerge in a competitive market.
The case rests on ‘market failure’.
The term is bandied about regularly by those who see imperfect outcomes and those who want to change the benefits different parties obtain from market transactions. But this fails to recognise the ‘government failures’ that emerge from alternative approaches.
In fact, labour market failure only truly occurs when there is a form of monopoly in place. Given the hundreds of thousands of different hirers and millions of workers there are very few areas of natural monopoly. These are confined to the labour supply where workers with highly specific skills or talents like rock stars, pipeline welders, and IT systems engineers, (all of whom generally command high remuneration levels). There are however areas where monopolies can be fashioned by preventing market entry, but this requires government policy or acquiescence.
The most notorious area of effective monopoly restraint is in building and construction where violence is used to prevent non-unionised workers offering their services and standover tactics are used against employers who seek to break the union-imposed monopoly. The elevated level of wages and other costs creates a 30 per cent cost premium, a premium that is absent from the non-unionised house building sector.
Under Australia’s IR system, thousands of ‘awards’ determine the remuneration of about 20 per cent of employees (30 years ago it was 80 per cent); registered collective agreements set the wages for a further 40 per cent with individual agreements covering the remaining 40 per cent. Although the average employee earns about a third more than the Award rates, in many areas the Award is the paid rate.
Political attention has focused on different payments for the same job. A union campaign pointed to some airline cabin staff doing the same job on the same plane as others but earning only half as much. Senator Roberts cited mining workers getting paid a $40,000-a-year difference depending on whether they were employed directly or through labour hire. Describing this as ‘wage theft’, he introduced the Fair Work Amendment in 2022 to bring labour hire workers pay levels to the same or greater than directly employed workers. His objective was to overcome ‘a failure of balanced market power’.
These are among countless other examples of apparently anomalous wage outcomes but in all cases the parties involved accepted the contracts willingly. Criticism is targeted at the employer paying some workers less than others – in no cases is there a suggestion that the higher earners are ripping off the employer!
The firm doing the hiring will seek to minimise its outlays. If it is cheaper to do so through contractors that will be the preferred route. In practice, most firms would want a balance between ‘permanent’ employees and workers hired under more flexible contracts. If the contractors do not obtain a premium wage to compensate for losing out on holiday pay loadings and other benefits this means the ‘permanent’ employees’ wages have been pushed above their market rate. Naturally, the workers getting lower remuneration will be envious of their more fortunate fellow workers
The government has now passed the two ‘Closing Loopholes’ Acts. Central to them is ‘same job, same pay’ for labour hire workers and enhanced workplace delegate rights including rights over prospective union members. Yielding to pressures, Qantas is levelling up its different wage settings at a reported annual cost to profits of $60 million.
Aside from loading the dice against employers, the Act introduces additional costs of complexity. In this respect, Freehills quips, ‘Make friends with a good IR lawyer – you will need them.’ The additional costs bring no corresponding economy-wide benefits.
And the ACTU is moving to its next agenda item: scrapping youth wages, illustrating a mindset that the level of wages has no effect on employment levels and no relationship to the productivity of those receiving them.
As the Closing Loopholes Act cannot conceivably have a positive effect on productivity, its goal of re-weighing the labour market outcomes can only be brought about by lowering profits. To the extent that this is successful, it would mean lower new investment levels and further reducing productivity.
For the ALP politicians and the unions, the key issue is to reverse the decline in union membership – down to about 8 per cent in the private sector – by forcing a de facto unionisation of the gig/contractor workforce. Union funding of the ALP, directly and indirectly, gives it a commanding advantage in terms of electoral marketing and one that is being eroded.
Labor’s IR policy adds to other productivity-suppressing economic policies put in place to foster support amongst sections of the economy. These include weaponising environmental regulations to prevent new mining, (while emasculating environmental protections in the case of wind and solar energy); subsidising wind, solar and green hydrogen; and squeezing irrigators’ water availability. The early outcome has been six quarters of declining national productivity.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/monopolies-in-the-labour-market/
*********************************************Biden-Harris Admin Raids FEMA Funds to Resettle Illegal Aliens
Federal spending is hard enough to keep track of at the best of times, but the Biden-Harris administration is highly adept at hiding how it funds its open-borders agenda.
In a cynical budget negotiation tactic, the White House is trying to push through a $40 billion “supplemental” funding bill that holds bailout money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency hostage to sending billions more to Ukraine with insufficient accountability.
It gets worse. If the White House tactic works, and Congress coughs up enough aid to Ukraine that rescue money for FEMA can get through, hundreds of millions of that funding won’t go to disaster-afflicted Americans.
Instead it will go to providing housing, food, health care, and transportation for illegal immigrants through grants to activist nongovernment organizations and “sanctuary” cities.
That’s right. Even though FEMA grants are meant to help taxpaying Americans prepare for and cope with hurricanes, fires, and floods, the Biden-Harris administration has used these same funds to pay activist NGOs to settle migrants illegally in the United States.
FEMA’s major disaster relief and flood insurance programs are already in debt and need to be refilled each year. The White House’s supplemental request uses that as a smokescreen to slip in grant money for their open-border operation.
FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program is already being siphoned for over $332 million “to assist communities receiving noncitizens released from custody,” which means housing migrants here illegally at the border, then transporting them to places such as New York City.
New York has been promised $104 million from this pot, though at a burn rate of $8 million a day, it won’t last long. Big city mayors gripe about a few buses carrying illegal aliens sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but the main train delivering migrants to their sidewalks is driven by the Department of Homeland Security, using FEMA money.
And the Biden-Harris administration is getting even more brazen. FEMA grant money, unlike its Disaster Relief and Flood Insurance programs, doesn’t require the president to declare a federal disaster—which would at least highlight the self-defeating results of his policies.
So it should come as no surprise that DHS, in its fiscal 2024 budget, already asked for a directly appropriated $83.5 million for FEMA Shelter and Services Program grants to “nonprofits and local entities to provide support to noncitizens released from DHS custody.”
Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security asked for $800 million—$650 million more than the year before—“for communities to support migrants who have been released from DHS custody pending the outcome of their immigration proceedings.”
Bear in mind that with the asylum system backlogged as never before, this outcome would be far in the future in most cases. The money would come from a $4 billion “Southwest Border Contingency” fund in DHS’ proposed fiscal 2024 budget.
In plain English, this means that having created a giant magnet for illegal immigration, the Biden-Harris administration wants to continue to burn your tax dollars to sustain hundreds of thousands of people who entered the U.S. illegally, for an indefinite period. To be clear, not only did these people have no right to enter the country, but they stand little chance of getting asylum even after a due process lasting many years.
Naturally, Biden faces resistance in Congress. Republicans have seen DHS use appropriated money to facilitate mass illegal entry over the past two years, and they are wise to the White House’s attempt to ramp this up in the fiscal 2024 budget.
Hence the attempt to Trojan-horse the border-related funds into the Ukraine-FEMA bundle. In the supplemental request, DHS is asking not only for $203 million more for Customs and Border Protection’s industrial migrant processing machine—which includes tent housing, transportation, and medical care—but also $600 million more for the FEMA Shelter and Services Program grants.
In a recent hearing before Congress, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell tried to “clarify for the record that FEMA is not an immigration agency.” Yet she also proclaimed her support for Biden’s Southwest Border Contingency Fund, which would channel money to FEMA to spend on services to immigrants here illegally.
But as a firefighter for two decades, Criswell surely knows which arsonist set the dumpster fire on the border that her agency’s cash-hose is now being pointed at.
All this only adds to the reasons that Congress should oppose this corrupt deal. Tying a FEMA top-up to Ukraine aid—in the middle of hurricane season, and shortly after Hawaii’s deadly Maui fires—shows that the Biden-Harris administration will maintain open borders at any price.
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The Left’s Word-Shaming Can’t Conceal ‘Third World’ Effects of Open Borders
Politically incorrect words don’t kill, but Venezuelan gangs do.
On Saturday, former President Donald Trump warned rallygoers in a small Wisconsin town that if Vice President Kamala Harris “is reelected, your town and every town … will be transformed into a Third World hellhole. ”
Trump repeatedly warns that Biden-Harris open borders are turning New York into a “Third World nation” and America into a “Third World” disaster.
Left-wing elites are apoplectic over Trump’s use of “Third World.” Never mind the violence perpetrated by migrant gangs and the societal disorder caused by open borders. The Left‘s problem is with “Third World.”
NPR calls the term “offensive.” Foreign Policy columnist Howard French calls it “utterly racist rhetoric.” This is an intentional distraction.
People watching their neighborhoods being degraded know what they are seeing with their own eyes. They have no problem calling the conditions “Third World.”
New York City Council member Vickie Paladino, a Republican, says, “We’ve got a Third World country now here in New York City, with Third World crime.” She estimates that 60% of the arrests in her Queens district are “illegal aliens.”
Queens resident Ramses Frias, a Democrat-turned-Republican, complains that commercial streets are being turned into a “Third World market,” with illegal vendors hawking stolen merchandise, and half-naked sex workers strutting in plain sight of children walking to school. Roosevelt Avenue is so overrun with hookers that it’s dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts” and looks like Bangkok’s sordid Patpong market.
The Trump campaign is also getting backlash for posting a comparison of two images on X—one of a quiet, clean street lined with homes, and the other of hundreds of newly arrived migrants, eating and sleeping huddled on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.
The Trump War Room caption reads: “Import the Third World. Become the Third World.”
The NAACP said of the post, “They are showing all of us just how racist they are.”
That’s preposterous.
Bedlam is being imported to the area around the hotel, once a Manhattan landmark. Businesses are fleeing. The migrants pictured happen to be mostly black, but commuters—black as well as white—dread walking past the chaos to get to Grand Central Station.
Trump is also being bashed as “racist” for calling migrants who rape and murder “animals.” On Saturday, he said, “Just this month, right here in this beautiful town, police arrested an illegal alien member of a savage Venezuelan prison gang known as Tren de Aragua” for “holding a mother and daughter captive against their will and sexually assaulting them again, and again, and again.”
Trump called the alleged assailant “an animal.”
He also used “animal” to describe the Venezuelan illegal who raped, bludgeoned, and killed nursing student Laken Riley. But Reuters accused Trump of wrongdoing for “resorting to the degrading rhetoric he has employed time and again.”
Ridiculous. The issue isn’t Trump’s choice of words. It’s loss of life caused by Harris’ open border.
The Left elite also turn a blind eye to the impact of prostitution on business owners and families trapped in close proximity to the brothels.
Incredibly, most Democratic politicians—except New York City Mayor Eric Adams—align themselves with the sex workers. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Queens district is overrun with street prostitution, has insisted in the past that “sex work is work” and generally supported decriminalization. Rep. Jerrold Nadler supports decriminalization, even as prostitution spreads in his Manhattan district.
A Democratic bill in Albany, N.Y., would decriminalize buying and selling sex, operating a brothel, and sex tourism—never mind the impact on neighborhoods. “This legislation would make NYC a major sex tourism destination,” warns Sonia Ossorio, of the National Organization for Women, who has documented the explosion of migrant prostitution.
Last week, The Washington Post accused Trump of alarming voters by depicting an “imaginary and frightening world.” Frightening, yes. But not imaginary.
Felonies are up 35% in New York City since 2019, and an estimated 75% of arrests in midtown Manhattan for assault and other crimes are illegal migrants. Street sex sells for $50 for fellatio, and $100 for vaginal penetration, according to NOW.
The situation is Third World, and you’ll get four more years of this mayhem if Harris is elected president.
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My main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
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