Five days ago I posted a tweet from Richard Dawkins, saying that his Facebook account had been suspended because he had tweeted that Olympic boxers who were biologically male (both of whom have since won gold medals in the welterweight and 57 kg category) should not be boxing in the women’s event.
Here’s his tweet:
Because there didn’t seem to be absolute proof that this was the reason his FB account was suspended, I asked him about this, and he gave me the story, which he’s now posted on his Substack site.
In short, Dawkins was wrong—Facebook said his account had been suspended because it was hacked and had simply been taken down for some kind of repairs, perhaps to strengthen the anti-hacking features. At any rate, he apologized for criticizing Facebook. And I, of course, must also apologize for reproducing what he said because that claim was erroneous. I didn’t do due diligence.
Here’s Dawkins’s apology (click to read)
And here’s the text of his explanation and apology (my bolding):
On July 30th my Facebook account was closed down, with no reason given. Associates of mine got in touch with a kind lawyer (@Steinhoefel), very experienced in exactly this kind of case, and he offered, pro bono, to negotiate with Facebook on my behalf. I appreciated his generosity and accepted his offer. He approached Facebook and received no reply.
Because no reason was given for the shut-down, and no reply to the lawyer’s overtures, I am sorry to say we jumped to the wrong conclusion: might it have some connection with my contemporaneous stand against genetically male boxers fighting women in the Olympics? I then tweeted what turned out to be a false suspicion of Facebook’s motives, and I deeply regret this.
On August 10th , I received an e-mail from an official at Facebook, saying he was looking into the question. He sent me a second e-mail the same day giving a full explanation. Facebook’s records showed, he explained, that one of the admins with access to my account had been hacked as long ago as June 22nd, and the hacker added “a flurry of unauthorized admins”. Their subsequent behaviour alerted Facebook, who closed the account down while they worked on the problem. My Facebook account was restored on August 11th , and I am very grateful.
We knew none of this until August 10 th, eleven days after the account was shut down. Now I am left in the mortifying position of having unjustly imputed an ignoble motive to Facebook. I must say it’s a pity that whoever decided to close my account (certainly not the kind official who eventually was brought in to investigate the problem) omitted to get in touch at the time. Nevertheless I accept responsibility, and publish this to correct the record and apologise.
This is the way a scientist should behave, admitting that he jumped to conclusions, even though he did initially float the possibility that his account hadn’t been taken down because of his tweets. (What made me wary was that I didn’t understand why a Facebook account should be closed because of something said on another and rival platform: Twitter).
Of course the Dawkins haters won’t accept this apology nor acknowledge the gracious admission of error, but how many people on the internet ever admit that they were wrong?
And I too, as I said, must share in this apology. I was wrong to post Dawkins’s tweet without thorough checking, and I accept Facebook’s explanation.
Finally, note that Richard does not retract the implication that there were biologically male boxers competing against women in the Olympics. I don’t retract what I said, either: that the likelihood is that at least two such boxers were unfairly competing against women in the Olympics. More and more evidence is accumulating that these boxers were indeed XY males, perhaps with a disorder of sex development (see posts by Emma Hilton, Colin Wright, and Carole Hooven).
I’m glad that was resolved and that Prof. Dawkins was not being penalized for expressing a valid view on XY people boxing as women.
I would think a good way to solve this specific issue for this sport would be to ban boxing in the Olympics and overall. It’s just too dangerous.
Once again you have shown what an honorable person you are. In this day and age it is rare to see someone admit to an honest mistake. Thank you for setting a high standard for your readers to try and emulate.
“Facebook said his account had been suspended because it was hacked and had simply been taken down for some kind of repairs, perhaps to strengthen the anti-hacking features.”
And
“Facebook’s records showed, he explained, that one of the admins with access to my account had been hacked as long ago as June 22nd, and the hacker added “a flurry of unauthorized admins” […]”
Meta is manipulated by the ESG cartel. DEI hiring is a fraud to justify hiring activists. The answers (with “hacked”, which should be “cracked”, see Eric S. Raymond for this distinction – but this is negligible), are not satisfying to me.
Strategic tests of activist manipulation are easily concealed with, in the words of H. L Mencken :
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and
wrong.”
H. L. Mencken
From “The Divine Afflatus”, section IV in
Prejudices : Second Series
1921
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53467/pg53467.txt
I think Dawkins is a high value target and if an example could be made of him – it would be an effective Facebook user intimidation.
Cui bono?
ESG: “Elvish Spirit Guide”? 🙂
Errmm…
Environmental Social & Governance
… but it does makes me wonder…
Thanks for clarifying this.
Also (and this is in no way criticism of Dawkins or our host) it’s unfortunate that genderists have so corrupted the meaning of “male” (and “female”) to mean “man” or “masculine” that even evolutionary biologists feel compelled to add “biological” before a word that has only and specifically biological (not cultural) meaning.
It should be enough to just say “male”.
Indeed, but given the degree of deliberate confusion engendered around these terms, for the time being I’ll have to use “natal” or “biological” as an adjective.
Good for both Dawkins and you for admitting the error and informing everyone.
+1.
First, kudos to both Jerry and Richard Dawkins for owning up to error.
Though, personally, I’m not sure I fully believe Facebook. If they thought it hacked, would they really take it down (making it invisible) rather than simply locking it (preventing changes)? Maybe they would, if the hackers had added objectionable content, but there’s no suggestion of objectionable content having appeared. Also, would they really take down an account they thought hacked, but then not email or contact the account owner in the next 10 days? Well, maybe. I know little of Facebook policies, so maybe I’m wrong to be suspicious of their explanation.
+1
Yes, when was FB going to get around to informing Professor Dawkins? Informing him in a timely manner likely would have prevented the situation.
And +1
Yes, this is absolutely the fault of FB. They didn’t act perfectly in this situation.
My guess, an activist type within FB shut down Dawkin’s account and this was damage control.
Why Facebook didn’t say why they closed off access (making it appear to have been deleted) is unclear.
It’s a free service and you get what you pay for?
Not very good on Facebook’s part.
Very clear explanation and apology. Thank you!
Thank you both for your apologies.
And yes, both those boxers are male.
A lot of the usual suspects are proclaiming “But Kehlif isn’t even trans, she was assigned female at birth”. When exactly did that become a relevant metric for anything to do with sex/gender issues in the world of woke?
Colin Wright and others have said the purpose of the activists in bringing up DSDs in the abstract is to queer the whole notion of sex for the sake of transgender ideology. This is exactly what they’ve done here with a flesh-and-blood one.
+1
Abstract->Negation->Concrete->[repeat]
Hegel’s Dialectic.
History uses people and then discards them [quote claimed to be Hegel’s, but I cannot find source ]
It isn’t. The Olympics apparently used, as criterion for “sex category” in boxing, simply the sex recorded on the athlete’s passport. That is subject to all kinds of mistakes. Kehlif doesn’t seem to be at fault here since he was raised as a girl, so the IOC is the one responsible.
Emma Hilton/Beetles gave a talk with Jon Kay at Quilette this morning about the whole kerfuffle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crab-8JwWY4
Scandals like this at the top level are excellent as they show in relief the horrible shadows the various woke panics have caused.
In this case the trans cult.
D.A.
NYC
Bravo for recognizing a cult by what it does – including to manipulate and abuse the innocent, such as those with genetic disorders.
The term “cult” in this case is not flippant – it is a precise use. In this context, “trans-” is a verb for, as the 1996 book is titled, Body Alchemy (Loren Cameron).
Alchemy is a Hermetic practice – as in ancient cults, rituals, etc. drawn from The Corpus Hermeticum (ca. 3 AD) which can be found in art and literature.
Taschen has a real cool book of reprinted artwork on alchemy, and one can find peculiar male—female pairings, etc. I’ll have to get it again…
I had my email hacked some months ago. Got note when my dad sent mer a weird email about how I was asking for money in the weirdest way possible!
I’m not sure why Dawkins is apologising when the whole shemozzle wasn’t his fault. In the absence of communication from Facebook, the conclusion he reached wasn’t an unreasonable one.
But as to the substantive issue, there seem to be an awful lot of people getting very upset about very little. These boxer are not trans, they were born female, raised female, and are, to all intents and purposes, female. Yes, they may have a development irregularity, but how is their DSD any different to DSD (different speed development) or DHD (different height development), and so on? Let’s face it, all sporting success is based on some sort of genetic advantage or another. Why should some be allowed and not others?
Those refusing to accept this only have one way out — get rid of competitive women’s sport all together and just have a single free-for-all category. That would (hopefully) certainly be seen as throwing the baby out with the bath water…
As best we can tell they were not “born fermale” and are not “to all intents and purposes, female”. That is, they are males with a DSD not females with a DSD, and have undergone male puberty with all the advantages that bestows.
If we’re going to accept that men, in general, have big advantages over women in most sports, then we need to exclude such as these boxers from the women’s category.
The genetic advantage a given woman might have over other women is fair enough within the women’s category, but the genetic advantage that a man has over women is not fair enough, else why have women’s sport at all?
Exactly; succinct and well put.
To belabor the point, according to all available evidence as I understand it, “born female” is incorrect. This is one case where “assigned (or, better, ‘diagnosed’) female at birth” is more accurate. Apparently born with undescended testicular tissue that secreted high levels of testosterone at puberty. This pubertal testosterone surge is the very cause of the general sexual differences in size and strength, and hence the very existence of separate sports categories for men and women.
I just prefer to say *misidentified* as female when born. The “assigned female at birth” plays too much into the hands of the gender woo camp.
Indeed.
Note the hypocrisy: trans-rights activists usually use “assigned male/female at birth” to indicate that that might not correspond to what sex one really is, but in this case they use it to indicate that it somehow determines the true sex. But, of course, logic was never their strong point.
No I don’t think this is the best we can tell. There was apparently a test performed by the IBA that has not been made public. The IBA is not exactly a trustworthy organisation. Until the boxers were banned for failing the test, nobody questioned that they are female, including at the previous Olympics. Imane Khelif has been boxing in the female category for six years. There were no objections until last year.
I’m staying on the fence until we have some reliable evidence.
Because they have XY chromosomes and testosterone, which means they must have testes and had male puberty. That makes them male for all intents and purposes, not female, no matter how they were raised based on what they looked like at birth.
Contrary to your assertion, it’s those who do “accept” that these men are female who have only one way out which is to end women’s sport. Women’s sport is not credible (or safe for women) if men can be deemed women for purposes of competition.
“Different speed, different height” as an argument for not minding males in women’s sport should have a name. I propose we call it the Michael Phelps gambit.
Those various variations while often significant are multiplied in effect between men and women so that it becomes obvious that males have a significant advantage, across the board, over females. The differences within the categories are not the same as those without.
And it is possible to have this category because it is easily determined. Male or female. Males after puberty have levels of testosterone 10’s to 100’s times higher that females.
There is no overlap W 15 – 70. Men 300 – 1000
That is why the category exists. And must exist.
Sorry, but I think you are grossly exaggerating when you say that the boxers are “to all intents and purposes” female. No, they are not: they are males by definition, they have testes and XY chromosomes and went through male puberty. They may have ambiguous genitalia, but they grained the athletic advantages of being male.
In fact, you are the one suggesting that we get rid of sex-segregated competition since everyone in sports has some kind of genetic advantage over others. This leads YOU to the conclusion that everyone should compete with everyone else and then. . . . goodbye women’s sports.
Congratulations to both of you. Your credibility rating has improved.
I think the error of attributing blame, if it is an error, by Jerry and Richard is moderated by Facebook not being upfront about what was happening.
It was a quite reasonable assumption given the state of play today.
So when do you think we’ll get an “I got it wrong” apology from woke activists about…well… ANYTHING?
I have found the level of dismissive self-righteousness in the MSM over questioning the status of these boxers to be astonishing. Any implication, much less assertion, that these people are not female has been derided as hateful and bigoted. One headline heatedly dismissed these “wrongful” accusations, while another lamented the “misconceptions” about the boxers’ sex. No balance, no curiosity, no sense of inquiry, just a rush to judgment of anyone asking questions.
I guess I am just naive enough to have thought that this might actually get people thinking and looking more closely at what’s happening to women’s sport. More fool me.
This is also a good indicator of woke bias at Wikipedia. The current version says:
“Following Khelif’s victory over Italy’s Angela Carini during the 2024 Olympic Games, misinformation surfaced on social media about her gender. False assertions about her gender were fuelled by Khelif’s disqualification …”
Note the “misinformation”, the “False assertions” and the idea that it’s about “gender” when it’s actually about sex. It continues:
“No medical evidence that Khelif has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.[6][7][8] Khelif was born female.[9][10]”
Wow, that Wikipedia entry checks all the right boxes for scary words: misinformation, Russian-led, bullying, JK Rowling, hate speech. I was disappointed that they left out “Republicans pounced…”. They also use the qualifier “published” in the sentence “No medical evidence that Khelif has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published”. I don’t believe that athletic testing results are ever “published”.
What the article doesn’t say: that sex is different from gender, that males going through puberty have a distinct advantage over females, that while she lives as a female that she is a male, or that female athletes are tested regularly for banned substances that would increase muscle mass or that would in other ways give them a non-biological boost. I don’t understand the IOCs lack of testing, unless they’ve totally given up on all testing. In fact, the 2022 Winter Olympics US figure skating team was given gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics specifically because of performance-enhancing drugs that showed up in one of the Russian athlete’s tests.
Therefore my conclusion is that one of these statements must be true:
1. The IOC is not testing either this particular athlete or all athletes so they have no evidence whatsoever that these two boxing competitors are indeed male. We will know this at some point if they end up disqualifying even one competitor in any sport due to banned substances.
2. The IOC knows that he’s male and is covering it up.
If Imane Khelif’s quixotic threat to sue ever came to anything, he’d be shooting himself in the foot because he’d have to submit to a chromosome test. This would legally establish that he is genetically male, thereby undermining his case. On the other hand, she is probably phenotypically female where external genitalia are concerned, and this is no doubt why she thinks she is female. But what really matters is that his Y-chromosome comes into its own in phenotypic characteristics that make a difference in the boxing ring, such as reach and punching strength – characteristics typical of a post-pubertal male. While admitting that it’s hard luck on her because she, egged on by the fanatically loyal Algerian crowd, sincerely believes she’s a woman, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that he should be deprived of his Olympic gold medal: he couldn’t have won it but for his Y-chromosome. His superior capacity to slaughter real women almost certainly stems from the hormonal effects of the Y-chromosome. And that is both unfair and dangerous.
Hemant Mehta is jumping up-and-down in anger again. He’s REALLY furious that the likes of Richard Dawkins are sticking to science, biology, and facts, as opposed to propaganda and Lysenkoist dogma.