Opinion
Female UN expert calls for ban on men in women’s sports, gets accused of ‘demeaning language’
Reem Alsalem
From LifeSiteNews
By Ordo Iuris
“Giving men so-called hormone blockers so they can compete with women – as some sports leagues do – doesn’t work”
United Nations Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, in a recent report, called on countries and sporting organization authorities not to allow “men who identify as women” to compete in female sports competitions.
- The U.S. representative to the UN accused Alsalem of using “degrading language” and of “bullying and gender misinformation.”
- Delegates from Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Mexico, Colombia, and other Western countries raised similar objections.
- “Gender should be understood in its ordinary sense as biological sex,” Alsalem said during the report’s presentation, citing the agreement from the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing.
- Alsalem’s approach challenges the assumptions of Western and UN-backed gender policies, which are based on gender as a social construct unrelated to biological sex.
In her latest report to the General Assembly, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem, called on countries to stop allowing “men who identify as women” to compete against women and girls in sports. The U.S. representative to the UN, wearing a badge on his jacket with the colors of the LBGT and trans lobbies, accused her of using “degrading language” against trans athletes, as well as spreading “gender misinformation” and “bullying.” Delegates from Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Mexico, Colombia, and other Western countries made similar accusations.
READ: Women’s sports are under siege by male participants, and no one seems to be stopping it
According to the report, allowing men declaring female gender into women’s competitions also leads to women and girls experiencing “extreme psychological distress,” due to physical imbalance with rivals, loss of fair competition and educational and economic opportunities, and violations of privacy (e.g., in locker rooms). Alsalem says that, in recent years, more than 600 female athletes have lost some 890 medals in more than 400 competitions, in 29 different sports, due to policies allowing men to compete against women.
“Giving men so-called hormone blockers so they can compete with women – as some sports leagues do – doesn’t work,” Alsalem said. It does not reduce men’s natural advantage, and strong hormone drugs can even harm an athlete’s health.
“Human rights language and principles must continue to be consistent with science and facts, including biological ones,” the expert argued. “Multiple studies have given evidence that athletes born males have a performance advantage in sports throughout their lives although this is most apparent after puberty.” Alsalem also mentioned the risk of injury to female athletes, which is knowingly increased when competing with biological men, whether they identify as men or women, the physical harm suffered by women against male athletes can be characterized as violence, according to the special rapporteur.
“Sex must be understood in its ordinary meaning to mean biological sex,” Alsalem said, citing a declaration from the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. She continued by stating that “sex based on biology” has been established in the international human-rights catalog, as opposed to the concept of “gender.” According to Alsalem, the two categories should not be confused.
Julia Książek, of the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law, stated:
Reem Alsalem identified a major problem that became fully apparent at the Paris Olympics this year, when it became evident that women were no longer competing against women, but also men who ‘identify’ as women. The UN expert rightly noted in her report that athletes’ mental identification does not in any way affect their biological predisposition, which they have by being men. This type of situation is the result of lobbying in international law for the concept of ‘sex with social context’ – gender. The first event raising questions about the use of the ‘gender’ construct was the 1995 World Conference on the Rights of Women in Beijing. The debate around its final declaration stirred controversy precisely because of the definition of gender, listed in the text as ‘gender’ rather than ‘sex.’ Under pressure from a large group of UN member states, the conference chairman clearly stated that the word gender was used in the ordinary, generally accepted sense in which it appears in UN documents, recalling the non-binding declarations attached to the final declarations of UN conferences in the early 1990s. He also stressed that there was no intention to give a new meaning to the term that would differ from the generally accepted one. Reem Alsalem also noted this in her report.
The Ordo Iuris Institute has long opposed the gender lobby in sports. In 2020, the Institute’s experts prepared an analysis of a draft UN resolution, which maintained that athletes should be allowed to participate in competitions according to their subjective feelings about gender.
This article was originally published on Ordo Iuris’ English-language page. Edited and reprinted with permission.
Amidst rough seas, you need a steady sailor.
Not just what’s happening, but what’s coming next.
“I think we’re going to see things that we haven’t seen in our lifetime in the Middle East,” he said.
This could go one of two ways, neither is small.
Victor Davis Hanson isn’t known for hyperbole. So when he opens with a warning like this, people pay attention:
“We are at an historic time in the Middle East,” he said.
“Never in our lifetimes have we been closer to a complete revolutionary fervor that gives promise of normalcy for the Middle East. And never have we been in more danger of seeing the entire region blow up.”
The paradox is striking.
Peace may be closer than ever, but so is total collapse.
And at the center of it all is the unfolding conflict between Iran and Israel, which Hanson called “surreal.”
Reflecting on the rapid collapse of Iran’s regional dominance, Hanson admitted that even a few years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable.
“If we had this conversation five years ago,” he said, “and I said to you, the Iranian nation that is huge compared to Israel, ten times the population, the Iranian nation has lost all control of the Houthi terrorists, and they are themselves neutered…”
He pointed to a chain reaction across the region: Iran’s proxy forces in Gaza and the West Bank have been neutralized. Hezbollah, once a feared military force, is now dormant.
“They’re gone as a Hamas, as a fighting force. The formidable, the terrifying Hezbollah cadres, they’re inert.”
The chaos in Syria, once a stronghold of Iranian influence, now seems to be working against Tehran.
“There is no more Syria, the Assad dynasty, the pro-Iranian, the Syria. It’s in chaos. But whatever the chaos is, seems to be anti-Iranian.”
The collapse is strategic, not just symbolic. Hanson noted that the so-called “Shia crescent” connecting Tehran to the Mediterranean is no longer intact.
“Lebanon is free of Iranian influence. So is Syria. Gaza, a de facto, will be.”
Even Russia, once a key ally, is no longer a player in the region.
“It’s tied down in Ukraine,” he said.
“Iran itself, the formidable powerhouse of the Middle East that evoked terror all over, has no defenses.”
Over the course of just five days, Israel has launched a targeted military campaign to dismantle Iran’s strategic infrastructure.
According to Hanson, the damage has been sweeping.
“They have dismantled all of the Iranian missile defenses. They have dismantled the terrorist hierarchy. They have dismantled the people who are responsible for the nuclear program.”
And yet, there’s risk.
“The Iranians have sent over 400 ballistic missiles and drones into Israel,” he said, “and 90 percent are stop. But that 10 percent gets through.”
Which brings us to the turning point.
All of this only matters if it ends with Iran’s theocracy on the brink of collapse.
If it doesn’t, everything that’s been gained could be erased.
“All of this chaos and all of this war will be for not if Iran’s theocracy emerges intact from this war.”
Even more dangerous, he added, would be a scenario in which the country’s nuclear infrastructure survives or can be quickly rebuilt.
That possibility has triggered one of the most urgent strategic questions on the table: Can Israel finish the job?
Or will it need help from the United States to strike Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities?
This is where things get complicated.
Under the “America First” foreign policy doctrine, Trump has been clear: no more forever wars, no more ground troops in the Middle East.
But Hanson argued that Trump’s actions tell a deeper story.
“I’m not an isolationist, I’m a Jacksonian,” he said, echoing what Trump might say.
“You should have known that when I took out Soleimani… when I took out Baghdadi… when I took out the Wagner Group.”
The message? Trump doesn’t go looking for wars. But when deterrence is at stake, he’s not afraid to act decisively.
Still, Hanson posed a chilling question: what if the Iranian regime survives?
“If this war should end with the Iranian regime intact and the elements of its nuclear program recoverable,” he warned, “then in some ways it will be all for naught.”
Despite Iran’s military losses, its media destruction and its isolated position, surviving such a coordinated strike could give it something even more powerful than weapons: perceived invincibility.
“It will be more like, oh my gosh, Iran survived everything that Israel, and by association the United States, threw at it.”
“It’s indestructible.”
And that, Hanson suggested, would be the real danger.
Not just a return to the status quo, but a shift in perception that emboldens the regime and reshapes the balance of power across the region.
Now the question hanging over the entire conflict is this: does the world play it safe and allow remnants of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to survive?
Or risk a final strike that could eliminate the threat for good, but possibly trigger even greater instability?
“Do you risk more danger by taking out and eliminating the nuclear threat for good,” Hanson asked, “and by association, you humiliate the theocracy to the point it can be overthrown?”
That’s the gamble.
He didn’t shy away from his own discomfort with war.
“I don’t like forever wars,” he added.
“I don’t like preemptive wars. I do not like the United States intervening anywhere in that godforsaken area. But if the war ends with the regime intact and a recoverable nuclear program, it won’t just be back to square one. It will be a disaster.”
That’s when he dropped a bombshell prediction of the future in the area after the dust settles in the desert.
Whether this ends in collapse or resurgence, Hanson believes the next phase of the war could reshape the entire region and the world’s understanding of power in the Middle East.
“So we’ll see what happens,” he said.
“And hold on, everybody. I think we’re going to see things that we haven’t seen in our lifetime in the Middle East. And it could turn out very bad.”
“But it could also turn out to be quite revolutionary and remake the map of the entire region.”
This story was made possible with the help of Overton —I couldn’t have done it without him.
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From the Daily Caller News Foundation
“The Supreme Court put to rest any question about whether fuel manufacturers have a right to challenge unlawful electric vehicle mandates”
The Supreme Court sided Friday with oil companies seeking to challenge California’s electric vehicle regulations.
In a 7-2 ruling, the court allowed energy producers to continue their lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to approve California regulations that require manufacturing more electric vehicles.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence before the Court of Appeals, the fuel producers established Article III standing to challenge EPA’s approval of the California regulations.”
Kavanaugh noted that “EPA has repeatedly altered its legal position on whether the Clean Air Act authorizes California regulations targeting greenhouse-gas emissions from new motor vehicles” between Presidential administrations.
“This case involves California’s 2012 request for EPA approval of new California regulations,” he wrote. “As relevant here, those regulations generally require automakers (i) to limit average greenhouse-gas emissions across their fleets of new motor vehicles sold in the State and (ii) to manufacture a certain percentage of electric vehicles as part of their vehicle fleets.”
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected the challenge, finding the producers lacked standing to sue.
“The Supreme Court put to rest any question about whether fuel manufacturers have a right to challenge unlawful electric vehicle mandates,” American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) President and CEO Chet Thompson said in a statement.
“California’s EV mandates are unlawful and bad for our country,” he said. “Congress did not give California special authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mandate electric vehicles or ban new gas car sales—all of which the state has attempted to do through its intentional misreading of statute.”
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