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Cross Post: Ten Ethical Flaws in the Caster Semenya Decision on Intersex in Sport

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Written by Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford

File 20190508 183103 1eva5jd.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Caster Semenya is legally female, was from birth raised as female and identifies as a female.
Jon Connell on flickr , CC BY-NC

Middle-distance runner Caster Semenya will need to take hormone-lowering agents, or have surgery, if she wishes to continue her career in her chosen athletic events.

The Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) decided last week to uphold a rule requiring athletes with certain forms of what they call “disorders of sex development” (DSD) – more commonly called “intersex” conditions – to lower their testosterone levels in order to still be eligible to compete as women in certain elite races.

The case was brought to CAS by Semenya, as she argued discrimination linked to a 2018 decision preventing some women, including herself, from competing in some female events.

This ruling is flawed. On the basis of science and ethical reasoning, there are ten reasons CAS’s decision does not stand up.Read More »Cross Post: Ten Ethical Flaws in the Caster Semenya Decision on Intersex in Sport

Caster Semenya, What’s Next?

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Guest Post: Torbjörn Tännsjö, Kristian Claëson Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy

Statistically speaking, women perform less well than men in most sports. Their top results are 10-12 % worse than those of men. If they are to have a chance to compete at the top level, they need a protected space. At least, this has been the received wisdom among sports authorities. The example of Caster Semenya means that this policy has reached the end of the road. What has surfaced is the fact that the idea of a special protected female sphere within sports doesn’t stand up to recent knowledge within medicine and psychology. Caster Semenya is the stone that tipped the scales. The very notion of being female has been put under pressure.

The theory of science teaches us that a fruitful classification must serve an important purpose. In addition to this, the classes used should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Every classified individual should belong to one class only and everyone should belong to some class. Historically, we have tended to think that this is true of the classification of human beings into the classes of being female and male. We were wrong. And today it is common knowledge that we were wrong. However, the sports authorities have turned a blind eye to this knowledge.

To break it down in simple terms, there are three main ways of distinguishing between female and male. We may look at sex chromosomes, at external sex organs, or at perceived identity. It is possible to be male in terms of sex chromosomes but female in terms of both external sex organs and psychological identity. Caster Semenya gives witness to this (See Robert Johnson, ‘What No One is Telling You About Caster Semenya: She Has XY Chromosomes’, LetsRun, 2 May 2019). We know also that some individuals with female sex chromosomes (XX) and external female sex organs don’t identify as female. They seek ‘correction’ of their external sex organs. And it is the other way around with some individuals with male sex chromosomes (XY) and male external sex organs. They don’t identify as male and they seek correction of their external sex organs. Even  classification based purely on sex chromosomes is not as simple as one may think. Some individuals lack an X chromosome (X, Turner syndrome) while some have an extra X chromosome (XXY, Klinefelter). And there are other variations as well.

How should sports authorities best handle this? Should they keep turning a blind eye to these facts or should they try to face up to them?

Read More »Caster Semenya, What’s Next?

‘Now Is Not The Time’: Is It Wrong To Engage In Political Debate Following A Tragedy?

Written by Alexandra Couto and Guy Kahane

In the days following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018, many of the surviving students and staff gathered to demand immediate change to the gun laws that allowed Nicholas Cruz to kill so many of their friends and pupils. Many students held banners on which it was written: “We don’t want your thoughts and condolences, we want policy & change!” Speaking at the rally, teacher Melissa Falkowski said “They say ‘it’s not the time’ — Now is the time! There is no other time!”

Was Melissa Falkowski right? Or is it wrong to engage in political and moral debate so soon after such a tragedy? Should we instead just offer our “thoughts and prayers”, postponing public debate to a later time?Read More »‘Now Is Not The Time’: Is It Wrong To Engage In Political Debate Following A Tragedy?

The Gulf Between Japanese and English Google Image Search

By Anri Asagumo, Oxford Uehiro/St Cross Scholar, (with input from Dr Tom Douglas and Dr Carissa Veliz)

 

Trigger Warning: This article deals with sexual violence, which could be potentially upsetting for some people.

Although Google claims in its policy that it restricts promotion of adult-oriented content, there is a district in the online world where their policy implementation seems loose: Google image search in the Japanese language. If one looks up ‘reipu’, a Japanese word for rape on Google, the screen fills up with a heap of explicit thumbnails of porn movies, manga, and pictures of women being raped by men. The short descriptions of the thumbnails are repugnant: ‘Raping a girl at my first workplace’, ‘Raping a junior high-school girl’, ’Raping cute girls’, ‘Raping a female lawyer’, ‘Raping a girl in a toilet’. As if rape in itself were not repulsive enough, many descriptions go even further, implying child rape. Similar results show up with ‘reipu sareta; I was raped’. It is strikingly different from the world of English Google image search, in which the top images usually send strong messages of support for victims and zero-tolerance for sexual offenders. Another example of how the Japanese Google world is different from that of English is ‘Roshia-jin; Russian people’. Searching in Japanese yields 17 pictures of young, beautiful Russian women, while searching in English returns pictures of people of different age and sex.Read More »The Gulf Between Japanese and English Google Image Search

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Do Jurors Have a Moral Obligation to Avoid Deadlock?

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This essay was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Written by University of Oxford student Angelo Ryu

1. Introduction

Many legal systems have juries decide cases of an especially grave nature. Because a jury consists of a group of individual jurors, they need a decision-making procedure before it may act. One such procedure is a voting rule: most require either unanimity or supermajority to deliver a verdict. An inability to do so results in a mistrial.

Mistrials are often treated as a sort of failure which ought to be avoided. To that end judges sometimes intervene if deadlock seems likely. In England there is the Watson direction, which refers to a collective obligation to return a verdict. The United States has the Allen charge, which informs jurors of a duty to agree upon a verdict, if possible.

These instructions are often criticised as an impermissible judicial intervention infringing on jury autonomy. At best they are treated as a sort of necessary evil, which must only be used in extraordinary cases. But I argue there is nothing objectionable about such instructions because they simply track the obligations already held by jurors. They serve an important function in informing jurors of their moral position. There may indeed be an imperative for legal systems without such recourse to implement one, as jurors may not always know the duties incumbent upon them in the exercise of their authority. But all this presumes that jurors face an obligation which mirrors these jury instructions. The aim of this essay is to defend that claim.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Do Jurors Have a Moral Obligation to Avoid Deadlock?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Question:  Can soldiers justify killing some as a means to influence the decisions of others?       

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This essay received an honourable mention in the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics, Graduate Category.

Written by University of Oxford DPhil student, Robert Underwood.

 

Lt. Col. Bob Underwood is a U.S. Army officer and a Fellow in its Advanced Strategic Plans and Policy Program. He is pursuing a DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and will assume command of 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the summer of 2019. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Killing in war eliminates threats but also plays a part in influencing the decisions of other persons beyond those we might kill.  This suggests that killing in war has a communicative function, and that the message is an important consideration that can feature in the balance of reasons to kill some but not others in war.  This is true provided combatants can permissibly kill some as means to communicate to others.  I argue that just combatants, those that fight for just aims, can permissibly kill to communicate and that unjust combatants cannot.  This is a new reason to revise our intuition that combatants on both sides hold equal rights to kill, the so-called moral equality of combatants (MEC).Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Question:  Can soldiers justify killing some as a means to influence the decisions of others?       

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Should We Contact Uncontacted Peoples?: A Case for a Samaritan Rescue Principle

This essay was a joint runner up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Graduate Category

Written by University of Oxford student Brian Wong

Uncontacted peoples refer to individuals who live (by choice or by circumstance) without coming into contact with broader, greater civilisation.[1] I make the idealised[2] assumption that our act of contacting seeks to provide these peoples with goods, opportunities, and access to advantages. I outline a tentative argument as to why it can be obligatory to contact[3] uncontacted peoples, basing my claim on a Samaritan modification to Singer’s Rescue Principle[4]. I will then raise several limiting conditions to the above Samaritan considerations. Noting that the key difference between contacting uncontacted peoples and more ‘uncontroversial’ Samaritan acts lies in the heightened epistemic indeterminacy in the former, I conclude by presenting a principle of epistemic prudence that has wider implications for broader instances of paternalistic intervention.[5]

Consider first the relevant facts: in 2013, it was estimated that there were over 100 uncontacted tribes around the world, residing in densely forested areas of South America, Central Africa, and the Indian Ocean. These tribes generally live without access to modern medical or communicative technology, and are more vulnerable to natural threats (e.g. predators, disasters etc.).[6]Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Should We Contact Uncontacted Peoples?: A Case for a Samaritan Rescue Principle

Announcement: Winners of the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the winners of the Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2019. Undergraduate Category: Winner: Harry Lloyd with his essay “What, if anything, is objectionable about gentrification?” Runner Up: Angelo Ryu with his essay “Do Jurors Have a Moral Obligation to Avoid Deadlock?”   Graduate Category: Winner: Tena Thau with… Read More »Announcement: Winners of the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Cross Post: Why No-Platforming is Sometimes a Justifiable Position

Written by Professor Neil Levy

Originally published in Aeon Magazine

The discussion over no-platforming is often presented as a debate between proponents of free speech, who think that the only appropriate response to bad speech is more speech, and those who think that speech can be harmful. I think this way of framing the debate is only half-right. Advocates of open speech emphasise evidence, but they overlook the ways in which the provision of a platform itself provides evidence.

No-platforming is when a person is prevented from contributing to a public debate, either through policy or protest, on the grounds that their beliefs are dangerous or unacceptable. Open-speech advocates highlight what we might call first-order evidence: evidence for and against the arguments that the speakers make. But they overlook higher-order evidence.Read More »Cross Post: Why No-Platforming is Sometimes a Justifiable Position

Announcement: Final Presentation for the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

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It is with great pleasure that we announce the finalists in the Oxford Uehiro Prize for Practical Ethics 2019, and invite you to the final presentation and reception.

The 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Final Presentation and Reception

HT19 Week 8, Wednesday 6th March, 4:30 – 5:45 pm.

The Presentation will be held in St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Oxford OX2 6HT, followed by a drinks reception until 7:00 pm.

We are pleased to announce the five finalists for the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and to invite you to attend the final where they will present their entries. Two finalists have been selected from the undergraduate category and three from the graduate, to present their ideas to an audience and respond to a short Q&A as the final round in the competition.Read More »Announcement: Final Presentation for the 5th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics