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Fair Observer Monthly | 1 Fair Observer Monthly March 2019 Fair Observer Monthly | 2 Atul Singh (Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief) Abul-Hasanat Siddique (Co-Founder, COO & Managing Editor) Anna Pivovarchuk (Co-Founder & Deputy Managing Editor) Fair Observer | 237 Hamilton Ave ǀ Mountain View ǀ CA 94043 ǀ USA www.fairobserver.com | [email protected] The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. Copyright © 2019 Fair Observer Photo Credit: Aisylu Ahmadieva / Shutterstock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher. International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2372-9112 Fair Observer Monthly | 3 CONTENTS About Fair Observer 5 Share Your Perspective 6 Should Sport Let Go of the Idea of Binary Sexes? 7 Ellis Cashmore With Climate Change Comes Extreme Weather 10 Arek Sinanian India and Pakistan Have a Choice to Make 13 Priyanka Pandey How Human Collaboration Can Beat Screen Addiction 16 William Softky Unless UK Is Better Informed, a Referendum Will Make Things Worse 20 Jack Riddick The New Zealand “Gunman” Is a Terrorist 23 S. Suresh Meet the “Moderates” the EU Is Trying to Empower in Iran 25 Alejo Vidal-Quadras Will Evo Morales Win Again in Bolivia? 27 Javiera Alarcon What Makes a Christchurch-Style Attack Feel So Likely in Britain? 30 Bethan Johnson Anti-Muslim Hate Crime Is a New Form of Racism 37 Imran Awan Fair Observer Monthly | 4 ABOUT FAIR OBSERVER Fair Observer is a US-based nonprofit media organization that aims to inform and educate global citizens of today and tomorrow. We publish a crowdsourced multimedia journal that provides a 360° view to help you make sense of the world. We also conduct educational and training programs for students, young professionals and business executives on subjects like journalism, geopolitics, the global economy, diversity and more. We provide context, analysis and multiple perspectives on world news, politics, economics, business and culture. Our multimedia journal is recognized by the US Library of Congress with International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) 2372-9112. We have a crowdsourced journalism model that combines a wide funnel with a strong filter. This means that while anyone can write for us, every article we publish has to meet our editorial guidelines. Already, we have more than 1,800 contributors from over 70 countries, including former prime ministers and Nobel laureates, leading academics and eminent professionals, journalists and students. Fair Observer is a partner of the World Bank and the United Nations Foundation. Fair Observer Monthly | 5 SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE Join our community of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world. Remember, we produce a crowdsourced multimedia journal and welcome content in all forms: reports, articles, videos, photo features and infographics. Think of us as a global community like Medium, Al Jazeera English or The Guardian’s Comment is Free on world affairs. You could also compare us to The Huffington Post, except that we work closely with our contributors, provide feedback and enable them to achieve their potential. We have a reputation for being thoughtful and insightful. The US Library of Congress recognizes us as a journal with ISSN 2372-9112 and publishing with us puts you in a select circle. For further information, please visit www.fairobserver.com or contact us at [email protected]. Fair Observer Monthly | 6 Should Sport Let Go of the ‘go back to making babies’?” (Cis relates to people whose sense of Idea of Binary Sexes? personal and sexual identity Ellis Cashmore corresponds with their natal, or birth, March 4, 2019 sex.) We now seem poised for a change: McKinnon is probably right: Even the Instead of understanding women and most motivated male athlete is unlikely men as two different halves of a binary, to self-identify falsely as a woman and we will see them as different points on a maintain the masquerade for, say, 20 spectrum. years (the approximate duration of a sports career) just to win medals and “A man can decide to be female, take money. To then proclaim that he’ll now hormones if required by whatever go back to being a man seems utterly sporting organization is concerned, win preposterous. everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his There is arguably a more relevant decision and go back to making babies objection, which suggests that trans if he so desires,” the former tennis star athletes, especially MtF, would be Martina Navratilova wrote in an op-ed physically advantaged over natal female for The Sunday Times. “It’s insane and athletes. The assumption is that trans it’s cheating.” athletes who were once males have raised levels of testosterone, which Navratilova is an out lesbian, a stalwart confers on them advantages in terms of advocate of LGBTQ rights and, up to the physical strength and speed. article’s publication, a woman renowned Testosterone is the hormone that for her liberal sympathies. She has stimulates the development of male since apologized for using the word secondary characteristics and is part of “cheating,” but her argument brought a group called androgens. Estrogens immediate rebuke, most defiantly from promote the development and Rachel McKinnon, a male-to-female maintenance of female characteristics in (MtF) trans track cyclist, who claimed: the body. Here’s where the issue “She [Navratilova] imagines a intersects with another contentious nonexistent cisgender man who will situation that’s divided sport. pretend to be a trans woman, convince a psychologist and a physician to ELIXIR OF ATHLETIC SUCCESS prescribe hormone therapy, undertake the process for legal changer Caster Semenya is a South African who recognition, then wait the minimum 12 was born, reared and socialized as a months of testosterone suppression woman, was legally recognized as a required by the current IOC woman and competed on the track in [International Olympic Committee] rules, women’s events. In 2009, Semenya, compete, and then change his mind and Fair Observer Monthly | 7 then 18, dominated the 800-meter resting heart rate, for example — are events at the International Association not considered unfair, of course. of Athletics Federations (IAAF) world track and field championships, winning A complicating factor is that success in by more than two seconds. A fellow sport is not the result of just one competitor called her a man. Pierre physical trait. Sport psychologists never Weiss, the general secretary of the tire of reminding us that mental IAAF, track and field’s world governing attributes such as motivation, mental body, said, “She is a woman, but maybe toughness and locus of control are not 100 percent.” Actually she has a crucial. Add to this environmental condition known as hyperandrogenism influences — cultural as well as that causes an excessive secretion of geographical — and the role of androgens. testosterone becomes harder to discern in isolation. Endocrinologists explain the In 2011, the IAAF introduced a policy difference between the sporting directed at women who had unusually performances in men and women by high concentrations of testosterone: reference to testosterone, but they have female athletes above the testosterone no interest in context. Context-sensitive threshold of 10 nanomoles per liter — accounts of sporting excellence provide considered at the lower end of the male more complex algorithms of social, range — faced measures if they wanted psychological and physical factors. to continue competing. Hormone- suppressing drugs and surgical removal ON THE BASIS OF SEX of internal testes, which can produce testosterone, were among the Caster Semenya is understandably unpleasant options. aggrieved at being forced to take drugs, which would probably get other athletes Testosterone is popularly regarded as disqualified, just to get to the start line. an elixir of athletic success. Exogenous Last month, she took her complaint to testosterone is the most popular the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) performance-enhancing drug and is in Switzerland. She no longer wants to forbidden in sport. There’s little or no take testosterone-suppressing drugs in overlap between typical male and order to compete. If she’s successful, female ranges on endogenous IAAF will have to admit Semenya and testosterone levels. So women who, for other athletes with naturally high natural reasons, have levels of testosterone levels — and brace itself testosterone outside the usual female for the howls of protest from countless parameters are considered to hold an other women who will claim they’ll be unfair advantage. At least that’s what disadvantaged. the IAAF concluded. Other naturally conferred advantages — height, If the court rules against Semenya, it will increased red blood cell count, low be a decision that distances athletics — Fair Observer Monthly | 8 and possibly sports generally — from similarities, the female body being just a the rest of society, which has moved “gradation,” or nuance of one basic male toward self-identification as the main type. “Medical theory taught that there criterion for sex. Rather than being was but one sex,” wrote Jeffrey Weeks assigned their sex, people can choose in his 2009 book, Sexuality. how they wish to be addressed and treated. It’s possible that reforms to the The female body was a kind of an UK’s Gender Recognition Act will relax inverted version of the male, a clitoris the demand that anyone has to prove imagined to be an underdeveloped they have a diagnosis of gender version of the equivalent structure in dysphoria and lived in their preferred men — the penis.