Is the World Boxing Championship a Witch Hunt for Transgender Women? The Case of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting
The African and Mediterranean Championships was won by Khelif in the year 2022, and he reached the Women’s World Championships finals that year. She took home silver, after a defeat by another Irish boxer, Katie Broadhurst.
The International Boxing Association organized the World Cup in which everything seemed to be going well. The Russia-led IBA, which is not recognized by the International Olympic Committee, disqualified Khelif after a gender eligibility test allegedly found she has XY chromosomes. IBA president Umar Kremlev has said that both Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, who allegedly had a similar test result, “were trying to deceive their colleagues and pretend to be women.” Khelif has denied the allegations.
The two athletes were admitted to the Olympics. Admission rules in this case are handled by the so-called Boxing Unit, which has ensured that all athletes participating in the Games’ boxing tournament comply with the rules of eligibility and registration for the competition as well as all medical regulations, which also includes the appropriate demonstration of medical certificates stamped and verified to at least three months before the start of the competitions.
“These boxers are completely eligible. Mark Adams, a spokesman for the IOC, told a news conference on Tuesday that the IOC has a responsibility to tone it down and not turn it into a witch hunt.
Author J.K. Rowling — who has been criticized for her transphobic views in recent years — falsely labeled her a man, in a tweet that has garnered over 400,000 likes. Donald Trump commented on the match on Truth Social, writing, “I will keep men out of women’s sports!”
In the past few days there were issues about hyperandrogynism and intersexuality, which involve someone being born with sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly into traditional definitions of male and female. They then further poisoned an already very sensitive debate around transgender women’s participation in the Olympics and sports competitions in general.
Imane Khelif has always defined herself as a woman and the IOC allows her to compete in the Olympics as such. Even in the face of assaultive public opinion, there is nothing to add.
She thinks that male athletes with male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to the women’s competition. “And not because you want to discriminate against someone, but to protect the right of female athletes to be able to compete on equal terms.”
Italy’s family and sports ministers have also voiced concerns about the lack of clarity around gender eligibility criteria, suggesting that uniform international criteria would assuage “suspicion” and protect athletes’ safety.
Why does she feel like Khelif? A statement condemning the “unethical targeting” of an Algerian boxer in the ring
Algeria’s Olympic committee is defending Khelif, issuing a statement on Wednesday condemning what it called her “unethical targeting” with “baseless propaganda.”
It said that such attacks on her personality and dignity were unfair, as she prepared to go to the Olympics.
Pan Men-an, secretary-general for Taiwan’s presidential office, said on social media that it is wrong for the athlete to be “subjected to humiliation, insults and verbal bullying just because of your appearance and a controversial verdict in the past.”
Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s first female president, wrote on X that Lin is “an athlete who is fearless in the face of challenges, whether they come from inside or outside the ring.”
Still, the southpaw has won many other titles — including bronze in featherweight at the 2019 Women’s World Boxing Championships, gold at bantamweight in 2018 and gold in featherweight in 2022.
Lin joined an athletics team at a young age to get good results in athletics and help out financially, according to her Olympic bio. She switched to boxing in middle school.
On Friday, Lin emerged victorious in her preliminary-round fight against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova, winning 5-0 by unanimous decision but without much fanfare in the crowd.
She says that she is not afraid of Khelif. The Associated Press reported on Friday that the Hungarian Boxing Association was sending protest letters to IOC and Hungary’s Olympic committee, about the clash in the ring.
After Khelif hit her with punches, Carini quit the bout less than 50 seconds into it. After deciding to withdraw, she fell to her knees sobbing in the ring and refused to shake hands with Khelif.
Source: What to know about the gender controversy sweeping Olympic boxing
Is There a Spontaneous Breakdown in the International Olympic Committee? The Case for Two Top-Falmed Athletes
“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure — especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement Thursday.
Olympic organizers are defending their right to compete in Paris and questioning the validity of those unspecified tests and the fairness of their previous disqualification, which they said happened without due process.
The match was the most evil thing that could happen to you, and it was unfolding right before your eyes. He later deleted his post and wrote, “I might be guilty of spreading misinformation along with the entirety of this app.”
“And unfortunately, as with all minefields, we want a simple explanation,” he added. “Everyone wants a black-and-white explanation of how we can determine this. That explanation does not exist, neither in the scientific community, nor anywhere else.”
On Friday, spokesperson Adams reminded reporters that the IOC stopped blanket sex testing in 1999, and that “even if there were a sex test that everyone agreed with, I don’t think anyone wants to see a return to some of the scenes.” He acknowledged that the situation has become a minefield.
Questions arose after the International Boxing Association said both athletes were disqualified from the IBA’s 2023 world championships after failing eligibility tests.
A chromosome sex test against a female hurdler: Why women have genital XY, and why are they female?
“They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female,” spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters earlier this week. Under Algerian law, one can’t change their legal gender.
The fact that the sole sponsor was a Russian state energy firm was one of the reasons why olympic officials took issue with how presidents from Russia and Uzbekistan ran the IBA, according to the Associated Press.
In a new statement released this week, the IBA said that Khelif and Lin had been subject to a separate and recognized test, with the specifics being kept confidential.
The reasons why females may have XY chromosomes is one of the reasons why these tests aren’t completely relied on.
This method was challenged in the mid-1980s by a Spanish hurdler named Maria José Martínez-Patiño who was dismissed from the Spanish Olympic team in 1985 for failing the chromosome sex test. The test revealed that, unbeknownst to her, Martínez-Patiño had an XY chromosome, and had androgen insensitivity syndrome. An individual with AIS can have genitals that appear female, but they don’t have female reproductive organs.
She made her first Olympic appearance at the Tokyo Games in 2021, where she lost in the quarterfinal round to Ireland’s Kellie Harrington (and didn’t face any false allegations about her gender at the time, as many of her defenders are now noting).
She’s now fighting to defend her career as a female athlete amid conservative accusations that she and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting are not women. Both athletes identify as women and have long competed in boxing as female athletes.
Payoshni Mitra is the executive director of Humans of Sport, who supports athletes with sex variation, and she said that this spectacle is not unique to the Paris Olympics.
Do we really know sex or gender? Why do some iterations of physical exams discriminate between men and women in track and field events?
The tests suggest the two were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors. The IBA didn’t respond to NPR’s questions and they aren’t providing documentation of the tests
Human rights advocates say these exams “discriminate against women on the basis of their sex, their sex characteristics, and their gender expression” and violate the right to privacy, dignity, health and non-discrimination, a 2020 report from Human Rights Watch said. Mitra was a co-author on this report.
People have looked at a variety of things over the years, including genitalia, chromosomes, and a specific genes. And what we end up with is the understanding that there’s really no clear cut definition of sex, because each of these iterations of testing has kind of collapsed under its own weight,” said Jaime Schultz, a professor with Penn State University’s department of kinesiology.
It becomes difficult because we’re locked into a way of thinking where we’re either male or female but we don’t appreciate the differences between them.
In 1928, women who competed in Olympic track and field events for the first time were automatically under suspicion for being too masculine, according to Schultz.
In the 1960s, officials of athletic organizations launched the first of many iterations of physical examinations. In the mid 1960s, women competing at a track and field event “were called into a room, not told what to expect, and were made to lay down on a couch and were subjected to a gynecological exam,” Schultz said.
Having AIS meant “her body couldn’t respond to the circulating testosterone that her body naturally produced,” so officials determined that Martínez-Patiño wasn’t taking unfair advantage by competing in female hurdling competitions, Schultz said.
A Spanish hurdler who was dismissed but was still allowed to challenge her dismissal in court won her case, but lost many of her relationships in the process.
These are women who competed as girls and women when they were younger, because they were assigned female sex at birth. They were beaten by other women. And yet, we are questioning whether these women are women,” Mitra said. “This is not mere speculation. This is actually people’s lives.”