Imane Khelif: a Manufactured Scandal
Last week’s news from the 2024 Olympics was dominated by the story of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who defeated her Italian opponent Angela Carini in the Women’s 66kg (Welterweight) division. Carini quit after 46 seconds saying that she was hit so hard that it hurt. It is surprising that she would even enter the Hitting Each Other In The Face event if she were going to complain that her opponent hit her in the face, Anyway, Khelife subsequently won her next bout against Hungarian Luca Hamori to proceed to the semi-finals and is thereby guaranteed a medal. I hope she wins the Gold for all she’s had to put up, not only for the past few days. She seems to have had a tough life generally.
Khelif’s deserved success has ignited what has been called a “gender row”, based on the fact that she and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (who is also competing in the 2024 Olympics, in the 57kg category) were disqualified from the IBA World Championships allegedly for failing “gender eligibility tests”. This decision was made suddenly by the Secretary General of the IBA without any due process and the only documentation available is a message on the dodgy social media platform Telegram. The IOC has commented on these so-called “tests”, see here. Here’s an excerpt:
Those tests are not legitimate tests. The tests themselves, the process of the tests, the ad hoc nature of the tests are not legitimate…
There is a thorough piece by Reuters, which links to the IBA’s own statements here (PDF).
You can draw your own inferences about the motivation for the deliberate manufacture of a scandal by the International Boxing Association, but my own view is that it reeks of sour grapes: the IBA, which has been mired in corruption scandals for decades, is no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee. I think this whole row was deliberately manufactured.
Such are the levels of ignorance and prejudice about anything to do with gender these days that the usual bigots lined up to condemn Khelif and the IOC on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. Widely circulated claims that Khelif has XY chromosomes and/or high levels of testosterone are neither documented nor verified, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the haters.
I’ve seen posts and comments all over the place asserting that women don’t produce testosterone at all. They do. Men produce oestrogen, too. In both cases it’s a question of quantity. Some women have higher testosterone levels than others. So what? If that makes them better at boxing then so be it.
(I even saw a photograph on social media showing that Khelif wears a groin guard under her boxing shorts. Indeed she does: that’s actually mandatory in both men’s and women’s boxing. The person who posted the image however said that wearing a groin guard is something only men do. Clearly he is unaware that a women’s private parts are also sensitive. I guess he’s never had the opportunity to find out.)
It has been argued that “biological factors” have given Imane Khelif an unfair intrinsic biological advantage over competitors. If that were the case then you would expect her to have been an outstanding boxer from the outset. She wasn’t. In fact she had a poor start to her boxing career, losing her first two competitive bouts; she has lost to other women 9 times altogether. Hardly the performance of some kind of superhuman monster as she is being portrayed. She has improved because she has worked hard on her fitness and technique. She is quite tall for her weight division – 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) – and has learnt to make use of her long reach, but how is that unfair? I think she might well struggle against an opponent who can get inside and fight at close range. Tall and rangy versus short and powerful is a contrast you often find in these mid-range weight divisions, which is one of the things that make such contests so interesting.
In any case, don’t all athletes have some sort of intrinsic advantage over the rest of us? Michael Phelps certainly did. People who excel at sports often have extreme physical characteristics, whether physical size, muscular strength, cardio-vascular endurance or whatever. Usain Bolt certainly had the advantage of being born Usain Bolt rather than someone else. Which is not to say that he didn’t have to work on making the most of his physique.
There being no documentary evidence to support their claims that Khelif is a man, others have resorted to crude stereotypes based on her looks. I’ve seen the same sort of comments about black female athletes who are accused of looking like men because they don’t conform to white ideals of femininity. A summary of this type of argument is “women should be banned from boxing if they display masculine characteristics, such as being good at boxing”.
None of this alters the fact that Imane Khelif is a woman and indeed a woman who deserves to be celebrated not only her success in her chosen sport, but also for the dignified way she has braved the abuse she has received. I hope she wins Gold and sends the haters into a state of apoplexy.
UPDATE: Imane Khelif did indeed win Olympic Gold by a unanimous decision. Congratulations to her!
J. K. Rowling is 59.
In the Dark 
August 4, 2024 at 4:05 pm
The primary aim of boxing is to give your opponent brain damage (or, failing that, cognitive impairment).
It should be outlawed.
August 4, 2024 at 4:06 pm
Well, that’s certainly one way of resolving any gender issues.
August 4, 2024 at 5:03 pm
“Widely circulated claims that Khelif has XY chromosomes and/or high levels of testosterone are neither documented nor verified”
Peter, are you able to refute the assertions included in the words below, which are from
https://x.com/Slatzism/status/1819427537740558848
+ Khelif and Lin were never tested for their testosterone levels. The claims that they were disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championship due to simple testosterone abnormalities were made by their respective national sporting bodies, who, obviously, have some motivation to lie.
+ Khelif and Lin are not believed to be transgender… They are believed to be impacted by a Difference of Sexual Development, in which there is a developmental abnormality in secondary sex characteristics. This is a medical condition which can manifest with children being born with ambiguous or disfigured genitalia. Male children impacted by DSDs are often “assigned female at birth” due to these genital defects, as there is a genuine assumption they are girls. Thus, their identification documents would be completely irrelevant in this case. As is the fact they were “raised as girls.” That’s entirely expected for male children with DSDs. Even more so for male children with DSDs in socially conservative countries. Is a boy without a penis more likely to be raised as a boy or a girl?
+ On March 25, 2023, IBA President Umar Kremlev said that the boxers disqualified at the championships had XY chromosomes. He said this in a statement to TASS News. There were only two boxers disqualified at the championships: Lin and Khelif. “But Kremlev could be lying!” Over the last 72 hours, the IBA has released two separate statements confirming that Khelif and Lin were not subject to testosterone testing, but had instead been subjected to a separate test validated by two independent laboratories. That test confirmed they were not eligible to compete in women’s boxing as per the IBA guidelines. Crucially, the IBA defines “woman” as “an individual with XX chromosomes.” In their guidelines, they also indicate that the gender tests they use to determine if a person is eligible to compete with women is a chromosomal test, not a hormone test.
+ “Why doesn’t the IBA release the test!” They cannot. It is protected medical information. They would be sued. Khelif and Lin, however, can agree to have the laboratories release those tests themselves… Why haven’t they?
+ “The IBA didn’t let L & K appeal their disqualification!” Yes they did. They have no choice in the matter. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is a fully independent tribunal which oversees all disputes in elite athletics. Every athlete has a right to bring a case to the CAS. Lin did not challenge the disqualification. Khelif challenged the disqualification but withdrew the appeal before it could proceed through the court. Please ask yourself why. If they were genuinely female, why would they have chosen to refuse their opportunity to establish that in an irrefutable and legally binding way at a fully independent venue? Literally none of this would have happened had they simply submitted their tests to the CAS. Buuuut… Consider that all decisions at the CAS are public information… If Khelif and Lin had proceeded through the CAS, there would have been irrefutable evidence, documented by an independent body, that they were either male or female. So why? Why did they not want the CAS to examine their tests? Why did they not want this information to be public?
Peter [Anton speaking again], if Khelif is XY then would you support this individual’s entry in the women’s Olympic boxing?
August 4, 2024 at 7:21 pm
I had forgotten to include a link to the IBA’s statement, which I have now done. It does not say that Imane has XY chromosomes nor that she has some sort of developmental condition. The rest of the tweet you quote – from a journalist with the far-right transphobic webzine Reduxx – is surmise.
As for your final question, I don’t think I know enough about Khelif to answer definitively, but I will say that if her case is similar to that of Caster Semenya then I think, yes, she should be allowed to compete in women’s boxing. Chromosomes do not compete in sporting events, people do and there’s a long way from genes to physiology. In most people the path is well-defined, but in others it is different.
August 4, 2024 at 7:50 pm
I’d never heard of Reduxx. The tweet seems to comprise statements claimed to be in the public domain, and inference from them. I welcome checking of the former.
I’d also welcome the views of Caitlyn Jenner, who as Bruce Jenner won the Olympic decathlon, and who said (on 1st May 2021) “It’s an issue of fairness and we need to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”
The question reduces to the gender criteria that it is right to use to decide who should take part in women’s sport. There isn’t going to be universal agreement about that, and I don’t think that words intended as an insult are helpful by any party.
August 5, 2024 at 7:50 pm
You might want to consider what this says about the credibility of the IBA
https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/cq5dd2lz8y8o
August 5, 2024 at 8:38 pm
So the two most senior IBA officials disagree with each other in a confused manner as to whether chromosomal or testosterone testing was conducted. But the IBA doctor who oversaw the tests, and would have relayed the results to IBA management, said that the results were “genetically male”. This statement is clear. And in case it isn’t, let us by all means have further tests.
August 5, 2024 at 8:57 pm
We still don’t know what tests have been done so far, as the test labs involved do doping investigations, not gender tests.
August 6, 2024 at 12:39 pm
[…] time, I thought I would connect two of my own recent blog posts, one about the case of female boxer Imane Khelife and the other about about the death of theoretical physicist TD Lee. What could the connection […]