At this year’s Paris Olympics, the beating of women by biological men officially became a spectator sport. Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, two boxers who had failed gender suitability tests twice in the past, competed in the women’s category without much opposition. Both went on to win all three rounds of their bouts and reach the Olympic finals in their respective weight classes. In the end, Khelif won the welterweight final on Friday, while Yu-ting triumphed in the featherweight final on Saturday. At every stage of this farce, the safety of their female opponents was constantly put at risk.
Fioana McAnena – Campaigns Director at Sex Matters – joined Brendan O’Neill on his podcast this week to discuss how this disturbing violence against women came about. Below is an abridged extract of their conversation. You can listen to it in full here.
Brendan O’Neill: Can you tell us what you know about this Olympic boxing case and how it fits into the broader discussion about women’s sport today?
Fiona McAnena: In the women’s Olympic boxing, Khelif and Yu-ting clearly hit much harder than their female opponents, and there have been rumors for some time that they may be men. Now, you might think, “How on earth is it possible for a man to compete in a women’s boxing event?” Well, we believe these boxers suffer from the same condition as South African runner Caster Semenya: sex development disorder (DSD). In some cases, babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. In a developed country, they would realize that something had gone not quite right in the baby’s development. They would either treat it or accept the condition.
Sometimes, however, the babies are registered as girls at birth, despite the fact that they have internal testicles and produce testosterone. As they grow older, it often becomes clear that these children are boys. As adults, they enjoy all the benefits of male puberty – benefits that are particularly significant in sports. Both Khelif and Yu-ting, supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), continue to insist that they were born female and raised as girls. But the fact is that if they were accidentally registered as girls at birth, that does not make them female.
There’s a simple way to clear up this controversy. If the IOC – which runs Olympic boxing after suspending the International Boxing Federation (IBA) in 2019 – wanted to end the review, it could get them to conduct a cheek swab test. We’re told the IBA actually gave both 2022 and 2023 boxers a blood test, so there’s little doubt that these two boxers have XY chromosomes.
For her part, Angela Carini, an experienced boxer who faced Khelif in one of the first rounds, said she had never felt a punch like Khelif’s. That’s because a man’s punching power is twice that of a woman, even at the same weight. We don’t know exactly what condition these two boxers have, but everything indicates that they have gone through a male evolution. Maybe they thought they were girls. Maybe their parents thought they were girls. But mistakes can happen.
O’Neill: Is there a significant difference between an athlete with DSD and a “trans woman” who participates in women’s sports?
McAnena: None of us know exactly how these boxers feel, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They may have been registered as female at birth for the reasons mentioned above, and they may have been surprised by their own development. This is clearly very different to people who claim to feel like the opposite sex. Ultimately, though, we need to put women at the heart of women’s sport.
One of the most annoying things for women is that while everyone is so eager to support these DSD athletes, no consideration is given to the women who are forced to do everything. This is the ultimate proof of the inherent sexism in the world. We are told that we must accommodate these athletes, but women’s sport is not a consolation prize for men who have had difficult childhoods. We must find other ways to lighten the burden of their lives, and giving them an Olympic medal is not one of those ways.
What has become clear in this boxing scandal is that the result is the same even if these boxers are not transgender. Women are not only losing at the Paris Olympics, they are being put at risk. When a man beats a woman of the same weight in the boxing ring, it is roughly the same as when a heavyweight beats a lightweight. Can you imagine what would happen if we let a heavyweight into the ring with a lightweight? As soon as the first punch was thrown, and probably even before, almost everyone would be calling for the fight to be stopped.
In the case of Khelif and Yu-ting, I hesitate to use the word “cheating” because I don’t care about their motives. The women’s category is simply not their category, and I am determined to change the rules back to what they should be: to exclude all male advantage from the women’s category. That’s all that matters. And we all know that counts. That’s why the IOC, despite bizarrely suggesting that we can’t really distinguish who is male and who is female, still uses separate categories. They insist that we must make an exception. There is no “cheating” here, because unfortunately the sporting authorities have allowed boxers like Khelif and Yu-ting to fight against women. These boxers walked through an open door.
Fiona McAnena spoke with Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here:
