This is part of Slate's 2024 Olympics coverage. Read more here.
The International Olympic Committee announced Monday that two female boxers who were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for not meeting gender-testing standards will be allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics. The news shouldn't have been a big deal — the IOC was simply following its own procedures — but it instead sparked a flurry of anger and fear-mongering from journalists and advocates who want to keep transgender people out of sport.
Algeria's Imane Kherif and Taiwan's Lin Yuting (neither of whom are transgender) will compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and have won medals in previous boxing world championships. However, last year, the International Boxing Association (IOC), boxing's governing body, disqualified Kherif and Lin during the tournament. According to the IOC database, Kherif was removed from the 2023 Championships just hours before he was scheduled to compete for the gold medal because he “had high testosterone levels and did not meet the qualification criteria.” Lin competed in the tournament and won a bronze medal, but the IBA revoked his eligibility after it was determined that he was ineligible because “the results of a biochemical test” likely showed high testosterone levels or a chromosomal mutation.
So why this difference in treatment at the Olympics? The IOC and IBA have different medical standards for athletes. In 2019, the two organizations parted ways after the IOC stripped the IBA of its Olympic status due to concerns about integrity, finances, and governance. The IBA's president at the time, Gafur Rakhimov of Uzbekistan, was under U.S. sanctions for alleged involvement in heroin trafficking and Eurasian crime syndicates. The IOC was also wary of the association's reliance on funding from Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom (the IBA has since dropped Gazprom as a sponsor). After the split, the IBA appointed Umar Kremlev as its new president, who has accused Khelif and Lin of “trying to deceive their colleagues and pose as women.”
But the organisation of the qualifying rounds leading to the Olympics is no longer the responsibility of the IBA but is instead the responsibility of the IOC, which has determined that Khelif and Lin are eligible to compete. “All athletes taking part in the boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have complied with the eligibility and entry rules of the sport and all applicable medical regulations,” the IOC said in a statement.
After all, both Khelif and Lin are women who meet the IOC's standards for competing in the women's division. There's no reason for them not to compete. However, right-wing media and activists opposed to transgender participation in sports have seized on the IBA's disqualification to smear Khelif and Lin as gender fraudsters trying to fraudulently win Olympic medals. Despite the fact that, publicly, neither Khelif nor Lin are transgender, anti-transgender journalists and activists have continued to refer to the boxers as “transgender.” male or Biological Male And call them by pronouns he and he(We'll explain later why the women had higher-than-average testosterone levels, but the short answer is that hormone levels vary from person to person, and natural differences between the sexes can lead to increased testosterone production.)
One of the leaders of the media attack on Khelif and Lin has been former college swimmer Riley Gaines, who has become a prominent anti-transgender activist in athletics after tying for fifth place with transgender woman Leah Thomas at the 2022 NCAA Championships. Calling Khelif and Lin “men,” Gaines warned that their participation would “cause the deaths” of female boxers at the Paris Olympics. “The Olympics glorify men who punch women in the face with the intent of knocking them unconscious,” Gaines wrote to X.
Setting aside the deeper question of whether society should value a sport whose main focus is the deliberate infliction of bodily injury, there is nothing wrong or doubtful about female boxers punching each other during a match. Women's boxing is all about punching women in the face! But anti-transgender advocates argue that what Kherif and Lin did in the ring amounts to misogynistic assault. On Tuesday's X, Robbie Starbuck, director of an anti-transgender documentary, posted a 2022 video of Kherif during a boxing match, describing it as “hitting on a woman.” He wrote that Kherif “is not a woman. He is clearly a man. Is violence against women now a sport?”
In a classic attempt to paint trans rights and women's rights as mutually exclusive, anti-trans advocates argue that feminists should call for the banning of Kherif and Lin because they are not real women and therefore their participation in boxing amounts to gender-based violence. In a post by X, the co-founder of an Australian anti-trans group commented on Kherif's video: “Beating women is now a spectator sport. We as a society have never been more aware of male violence against women. Why are the Olympics allowing this man to enter the boxing ring with women?”
Chaya Raiczyk, creator of TikTok's Libs, also wrote on X: “So apparently it's okay to punch a woman in the face at the Olympics as long as she says she's a woman.”
Oliver Brown of the Telegraph, a journalist who often takes an anti-transgender stance when covering sport, also argued that the IOC's current medical standards could put women at risk. Khelif and Lynn are “two people whose biological identity is suspect,” Brown wrote. “The longer this goes on, the greater the chance that someone will be seriously injured… someone could be killed.”
Competing athletes have also begun weighing in, raising the possibility that the medals won by Khelif and Lin could be challenged. Australian boxer Caitlin Parker said she disagrees with the IOC's decision. “It's not that I've never sparred with men before,” she said. “But you know it could be dangerous to the sport and it should be seriously considered.”
Gender verification tests in sports have a long and tragic history, as sports organizations use them to evaluate athletes' biological characteristics and disqualify those who deviate from established gender norms. For decades, women who passed the test received a “Certificate of Femininity” that they had to present before competing in Olympic competitions. Women who failed the test were barred from competition because their bodies did not meet what officials considered the feminine standard.
In many cases, these athletes were completely unaware that they had a chromosomal abnormality until the Olympic gender testing agency told them the results just before they competed and determined they couldn't compete. That's what happened to Caster Semenya, the South African track and field star who won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. She was barred from competing in future Olympics due to the IOC's new testosterone-restricting rules. Even today, most sports organizations require gender testing and impose a range of requirements on transgender and intersex athletes, from hormone therapy to surgery.
But human sex is not as binary as the guidelines of many sports governing bodies would have us believe. As one endocrinologist told author Katie Burns: Fair Play: How Sport Affects the Gender DebateWhat we think of as biological sex is made up of “the interaction and collection of sex chromosomes, sex hormones, internal reproductive organs and gonads, and external genitalia.” Many people deviate from the norm in any of these categories, with 1-2% of people falling into the intersex category.
The IOC once had a uniform standard for acceptable testosterone levels, but recently changed its guidelines. In 2021, the IOC left the decision to each sport's governing body, allowing each organization to set its own hormone tolerance range. On the Olympic website, the IOC points out that testosterone is not necessarily a determinant of physical advantage, and that some cisgender men competing in elite athletics have testosterone levels that some sports organizations consider to be in the “female” range. “In other words, athletic performance varies independently of an individual athlete's testosterone levels,” the site says.
That won't stop anti-trans advocates from using Kheriff and Lin, who are not transgender, to stoke fears about transgender and gender non-conforming athletes. In Kheriff's first bout this morning, his opponent withdrew after 46 seconds, a rare occurrence in Olympic boxing. His opponent, who cried as he left the ring and refused to shake Kheriff's hand, said he withdrew because his nose hurt, not because Kheriff had made a statement about whether he should compete. Anti-trans commentators have called the result a “horrible evil.” Lin will make his first bout tomorrow. As both fighters advance (and they likely will), their detractors will likely grow louder. Bigger.
