Repost: The Gender in Sports Debate Gets Even More Confused (Which Didn't Seem Possible)
Transgender talking points come for not-transgender athletes
***Hello! I have the flu and need a sick day. But, in light of the IOC moving towards a ban of transgender (and non-transgender but genotypically XY) women in Olympic sports, I’m un-paywalling this piece from the ‘24 Olympics. Enjoy!
The main thing I’ve been rooting for this Olympics — besides the slow death of Colin Jost1 — is a controversy-free games. I’d like the athletes to be judged purely on the basis of their ability, physical attractiveness, and suitability for a tear-jerking NBC mini-bio, as God intended. Unfortunately, there’s a controversy in women’s boxing that highlights how our polarized discussion of trans athletes in women’s sports has rendered us deeply stupid.
There’s an Algerian boxer named Imane Khelif. Khelif competed in the Tokyo Olympics as a woman, though last year, she was banned from competing as a woman by the International Boxing Association. However, also in 2023, the International Olympic Committee withdrew its recognition of the IBA and assumed responsibility for overseeing women’s boxing. That cleared the way for Khelief to compete, because the IOC and IBA have different rules. Yesterday, Khelief fought her first Olympic bout — against Italy’s Angela Carini — and Carini withdrew after 46 seconds citing safety concerns. Here is the punch that caused Carini to say “I’ve never been hit that hard in my life,” and also Carini refusing to shake Khelif’s hand after the bout.
Unsurprisingly, this threw gasoline on our tire fire of a debate about trans women in sports. Which is one sign that our discussion is badly muddled, because Khelif is not transgender: She doesn’t claim to be trans, being trans would create huge problems for her in Algeria (where it’s illegal to even be gay), this simply isn’t about trans athletes. This is a about how to treat athletes with a difference in sex development (DSD), which has gotten subsumed by the debate around trans women in sports. And the proximity to the trans debate — which is the most “slather your head with honey and stick it in a colony of fire ants” issue that exists in politics right now — appears to have caused the IOC to be incapable of enforcing its own rules.
We don’t know much about Khelif’s situation. It’s possible — though absolutely not certain — that she has a difference in sex development, such as 46XY DSD, in which a person has X and Y chromosomes and their body produces and responds to testosterone in the typical male way. This is the condition that two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya is reported to have. The IBA says that Kehlief twice failed an unspecified gender test that apparently was not a test of testosterone levels, and the IBA’s then-president said that the tests showed that Kehlief has X and Y chromosomes. Worth noting, though: The IBA appears to be deeply corrupt, and their former president is a homophobic asshole. If you were hoping to read an uplifting story about a trustworthy organization, then I suggest that you stop reading this article right now and check out this group in Seattle that rescues cats from trees.
The IOC’s only requirement for gender eligibility is that an athlete’s passport declare her to be female. Seriously: That’s it. There are no other tests, and not even — as far as I can tell — any serious effort to verify the passport’s validity; a passport written in crayon on a Snickers wrapper might be good enough. IOC officials have issued statements with logic so perfectly circular that it could be used to calibrate scientific instruments: IOC spokesman Mark Adams justified the eligibility of Kehlief and one other athlete by saying “These athletes have competed many times before for many years.” So: They have been eligible before, therefore they must be eligible now. And because they are eligible now, they must logically always be eligible. I suppose that if Imane Khelif whipped out a 12 inch penis, smacked IOC spokesman Mark Adams across the face with it, and said “I was joking the whole time!”, Adams would respond by saying “She was eligible before, and therefore she is still eligible now.”
The IOC’s claim that sex testing is impossible doesn’t pass the laugh test (a different IOC spokesperson asked “Who makes the call which athletes should be tested?”). The answer to the rhetorical question above — which the spokesperson seems to treat as some sort of “if a tree falls in the forest…” unknowable riddle — is obviously “You make the call, dumbass. You’re the goddamned Olympic Committee.” The IOC could also simply give a genetic test to every athlete, which could be done with a once-per-lifetime cheek swab. This is obviously within the IOC’s capabilities because they also run a rigorous, frequent, and highly-invasive anti-doping regime — the IOC already collects more piss than R Kelly’s bedroom rug. The IOC also tested for Covid frequently in Tokyo and have numerous other requirements that athletes have to follow. Pretending that any sort of test is an unworkable invasion of privacy is “I can’t wear a condom because of a latex allergy”-level bullshit that no grown-up should believe.
Why is the IOC so resistant to doing any real verification of a boxer’s sex? If I may engage in a miniscule amount of speculation, I’d say that it’s because they’ve accepted the argument that any questioning of a person’s gender status is ipso facto bigotry. The IOC’s statement on the controversy begins with the line: “Every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination.” It then proceeds to describe the criticism of Kehlief and another athlete disqualified by the IBA in 2023 (Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan) as “aggression” and “abuse”. It frames the IOC’s decision to let them compete as a defense of human rights, which they also did in a framework released in 2021. Adams said that the IOC is determined to let Kehlief and Lin “compete as women, which is what they are.” This is the language of the transgender rights conversation.
But how do Adams and the IOC know that Kehlief and Lin aren’t straight-up cheaters (which, to be clear, is not what I think is happening here)? Consider the unlikely-but-possible scenario in which Kehlief and/or Lin — possibly with the encouragement of their government — have hatched a Juwanna Mann-esque plan2 to try to win medals. What would prevent them or any future athlete from doing that? There are reports that Kehlief, like Semanya, was raised female, but if the IOC were to conduct an investigation into whether an athlete’s female identity is longstanding and sincere, that would constitute exactly the type of differentiated scrutiny that the IOC has declared out-of-bounds. The IOC seems to have stripped itself of any ability to disqualify anyone on gender grounds, no matter how bad-faith the person’s actions. If Jason Momoa showed up at the Olympics stark naked, with his beard and (probably massive) schlong wafting in the breeze, and presented the IOC with a female passport, would they have any ability to take action? And I mean action besides excoriating us for questioning Ms. Momoa’s sonorous womanhood.
The answer is obviously “no”. Not according to the rules that the IOC has made for itself and framed as a human rights issue. By being reluctant to engage with the thorny question of DSD athletes — which seems to be related to the belief that a person’s declared gender renders their physiological sex irrelevant in all cases — the IOC has neutered itself. They know that drawing a line between who can compete in women’s boxing and who can’t would be fraught, so they’ve decided to functionally not enforce any line. The short-term result seems to be a woman getting punched hard in the face by a person who may have the physiological characteristics of a man. Which seems like a strange outcome for supposedly progressive politics to enable.
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I have nothing against Colin Jost! But a Wikipedia page that includes the line “died of a staph infection while covering Olympic surfing” would be objectively funny, and to Jost’s credit, he seems to know that.