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Imane Khelif punches Angela Carini (Fabio Bozzani/Anadolu via Getty Images)
It looked like a man punching a woman. Algeria’s Imane Khelif, at 5’10”, is only two inches taller than Italy’s Angela Carini; but watching the two in the ring of the women’s 66kg boxing at the Olympics, the difference between them was painfully obvious. Khelif’s hard, rangy body had more reach, and more power. After taking two ferocious blows, Carini abandoned the bout, receiving the final result in devastated tears.
It looked like a man punching a woman because, according to the International Boxing Association, Khelif is not a woman. In 2023, Khelif was disqualified from the World Boxing Championships along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting — “a result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition”. This decision was based, not on testosterone levels, but on “a separate and recognised test, whereby the specifics remain confidential”.
A Russian-language statement (the IBA is Russian-led) put it more bluntly: “Based on the results of DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to deceive their colleagues and pretended to be women. Based on the results of the tests, it was proven that they have XY chromosomes.” Lin did not appeal, while Khelif initiated an appeal and then withdrew it, meaning that in both cases, the judgement became legally binding.
But not binding on the Olympics, which withdrew recognition from the IBA earlier this year over multiple concerns over governance. That means the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is free to apply its own rules on sex categories in sport. IOC spokesperson Mark Adams warned against starting a “witch hunt… These are regular athletes who have competed for many years in boxing; they are entirely eligible and they are women on their passports.”
Which would be a totally acceptable way to classify sex, if the fight was between passports, rather than two bone-and-sinew bodies. Khelif is apparently not female, in a category designed for female athletes. And while the IOC has been keen to emphasise that this controversy is wholly unrelated to the contentious matter of trans women in sport, that is an impossible separation to maintain. The question of how sex should be defined — by chromosomes, by hormone levels or by legal marker on a passport — is the heart of the argument over inclusion.
What happened in the ring in Paris is a riposte to all the absurd claims that sex is immaterial to athletic performance. Witness, for example, the writers Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, who argued in a 2012 New York Times op-ed for “letting go of the idea that the ultimate goal of a fair policy is to protect the ‘purity’ of women’s competitions”. If inclusion is the objective, “then sex-segregated competition is just one of many possible options, and in many cases it might not be the best one”.
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SubscribeCalling a camel a horse doesn’t make it one. Never has and never will.
What about calling a zebra a horse? You see, these things are not always black and white…
But zebras ARE black and white
A sense of irony just died a death.
So it did. Even though many zebras have brown stripes. Apologies for the pedantry.
Damn!!! Does this mean Manuel’s hamster was not a hamster but a rat?
Plenty of horses being called camels in the police, fire brigade, military, thanks to decades of “gender equality.”
IOC spokesperson Mark Adams warned against starting a “witch hunt… These are regular athletes who have competed for many years in boxing; they are entirely eligible and they are women on their passports.”
Classic magical thinking: change the name, change the thing.
What a horrible obfuscation. They are women because they move around carrying a piece of paper that says so.
They are not transgender, they were born girls, why do you stoop to the lowest form of bigotry
Who was born girls? You’ve lost me.
These women were born and raised as girls. They knew nothing else. This does not mean however that they should be allowed to compete in female sports. Especially contact sports.
The athlete accused by some here of being a man. Try to keep up, they were assigned female at birth.
What were you ‘assigned’ at birth and do you maintain it? Asking for a friend
Male, and no — I fixed that error.
The article alludes to it but doesn’t say explicity (can’t imagine why…) but Imane Khelif is not transgender – they are competing as they were born (as far as I’m aware). It’s just that they seem to have been born with genitalia that were identified as female, but apparently have a Y chromosome. Presumably some form of intersex.
There is no name change involved, Imane Khelif has always been her name she was assigned female at birth.
A good article but one correction is needed.
“It looked like a man punching a woman because, according to the International Boxing Association, Khelif is not a woman.”
No, Khelif is not a woman because biology. What defines defines “man” and “woman” and (very rarely) “intersex” is immutable genetics. He has XY chromosomes. If this wasn’t enough, he has a testosterone level of a normal man, he went through puberty and became a man, and he doesn’t even claim to be transgender.
In fact the only thing that even suggests he is a woman is a piece of paper issued by a government bureaucracy. I rest my case.
The author, like many women do to their cost, extends politeness to a bully, and a savage one at that. Don’t play Khelif’s game. Stand up to him and say it like it is. He’s a pathetic specimen of a man, not just cheating women but battering them.
There’s a queue of misogynists and opportunists queuing up behind him to once again make competitive sport a male-only activity. Don’t enable them.
I believe he is actually intersex, i.e. he was born with female genitalia but XY chromosomes.
Someone who has been through male puberty must have testes, and is therefore a man. Unless they’ve been taking testosterone, which would disqualify them for doping.
“Someone who has been through male puberty must have testes” <– Not the case. The adrenal glands and ovaries and pituitary (or hypothalamus, I don’t recall) all make testosterone in typical cisgender females, and what is required to undergo a male puberty is sufficient testosterone — not testicles.
You need to study a proper textbook on endocrinology before you make another entry. The action of ALL sex hormones, in BOTH sexes, requires target tissues to be responsive to them. Mutant genes can mean that tissues and organs (e.g. male external genitalia) do not develop normally, despite the fact that every other aspect of maleness, including (usually) proclivity to the opposite sex, is normal. This absolutely includes all the strength and other advantages which male athletes have over female ones.
I have the textbook. What I said is correct, what you said is irrelevant to my reply to what I quoted.
What textbook is that? Yes the ovaries and adrenal glands in healthy women will produce small amounts of testosterone, but certainly not the pituitary gland or hypothalamus.
Thank you for admitting I am perfectly accurate — I did not say large amounts, I did not refer to any amount at all (other than nonzero).
Forgot to mention that a normally functioning SRY Gene (Sex Determining Gene on the Y-Chromosome) is essential to confer maleness. That is why anyone with a genotype which has a Y-chromosome (XY, normal male) is destined to become phenotypically (outwardly) male, unless there are non-functioning, mutant genes.
If a present SRY gene was always functional and always present on only a Y you would have a point.
You do not.
It is just about the only thing that the Y-chromosome does; there are very few functional autosomal genes on it.
The Y-chromosome is ESSENTIAL in conferring a male phenotype.
No the SRY gene is fairly essential in conferring a male phenotype. It is not always on the Y.
.
The gonads produce the overwhelming amount of testosterone in the body. Perhaps Khelif has internal (undescended) gonads, like Caster Semenya. Male on the inside, female on the outside. It’s complicated.
And what is most likely is the accusation is FoS.
That is a DSD. All DSDs are applicable to only male or female. There are no DSDs that apply to both male and female; they are sex specific. There is no hermaphrodite. Humans are not snails.
I cannot believe all the people down-voting you. Even the Daily Mail did a better job at getting the facts correct. There are many different conditions where people are born with female genitalia but have XY chromosomes. Some have internal testes, while some have neither ovaries nor testes. Some can even get pregnant. Imane clearly is one of these, not a man masquerading as a woman – she has lived her whole life as a woman. Such people deserve sympathy and sensitivity, not the the kind of knee-jerk reaction evident in this piece. Incidentally, Imane lost many matches in the last Olympics.
Whilst there are Differences of Sexual Development that mean that males with XY chromosomes do not properly response to testosterone, which can lead to ambiguous or even apparent external female genitalia, they do not have ovaries, a uterus or a womb and so absolutely cannot become pregnant. Also the Olympics is a knock out competition, you cannot lose many matches in one tournament.
I have sympathy of Imane, as far as I am aware they were raised as a girl based on the appearance of their genitalia. However, there were obvious signs that they may have had a DSD and upon its discovery they should have withdrawn from female competition. Whilst this may be distressing many young athletes careers are cut short by injury, illness or medical conditions, it difficult to deal with but that’s the reality of sporting competition. Sadly for Imane they are not an elite level female competitor but likely an average male one. This may be hard to come to terms with but it is the truth.
You are incorrect. People with XY chromosomes have on occasion given birth.
“However, there were obvious signs that they may have had a DSD and upon its discovery they should have withdrawn from female competition.”
No, they should be required to lower their testosterone to cisgender typical levels.
“Sadly for Imane they are not an elite level female competitor but likely an average male one.”
Ah the good old “one drop” rule! As nasty in this flavor as any other.
Can you cite one case? A link? (and not to someone’s blog).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24313430/
How do 15 cases do?
Out of how many cases?
No relevance to that. Any real thing contrary a proposition disproves that proposition.
For crying out loud, those were individuals with Swyer’s syndrome, where the ovaries were nonfunctional, despite an external female appearance. The pregnancies were achieved with artificial insemination.
There was just one case (don’t know if it was included in the 15 or not) where “A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.”
Complete gonadal dysgenesis. Poor child. Incidentally, the whole extended family was a complete genetic mess.
I don’t think that mother wanted to compete in the Olympics.
“The pregnancies were achieved with artificial insemination.” <– No, not in all cases.
There is no such thing as an exception proving a rule — all exceptions prove how a rule is wrong.
“You are incorrect. People with XY chromosomes have on occasion given birth.”
Correct but vanishingly rare. There is only one know instance of pregnancy being viable without donated eggs.
“No, they should be required to lower their testosterone to cisgender typical levels.”
Testosterone levels are not the defining factor in success in sporting competition. The androgenising effects for testosterone during development and puberty bestow lifelong advantages, than cannot be removed by lowering testosterone later in life.
“Ah the good old “one drop” rule! As nasty in this flavor as any other.”
A cheap, ridiculous and in no way a legitimate parallel. Individuals who have been through male puberty cannot fairly or safely participate in the female category.
It is perfectly fair and accurate.
Horseshit. Exactly such a requirement was the Olympic requirement for 18 years running, and should be again — that testosterone levels should be cisgender female typical for 2 years contiguously prior to competing in women’s events.
What about those females that have experienced a male puberty, more than 2 years prior, and thus have the advantage of the increase in muscle mass that develops during a male puberty?
There is no such muscle mass which persists after 2 years and no more of HRT.
That rule was stupid then and remains stupid now. Those who are XY, have had the advantage of testosterone during development and have gone through puberty shouldn’t be competing in womens’ sports, no matter what the inventors of novel “rights” think.
Oddly, these transwomen don’t seem to want to compete in events involving agility and flexibility where women excel, only in those where you get to hit someone.
“That rule was stupid then and remains stupid now” <– Except it worked perfectly well.
There is no such thing as a permanent net athletic advantage to having had a male puberty.
You don’t know there are not MtF athletes in the sports you claim they are not in.
Can you name any XY human beings who have both conceived in vivo and subsequently gone to full term gestation and given birth? Unlikely as the handful of cases you refer to (and if the medical papers are in fact even reliable) were all the result of IVF from egg donors. The ethics of this seem somewhat questionable to say the least.
“The ethics of this seem somewhat questionable to say the least.”
To you, but the “gender critical” have the evident moral compass of Oskar Dirlewanger.
It seems we’ve gone beyond Reductio ad Hitlerum to Reductio ad Dirlewangerum. If you really associate being gender critical with that psychopath then it’s you that need counselling.
The gender critical seek to force boys to have breasts and periods and to force girls to have beards and deep voices. You are the Mengeles you complain about.
NO-ONE with an XY genotype has given birth because they are MALE.
Imbecile, I have already linked here in this thread to a report of such pregnancies recorded in medical literature.
I take the insult ‘imbecile’ as a compliment as it comes from you; the enlightened one!
And you would do better to not, but you are not able.
Nope they can’t get pregnant.
Wrong, as I’ve cited here at least twice already.
While you may have compassion for someone with a medical condition, that should not extend to allowing genetic males who have been through male puberty to compete in women’s sports. Sorry, that’s a red line.
She is not male, she is not a man, ffs, stop listening to bigots, every other sport body has discounted the only one that ”found” xy and people cannot be blamed for anything that happens in the womb. The woman writing this nonsense should be ashamed as the young Italian girl has apologise profusely for being a d**k
The best available evidence – the DNA test – says he is male.
No, such does not — no such lab result has surfaced.
Yes it has. Read the second and third paragraphs of the story.
No, it has not. It has been alleged.
“Surfaced” would mean a certified copy of the original or the original including who carried out the test and by what mechanism, qualified to do so in a properly ISO certified lab, is a document made available.
No, they deserve scorn for exploiting their condition to crush the dreams of normal women. Seeing the woman on her knees in despair at losing to that fraud drop many people towards the far right. Your misplaced empathy is toxic to real women.
Totally agree. This person clearly recognises he has a distinct advantage in the sport and has brutally exploited it for his own gratification. It’s utterly vile.
SHE IS A WOMAN, SHE WAS BORN A GIRL, SHE IS NOT EXPLOITING ANYTHING
Screaming does not make something true. “She” was not “born a girl”; she was born perhaps with ambiguous gentitalia but not a biological girl. Such people are certainly deserving of understanding and compassion but not the right to beat the h**l out of women. Nobody really cares what a person so comprised chooses to call themselves or how they dress or what’s on their passport. But if a perturbation of nature causes them to be physically stronger than women they have no place in women’s sports. And yes, they most definitely are exploiting a peculiar situation that inherently works to their advantage at the expense of other people who are comparatively disadvantaged. If that isn’t the definition of exploitation, what is? I refuse to believe that such people do things like go into women’s boxing because they are simply following their dreams. They do so to act out on sublimated rage against the circumstance life dealt them and as a way to lash out against natural women who they can never truly be. They also want the world to pay for their misfortune by shoving their aberrancy in our faces and forcing us to contort our morality in their exclusive behalf. Nature unfortunately made them different but they make themselves into monsters when they choose to physically assault people weaker than themselves.
““She” was not “born a girl”;
Not only was she, you have no excuse whatsoever to claim otherwise.
Saying to these bigots what is real really is like beating your head into a brick wall, isn’t it?
Except they have lost 9 times to “normal women”. She is a real women, and observed to be so at birth.
Ah, so now you accept ‘observed’ at birth. I was led to believe that for your type ‘observed at birth’ meant nothing? Or does it only mean something when it’s convenient? If sex is ‘assigned’, and is essentially an oppressive cis-gender conspiracy, how can it now be ‘observed’ in the case of Khelif? Which one is it?
Sorry Graham, only saw your much better comment after I posted.
Liar. Not one word you said there is true and relevant.
It that you know you lie and don’t care, which is why I have such contempt for you.
Okay, now you’re approaching the argumentuum ad Hitlerium. Calling your opponent a liar when you can’t counter his argument is outside the limit.
A) It is a genocide you Social Conservatives are trying to gin up for transgender — every category of what is a genocide is met but extra/pseudojudicial murder.
B) I have countered their argument, neither you nor they ave the wit and honesty to admit it.
“I was led to believe that for your type ‘observed at birth’ meant nothing?” <– Why yes, you take other bigots as being credible, they lead you by the nose.
The point is it has only ever been you bigots stupidly claiming that assigned meant anything arbitrary. It literally is a sign made on paper and that is an official indication of how a child is to be raised and for that matter what bathroom they can legally use — and that equally literally there are errors to that assignment which are not visually obvious on observation.
The gender of a person (which you can not admit is a physical thing developing in a fixed manner while in utero) can not even be observed visually at birth, so it’s assignment can only ever be accurate by happenstance, however usual.
I thought people were assigned at birth not observed. So this person was surely assigned incorrectly or does that not apply when it is inconvenient.
Imbecile, people are assigned at birth — it is only your bigoted stupidity which leads to you complain that “assigned” implies any arbitrariness — and — your bigoted stupidity which leads to pretend observation is always correct.
Yes, assigned at birth based on visual inspection of the genitalia, and that is going to correspond to actual sex/gender 99.9% of the time. But in some cases there will be “ambiguities”. How are those ambiguities meant to be handled? That is the question here.
And the answer has been known of for over 20 years now, it is to require of athletes in women’s categories that they have no testosterone elevated above cisgender female typical levels for as much as 2 years prior to competing in those categories.
Admitting what worked for 18 years in the Olympics is a solution gives you Social Conservatives nothing to use a propaganda in your moral panic, however.
Like Joe Biden, this comment makes no sense whatsoever. Total discombobulation.
Of course you can not admit it makes perfect sense — that would invalidate a lie you love.
Where is your evidence for that?
I thought that “assigned at birth” was completely a completely unreliable way of determining whether someone is male or female?
Liar it is correct a good 149 times out of 150, you will find precious few claiming otherwise but the morons such as yourself who claim it is essentially never wrong.
Perhaps Khelif is not an excellent boxer, but other attributes have allowed Khelif to overcome most female opponents. If simply being male was enough to win a boxing match, then all men’s matches would end in a draw. As an analogy, perhaps a heavy weight male boxer may occasionally lose to a lower weight, but they are in different weight classes for a reason.
There is no evidence whatsoever she is male.
Why are they a fraud? They are what they were born naturally – whether whatever that is (no-one seems to know exactly what that is) should be allowed to complete in women’s sport is a question to be asked, but there’s no fraud.
And at that, transgender women are not men masquerading as women either.
That is the literal definition of what they are.
No, it is literally not.
The definition is a woman born with the birth defect of having an apparently male sex.
There is no masquerade, there is no mask or costume to take off.
So, is Khelif then a man born with the birth defect of having an apparently female sex?
No, she is apparently not a man at all.
Nope. The Oxford Languages definition is, “denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth. This includes males who wake up one morning and suddenly decide they’re female, They’re still XY, hormonal treatment and plastic surgery to the contrary notwithstanding.
Khalif apparently was born with external female genitalia, was raised as a girl and has boxed as a woman. Still open is her genetic complement. The IBF claims she is XY, but this determination was suddenly made after she won over a favored Russian boxer, so it’s open to challenge.
If she is genetically found to be XY after a properly supervised second test, she shouldn’t be allowed to box against women. I’m sure that will be a terrible disappointment, but so are the technical decisions made every day by the Olympic Committee, many with less justification with this one.
“denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.”
That is inclusive of what I said.
“The definition is a woman born with the birth defect of having an apparently male sex.” <– The definition of a transgender woman.
Well, that depends on your definition of “masquerading”. I would consider the need for puberty blockers, testosterone replacement, breast implants, gender reassignment surgery, wigs, make-up, beard hair removal, therapy and wearing “exaggeratingly feminine clothing” pretty much an example of masquarading.
That’s an interesting insight. And suggests that in this case, it’s not as easy and obvious, though there is still little justification for allowing it.
It is impossible to become pregnant if you have XY sex determining chromosomes. If you don’t believe me, look at some medical textbooks.
Wrong.
There is only one condition where someone is born with XY chromosomes by is anatomically female – Swyer Syndrome – and it is incredibly rare.
You goddamn idiot, look up CAIS. If there are 8.1 billion people in the world, there are near 400,000 people who have XY chromosomes and are women and assigned female at birth.
The most appalling thing about you brainless bigots is how sure you are of what is complete balderdash!
He is, and always will be, a man. The only masculine trait he doesn’t have, apparently, is external male genitalia. This may be because of the same mutation affecting Caster Semenya which means that an enzyme is lacking which is responsible for making certain androgens which cause normal male genitalia to develop. In every single other aspect, both of these people are men.
It seems absolutely ludicrous that any sporting body can advocate the taking hormones to depress testosterone to an arbitrary level in order to compete against women.
These individuals are not excluded from sport; they should be competing in the men’s category where their sporting mediocrity would be exposed immediately.
“He is, and always will be, a man.”
Not what the doctor said when she popped out.
What did the doctor say when you popped out? Doctor must be right, eh?
The doctor should have said someone who will go on to completely lose it on a moderate, polite talk board. Calling people morons, liars, imbeciles, bigots and etc. Way to go.
Reality is not a matter of opinions, but of what is measured. I refer accurately to most here as morons, liars, imbeciles, bigots, child abusers, ignorant, etc., because they persist in expressing nonfactual opinions and to the end of hurting innocent people.
Most doctors go by evidence.
The Herd here has none.
The point is how often and in what ways are they wrong. The measure you gender critical bigots first go by — because you are ignorant, evil, and stupid — says Imane Khelif is a girl.
So are you admitting now that how someone’s genitalia looks has nothing to do with it necessarily?
You do not believe in wrongly assigned at birth when it is inconvenient.
Imbecile, I know that assignment made at birth can be incorrect and I assure you that when so it is not convenient.
Actually, a doctor may have never filled out Khelif’s BC. Growing up in a rural area, these details were often filled out by the family. And if Khelif is DSD 5-ARD (which is most likely, and the same as Caster Semenya) then there would have been ambiguous external gentalia, which would appear feminine. It would only be apparent when Khelif went through male puberty that he was male and had a DSD. And he has clearly gone through male puberty.
Sure, but the Dr didn’t have all the facts.
Just a minor point then!
We are discussing the issue of athletic performance here; not the tragedy of an individual without external genitalia.
In that case he’s not female. He’s male.
That’s one category of ‘intersex’ conditions. There are several others, including XXX, XXY and XYY triploid conditions. In all cases the individuals are essentially male or female, although there is some variation in phenotypes. Ovotestis, where an individual possesses ovarian and testicular tissue is incredibly rare at 1 in 100,000 births and there are serious associated co-morbidities.
Intersex is a misleading term that lacks specificity.
That is his problem, as much as it is a problem for blind or cleft lip people to be born as such.
Life is NOT fair , never was and never will be.
But lets not make it even more unfair, by humans.
( Don’t bother answering that deaf = hearing impaired or blind= visually impared. )
She.
A DNA test showed that he has XY chromosomes. There is no evidence that he has female genitalia.
There is a DSD called Swyer syndrome, where someone is born with XY but has female genitalia, but this is incredibly rare – 100 recorded human cases according to Wikipedia.
“A DNA test showed that he has XY chromosomes.”
That is a claim made — no such lab report has surfaced.
Then conduct the test. Problem solved.
Not on account of the likes of you.
Well said Nell, my sentiments exactly. However, your second sentence has grammatical errors which is unusual for you.
I can’t relate to women wanting to box in the first place but transwomen wanting to muscle in on yet another women’s “sport” I find repulsive and outrageous. One wonders where, and if, the takeover will ever end. These men wanting to have the best of both worlds gives me the creeps and their sense of entitlement is obscene.
She is not trans. She requires no surgery to obtain female genitalia.
Your imagination is getting carried away here. We don’t actually know, but it seems inconcievable he has l***a, a vulva and a vagina.
He has a what?
She.
No, he.
No, never yet.
Alright, it. Everybody happy?
And yet, she was assigned female at birth because of exactly that appearance.
No he wasn’t.
Yes she was idiot.
I wonder when you will have the decency to eat your words?
Really, now you say assigning is correct because it is convenient.
No, I say assigning because it is perfectly accurate — literally a sign is made on paper.
I think you mean ‘he’!
She was born a girl you utterly nasty bigots. Why are men so pathetic, when I was a scrawny 7 stone girl I beat every damn boy in school at sprinting and swimming and in every exam and test and was proud as hell. It was considered a great badge of honour
That’s correct, you may have done that as a girl, but not as a woman competing against men.
No, she.
It’s a he and I have no idea what you mean about the female genitalia.
She is a she and has been considered so since her birth.
Not by the rest of us. Does he have a uterus?
Fool, by every one. In fact, only one Russian owned and run organization has ever claimed other wise, and only after she beat a Russian boxer — no such thing has been alleged before or since. You don’t even have any excuse to doubt she has a uterus.
Actually, that’s IOC propaganda. The IBA followed a very professional process, with test conducted in two independent countries. Read the minutes of their committee meeting here https://www.iba.sport/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/BoD-meeting-minutes_New-Delhi_FV-approved.pdf
Thanks for the link. The meeting minutes, however, did not specify what tests were actually conducted, only that they were done in Istanbul and India.
“The IBA followed a very professional process”
So they claim. They have published no evidence, only claims.
What?!
Where does it say that this person does have female genitalia?
Well put. It is the latest evolution of the Cultural Marxist mind virus. The aim is the disintegration of Western Civilisation.
Done and dusted, innit?
I don’t think it’s a plan.
Unfortunately, the next step will be the West trying to infect areas such as South America and India with this same virus, and pressure being put on governments there by the activist class here in the West.
I owe you an apology, Nell. Apparently “because” is the new English that can be used in the way you used it – grammatically correct but, nevertheless. super confusing.
“I can’t relate to women wanting to box in the first place “. I can’t relate to anyone wanting to participate in competitive sport. Does anyone remember the popularity of co-operative games in the 1970s?
He’s a pathetic specimen of a man
Perhaps. Though I feel a certain sympathy for him Nature has dealt him a fairly brutal hand – albeit he hasn’t responded with any grace, but simply chosen to exploit his ambiguous status in the most damaging way.
Yes. This is a hugely difficult journey for a person but I cannot fathom why she would take the course she is pursuing. It is a contact sport so is not even debatable. The Semenya example is debatable.
She is an atypical example of a woman, and was assigned female at birth. She has lost numerous bouts to other cisgender females, where is the exploitation?
This should not be seen as a discussion with regard to just one person, particularly as there is also a second fighting n this Olympics.
See my comment, an unskilled male is beatable by a highly skilled female, to a point. This has no relevance to the argument.
Or, “a good bigun will always beat a good littlun” as they say.
A part of me was almost glad (not actually glad because the scene was as gross as everyone saw it to be) that this happened, because it is the poopy-cherry on the t**d cake that is these Olympics. From the authoritarian Covid-era QR codes to enter Paris, to the disgusting money being made by the corporate capitalists, to the exclusion of Russian athletes for purely political reasons, to the obscene, dystopian opening ‘ceremony’, these Wokelympics are exactly what you would expect from a dying system.
A dying system, indeed. As this idiocy proceeds how long will it be until the Olympic audience stop watching the farce that it has become.
I’ve been asking that question about the Oscars for years, but millions of people still watch (so I’m told).
You are right, but we watch to view athletes from our countries who have toiled for years to compete on the world’s stage.
That’s why I am not watching this crap. I absolutely refuse to support this nonsense by turning on the telly.
Ditto.
To be fair, the author was using the decision of the IBA as a rhetorical device. But yes, anyone who has XY chromosomes is a man. Doesn’t matter if the testes are internal, as I understand is common in XY DSD cases. Still a man. For one thing, the pictures show a man with a male upper body punching a woman with breasts. TBH, I am not watching the Olympics any more this time. This has turned it into a sick disgusting spectacle and I’m not validating it by watching.
“But yes, anyone who has XY chromosomes is a man.”
Including the XY people who are known to have carried a pregnancy to term?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24313430/&ved=2ahUKEwifuqbG-NaHAxU9vokEHYNpEIkQFnoECBwQAw&usg=AOvVaw2r6s8GP4fcbFPUqZlbzMo6
I feel the same way. I refuse to endorse this by turning on the telly.
It’s a bit like saying the Enola Gay punctured the myth of antigravitation. It was never really a consideration. Bombs drop, they fall.
Progressive Ideology be damned. Normal people can see that DSD people are not normal women. Keep them out of sports.
Normal people can see you are a bigot without a functional brain. It is needful only to have the testosterone of an athlete at a cisgender typical level for not more than two years.
What defines a woman and man is how the gender of the individual has developed — that is why people with CAIS are women.
Imane Khelif was assigned female at birth based on the appearance of her genitalia, the same as you were.
“Stand up to him and say it like it is. ”
“There’s a queue of misogynists .. to once again make competitive sport a male-only activity.”
Let’s be clear. What’s happening is utterly ridiculous. Nobody ever suggested that men should be able to compete in women’s sports until about a decade back. Even now, it’s only the West were these things are not considered insanely laughable.
Just like nobody thought nine youths could sexually assault a teenage girl, with no remorse, and end up with just one in jail, for 2.5 years.
In other words, it needed a feminist utopia, the gynocentric world that is the West today, for things like this to happen.
It’s the world where boy scouts are misogynistic, we have to pretend women are exactly the same as men in the military, IT or Wimbledon, where Damore got fired.
It took decades of escalating insanity and feminist- Marxist shamelessness to lay the foundations.
And it’s personal.
If a nasty pervert entered my daughter’s toilet and started behaving obscenely while pretending to be a “woman”, there isn’t much I can do about it other than moving house / school.
That’s just unbelievable.
So, no. “Saying it like it is” or laying the blame on “misogyny” won’t cut it. You have to get to the source. The feminists and those who keep bleating about “sexism” if you suggest men are different.
Not as easy as blaming the “men” though, I am afraid.
BB had a headline on this: “Imane Khelif Wins First-Ever Gold Medal In Freestyle Domestic Violence”.
What a miserable lowlife, hitting a woman, hiding behind a piece of paper. And what spineless, immoral bureaucrats at the Olympics, arranging this fight between a man and a woman, like back in ancient Rome! What’s next, people thrown in front of lions? Shame on all of them.
She is not a man, she was born a girl, she is not transgender or any of the other nonsense being peddled. This is the most ridiculous bigotted beat up.
I’m not sure all the facts are known about the case – but like you I’m really shocked by the level of bigotry in the comments.
Like it or not, it does make you suspect that behind all the supposed concern in relation to the trans issue lies simple, mean spirited bigotry.
“but like you I’m really shocked by the level of bigotry in the comments.” <– You are in fact claiming to be surprised?
“it does make you suspect that behind all the supposed concern in relation to the trans issue lies simple, mean spirited bigotry.” <– Pray tell, what clued you in?
It’s not bigoted at all. The issue is that in a contact sport such as boxing one wants to have an even playing field. Otherwise it’s just plain dangerous. And by dangerous I mean reall serious things like brain injury and death – no laughing matter I think you’d agree. Nobody would consider a boxing match between a middleweight and a heavy weight a fair fight. The middle weight may well be more skillful but one real punch from the heavyweight and it’s lights out. The same is true of these XY males with an enzyme mutation such that they have both male internal (testes) and female external genitalia. The result of the increased level of testosterone is that such individuals are much much stronger than their XX female counterparts. As a result a boxing match between these XY “female” boxers and XX female boxers is not simply unfair but just plain dangerous. Boxing is a dangerous enough sport as it is without making it even more dangerous.
At least Greek Olympians were in the nood, which presumably cleared up a lot of ambiguities. Maybe not this one though.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
If it has a vagina, uterus and fallopian tubes, since birth, is it a woman?
Not necessary
If it doesn’t it certainly isn’t and I don’t think in this case it does.
How do you know that’s the case though? Have you personally done an ultrasound exam or have you seen the results of a chromosome test? My question is genuine: how do you know that this athlete possesses the organs you mention?
The Olympics are not safe for women largely because of women. You can thank feminists for propagating a myth that women are psychologically and biologically equal to men. In the US you can thank women because they support trans issues by a larger margin than men. You can thank those that vote for Democrats, again largely women. I wish my trans brothers and sisters all the best and to live their lives as they like. But, let’s not do cooky things like mix men and women in violent sports, prison populations, etc.
I resent your blaming women for creepy transwomen. I for one, am horrified at the power that transwomen seem to have. Transmen don’t seem to crave the same power or want to take over in the same way, which says more about men than women. It’s the same male mentality, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I think you’re shooting the messenger here.
You are talking there to a bigoted TERF.
In these public cases, they reveal themselves to be misogynistic and sociopaths which I believe is strongly linked to the kink they are pursuing and this irresponsible acceptance of it.
Well, in this case it seems like the IOC official who defended the decision is a man and also an old school chum of Sir Kneeler. Go figure. I did do something I have never done before and looked at JK Rowling’s Twitter feed. Came away with even greater respect for her after seeing the bile that gets spewed her way. But another thing I noticed was how much of it came not just from ‘transwomen’ but from their ‘allies’, of which a remarkable number are REAL women. This also chimes with what I observe regularly in my day to day life. Most men find all of this absolutely abhorrent and the enablers are overwhelmingly other women. A case in point is the ghastly Lisa Nandy. I notice that our current government have been rather silent on this matter. Well, after all, our current minister covering sport has given approval to individual governing bodies making the ‘right choice’ and this ‘right choice’ has been defended by a close friend of our spineless cretin of a PM. In the meantime, all those horrible ‘far-right’ types like Trump, Meloni and Truss have called it like it is.
She deserves every trace of it I’ve seen.
You agree with people who send threats of violence?
In response to the violence she espouses, yes — perfectly fair.
I think it shows that most men don’t care about sharing a bathroom or changing room with a trans man. And therefore don’t spend their life online arguing about it.
“the power that transwomen seem to have”
He pointed out that the power that trans have is precisely because of the women who voted democrat, support those jerks.
On their own, they have no power. Any man trying to enter a women’s bathroom would be violently ejected by other men normally.
The reason other men can’t act now and why the police and other bodies support trans, is because of the women.
We all make choices in life that limit us in some way. Choose to study humanities and not STEM and you have created a limitation along with what you hope to be an enrichment. Choose to have children and you limit yourself with a responsibility in exchange for a personal enrichment. Trans yourself and hopefully you gain an enrichment and lose your qualification for competitive sport. Make choices and live with the consequences- also known as growing up.
“Make choices and live with the consequences- also known as growing up.”
That sounds like slavery to the other side. This is evil rhetoric to them. They will reject this utterly.
Something Ditum did not mention was the fact that Khelif and the other male competitor have never said they are trans women or even intersex. So the argument that they are women falls flat. Carini said she had never been hit so hard. Her helmet was smashed against her head and her nose was broken in 46 seconds. She was right to exit when she did, knowing that she could be seriously injured . She probably, instinctively, knew that a man’s punch is 167 times more powerful than a woman’s punch. And that includes your average male couch potato. I guess the IOC’s next move will be to cancel women’s participation, except for trans women. Oh, also male non-binary ‘s. And asexuals. And demigenders. And so on. Just not XX-ers.
The claim is that a man’s punch is 1.67 times as powerful as a woman’s, not 167 times.
I read it’s 2.67 (in the Telegraph)
I’m pretty sure that the 2 places of decimals is ridiculously precise, but there is no question that even a couch potato man carries a much heavier punch than a regular woman. That being said as somebody who is not a boxer, and not tall, I wouldn’t want to go up against Angela Carini either in a fight.
Amen to that!
Yet she has lost to 9 women
“The power gap between a male and a female punch is 162%. That is, males males can punch 2.6 times harder than females.”
Math problem!
A moments thought would tell you that couldn’t possibly be true. Perhaps you think 167 times less than most people.
Incorrect. As any Hollywood movie, computer game or action TV show made in the past decade will inform you, a woman is easily stronger than a dozen beefy, muscle clad men.
Look, the Algerian boxer is called: I,man,e
Clue, much?
She was born a girl, she is not trans, not a man, what is wrong with you
It was just a simple joke.
But I understand: wordplay doesn’t translate well below the line.
Especially when read by those devoid of any humour. But, such are our po-faced times.
Ladies: you should be deeply suspicious of any man that watches Khelif’s next fight or the Taiwanese bloke’s fights. It probably means he is turned on by the sight of men hitting women. Avoid such men at all costs!
Nice avoidance of pronouns for Khalife; well done!
He’s lost 9 out of 50 amateur fights. That’s a pretty middling record. Almost 1/5 of the women he’s faced have beaten him. I appreciate the issues with this but Khelif is clearly not an unstoppable machine. I’d like to hear from some of the women who have beaten him about the threat he supposedly carries.
A popular refrain in boxing is that styles make fights.
Take former WBC champion Deontay Wilder, a poor boxer with a near lethal overhand right. He made an entire career out of that until Tyson Fury managed to get off the canvas from one.
I’ve never seen this guy fight before, so I have no idea if it is a similar case of having an attribute (a much bigger punch) that erases a lack of technical ability.
Boxing has weight divisions for a reason, and it’s not because bigger boxers are better.
The flip side is that he won 41 – against women and before he reached his physical peak. That’s a 4.5 to 1 win/loss record. Middling would presumably be more, say, in the middle? Average age of an Olympic boxing medallist is 24. He’s 25 just now.
“She”, and so since birth.
And presumably his losses were when he was younger, against more experienced female pros?
And point is, he might have lost a few. But that’s down to technique, his physical strength would still have been far higher, and that’s the reason it sucks for women to have to face him.
The pro-trans lobby is driven by the notion of patriarchy; obsessively so. It is true a priori, a fact. They are beyond reason. It spills over into an unhealthy psychology that dominates their world view. Paranoia.
What’s not to like?
This person isn’t trans. They have a DSD with XY chromosomes but female genitalia due to a genetic abnormality in a key gene. They’ve always been socialised female and Algeria doesn’t have any trans rights.
Does he have female genitalia, which are partially internal, or lack of visible male genitalia? I understand from what I have read, that he must have internal testes to produce the amount of testosterone that is present in his body.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia can also cause elevated testosterone.
To what degree and to whom under which circumstances? Certainly not the same as having a set of functioning plumbs, even if they’re nestled up next to your kidneys.
Oh for god’s sake you intrusive crude disgusting people blaming people for things they have no control over. It’s called eugenics
He, singular. Even schizophrenics are one person.
Well, multiple personality disorder, anyway. Not the same as schizophrenia. Apologies for the pedantry.
She is a woman, was born a girl, a you going to make the ludicrous claim that the doctor who delivered her can’t tell the bloody difference
What a stupidly universal claim –obviously wrong.
I’m amazed you understood it. I didn’t. I thought it was just drivel.
I’d prefer to reply with a more thought out reply, but I’m at a loss. What on Earth are you talking about?
Haven’t these people got any dignity?
Do you mean the commenters to this article?
No males in women’s sport, ever. Not for any reason.
She is not a male.
She is not transgender.
Even a transgender woman is not simply a male.
The thesis of this article is hedged about with the word “apparently”. The truth is that a woman was punched in the face by a man in a so-called “sporting contest”.
This physical assault happened because of the stupidity of all concerned in the denial of biological reality. The woman who allowed herself to be put into the ring with a man is included among the idiots who arranged the event.
SHE IS A WOMAN AND HAS BEEN BEATEN BY 9 OTHER WOMEN WHO NEVER OBJECTED OR SAID A WORD.
Seems very strange to me that the boxing authorities are prepared to recognise segregation by weight – because this has a clear impact on power – but not sex.
Wilful blindness to my mind
The boxing authority (IBA) WERE prepared to recognise segregation by sex (they banned these athletes, it is the IOC who enabled them to box
I think more broadly, our culture has forgotten how vast the difference between male and female strength, especially upper body strength, actually is. There is a paper which looks at trained athletes, and in absolute terms, there is over a 2x different in performance (kg lifted, reps….etc) between male and females. And outside of athletes, more men work out and try to build muscle than women, so the difference between the average man and average women are probably larger. 2x is massive, that’s the difference between a bruise and a fractured skull.
Partially, I think this is because, outside of physically abusive relationships, a man putting his full strength into fighting or hitting (or even just tackling in a contact sport) a women is pretty rare. Most people will not have first-hand experience of the disparity.
I also think it’s because our culture is full of depictions of women (including small, thin women) fighting and defeating larger men with ease. Sometimes there is a supernatural element to this, but frequently it’s just portrayed as sure skill. In reality, for a 5’2″ trained women to take down a 6’0″ trained man would require a lot of luck, skill *and* probably surprise. When it comes to depictions of sword-fighting, which is you see in a lot of fiction, that’s even less realistic because of how dependant on upper body strength it is. There is a reason that across global cultures and time periods, female warriors were the exception.
No, you are imagining the consistency of that disparity in strength — and — it’s permanence.
Imane Khelif lost to 9 cisgneder women, she has no such “dominance” as you claim. Were she to be made for 2 years prior to competing (as was at least 18 years) the Olympic rule, that her testosterone was cisgender female typical or lower, she would have no possible masculine advantage.
IOC and alike are also enabled by the cowardice of athletes and spectators. The much should have been boycotted. That would have removed the teeth of the monster that threatens not only sports but our whole society.
And yet it’s people like you who threaten society.
“Imane Khelif punctured the myth that sex is immaterial”
Virtually nobody believes that sex is immaterial. Only delusional and brainwashed (mostly) young people believe that ‘trans women are women’ and that men can magically become actual women if they have surgery and put on a frock. TRA fanatics just pretend it’s true.
Vicious misogyny which seems to align with a particular religion and its culture as well as the arrogance of postmodern Queer philosophy.
But we should not be culturally specific and note that men identifying as women to beat female fighters to a pulp was pioneered in MMA cage fights in the US.
We should also not be gender specific and note that pretending that biological differences don’t exist was indeed pioneered in a massive scale in the US, not by men desiring to beat women “to a pulp”, but by women who wanted to get quotas and entry to jobs they were woefully unqualified for.
Except the only person to kill an MMA female fighter in recent years was another cisgender female, sure.
Other than reality, yes.
Let’s quote the article : History professor Johanna Mellis even suggested in The Guardian that women’s sports categories might have been invented by men “to limit our athletic success and opportunities by reinforcing sexist notions of cisgender girls and women as the ‘weaker, slower sex’”.
Maybe as a society we would be healthier if such lunatic failures such as her could not speak from positions of academic authority. And possibly put in some stupid jail. Citizens have their right to a free opinions. But a university professor is not an ordinary citizen. They are credentialed, sanctioned authoritative figures in their domain.
Medical malpractice, gross negligence or selling fake remedies carries significant penalties. Having university professors talk such nonsense should have similar consequences, possibly with a forced 3 rounds against a male boxer.
The only history this woman has is of mental illness.
I see the Right getting outraged over “trans” people infiltrating women’s sports, and I can’t help but think that these rightists’ great-grandparents would have considered it scandalous that women are boxing, period. With other women, or with men.
It just seems that the adage “The Right always defends the prior leftist position” is truer than even rightists who speak that in criticism of politicians, realize. The Right turned into second wave feminists in the light of the trans menace; even as feminist rhetoric in the first place, aided by Hollywood and pop culture, has long depicted women “defying expectations” and beating men soundly, often in sexually suggestive outfits to add to the “allure”.
Total bull and you know yourself it is. Now troll off back under your bridge.
Touched a nerve you mean.
Some posts deserve considered responses. There are others which may be dealt with by a pithy riposte and, finally, those which are so absurd that they deserve no more than flippancy. A triage system wastes less of one’s valuable time, does it not?
What’s your position on straw men in women’s boxing?
Why do people make this a ‘right/left’ issue?!!! It’s an issue about reality. The reason why we are in this ludicrous situation in the first place is because of identity politics. It’s about time you started to think for yourself instead of chasing a group identity.
And yet it is only “the right” pushing the lies, “they can always tell”, “gender does not exist”, or “gender is always the same as the sex”
UnHerd does not require us to align ourselves as L/R. All the people I know who like me spend far too much time trying to stop the TRA behemoth are Left. Many are even (still) in the Labour Party, waiting to be expelled for their heresy.
“UnHerd does not require us to align ourselves as L/R.” <– I did not say it did, I said it is “the right” pushing the lies here, and it is.
She IS a real woman.
Are you OK?
Having Khelif in the women’s boxing competition is simply outrageous. I’m neither strong nor tall (for a man), but when I used to do Tae Kwon Do we would often spare against the women. Whenever I did that I just defended myself and never tried to hit back, but only make light contact, if any, as I knew that I could literally make a woman fly across the room with a single reverse side kick. Same sort of thing in cycling but at least in cycling there is no physical contact. In the Wintergreen Time trial, a particularly brutal climb in Virginia (that Greg Lemond once labeled as the hardest climb he’d ever done), I was about at the 50th percentile in my age group for men, but I was faster than the Cat I (semi-pro) women who were over 30 years younger than me. The fact is that men don’t belong in any women’s sports. And it’s for exactly the same reason that inboxing one doesn’t pit a light weight against a heavy weight.
“Having Khelif in the women’s boxing competition is simply outrageous.”
On the basis of what? Having lost 9 fights, she plainly dominates nothing and was assigned female at birth.
That’s not a bad record tbh. Even Mike Tyson and Mohammed Ali lost some fights. And she is at the Olympics. The point is, how much of her success is down to her boxing, or her (male) genetic advantage?
There is no such thing as a male “genetic” advantage. Testosterone is not a gene.
Does anyone know what the actual facts are, here?
‘Has XY chromosomes’ could be a mosaic individual, with cells of both types. Did this person pass through male puberty? Does anyone know? I am all for keeping womens’ sport for women, but there will always be a (very) few individuals who fall just on the dividing line. In this case the IBA decided one way, and the IOC decided another. We can hardly judge which side made the better decision without knowing the facts.
Cells of both types? Do you mean ovarian and testicular tissue? I’ve referred to that 1 in 100,000 condition in another post. It’s very unlikely. I hope you don’t mean some cells are XX and some XY.
I do mean cell populations with different chromosomes. It can happen. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45,X/46,XY_mosaicism This kind of thing is rare but not unheard of.
The best guess is that this person is intersex in some way (like Semyona) and that the IOC refuses to even consider the question. But, again, until we know what we are talking about it is kind of hard to make clear judgments.
We know the facts; he is genotypically male due to his XY sex determining chromosomes, and phenotypically male, apart from not having external male genitalia, although I’m not sure if that has been officially disclosed yet. It’s a geezer, for Christ’s sake!
“We know the facts; he is genotypically male due to his XY sex determining chromosomes”
No, as a matter of fact you don’t know that unless you can cite that. Such has been reported nowhere I know of — speculation is not a lab report being published.
Can you point to your source for this please.
How on Earth does a call for the facts get downvoted?
Agree with you. And the exponents of trans-rights-trump-all would glibly say that it’s only a very women who’ll suffer, as if that makes it okay.
You are an incoherent idiot.
Sorry, what?
I actually agree that trans women (who were born as men) should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports but that is not what has happened here. This article should not have been allowed to go up- this person was born a woman, they do not allow people to transition to another sex in Algeria. The elevated testosterone is due to a medical condition. People should get their facts right before commenting.
The Soviet and East German women were women with elevated testosterone, among other things. It was a known issue then and more so now, but no one is defending those women and their hormones. Why are you defending this person?
“The Soviet and East German women were women with elevated testosterone” <– By injection, yes. A deliberate national program to cheat.
“Why are you defending this person?” <– Because they have done nothing wrong at all. They haven’t even shown any advantage over other athletes, having lost 9 fights to cisgender female athletes.
The fact is the losing boxer here was obviously, visually quite out of condition. To go by looks, actress Linda Hamilton could take Angela Carini at the moment.
I have to confess you are on form today Talia. To the point, less obviously angry than is sometimes the case, and funny to boot.
The point is that both trans identifying males and DSD individuals with XY chromosomes are all male, whatever their bodies look like for whatever reason. All have gone through male puberty and have significant physical advantages over females. They should not be in women’s sport and it’s just bad luck for the DSD individuals. Plenty of people don’t get to compete in elite sport. That’s life so suck it up. In the trans case, the individuals are also deluded, but that makes little difference to the woman on the receiving end of a right hook, does it?
“The point is that both trans identifying males and DSD individuals with XY chromosomes are all male”
The point is you are desperately uninformed and as a practical matter, unintelligent. You know nothing real about it and spout insanity.
This is really old news in a way. Joe Rogan was talking about this roughly 8 years ago with a certain character called Fallon Fox. Fallon was a man for 30 years, decides to become a woman and takes some hormones then starts fighting actual women and seriously hurts at least two of them.
And Joe was called a bigot for calling this out.
Fallon Fox is trans. There is a difference.
Yeah I know having looked at it closer this case is a bit more complicated. But there is still a wider issue to be considered here.And it is still questionable whether this fight should have taken place.
Chiefly that Fox hasn’t killed anyone in an MMA fight, and cisgender women have.
So she hasn’t killed anyone just seriously hurt them.
Guess that’s ok then.
Since you are complaining about something not happening, I thought reality should be pointed out to you.
An excellent article, and the last paragraph is superb. Thank you.
Even allowing for the times we live in, I can’t understand how this fiasco has come about, not just what happened to Casini (she could have died in the ring, boxers have died in the ring) but how the idea of this kind of mismatch ever got off the ground.
Sure – men fighting men. It’s a good argument against boxing but not very relevant to this case. If women have a reduced ability both to deliver and to take punishment, then sooner or later we can expect a woman to kill another woman in the ring. And if not, why on Earth are we letting men fight men!
The suggestion is that if men die while boxing, it’s still a tragedy but not as much as if it happens to a woman.You hit upon a basic, big problem with the changes happening in society.
For millenia, women were protected and men considered expendable. This, men did all the dangerous jobs, dying on war, etc.
We have now been brainwashed to believe that women were “oppressed” by men all along, that they should be treated as “equals”. And women feel no gratitude towards men for what the latter contribute towards society.
But then, women stand to lose those massive privileges that they enjoy and preferential treatment over men, while they pretend those don’t exist or don’t value them. It almost mind breaking.
I keep seeing posts that this person IS a woman, just one with elevated T levels. You mean like the old Soviet and East German athletes who were pumped full of hormones and likely be disqualified under current testing procedures?
I’ve seen a lot of pictures of this boxer and you have to really strain to say “that’s a woman.” All anyone knows is what they are told by some third party like Algerian officials who have a dog in the fight. At some point, women have to take on this fight before their sports and womanhood itself are erased.
But what if her T levels are just naturally high. Elite athletes generally are not typical of the general population.
No moron, like some with a medical condition which has made their testosterone levels a typically high.
And your sort of fool is why the chief victims of “bathroom laws” are cisgender women who are too mannish for your taste.
The physical characteristics of my body mean I can’t expect to be a pole-vaulter (have you noticed how tall and skinny they are?). The physical characteristics of Imane’s body mean she can’t expect to box against women. We’re all constrained by the bodies we’re borne with. Get over it.
He is not trans, he has a DSD. Probably DSD 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), a genetic anomaly that means he (probably) had ambiguous genitals at birth. If he is XY he will not have a uterus nor a functioning vagina. He will have internal testes. In a country with rigid gender roles, he was brought up as a girl, because that was the only choice available. When he publishes his autobigraphy in a couple of years (sooner if the right agent is found) we may get some information about what his childhood and adolescence was like. Then at puberty the XY genes produced the testosterone that makes a male body grow strong and hard. Horrendous for him and for his family. No surgical ‘corrections’ will help with the confusion. So stick with the female ID and go for gold.
Any questions could be resolved, along with those re the other boxer and the several other males in women’s teams, by a buccal swab that will say, hey he was XX all along. Or not. Hopefully this notoriety will mean that compulsory sex testing for all female athletes will return by 2028. (The objections in the past were because it was an invasive inspection of their genitals, not surprising they cried Halt.)
Sorry to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting for the scrutiny, for people brought up as girls who did not ask for any of this. Do that swab test and the scrutiny will end, and sue the IOC who made the rules (“their passports say F”) that made this happen.
Here is some information for those who want to know some of the science: https://twitter.com/hoovlet/status/1819041282594873759
“he has a DSD.” <– She.
And is said at that to have typically female genitalia.
Spot on. The buccal swab is hardly invasive and I was astounded that the test had been dropped by sporting bodies many years ago, It provides definitive evidence of what a genetic male is; i.e. XY.
But fool, no one of relevance has claimed sex is immaterial.
What is solely material is the hormonal time history of the athletes involved. Imane Khelif is intersex, assigned female at birth on the basis of what was then observed. It is plain from the Olympic record that MtF transgender athletes who are under effective HRT for no more than two years have no “masculine” advantage remaining, and at that Khelif has had the stuffing beat out of her by cisgender women athletes before.
Carini was plainly not at the level of conditioning required of an Olympic level boxer, frankly is it plain actress Linda Hamilton at her age could likely beat her now, anent their weight/height class are similar.
The usual delusional stuff Talia; keep it up while women are getting battered by men.
Except as is usual, you can’t name anything I’ve said which is so little as incorrect.
You just don’t like it.
Actually no. I don’t entirely agree with Talia, but in this case she’s beating you to a pulp. It’s hardly a fair fight. I’m wondering if Unherd should introduce intelligence categories. Otherwise it does seem a little unfair.
“It is plain from the Olympic record that MtF transgdenr athletes who are under effetive [sic] HRT for no more than two years have no “masculine” advantage remaining”
I assume this is what you mean. If so, provide some peer reviewed evidence from reputable journals to support it.
You are unaware who wins Olypmic medals is publicly recorded?
Ah, using a nonsensical argument to justify your opinion.
How revealing…
Merely the fact that under such IOC rules, no MtF transgender athlete won a medal so much as once proves my point.
Didn’t Laurel Hubbard get a silver, after throwing the chance for a gold?
Nope, fat boy bombed out and dropped the bar. No lift recorded. Pity for the Australian Aboriginal woman who came next in the regional qualifiers and should have been at the Olympics instead of this mediocre, middle aged bloke.
Bigoted moron, there was no matter of “instead”. Mrs. Hubbard was the only person attempting to enter in her weight class.
They are not nonsensical. If they are wrong, counter the facts or the argument. If you know Talia is factually wrong in what she says, then say so and point us to the facts. Seriously, that would really raise the level of the debate.
“Assigned female (or male) at birth” is a useful phrase which is appropriate here. It was used where there was ambiguity in a baby with a DSD, a best guess would be made based on the appearance of the genitals. Now a chromosome test will establish the sex of the baby and it can be brought up in that gender for simplicity, and to avoid surprises at puberty. Of course in reality a baby is a baby with no need to have a ‘gender’. Transactivists have co-opted the phrase to describe their birth sex (AFAB/AMAB) as if they were mislabelled by a passing medic, or by the gender fairy. It drives genuine DSD-having people nuts.
Many DSDs are far more complex that the one being discussed. Many are fatal. Some produce very unformed organs that will require huge amounts of surgery to keep the child alive. dsdfamilies is a UK charity that provides support to children, young people & families affected by Differences/Variations of Sex Development (dsd/VSD). Feel free to donate.
Err wouldn’t that present problems if this was completely inconsistent with their genitals?
That’s why they need support and advice. 100+ babies a year born in the UK with some kind of DSD so it is possible to connect with other families, plus it’s a medical specialism.
Maybe the way to ensure a permanent solution is make the catgories more clear. Instead of Male and Female which the wokeist like to play games with just have two slightly different categories. Open. Which any person can take part in (Men, women transpeople anyone). The other is exclusive to natal females. Women born as women.
The difficulty doesn’t seem to be a two way street. There may be some, but I haven’t heard of any, women who want to be in men’s sport. But if there are then fair play to them. That way isn’t a problem.
TP who always appears out of nowhere on such articles believes it, but much to my delight everybody just downvotes and ignores him. That’s exactly the right approach when it comes to these disturbed individuals who deny science and reality.
The trouble being it is the “gender critical” who ignore measured reality, science.
The other male boxer just won as well, with any luck they will meet in the final and reduce this shtshow to the dregs of the international farce that it is.
Are they in the same weight class?
Frankly, if men “winning” beauty pageants didn’t drive home how moronic this whole thing is….
And that one on the cover of the online edition of Playboy. Seriously? Given the true nature of such periodicals, this does seem like a move from mass market to something more ‘niche’ for their onanistic ‘readership’.
How many ‘transmen’ are competing in the Olympics?
The IOC has stated eligibility to compete in female boxing is based on the passport declaration of sex. However, the IOC has published a very helpful document – IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations – that may force them to reconsider this matter. Interestingly, it mentions testing testerone levels when assessing eligibility in men and women competitions. (section 9.3).
bring back naked competitions. then. we can all see what we want to see.. of course naked skiing may be “hard” in the mean time he is a he and she is a she
He has female genitals, just underdeveloped. Otherwise, he is a man. The test for such deviations was introduced almost 100 years ago. It is now cancelled.
“He has female genitals, just underdeveloped.” <– You, brainless bigot, have not the slightest excuse to claim you know that or even suspect it.
According to the Telegraph the head of the IOC who made this decision to allow these two fellas to fight women was Sir Kier Starmer’s Best Man!
And yet the British Army was insistent on placing women into front line combat roles as part of its DEI drive forced into reality by the cries of feminists that men and women are equal in all respects. It took sport to expose this folly and yet no-one will ever row back on the decision to place women into actual hand-to-hand combat because that is somehow different.
Women in the military can have weapons. Great equalisers. But hand-to-hand combat? Unlikely. Even in the IDF.
I guess the hand to hand combat bit could always be sex segregated 🙂
One of the job descriptions of a British infantry soldier is ‘To close with and kill the enemy’ when I say hand-to hand I don’t greco-wrestling. I mean driving a bayonet into the enemy. How do you think trenches are cleared? And all this nonsense about modern weapons levelling the playing field? The current war in Europe is a gruelling slog with men killing each other at close quarters over small pieces of real estate.
That’s a bit of a blast from the past. It used to be a fairly standard feminist idea though. Sports were segregated to avoid men facing women in fair competition in which the men would face a real risk of being defeated.
I know, I know – but this sort of thinking really was pretty commonplace – the history prof is only echoing it.
The fact that you are being downvoted for an easily observable, very true statement of fact shows how difficult it is.
A commonly asserted, even if ridiculous, stance from feminists, trying to shit down women’s sports, brought us to this ridiculous place.
But – we can’t point that out, and are expected to blame the men, even though the men are the ones who created and protected women’s sports in the first place.
But I thought the boxer concerned wasn’t a particularly heavy hitter, by female standards. So faced with a heavy hitting female the risk would be greater. The boxer concerned does not appear to be knocking women out left right and centre.
This article is full of contradictions I’m afraid.
At low levels perhaps, but does the author really believe that the deciding factor at Olympic level is brute strength? At that level mediocre men with brute strength alone simply do not appear. Does she think that the difference between male and female soccer is one of brute strength alone, with skill playing little part?
What would happen is that exceptional women would be beaten by the same exceptional men who beat other men. The mediocre would be watching it on TV
You mention football but this is a classic example where men have a clear physical advantage as has been repeatedly demonstrated. Prior to the last women’s world cup, the Brazilian national team lost heavily to a Queenland’s school youth team. In England, some of the top WSL teams play against boys teams aged 15 years as part of their training. They lose heavily because of the physical disadvantage but the purpose is to improve physical strength and stamina. Sex clearly makes a difference.
One can also look at tennis where Serena Williams was trounced by a lower ranked mediocre male player.
So well said and so necessary to say. Thank you for this excellent article.
So if Khelif gets knocked out (perhaps literally) in the next match what are we to conclude? That it is dangerous for women to fight women, or that it is dangerous for men to fight women?
Your lot created this mess by objecting to the perfectly fair and worked well 18 years running IOC rule that someone’s testosterone had to be at cisgender female or lower levels for two years contiguously prior to competing.
You have quite thoroughly identified which lot you are in.
You represent a totalitarian ideology, and no gender ideology exists for you to oppose. That is why you can not restate any gender ideology which actually exists.
“Are you sure?” <– Yes.
“Your high priestess Judith Butler seems quite happy to use that term” <– I don’t care what you pretend is important, I only care what is true and relevant.
You can not restate any gender ideology about this, because none exists.
However, I can say what actual gender ideology there is to do with it, and that totalitarian reality denying ideology is yours.
You believe gender has no physical existence, or, that it is always magically the same as the sex of a person — and — that that is always perfectly true, nevermind any exceptions to what you claim is a rule.
There are no exceptions to rules in reality, all exceptions prove how a rule is wrong.
Women, all women, but especially influential women like Sarah Ditum, need to make up their minds about women’s ‘equality’, because at the moment women claim equality when it benefits them, but demand preferential treatment when it doesn’t. Their own categories in sport, but with equal prize money. Equal access to combat roles, but with lower performance standards. Equal grading of the jobs that suit them with incongenial jobs done by men, but not quotas which would require them to do jobs that don’t. And the equality fiction doesn’t just elevate the mediocre, it costs lives and livelihoods.
It seems to me that a lot of views and arguments are at cross-purposes.
My take is that there are three Man v Woman markers to consider.
Socio-cultural pretense: Look/act/live like ‘the other’
Anatomical: Have the bits and hormonal signature of ‘the other’ by extremely rare natal circumstances or by current trend-setting chemical and surgical means.
Genetics: X’s and Y’s are the definitive ‘either /or’ determiner like they used to teach in school because it was simple enough that school kids could understand it. Carefully worded arguments about social construct not required.
Trans-activism may have had a rather benign beginning. Adopting the appearance of the other may be a bit odd but one shouldn’t be beat up over it. Fair enough. After all, most transgender issues are mental illness issues anyway. But the ball got rolling and activists insisted that we must submit to the pretense that one could indeed actually become the other (with or without a bit of work in the shop)
Then they decided to tell us that pretense and some discreet carving actually made genetics irrelevant and it’s ended in tears as we all knew it would. Sorry, but ‘2 outta 3 ain’t bad’ isn’t a winning hand. Genetics is the trump card in this game. Women’s spaces in washrooms and changerooms. Prisons. Your local obstetrician’s office. And sports.
The IOC (and other sports bodies) have been so worried about not stepping on T-phobic social justice toes they’ve lost the plot. They’ve been working for decades to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs ( PEDs are just a way for women to be manly and men to be even more so) yet they completely whiffed on genetics. It has been an embarrassing and potentially dangerous abandonment of their professed Olympic ideals and continuing to gaslight the public into thinking that it isn’t is just fuel on the fire.
I don’t need chromosomal results, or testosterone tests. I can use my eyes. He is a man. My God, the Emperor has no clothes! It’s a “brave new world” when we can’t state facts without crazy people contradicting us.
You can tell by the brow, the jawline, the arms, the bucket hands, the feet, the narrow hips. You could shave 100 people’s heads, put them in flour sacks, and people could tell you who was male and who was female. Chromosomes affect every cell in the body. Even if Khelif has a DSD, he is a male, perhaps with some external anomaly. There is no doubt that he is a man.
Trans ‘whatever” they are do not belong in sports that do not involve their sex at birth…this is all bullshit.
These two boxers are not Trans buts DSDs so the situation is a bit more complex. I do agree that women’s sports should be left to real women and trans people excluded for the integrity of competition. It’s a pity the IOC does not appear willing to address this
https://www.quora.com/Whats-your-take-on-Imane-Khelif-a-biologically-proven-male-boxer-taking-part-in-the-Womens-Boxing-event-at-the-Paris-Olympics-2024/answer/Mike-Jones-169
A good summation of the fact there is no good evidence Khelif is even intersex in any way. The Russians did not think so until after she beat a particular boxer.
Yet you continue to use, “he” for her, because you are a bigoted a$$hole.
As I noted, the situation in this case is more complex. Wanting women’s sports to be for women only is bigoted? Interesting take.
No, you are a bigot because you have no idea or care what makes someone a woman, and, you have no idea or care what provides masculine advantage in sports.
I used to box, both my daughters box, and the thought of them having to fight a man would disturb me. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. For a good explanation by someone who knows the ins and outs of the boxing world, read https://www.badlefthook.com/2024/8/1/24211625/there-are-no-transgender-women-boxing-in-paris-olympic-boxing-news-2024.
In addition, Ms Khelif’s record is 42 wins, 9 losses, with just 6 wins by knockout. So she has been beaten a number of times, and by other women. The amateur record of 2x Olympian gold medallist (and current p4p top (undeniably) female pro-boxer) Clarissa Shields is 63 wins, 1 loss and 11 knockouts. Thus Ms Shields’ knockout ratio is greater than that of Ms Khelif, i.e. Ms Khelif does not seem to possess extraordinary knockout power.
Yes! This. She’s been beaten 9 times by women. The Italian wussed out and played the culture war card… and the ugly parts of the Unherd audience (led by terrible journalism) have come braying around.
For all those claiming his fight record shows he has no real advantage, most of his defeats came early in his career and he has not lost a fight since 2022. So a combination of experienced gained and reaching his physical peak is clearly working to his advantage.
I appreciate that he is not Trans and it’s a difficult situation bit the IOC’s statement that his passport says female and that’s all the evidence they need does no one any favours. A better testing regime is needed in future for the sake of female sports.
She. Not he. And improving to win consistently until the next winner takes them down is the usual course of a boxer’s career.
“I appreciate that he is not Trans” <– You take no apparent notice of the fact whatsoever.
My point was it is not the killer argument many think it is. Both boxers did fail tests due to high testosterone levels, which they chose not to dispute so I’d like to see more on that. Simply citing the sex in their passports isn’t sufficient unless we’re happy for women’s sports to be overwhelmed by trans athletes.
“Both boxers did fail tests due to high testosterone levels” <– Prove it.
“Simply citing the sex in their passports isn’t sufficient unless we’re happy for women’s sports to be overwhelmed by trans athletes.” <– Imbecile, because transgender athletes have been able to compete in the Olympics and no MtF athlete has ever even won a medal you have no excuse to claim that.
From a recent article published by Reduxx: ‘European Vice President of the World Boxing Organization ……..warned the International Olympic Committee about males participating in women’s boxing as early as 2022, but that nothing was done…….confirmed the speculation surrounding the Algerian boxer, adding that it had been known as early as 2022 that Khelif was biologically male.
“The problem was not with the level of Khelif’s testosterone, because that can be adjusted nowadays, but with the result of the gender test, which clearly revealed that the Algerian boxer is biologically male,” ‘
Yes, I’m aware that men have been competing in the female category. It doesn’t mean it should be allowed to continue. You can see at junior levels of US sports that boys claiming to be girls are starting to win and depriving girls of podium places. Look also at how boys football teams are able to trounce elite women’s national teams as evidence of how sex matters. It feels only a matter of time. Irrespective, any male athlete competing is depriving a genuine woman of a place which is sufficient enough to put a stop for it.
Transmen compete in women’s comps which is as it should be. Let trans men compete as the sex they are rather than as women.
When I was living in South Africa there was a huge story about an ‘intersex’ runner called Caster Semenya. The controversy about her (out of respect to her chosen sex, and she is a lesbian with a wife and two children) sex was explained by the medical people in the country – that her genital appeared to be female with undeveloped testes…so she could not fall pregnant etc. She doesn’t like the label intersex and declares she lives as a woman. The major difference between non contact sports like tennis, track and field etc and combative sports must be emphasised. Here we are not talking about speed. Here someone’s life is endangered, sanctioned and promoted by the governing body??? What? So experts can talk about XY, genital mutations, testosterone etc but we simply cannot allow any doubt in a combat sport. Disclosure – I never understand why the world allows people to beat each other up as a sport!
Semenya is an XY male with a DSD just like Khelif. After she won the gold medal in the 2016 Olympics, the governing body of track & field changed their rules to require DSD males to lower their testosterone levels to compete in female sports. Semenya refuses to do so and thus can no longer compete in most competitions. “She” now admits she has internal testicles and has fathered two children with her wife.
What might be better is to rule that people who are in the tiny minority of intersex can compete against each other only.
Everyone has known, for millennia, that “sex is not immaterial”. Its an obvious thing, not a myth that has been ‘punctured’. Academia/media promulgating something that is factually wrong to even simpletons, doesn’t create a myth that needs to be ‘punctured’ by reality. Reality is reality. It’s similar to suggesting a trace gas like CO2, causes global warming, instead of the thermonuclear events in the sun, or our distance from it. One of many ‘myths to be punctured’ from the same people.
If this person has XY chromosomes but external female genitalia, it is a birth defect. HE has a place in the paralympics, not in women’s sport.
The IOC is a political joke on many levels. Like many US institutions, they are unwilling to stand up for the rights of biological women. Boxing is a sport of skill and physical ability. In any similar sport, a highly skilled woman can best an unskilled male. Just because Khelif has competed as a woman and lost to women does not make him one. It is entirely possible as he developed his skill set that his physical advantages would become the deciding factor in a match. Sadly, the MSM is unwilling to confront the issue at the risk of offending a minority of LGBTQ. Of course any comment from the Guardian should be viewed with scepticism.
My head is spinning from the vitriolic arguments over his/her gender based on (maybe) chromosomes, genitalia etc. The actual facts here are missing, so I won’t offer an opinion on this particular boxer. But the utterly ridiculous opinions offered up by professors and Guardian writers etc. in this piece are clearly written by people who don’t care about or understand sports. And as they don’t care about or understand it, they should just shut the h*ll up on the subject.
Ugh… Unherd this is beneath you. I am a male TERF for the most part. But this woman was born a woman and won as a woman. Some women are just stronger and more fierce than others. As are some men. It’s just the way it goes. I have supported JK Rowling, too, in most of her advocacy so far. But she’s going too far here.
Some real journalism on the issue.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-06/imane-khelif-womens-boxing-trans-a-social-media-pile-on/104186350?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
So, since lefties are dumbasses on the subject of gender categories in sports, now conservatives should be too?
Jeez, this article, the comments in this thread are just as much culture war BS as what you guys usually decry round here.
Allow me to give a sane appraisal.
citing the IBA as your primary source of evidence is freakin’ stupidas far as I can tell, the ‘I was born and raised a girl/woman’ point is, uhh, irrefutable? of for your nipicky nitwits, how bout currently unrefuted? Since, you know, it is true. Imani Khelif noted herself the sanest thing I have heard so far on the subject, that the controversy ‘harms human dignity’this empoverished kid boxes her way out of the ghetto, should be greatest moments of her life, and all ya’ll ghouls wanna do is score political points? Yeah, this thread itself harms human dignity. picture she’s your kid.
Forcefeeding a false narrative, and then refuting topics that don’t apply, given the false dichotomy being posited, is shitty rhetoric.
It is entirely possible to despise the ignorance involved in ‘formerly male bodies’ competing against women, and to ALSO despise this kind of obsessive insistence on, what, ‘genetic fairness’? What, exactly, is Sarah Ditum arguing here? Putin’s corrupt cronies, noted shit-disturbers and homophobes, got this one correct?
Or genetic fairness is, like the next important issue for identity politics? Let’s denounce ‘tall privilege’?
Most likely, this is just lazy writing from someone who doesn’t follow sports.
Micropolicing for genetic abnormalities was a moral obscenity when the IOC did it to Caster Semenaya back in the day, and it remains one now.
Screening for genetic abnormalities seems a pretty apt way to describe male sports itself, right?
Tyson hits too hard. Wembenyana is too tall. It’s nor fair to us normal males.
Absurd, right?
Sorry for the rant, but this quality ‘analysis’ is easily my biggest pet peeve on both the left and the right. Smug, dumb and ill-informed.
Or is this that increasingly common conservative community that approves of greater government intervension in personal lives?
I though now the general view was that Khelif is a woman. I read an extremely sensitive article in the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung on Friday about the difficult life. The article referred to how JK Rowling and her ilk can be relied on to thoughlessly pop up and declare anyone as a male ogre who does not meet her criteria. I think also the Global South appears to be lining up behind her. In her homeland Algeria the entire country is behind her, with women in particular seeing her as a model figure.