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August 5, 2024 - 6:30pm
A press conference hosted by the International Boxing Association (IBA) today only broadened the unfolding spectacle around boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. The chief executive officer of the IBA, Chris Roberts, disclosed that the two boxers had previously been found “ineligible” to compete in women’s boxing after undergoing a chromosome test.
As a result, Khelif and Yu-ting were not allowed to compete in the 2023 world championships. The athletes were “given the opportunity to appeal the findings to the Court of Arbitration for Sport,” with the IBA offering to pay the majority of the costs involved. Yu-ting did not appeal, and Khelif appealed and then withdrew.
Due to demands from the Algerian and Taiwanese boxing federations, Roberts was unable to reveal detailed information about the athletes’ test results, beyond “the chromosomes of both boxers were ineligible.” Listeners must read between the lines: the available information suggests that Khelif and Yu-ting are male athletes with disorders of sexual development.
Roberts also criticised the International Olympic Committee, which had chosen not to act on the information the IBA provided, instead assessing athletes’ eligibility to compete in female sports based on the legal sex designated on their passports.
Over the past two weeks, there has been a lot of confusion and misinformation in the public sphere when it comes to Khelif, Yu-ting, and what makes someone male or female. Media outlets have consistently referred to Khelif and Yu-ting as “female athletes” and framed the debate over Khelif and Yu-ting’s eligibility to compete in female sports as a question of policing femininity among women of colour. A USA Today “fact check” elided the controversy altogether: “Fact check: Imane Khelif is a woman.”
It doesn’t help that the term “intersex” itself is highly misleading; it implies that some people are neither male or female or both male and female or somewhere in between male and female. But intersex conditions are better understood as disorders of sexual development that affect typical male or female development. In other words, these conditions are sex-specific, not sex-defying.
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SubscribeIt’s almost incredible that the IOC has simply accepted that these boxers are female because it says so on their passport! Is this the extent of their curiosity and duty towards fairness and safty? There can surely be no confidence in the IOC to administer sport adequately.
They are in total denial there is even an issue. The stock response is ‘they were born and raised as female’.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
The IOC have published a lot of material stating the view that anyone who claims to be a woman is a woman.
They are fully signed up to the gender identity cult.
To them, Khelif is a woman because he says he is. It doesn’t matter if you prove her has XY chromosomes, male testosterone levels, testicles and a p***s – he is a woman, and if you question that you are evil.
The Left crowed that Angela Carini gave up because she was too stupid to realise that somebody might be stronger than her.
The Left are full of hate.
Imane Khelif was raised as a girl. I don’t think the boxer should be criticised over this.
He was raised as a girl, according to we don’t know who, until about the age of 12 when puberty kicked in, and then he magically turned into a man.
Underwent puberty & became an adult human male.
An infertile adult, likely with secondary sex characteristics more like a woman. It’s hard to say what Imane Khelif is between the binaries of man and woman. Insisting that she is a male ignores a lot of biological facts.
The real world is not neat and tidy like people here want it to be with their abstract categories. Athletes at the Olympic level are genetic freaks in many respects. They are not normal. They have characteristics that set them apart.
Do you think it’s just chance that so many elite woman athletes are gay? That a woman like Brittney Griner looks a lot like a man? There are a lot of things going on in our biology, many of which we don’t understand very well, and we ought to try to be less dogmatic and more pragmatic.
Normal athletes in their sex categories are not ‘genetic freaks’; XY denotes male, XX denotes female. This categorisation is the absolute definitive answer to all this gender madness. A cheek swab is all that is needed to establish biological sex.
To succeed in any elite sport, an individual is dealt certain ‘genetic cards’ which puts them at the right extreme of the Normal Distribution Curve. Nothing ‘freaky’ about that. Then comes the intensive training needed in order to maximise the potential gifted to them by chance.
My point is that athletes do not get to the Olympics by either nature or nurture. It has to be nature and nurture. Only people who are genetically gifted well above normal get there. They are freakish in that regard.
For example, Brittney Griner is 6 feet 9 inches tall. Simone Biles is 4 feet 8 inches tall. Those are freakish heights for women. Other cases are the same way. The selection process is very brutal in weeding out those who are not gifted.
You point to the difference of XX and XY as being an absolute definitive answer to all this gender madness, but that makes little sense. A male genotype doesn’t automatically give a person any advantage in boxing. A woman with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), for example, has an XY genotype but has no physical advantage because of it.
The IAAF (now World Athletics) went through all this with Caster Semenya in a series of court cases and arbitrations lasting more than a decade. They still haven’t found a good resolution, but at least they have a fair process.
A fair process is what I think Imane Khelif and Lin Yuting deserve. And they haven’t got it. Clear rules, with fair testing, are needed no matter what the rules say. At least the IOC did that. The IBA did not. And stop the claims that these women are battering other boxers.
One final note. Sex differences are not the only thing that affects athletic performance. When we start trying to dig into what advantage nature has given an elite athlete, we open up a can of worms. Look at the runners in the finals of the men’s 100 meters in the Paris Olympics. All 8 men were black, of Western African descent. All were tall with long legs in relation to their torsos, giving them a high center of gravity. All probably had at least 80% fast twitch muscle fibers.
This has been the pattern for decades. The last time a white man won a medal in the Olympics 100 meters was 44 years ago. Should something be done about that?
Because of all the different somatotypes (body shapes and sizes) people find a sport which suits them if they want to progress to an elite level, or any level for that matter. Men are superior in the vast, vast majority of sports because of the advantage that maleness confers. If no advantage is present, males and females compete in the same category, e.g. equestrian events. If males competed in female categories, there would be ZERO success for women. Is that really what you want?
What fair testing do the IoC do? As far as we know it’s a testosterone test & a look at a passport. Re the latter, a stamp in a passport is no longer an accurate indicator of sex, chromosomes or any other biological information about an individual, since anyone can now get it altered to say whatever they like. Plus it’s not the business of the state to determine who participates in sports at any level.
No matter how complex the position of people with DSDs, when it comes to sports (& a host of other situations where women might feel threatened, vulnerable or discriminated against) there need to be clear boundaries. XX/XY is a good measure. Why would anyone oppose this?
Men with CAIS are androgenous looking with a more ‘male-like’ pelvis. They also do not menstruate. That’s two distinct advantages straight away. They are not women. Full stop!
It’s quite extraordinary that you describe well-known genetic anomalies as ‘freakish’. The condition I described, 5-ARD, is quite specific & it defines a condition that applies to XY chromosome presentation. That is, a male, but with a condition that means the outer genitalia are not formed as usual. This is not some outlier view.
Have a listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-real-science-of-sport-podcast/id1461719225?i=1000664366015
Secondary sexual characteristics are everything not involved in reproduction; body and facial hair, male pattern baldness, broad shoulders and narrow hips, increased musculature and reduced body fat, large larynx leading to a deeper voice, square chin, etc.
“Underwent puberty”
Not a male one.
There is no evidence Imane Khelif is a man at all.
Well all s/he needs to do is submit to a cheek swab chromosome test & all speculation about the matter will be over & s/he can be left alone.
No, no cheek swab will have anything to do with it.
It will clarify whether the two boxers are in fact genetic males. A simple cheek swab will capture nucleated cells containing the boxers’ DNA which can be analysed for the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. Looking at what is appearing in reports, particularly information from the IBA, I suspect that both individuals are genetic males (despite appearances) who, in all probability, have undergone male puberty. As a result, they have male physical advantages, such as an enhanced musculature and robust skeletons, over female competitors.
Obviously I appreciate simple scientific fact isn’t for you, but this is what the issue boils down to.
But idiot, the Y chromosome is not dispositive if the issue.
That is the scientific fact disposing of your stupidity.
All “masculine” net advantage come solely from the last two years of testosterone blood levels before competing.
A basic question. Did this person when born have a p***s or a vagina. If this person was raised as a girl then presumably the latter. Why can’t this person confirm this so as to avoid doubt.
It isn’t incredible at all.
The IOC is fully signed up to the gender cult, so anyone who says they are a woman is a woman.
Even the passport thing is a necessary concession to transphobic bigotry, as far as Keir Starmer’s best man is concerned.
Just wait. Like Lia Thomas, the college swimmer, every mediocre male athlete will claim to be a trans woman. The IOC will welcome them with open arms, and the female athletes will hear that they need to train harder.
Neither of the two boxers, Imane Khelif nor Lin Yuting, was a mediocre male athlete. Neither of them claims to be trans. Both of them were born and raised as girls. Both of them have competed only as women.
These two boxers are not at all like Lia Thomas, and a lot like Caster Semenya. Their cases are rare and unique, and should be treated seriously by people who understand the problem. Not shrugged off as fakery by people who don’t.
They went through a male puberty, and that is what matters. He has a larger heart and lungs; longer limbs; larger hands and feet; greater height; more twitch muscles for speed; more hemoglobin in his veins; greater height; more upper body strength; faster; and finally, punching power that is about 167 percent greater than a women.
Imane Khelif didn’t go through a male puberty. Her body doesn’t respond to testosterone properly. That’s why she was thought to be a girl at birth and why she was raised as a girl in Islamic Algeria, not a country known for being friendly to trans advocates. She has a high level of testosterone, but its effects on her development are hard to determine.
I went into detail about this 5-alpha reductase deficiency in a lengthy comment that UnHerd deleted. But it’s important for people to realize that she is nothing like the trans Fallon Fox you compare her to.
Whether Imane Khelif and others like her should be allowed to compete in women’s sports is certainly a debatable issue, and one that should be debated. But the false facts you keep presenting have no place in that debate.
The tragedy in all this is that a private problem has been dragged out into the limelight and been forced to parade around for the illicit benefit of the press, the IOC and voyeurs like me.
Once the genetic determination had been made, Imane Khelif should have been disqualified, firmly but quietly. Perhaps this is unfair, but a lot in life is unfair.
You want to know what else is unfair? After this brouhaha, will Imane Khelif be able to go back to Algeria, or will her life there be made a living hell between foreign LBGTQ+ activists and native Moslem witch hunters?
As for the IOC, a simple rule: A Y in your chromosome, you’re male. Problem solved. As for passports, I care not a fig for the opinions of various Foreign Offices and State Departments. Decide how you like, but if the passport holder has trouble at the airport, not my problem.
The genetic determination has not been made. That’s the problem. The IBA did some secret testing, which it refuses to describe and the results of which have never been released.
The IBA is corrupt and incompetent. At the press conference its president raved like a lunatic, accusing the president of the IOC of being a [word sel-censored to avoid this comment being deleted].
The IOC has no business acting as the governing body of boxing or any other sport. It too is corrupt to some degree, and political. But it has recognized that and says boxing will not be part of the 2028 games unless a governing body emerges.
Let’s all hope that World Boxing or some other group steps up to address this women’s qualification and other issues properly. This situation is unfair because of process, let alone substance.
But the IOC said that it would not test for sex any more. Thus, men can say they are women and compete with women. Just like that. Sounds fair to me. Not.
I understand that the IBA have been told by the IOC not to release any more information than what they have already. As stated in the article and on the basis of the IBA’s information, it’s thought that the particular DSD that the two boxers have results in their experiencing male puberty and hence have physical characteristics associated with males. In other words, they have male strength but are boxing females. In the real world of biology, this means you have people having superior strength and resilience boxing people who do not have the same advantages. This isn’t fair or safe.
5-ARD does not prevent the testes descending at puberty & natural body modifications taking place. The hormonal anomaly prevented the normal formation of outer male genitalia, but he will have male internal organs, which at puberty will have delivered all the necessary hormones for a male.
The body produces the hormone testosterone but not DHT and other androgen needed for normal male development.
In my view, these people are more women than men. They are not like males beating up on females. Look at the punch that popped Angela Carini in the face. It was nothing special. The effect was stark because she didn’t take the punch well.
As I say, a simple cheek swab is all that’s necessary to clarify things. The lines have to be drawn somewhere and chromosomes are about as definitive as it gets.
Especially for women.
Done a lot of boxing, have you? The punch was that of a mediocre man but was still much more powerful than a biological woman. Why don’t you test your ‘view’ by getting in the ring with both sexes, then report back afterwards, if you are still alive!
How do you know how hard the punch was? I watched the clips of the last minute or so of the bout, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a pummeling. Imane Zhelif was clearly the better boxer, it’s not as clear that she was the more powerful one.
That’s what I liked about boxing. Not the punching so much as the timing and the footwork, and the mental aspects. As I said, I boxed some in high school, and really enjoyed it. But I was never that good, and I didn’t like to get hit in the face. That hurt. And my looks were not that great to begin with. The last thing I needed was a broken nose or a punched-out, battered and bruised visage.
So I hung up my gloves, but I still like the sport. I won’t tell the story now, but I got to say hello to Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1988. That was interesting. That’s one powerful-looking man.
I value this comment from Carlos because he has shed light on the issue in a very constructive way. It means that the issue is not about believing in a subjective version of gender, but in addressing real biological distinctives that affect let’s say 0.001% of the population.
The whole issue with women’s competitions is that it is specifically for those born without male advantages. If you have a genetic anomaly that you have some male advantage without being 100% male, then you still don’t qualify. You have to be 100% female to be in the women’s section. That would be my view.
The whole point in having women’s competitions is that women compete against WOMEN. Enough said!!!!
Which is why the last paragraph of the the article was particularly apt.
Totally. The IOC has proven to be not fit for purpose. This unedifying spectacle is 100% of their own making.
Very true that the two athletes shouldn’t be vilified. They’re not faking or cheating. But they still shouldn’t compete if they have male boxing strength.
How do you know they ‘weren’t mediocre male athletes if they haven’t fought men?!
This particular issue is nothing to do with ‘trans’. It is very specifically to do with a 5-ARD DSD.
But isn’t it interesting how ‘trans’ ideologues harp on about ‘assigned at birth’ for everyone, after which you can apparently choose your sex (oops, sorry, ‘gender’) right up until a male actually IS wrongly assigned at birth’ (as a girl) & then suddenly it’s’ ‘born a woman’?
Don’t forget that at the centre of the IOC decision to allow these XY-ers into the ring with women was a man called Mark Adams. He is the best friend and was the Best Man at the wedding of our current Prime Minister Two-tier Keir, who also can’t say what a woman is.
‘Inclusion’ & no ’hurty feels’ for men is what the IoC prioritises over the actual physical safety of female athletes. Disingenuous doesn’t begin to cover it.
All it takes is a simple cheek swab to test for chromosomes.This has already been done by the IBA but Mark Adams refuses to accept it. Why?
He’s an absolute disgrace. A very highly paid man in a corrupt organisation telling women what they need to accept. He obviously briefs Keir Starmer on ‘What is a woman?’ issues.
The IOC is a grossly corrupt organisation, along the lines of FIFA. Adams proves nothing has changed.
“But intersex conditions are better understood as disorders of sexual development that affect typical male or female development. In other words, these conditions are sex-specific, not sex-defying.”
Is this correct? Some DSDs occur in people with XX (female) or XY (male) chromasomes, but there are also intersex conditions where a person may have XXY or XO chromasomes, which don’t fit either definition. Seems like it would be fairer and more accurate to speak of DSDs and intersex conditions as different categories.
So, for example, I don’t think it has been stated whether Khelif has XY chromasomes with a DSD or is intersex with XXY or XO chromasomes.
Seems more like a case of National Sporting Associations testing the rules than something individual athletes should be blamed for – remember Russian female athletes in the 1980s before doping tests were well developed?
Yes, there were performances which lead people to start saying that female athletes would sooner or later catch up to the performances of male athletes.
When there was better testing, this ‘catching up’ stopped….
XO is classed as ‘Turner’s Syndrome’ where there are physical and mental symptoms associated with the condition. The absence of the Y-chromosome means that no male genitalia form and the individual is is ‘outwardly’ female; although they are sterile because no viable gametes can be produced.
XXY = male with a DSD; XO = female with a DSD. Basically if you have a Y chromosome you are male, and will have post-pubertal male athletic advantages – but unfortunately for both males and females, rare genetic disorders (including but not limited to, the absence of a whole sex chromosome or presence of additional sex chromosomes) can in a minority of cases lead to an absence or abnormality of normal genitalia at birth. We have to sympathise with athletes brought up as girls who actually have male genetics – this is not about blaming them – but they do have a significant physical advantage over XX women, which is not really fair. And in the case of boxing, probably not safe either.
XXY and X0 are chromosomal abnormalities with known presenting features. They should not be described as ‘intersex’.
Get some proper reporting in ya:
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
ABC Australia? Don’t make me laugh! 😀
For laughs I have had a look at that article. It can be summed up in one sentence:
“The IOC says the pair met all eligibility rules.”
That’s it. This is all the ABC verify team could come up with on the subject. What these eligibility rules are we don’t know (well, we do, but not thanks to them).
Exactly! The ABC is known as the propaganda arm of the Australian Labor Party. It’s CEO is all but that party’s Suslov. Say no more.
The IBA is a deeply corrupt organisation with ties to the Russian government. I doubt their judgement can be trusted in this situation, or any other.
The two boxers had a right to appeal the IBA decision and mysteriously didn’t.
That’s what the IBA says but their story has been contradicted by the CAS.
It is not mysterious. The IBA has been dissolved as a sports governing authority, on account of Russian influenced corruption.
Who cares. The IOC should have sorted this mess – and they had ample time to do it. This is their fault and no one else’s.
Absolutely. “Passport sex,” my eye. In a lot of the world, a backhander to the right petty official, and you can have Martian as the sex on your passport.
(Martians have only one sex, did you know that? Their appearance varies with barometric pressure. That’s why Martians on earth are all male.)
Ahem. Back to my original argument. Even in the US, I would bet that with enough paperwork, someone with a perfectly normal XY chromosome could pry a “female” passport out of the State Department.
Just wait. Every mediocre male athlete will suddenly claim to be a woman, and the IOC will welcome them with open arms. When the women keep losing when competing with the males, excuse me, women, they will be told that they should have trained harder.
Sorry. I wrote this because my original posts didn’t show up when I came back to see if there was a comment.
The IOC doesn’t normally make the decision on the qualifications for women to compete in a sport. They leave that up to the governing body for each sport, most of which have been struggling to figure out how to handle this issue for more than a decade since Caster Semenya’s case caused such a fuss in women’s track. Cases like Lia Thomas in swimming have made it worse. But progress has been made.
The only reason the IOC stepped in in boxing was because the IBA is corrupt and incompetent, and there was no other organization who could step in to handle the job. The IOC will be happy, I’m sure, to bow out.
Imbecile, the same way that did not happen for the last twenty years it will still not happen, ever.
In terms of height and musculature Khelif does not look that different to female boxers of similar weight. We are not talking a female Mike Tyson here. The advantage Khelif has is not immediately obvious, in the way that a tall persons advantage in basketball is obvious.
Men, taken on average, have greater upper body musculature and strength than women. But that’s an average, which is pushed up by large heavily muscled men.
in what exactly is Khelif advantage supposed to consist, especially having been beaten on several occasions by unquestionably female boxers.
Genuinely curious.
Khelif was quite a bit taller than the Italian woman he was fighting. Just look at the picture accompanying this article. He is far more muscular than she was. Remember what she said? She had never been hit that hard. It’s like the two women who fought trans woman Fallon Fox. After they recovered from their concussions, fractured skulls and smashed orbital bones, they said they had never been hit that hard.
I saw the blow that Imane Khelif landed on Angela Carini. It seemed to sting, but it certainly didn’t stagger her. Not a particularly powerful blow.
Well yes, but boxers do differ in height, power, skill and speed at the same weight. That’s why some win and others lose. At Olympic level you would expect opponents to be some of the toughest you’ve ever encountered. The physical differences do not look large.
He has been previously been beaten by women because he is a mediocre MALE boxer who could never compete at this level in the men’s category. He has no right to deny a place for a woman as he is a biological male. To deny this is to deny what anyone can see with their own eyes.
Khelif is not male and has never competed in men’s categories.
He IS male and wouldn’t be able to compete in the men’s category because he is mediocre. He chooses to batter women instead.
No, she is not male. You actually can’t quote any lab result in any way showing otherwise. She, was born and raised a girl.
Imane Khelif didn’t batter anybody. Did you see the fight with Angela Carini? It was a typical boxing match. She didn’t take any noticeably strong blows. There was no sign of any battering on her face. She says the punches she took were powerful, but that’s a subjective judgment.
Imane Khelif has been boxing as a woman internationally for over 6 years. As far as I know, she’s never been accused of battering anybody.
Can we please stop altogether with this Olympics nonsense? No one wants to host this globalist propaganda show anyway. Every branch of sport has its own multiple championships which are great events without all this fake hoopla about love and unity
What? That’s not fair. This is not a Lia Thomas problem, where a man masquerades as a woman. This is a Castor Semenya problem, where a person has a rare medical condition that unexpectedly (often as they hit puberty) puts them into a category that stretches the limits of what is considered a woman.
We don’t know for sure what the IBA found in when it tested these two women in 2022 and 2023. The IBA is too corrupt and incompetent to be trusted as the governing body for boxing, and for that reason the IOC suspended the IBA in 2019 and stripped it of all authority in 2023, taking over itself the regulation of boxing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The IBA showed that incompetence again by what they have told the world now in their latest press conference.
Boxing did not need this. It’s a popular sport in many countries, but not so much in the US anymore. Not like the days in Rome in 1960 when Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. won the gold medal as a light heavyweight that set him on the road to glory as Muhammad Ali. For now, boxing is not even on the program for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The IOC is not set up to act as the governing body for any sport, particularly regarding the qualifications for women’s events. But for boxing it had to step in on an ad hoc basis as no other organization could. For other sports, each governing body sets its own standards on that issue, and there has been controversy for years. It’s no surprise that the IOC did not wander into the “what is a woman?” morass but instead took a minimalist position of going by passports. What else could they do?
Does that IOC decision give the two boxers, Khelif from Algeria and Lin from Taiwan, an unfair advantage? It’s hard to say. Both boxers do seem, from what the IBA has said, to have XY chromosomes. But that is hard to verify. The IBA said that four women boxers tested as men in 2022, but the other two women of the four tested normally when tests were repeated in 2023. Maybe Khelif and Lin were improperly tested too. And the IBA has waffled about whether testosterone tests were done. The IBA statements cannot be trusted — their press conference was a farce.
We do know that these two boxers were born and raised as women. They may have a 5-alpha reductase deficiency. If so, their bodies have a reduced ability to convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a more potent androgen. So up until puberty, their body structure may have been within the normal range of girls much like in androgen insensitivity cases.
But when puberty hits girls like this, their bodies may start to respond more to the increased androgen levels, developing at least some more masculine characteristics. For example, they might have had a normal, or slightly larger, c******s (rhymes, sort of, with Dolores) that suddenly grows into a micro p***s (rhymes with Venus). They typically have high levels of testosterone, but it’s not clear if those high levels have the effect on their bodies that they would on a normal XX woman.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that the IOC made the right decision. Letting these women (I would call them that, despite their apparent XY genotype) box is not threatening anyone. They have been boxing other women for years, with no one hurt before. They even competed in tournaments this year with no reports of injury or even incident.
With regard to the most recent fight that got a lot of attention, the punches Khelif threw did not stagger her Italian opponent. They did not look like the punches a man would throw, with 2.67 times the punching power of a woman. Instead, it looked to me like the Italian woman got hit in the face, and that’s what caused the pain that caused her to bow out of the match. That happens, and the blow can be as much emotional as physical. I know, I boxed a little in high school, until I got my nose broken and hung up my gloves. That did me in.
Like boxer Mike Tyson said when he heard about his upcoming opponent’s plan to beat him: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” As with plans, the same could be said of dreams of Olympic victory in women’s boxing.
I disagree. I think the rule should be if a Y chromosome is present, the athlete is male. But you present a good argument well stated. Either way, the question is the distribution of unfairness. What should not happen is the question occupying all three rings of the circus until the participants are thoroughly bloodied and the audience begins to leave.
“This is not a Lia Thomas problem, where a man masquerades as a woman.”
Lia Thomas is not a Lia Thomas problem. There is no masquerade. There was also no problem, she dominated nothing, and kept the same relative place in the rankings overall.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html
“They even competed in tournaments this year with no reports of injury or even incident.” <– That is because just like the “problem” with Lia Thomas, the entire thing is manufactured for the political purposes of bigots.
The fact is that to go by appearances Carini could have been beaten by actress Linda Hamilton in the 2nd Terminator movie — Carini was underconditioned.
Good to know that you are quoting Hollywood movies to back up your argument. Perhaps you could step in the ring with both of them (at different times!) to weigh up the issue properly.
Moron, I have not quoted any movie — I have mentioned a clearly cisgender female human being who could plainly wipe the floor with the under conditioned Angela Carina.
Try dealing with reality with a little recognition and maturity for once.
I think you quoted ‘Terminator II’, unless I am very much mistaken; although, according to you, I’m a ‘moron’, so that probably explains it. You do yourself no favours by making disparaging comments about people.
No imbecile, I quoted the movie nowhere.
“When it comes to sex division in sports, there are some sports — like swimming and running — where fairness is what’s at stake.”
I disagree with this passage. If we talk about sex segregation in sport, wherever it exists there is a question of fairness should men be allowed to compete with women in such a competition. Even chess and Bridge, not just swimming or athletics.
In some cases there is indeed also a question of safety.
Is this geopolitics being played out between the conservative Russian-led IBA and the pro-American and necessarily woke IOC?
Of course, the IOC robbed 100s of Western femake athletes of their medals in the 1960s and 70s when they granted the Eastern Bloc dopers theirs.
The Soviet block took women and doped them. This is a completely different situation.
Ah, the Brothers Press, Tamara and Irena.
I’m sorry to see that some unHerd readers are allowing their righteous anger about transgender ideology to over-ride their feelings of common humanity towards Imane Khelif by choosing to talk about ‘he/him’. None of us know Khelif personally, but we can surely imagine what it’s like to find yourself exposed to this relentless international scrutiny, just as happened to Castor Semenya a few years ago.
What we do know is that Khelif was presumably born without external male genitalia, and was raised as a girl in conservative Islamic Algeria. We understand that as a young person she wanted to play soccer with the boys, but was rejected because (of course) the boys refused to accept a girl playing their game. And she says she was bullied by the girls because she was too much of a tomboy for them. We can also imagine her unhappiness at puberty when those internal testes started kicking in with the testosterone produced by male XY chromosomes.
Looking in the mirror, did she see a girl’s face transforming into a pretty young woman, or a disconcertingly male jawbone and heavy eyebrows? Don’t we remember our own adolescent anxieties vividly enough?
This is an entirely different situation from a teenage boy or an adult man deciding to ‘transition’ to become a woman by putting on a dress and makeup, for whatever reason, and proceeding to beat the ‘cis’ girls at women’s sport. We should reserve our anger for the clowns who run the IOC, not these two young people.
Khelif is a male. Semenya is a male. Mboye is a male. Plenty of males present as females. We can have compassion for the situation in which these malformed persons are in, but still have more compassion for the females which they are displacing, damaging, and beating unfairly.
I do agree with this, but they have put themselves out on a world stage (or have been manipulated to do so) & that has placed them in a dreadful position. Maybe they trusted that the IoC would protect them from this kind of prurient scrutiny. If so, that trust has been horribly misplaced.
The right thing to do would be to offer to take the cheek swab & live with the result.
Being put in a dress as a child may have been a mistake but it cannot determine your sex.
IOC in denial of biological facts, eyes closed to rampant state-sponsored drug misuse, infected with anti-colonial and identity politics, self-serving global bureaucracy and national leadership bodies…
So, business as usual 🙂
These males boxers will both get fraudulent medals. This is not the only case of the Olympics allowing male to compete in the female category. Caster Semenya and a number of African males have DSD, and have female genitalia. Such persons have been ruled out of the run competitions. Boxing is worse, since these males can actually harm female competitors.
The IOC should test every female for XY chromosomes.
“the available information suggests that Khelif and Yu-ting are male athletes with disorders of sexual development.” <– It is not information, it is baseless speculation from an unreliable narrator — they have only claimed this despite prior participation in the IBA, after a favored undefeated Russian boxer was defeated by Khelif. Did they get the tests wrong the first several times? The IBA is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin Inc.
“It doesn’t help that the term “intersex” itself is highly misleading; it implies that some people are neither male or female or both male and female or somewhere in between male and female.” <– That is literally what it means and is exactly accurate, not misleading. Why is objectively measured reality something you reject?
It is not a matter of safety any more than boxing ever is — for all how you TERFs scream and wail about Fallon Fox, they have not killed any women in the ring, cisgender female athletes have.
If you want to produce an artificial degree of fairness in women’s boxing with respect to testosterone, then require of athletes they have typical cisgender female levels of the hormone in their systems for no more than two contiguous years prior to competing, and require that across the board.
A ‘low blow’ wouldn’t worry him; massive advantage!!!!