# Olympic Boxing Gender Controversy **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 1, 2024, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161 "2024-08-01T22:13:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/201 "2024-08-08T16:21:10Z")
I think JKR very much believes what her TERF group tells her. Most of the stuff she claimed early on about trans people was all TERF rhetoric. Her “facts” were all things they claimed. So it need not be that she herself thinks black women look more mannish. Just that her TERF buddies do. And she has picked her side. And I suspect she doesn’t fact check gender-related stuff anymore except on TERF websites. Because anyone else is clearly denying reality. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/202 "2024-08-08T17:35:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Still seems pretty CT, but not as far-fetched as I originally thought: The hypothesis that Khelif and/or Lin actually had no disqualifying gender-eligibility test results last year at all (and indeed, they both seem to have been competing for years without any such disqualification prior to the 2023 event), but were deliberately targeted or scapegoated by the IBA in some way for some kind of corrupt reason. I mean, that’s literally the most plausible explanation for this whole mess, and every other explanation seems to me to have conspiracy-theory status. > [@Zyada](#): > > Read my response above re the factors involved in the difference between women’s and men’s performance. In the nature vs nurture debate I am strongly on the side of nurture. And people raised as male are treated very differently than people raised as female. One data point, here: Men also dominate competitive chess (well, agendered dominate competitive chess, but among humans, I mean). That’s clearly not because of upper-body strength or muscle mass or anything like that, so whatever the explanation is must be something else. And one commonly-posited possibility is that men are more competitive than women. Is that innate, cultural, or a combination of both? Who knows? And even if innate, which way would trans people go on it? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/203 "2024-08-09T22:41:41Z")
Khelif has won the gold. > **[Boxer Imane Khelif wins gold medal: Algerian is Olympic champion after...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/08/09/imane-khelif-vs-liu-yang-olympic-boxing-updates/74738891007/)** > > Targeted in a “gender eligibility’’ controversy at the Paris Olympics, Imane Khelif of Algeria continues to thrive inside the boxing ring. ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/204 "2024-08-09T22:46:34Z")
I’m so happy for her. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/205 "2024-08-09T23:52:56Z")
Good for her!!! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/206 "2024-08-10T00:23:53Z")
Yay Khelif!! And, surprise surprise, she did not in fact kill any of her competitors or even put any of them in the hospital with her alleged brutal unfeminine powerful manly strongness! Of course this victory is going to be spun as justifying the belief that Khelif “must be” male, since otherwise how could she have defeated all these female boxers, huh? But, as previously noted, any outcome whatsoever would have been spun by the gender-police types as support for their bigotry. If Khelif is going to be doomed to wade through all this unspeakable pigshit anyway, at least she’ll do so as an Olympic gold medalist. 👍 With this and with Lin Yu-ting earning at least silver in the featherweight division so far, it’s a good day for the anti-bullying resistance movement. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/207 "2024-08-10T00:34:51Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Of course this victory is going to be spun as justifying the belief that Khelif “must be” male, since otherwise how could she have defeated all these female boxers, huh? Whoever won the gold would have “defeated all these female boxers”. Duh! The bigots try so hard and fail so spectacularly. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/208 "2024-08-10T00:43:51Z")
I’m relieved that Algerians have rallied around her in the face of the BS getting spat at her. There was some real concern that the lies could get her killed if people in her home country believed them, but now she’s a national hero. Also, if I may indulge in a bit of schaudenfreude; [![](https://i.imgflip.com/8zsqnc.jpg) ](https://i.imgflip.com/8zsqnc.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/209 "2024-08-10T00:50:59Z")
Yeah, Logan can fuck himself. Yesterday I bought a t-shirt to support Coffeezilla’s legal fund since Logan is suing him for exposing his scams. Even his apology for spreading disinformation was full of disinformation. > **[Logan Paul Admits to ‘Spreading Misinformation’ After Making Controversial...](https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/logan-paul-admits-spreading-misinformation-imane-khelif-olympics-1236094918/)** > > Paul admitted to 'spreading misinformation' on social media after calling Algerian boxer Imane Khelif a man. > > ‼ OOPSIES ‼ > > I might be guilty of spreading misinformation along with the entirety of this app > > Although she’s been previously disqualified for failing a “gender test” and has XY chromosomes, some sources say Imane Khelif was born a biological woman ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/210 "2024-08-10T01:14:26Z")
That’s not even a lame apology like, “Sorry I offended you with my offensive behavior.” That’s a some people say so and so, but I don’t believe it. Wink. What a turd. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/211 "2024-08-10T04:47:23Z")
Well, at least one good thing coming out of this whole shitshow—and even more so now that Khelif is definitively the champion in her category, and Lin definitively either the champion or first runner-up in hers—is that it forces a showdown for all the Gender Critical transphobes who have been trying to dismiss or handwave away the complexities of real-world biological sex in favor of their preferred simplistic male/female binary. For years they’ve been waving signs saying “Women Can’t Have Penises” and “Men Can’t Have Vaginas” and similar. And when somebody points out the realities of intersex individuals, where genitals and karyotype and hormone levels don’t all fit into the same sex category, they shrug it off as being some kind of statistically negligible anomaly. Well, here we’ve got a decidedly non-negligible global public opinion controversy centering on a female athlete who, according to all available evidence, is incontrovertibly female by birth sex assignment, implying female genitalia, and has always lived and competed as female. (Two of them, in fact, because AFAIK Lin’s AFAB status is just as credibly established as Khelif’s.) And we’ve got a whole bunch of transphobic bigots nonetheless falling over themselves to describe both athletes as “male”. Well, folks, make up your minds: can somebody born with a vagina be male, or not? If you can’t figure your way out of this self-inflicted semantic mess without insisting on a flat-out logical contradiction, or else making up stories about how Khelif and/or Lim must be “secretly trans”, then it’s time to admit that you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. It’s always fun to see people who’ve built a movement around pretending that reality is simpler and easier than it is run smack up against some of the complexity they’ve been denying (see also: the anti-abortion-rights movement and IVF bans). This should have happened already with the champion-runners flap about Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, but at that time IIRC the transphobes hadn’t doubled down quite so hard on their “penis = man, vagina = woman” sloganeering. Also, more people were more confused about the distinction between “transgender” and “intersex” back then. Thanks largely to some hard work on consciousness-raising by transgender-rights advocates, more people nowadays understand what “AMAB” and “AFAB” mean. And they’ve received the transphobic messaging that your birth sex has to be accepted as your “real” gender category. So what happens when somebody who hears that Khelif failed a gender eligibility test, and lambastes her in the media because he jumps to the conclusion that she’s a transgender “man fighting a woman”, finds out that Khelif is AFAB? Well, if he’s former UFC middleweight champ Israel Adesanya, [he apologizes.](https://talksport.com/olympics/2001672/israel-adesanya-public-apology-boxer-imane-khelif-paris-2024/) > [@](#): > > [Adesanya](https://talksport.com/who/israel-adesanya/) also had his say after mistakenly believing that Khelif was born a man before transitioning to become a transgender female. > > “Men should not be boxing women,” the [UFC](https://talksport.com/topic/ufc/) star tweeted […] > > Adesanya has since apologised for his words after admitting that he misunderstood the situation. > > “From now on, I’m going to leave women’s fights to women,” he said on The Rock. > > “I tried to speak up about it and apparently, I got it wrong, or a lot of people got it wrong with this misinformation. […] > > I saw the news or the articles and I was like, 'Why they are letting a trans person [fight women]? And then I find out later she wasn’t actually trans. > > “So, to the lady, my bad. I got that wrong. > > “To the lady, the boxer, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what was going on." Music to the ears, and pretty damn decent of him, although maybe also the least he could do? Public apologies to Khelif for ignorant “trans” misinterpretations have also been issued by, among others, the Boston Globe and the president of Louisiana State University. If it transpires that Khelif and/or Lin does in fact have a Y chromosome along with her female birth sex, and the gender-police types want to call her a “man” on that account, then they’ll have to acknowledge that yes, according to their criteria, a “man” can have a natural-born vagina. If it turns out that one or both of them is XX (esp. if they give birth at some point), then the gender-police types will have to acknowledge that no, in fact they can’t “always tell” who is or isn’t a “biological male”. That will be taunting-fodder for decades to come, whenever a gender-police type calls some female athlete “male”. “Ha ha, remember back when you were swearing up and down that that Olympic gold boxer Imane Khelif was really a man, and the Paris Olympics were showcasing ‘male violence against women’ and ‘men punching women in the face’ and all that bullshit, and three years later Khelif got married and had a son? Yeah, you were FOS then and you’re FOS now.” Better yet, when the Gender Critical folks come out with their usual fearmongering about kids allegedly being “pressured” to be transgender on the grounds that if they’re gender-nonconforming they must “really” be the opposite sex (not that any transgender rights supporters are actually advocating any such nonsense, but that’s how fearmongering works). “Oh yes, I completely agree with you that it’s so important to accept gender nonconformity in both children and adults! Nobody should be made to feel bad for not looking ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ enough, or be bullied into identifying as a different gender! I think it’s so great how the Gender Critical community supported the female boxer Imane Khelif, even though she’s so gender-nonconforming in her appearance!” (subtext: you fucking hypocritical weasels). ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/212 "2024-08-10T05:12:27Z")
I think you’re underestimating the ability of transphobes to simultaneously believe in their simplistic binary sex identity and that specific individuals like Khelif and Lin are male abominations masquerading as women. They won’t see any hypocrisy in believing both at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/213 "2024-08-10T05:14:40Z")
True, but hopefully there will be growing numbers of the less bigoted general public capable of spotting their bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/214 "2024-08-10T05:16:16Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > think you’re underestimating the ability of transphobes to simultaneously believe in their simplistic binary sex identity and that specific individuals like Khelif and Lin are male abominations masquerading as women. Indeed. Just an hour ago Trump referred to her as “a man who transitioned into a boxer”, which is completely nonsensical and which his idiot cultists will take as the gospel truth. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/215 "2024-08-10T05:19:48Z")
Heh, he’s such a clown. In my own youth I tried to transition into a basketball player (merely at the school-varsity level), but I got my dreams shattered by being (a) short and (b) untalented. (I mean, I made the teams, but only because they were desperate for players.) Though I think it would be kind of funny if “transitioning into” becomes slang for “training as” or “succeeding as” in sports contexts. I think it’s great that Khelif has transitioned into an Olympic gold medalist, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/216 "2024-08-10T11:15:19Z")
It sounds like alchemy. Many people have tried to make lead transition into gold, for example. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/217 "2024-08-10T21:28:30Z")
Just reported: She has filed a legal complaint. I know nothing about French law so I don’t know how this works, but I wish her the best. [https://www.reuters.com/sports/olympics/boxing-algerias-khelif-files-harassment-complaint-amid-gender-dispute-2024-08-10/](https://www.reuters.com/sports/olympics/boxing-algerias-khelif-files-harassment-complaint-amid-gender-dispute-2024-08-10/) ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/218 "2024-08-10T21:36:31Z")
Lin has also won gold in her weight class, so there’s that as well. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2024, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/219 "2024-08-10T22:22:49Z")
Came in to post this. Well done, Lin and Khelif! And, once again, that makes eight victorious Olympic bouts between them with zero casualties or hospitalizations. Apparently it is not so catastrophically hazardous for the delicate XX lady boxers to climb into the ring with the (allegedly) XY “manly” horrid brutes as all the gender-police pearl-clutchers would have us believe. (I was recently listening to the NPR podcast “Tested”, about the history and current controversies of elite athlete gender eligibility testing, particularly in track and field. Apropos of which, does anybody have a suggestion for how to watch, in the US, the recent documentary on the same subject called [Category: Woman](https://www.categorywomandoc.com/)? The “Where to Watch” link on that site returns a 404 error, and [the film’s page on the streaming website of the production company TVO](https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/category-woman) says that the video won’t play due to geographical restrictions. Any help or tips gratefully received.) I suspect this is going to become an even more seriously scrutinized issue, with fans being more willing to push back against insults and harassment of (both actual and allegedly) XY DSD female athletes who are AFAB. Even if there’s still not a lot of support for transgender female athletes in competition, a lot of people recognize the injustice of accusing cisgender AFAB athletes, who have always identified and competed as female, of being “males” or “cheaters” or practicing “male violence against women” or “taking away medals from female athletes”. Mind you, I think that in the last analysis this will shake out to some kind of not-completely-unregulated separate status for XY DSD female athletes. Personally, in my current semi-informed state regarding this issue, I tend to favor ultimately devising some form of handicapping system. Like, XY female athletes still compete with XX ones (because there aren’t enough XY women for separate heats or categories), but, say, they need to achieve some specified additional level of performance in order to beat the highest-achieving XX competitor for a medal award. To make such a system even close to reasonably accurate and workable, of course, there would need to be a shit-ton of actual performance data collected about elite female athletes, along with a lot more transparency about specific gender eligibility criteria and testing. We have the computational technology to devise very complicated quantitative handicap values and even to update them individually in close to real time, but coming up with valid physiological models as a basis to create them is going to be an applied-math beast and a half. It’ll keep sports-stats nerds happy to the end of time arguing about the minutiae, though. But the whole brouhaha and journalistic investigations on the subject have IMHO solidified one ironclad principle: Sports competition, including elite sports competition, absolutely needs to be open and accessible to all humans using their natural-born bodies and gender identities. I don’t yet have a clear view of exactly how the equally important rights of transgender athletes will be reconciled with that principle. But I am ever more convinced that this business of requiring XY DSD female athletes to surgically or pharmacologically interfere with their natural hormone levels, just in order to be recognized as both female and an eligible competitor in sports, is some human-rights-violating bullshit. So is the practice of accusing and harassing XY DSD female athletes who are in no way cheating or faking on any issue, just living their lives and competing as the women they’ve always been assigned as and identified as, in their natural bodies. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161/220 "2024-08-12T02:06:50Z")
[Richard Dawkins](https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/richard-dawkins-lied-about-the-algerian) hasn’t come out of this affair looking too good. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-boxing-gender-controversy/1005161.md?page=12)