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The 2024 Olympics has seen plenty of sporting highs as well as heartbreak for competitors around the world, but no competition has sparked more debate and controversy this year than the women’s boxing.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif is guaranteed either a gold or silver medal in the welterweight event, after securing her place in the final on Wednesday morning NZ Time.
While Khelif will make it to the podium her experience at the Olympics has been soured by public backlash against her and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting in the featherweight division. Both boxers were banned from International Boxing Association matches last year after tests on their sex ruled they were ineligible to compete.
[...] University of Waikato Professor in Sociology of Sport and Gender Holly Thorpe told The Front Page that the IBA has largely been discredited.
“They lost their permission to be the world governing body of boxing. My understanding was that was for issues relating to transparency, the culture of that organisation, a number of kind of ethical concerns.”
Corruption! Russians! Disinformation!
[...] Thorpe said that hormones fluctuate for us at different stages of life, and that testing women for testosterone is problematic.
Whereas if you’re born with XY chromosomes, you stay born with XY chromosomes and having XY chromosomes means you’re a dude.
Oh, wait. It’s the IBA who says both boxers have XY chromosomes and the IBA has been “discredited” because, you know, corruption and Russian disinformation.
“The important thing is that the International Olympic Committee, for women to participate in the boxing at the Olympics, all they need to prove is their gender identity and their passport. They don’t need to do a blood test. They don’t need to prove their hormones or chromosomes. It is their gender identities and their passports, and that is all the IOC requires.
In other words so long as you say you’re a woman and have it on your passport you’re good to go. It doesn’t matter if you’re not actually a woman.
[...] “If we look at Michael Phelps, for example – huge feet, tall, big hands. These are biological advantages in swimming, but we’re not accusing him of any unfair advantage, right?
This is what I call the ‘superman’ argument. According to this argument, Khelif, for example, didn’t win because he’s actually a guy (I won’t get into arguments about him being intersex, etc), but because ‘she’ was born with certain genetic advances. The strange thing is that these advantages are precisely the same as those any guy would have over a woman when it comes to boxing. Wow, what a coincidence!
But there you have it. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it is a duck. Unless you’re the IOC and the duck has declared itself to be a swan. In which case, it’s a swan.
