Media play the race card to dismiss science of sex in Imane Khelif Olympics boxing controversy

In one corner, the mainstream media are playing the race card to further obfuscate the biological differences between men and women, giving the International Olympic Committee cover to continue letting chromosomally male athletes compete against females.

In the other corner, sexual-development experts are explaining why they think sports associations cannot rely on external anatomy, much less passports or history of socialization and athletic competition, to determine eligibility for sex-based sporting events.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif's march to at least a bronze medal in women's Olympic boxing competition, starting with a 46-second match against Angela Carini that may have broken the Italian pugilist's nose and continuing with victory over Hungarian Luca Anna Hamori, has provided the largest platform yet for gender ideologues to dismiss the science of sex.

IOC officials have justified the participation of Khelif, who said "I am a woman" after defeating Hamori, and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting, who is also guaranteed a bronze, in women's competition on the basis that their passports identify them as women and they have always competed as women. 

The body has been loath to acknowledge the allegation by the International Boxing Association, which runs the Women's World Boxing Championships, that its testing in 2023 showed the two boxers have XY chromosomes, making them male regardless of the appearance of their genitalia, which is unknown.

The issue is further complicated by geopolitics and national pride. The IOC stopped recognizing the Russia-based IBA last year in part because "it is unclear where the money is coming from," alleging that IBA had "full financial dependency, at the time," on Russian state-owned Gazprom.

Just the News could not find any media, apart from Fox News, that mentioned Khelif's alleged chromosomes in first-day reporting on the Algerian's defeat of Carini. Even conservative outlets simply referred to a vague "gender test," conflating social identification with biology.

The IBA's correspondence to IOC in June 2023 said its testing of Khelif determined "the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes," which "epitomizes the importance of protecting safe sport," according to 3 Wire Sports, founded by Olympics sportswriter and professor Alan Abrahamson, who said he had viewed the correspondence.

Mexican boxer Brianda Tamara shared her experience of fighting Khelif after the IBA disqualified the Algerian.

"I don't think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men," Tamara wrote. "Thank God that day I got out of the ring safely."

Cuando pelee con ella lo sentí muy fuera de mi alcance, me lastimaban mucho sus golpes, creo que nunca en mis 13 años de boxeadora me había sentido así, ni en mis sparrings con hombres. Gracias a Dios ese día baje con bien del ring, y que bueno que por fin se dieron cuenta pic.twitter.com/0mHyhNfq4X

— Brianda Tamara OLY (@BriandaTamara) March 26, 2023

"Some want to own a definition of who is a woman," IOC President Thomas Bach said at a press conference Saturday, implying that sex is subjective. Bach asked "how can somebody being born, raised, competed and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman?"

The IBA reiterated Monday at a press conference that it disqualified Khelif and Lin from women's competition in 2023 after blood tests showed their "chromosomes … make both ineligible" but said it couldn't share those tests due to "medical privacy."

Lin didn't appeal, while Khelif dropped an appeal despite IBA pledging to pay for "most" of it, CEO Chris Roberts said.

Boxers, coaches and even medical staff expressed concerns about the eligibility of the duo at the 2022 championships, but their blood tests then were "inconsistent," Roberts said.

IBA's former medical committee chair Ioannis Filippatos, an OBGYN, told the media he can get his passport changed to identify him as female, but "the nature and the biological world do not change."

I know this is an unpopular opinion with some trans people, but it is time to retreat to safer public policy ground. We are going to lose this fight badly, and it’s gonna fuel a further assault in their eliminationist mission to destroy healthcare access.

Trans women in sports… https://t.co/MOqtyPr1Eq

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) August 1, 2024

The IOC warns media covering the Games not to refer to sex at birth, call athletes "biologically" or "genetically" male or female or say they have changed sexes, in a "problematic language" section of its "Portrayal Guidelines" spotted by The Free Press.

These terms "can be dehumanising and inaccurate when used to describe transgender sportspeople and athletes with sex variations" because sex is "not assigned based on genetics alone" and "gender-affirming medical care" can change a person's "biology," the guidelines claim, referring to hormonal treatments and surgical procedures that cannot change sex.

The Associated Press dismissed questions about the two boxers' sex by portraying sex testing in sports as a racist and "Eurocentric" practice that disproportionately targets "female athletes of color" and those from the global south. It quoted activists and a medical anthropologist, but no scientists.

"Dehumanization and objectification stretches back to chattel slavery, when enslaved Black women were valued for auction based on their physical appearances and skills that were seen as more masculine or more feminine," race and ethnicity video journalist Noreen Nasir wrote.

She claimed many athletes whose female sex is questionable simply have "naturally high testosterone" typical of women with disorders of sexual development, now euphemistically called "differences" by the AP among others.

This was Imane Khelif fighting in Mexico in December 2022 against a Mexican woman.

Three months later, a test apparently revealed the XY chromosome.

Note the force of the punching.

Imane’s opponent that day, @BriandaTamara, said she certainly did:#OlympicGames #Boxing https://t.co/NvltUigCbT pic.twitter.com/8PhfGzJO2F

— teresa smith (@treesey) July 29, 2024

The IOC walked back a statement Saturday by Bach that "this is not a DSD case," claiming its president meant to say "transgender" instead of "DSD." 

There is no comparison between the high testosterone of women with DSDs (differences in sex development) and men, Duke University sex and gender law professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman wrote in a Quillette essay, calling the IOC's statements "a combination of 'inside baseball' and sleights of hand" designed to erase "the relevant biology and the language we use to talk about it."

She cited research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2020 and her own 2017 paper "Sex and Sport" in the journal Law and Contemporary Problems.

Sex researcher Carole Hooven, who wrote a book on testosterone and left Harvard following a cancellation campaign based on her public remark that "sex is binary and biological," wrote X threads for scientists and laypeople on the relevance of XY DSD 5-alpha reductase deficiency in making males appear externally to be females while retaining male athletic advantages.

"Detailed explanation," X owner Elon Musk commented on the technical thread. 

Starting in embryonic stages, males need high testosterone levels for developing the penis, scrotum and prostate, and to prevent development of the "Müllerian ducts, which become the upper part of the vagina, cervix, uterus and fallopian tubes," Hooven wrote.

But testosterone then has to be converted into DHT, "and people with 5-ARD don't make the necessary enzyme to carry out that conversion," she said. "So they end up with what appears to be a vagina" until the testes descend, often at puberty, and many then start living as males.

I posted yesterday about 5-ARD, a disorder (or difference) of sex development. I don't think anything I've posted here has ever received more attention (millions of views, over 10K likes, and rising, media inquiries, which I've turned down).

First: why didn't I mention that I… pic.twitter.com/3KU0Z2TaL5

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) August 2, 2024

"The 'decision makers' are aware that athletes with 5-ARD are male, and that they experience the benefits of male puberty," Hooven wrote in her more jargon-filled thread.

"The requirement to reduce their testosterone to typical female levels isn’t discriminatory, since these are males who are asking to compete in the female category," she said. "But more significantly, all the relevant scientific evidence shows that reducing male T in adulthood does not undo the physical benefits of male puberty."