Transgender Or Intersex? Confusion Reigns Over The Gender Status Of Two Olympic Boxers
On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a surprising correction after claiming for a week that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting were actually born women and have Differences in Sexual Development (DSD), a range of rare conditions in which a person’s genitalia do not necessarily match with their chromosomes or hormone levels. In this weekend’s column, I cited that IOC claim that Khelif is not a transgender athlete. Yet, there remains considerable confusion on how the IOC and the boxing governing body is framing this issue and the question of gender.
IOC chief Thomas Bach said: “We have two boxers… who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women, who have competed for many years as women. And this is a clear definition of a woman.”
Bach chastised critics and warned them not “confuse the two issues,” stressing that this was not “about the transgender issue.” However, he then confused many by saying “this is not a DSD case.”
The IOC later issued a correction:
In today’s IOC – Paris 2024 press briefing, IOC President Bach said: ‘But I repeat, here, this is not a DSD case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.”
What was intended was:
‘But I repeat, here, this is not a transgender case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.’
The key claim of the IOC is that both boxers were “born women.” Clearly, the identification on their passports (and how they were raised) can differ from country to country.
In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev explained the IBA’s decision to disqualify Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting and Algeria’s Imane Khelif from 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships. While there remains confusion on the testing used by the IBA (or the reliability of those tests), it issued this statement:
“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”
Various media also did their own “fact checks” with outlets like USA Today stating that the “outcries from anti-trans celebrities and politicians” were based on false claims and the boxers were born women.
NBC also cited “attacks from anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives online who claim they’re transgender.” It stressed that the IBA could not be trusted since the group was banned by the IOC. (IBA was banned for corruption and financial related issues).
Notably, buried down in the CNN report on the controversy is a line that would seem significant that “Khelif… has not said she has DSD.”
In the meantime, IOC spokesman Mark Adams has said that these determinations are left up to each sport’s international governing body because “they know their sport and their discipline the best,” Adams added that “I hope we all agree that we’re not calling for people to go back to the days of sex testing which was a terrible, terrible thing to do. This involves real people and we’re talking about real people’s lives here.”
Yet, it seems odd that such major criteria of qualification would be left up to each governing body. There should be a consistent rule across the Olympics. Yet, the Human Rights Watch maintains that gender testing violates fundamental rights to privacy and dignity.
My friend Marc Siegel, Fox medical analyst, argues that the testing side can be a simple as a hormone swab.
Media is still insisting that these are not transgender athletes. Many articles cited GLAAD and InterACT. On Sunday, GLAAD was insisting that Khelif is not transgender, but is now referring to the DSD claim as something the IOC has maintained:
Imane Khelif is a woman.
Imane Khelif is not transgender and does not identify as intersex.
Because Imane Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) championship due to an unspecified gender eligibility test, which has different eligibility criteria than the IOC, there have been unconfirmed reports that she may have a variation in her sex traits, also known as differences of sexual development (DSDs).
DSDs are a group of conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs. According to the NIH, some people with DSDs are raised as female but may have sex chromosomes other than XX, or elevated testosterone levels.
Athletes with variations in their sex traits, or DSDs, are not the same as transgender athletes. Conflating the two is inaccurate.
It is not verified that Imane Khelif has a variation in sex traits or DSDs.
If you are confused, you are not alone.
Legally, there continues to be a debate on the criteria used in these competitions. However, the GLADD statements seems to suggest that there is uncertainty on the underlying facts.
Some of the confusion may be due to the use of transgender versus intersex.
There is a difference between transgender athletes and intersex athletes.
Transgender refers to someone who has a gender identity that is not in alignment with their sex.
Intersex refers to someone who has reproductive anatomy or genes that align with conventional definitions of male or female, including different chromosomal profiles. ESPN explained that “an example is someone who is partially or completely insensitive to androgens, such as testosterone. They may be assigned female at birth but have XY chromosomes because of their body’s physiological insensitivity to androgens.”
The athletes defending these two boxers have supported the claim that they are intersex athletes who were born female but have chromosomal differences.
What is most striking about the boxing controversy is that there appears little agreement on the underlying facts and testing. It is not even clear what Khelif has claimed in the past on these issues. That seems curiously undefined and irregular for a classification criteria. That was brought home by the confusion of Bach himself in warning against confusion on the issues.
On Saturday, Khelif defeated another female contestant, Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori and Taiwan fighter Lin Yu-Ting also won the day before to advance to the semi-finals.