By RUSS O’SHEA
A first-round knockout at the Olympics has catalyzed a firestorm of misogyny, transphobia, and racism the world over. On Aug. 1, Italian boxer Angela Carini gave up within a minute of facing off against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, shouting to her corner, “Non è giusto! Non è giusto!”, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” This exclamation, which implied that Khelif was male, was the dog whistle for the right to attack—and the uproar began. Carini, a police officer, began to sob and refused to shake her opponent’s hand, saying that she had “never felt a punch” like the one Khelif had delivered and needed to leave the match to “preserve [her] life.”
The media was quick to point out that Imane Khelif, who was born a woman and has lived and competed as a woman all her life, was previously disqualified from an event unrelated to the Olympics by the International Boxing Association (IBA). The IBA has no authority over the Olympics—in fact, due to years-long corruption, it is the first body to have been banned from the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in its 130 years in 2023. One of the reasons for this removal was the IBA’s sudden shift on gender policy in the middle of that year’s World Championships, which were also boycotted by 17 countries over controversy around the Association’s policies in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The IOC, meanwhile, approved Khelif’s participation in the games and reiterated support for her participation following the match with Carini. Khelif is from Algeria, where it is illegal to be trans and there are no legal systems in place for updated documentation that would be necessary to clear a trans athlete for participation in the Olympic games.
Why had Imane Khelif been disqualified in the first place?
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan were barred from competing part way into the Women’s Boxing World Championships in India last year when they “failed to meet eligibility rules following a test conducted by an independent laboratory,” according to IBA Board of Director minutes. This chain of events came as a shock to the boxers who had already progressed through the competition. Had she been allowed to continue, Imane Khelif, for example, would have been in the running for gold.
These minutes also requested the establishment of a set procedure for gender testing, which did not exist at that time. Khelif and Yu-Ting were the only two boxers in the championships that were made to undergo gender testing. No explanation was given as to why the women were singled out, aside from vague references to complaints from opposing countries, and they were not given due process.
Umar Kremlev, head of the IBA, who is famous for his prominent role in the Russian far-right Night Wolves biker gang, asserted that gender testing “proved [Khelif and Yu-Ting] had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded.” The implication was that a presence of XY chromosomes was in some way related to increased athletic performance, which must give the boxers an unfair advantage over their competitors.
Besides vague (and often contradictory) statements from the IBA and Kremlev, there is no evidence that the testing took place, and there have even been claims that there were no tests at all but rather that the ban originated from a telegram message sent by Kremlev, which was picked up by Russian news agency TASS. The bans only came after Khelif defeated Russian boxer Azalia Amineva, raising additional questions about their efficacy.
Fanning the flames of paranoia around athletes that push the boundaries of gender “norms,” especially ones perceived to have taken medals from Russians, would not be out of place in a country that has criminalized the LGBT rights movement as a “terrorist organization”—nor would it be out of place coming from Kremlev, who has ties to Vladimir Putin. Putin in 2021 called transgender athletes “the end of female sports,” which is the message Kremlev is also trying to push (whether those targeted by his rhetoric are actually trans or not is of no concern).
On Aug. 6, the IBA held a chaotic mess of a press conference in response to mounting pressure to provide evidence for the testing. None was given, and the press conference was really a pathetic showing that saw Kremlev and others repeatedly skirt the question with rants about drag queens desecrating the games, the assertion that it was all to protect women’s sports (another dog whistle), and a promise to prosecute the head of the IOC. Reporters were enraged that their time was wasted, and the conference at times devolved into shouting matches between them and IBA officials. It ended after a teammate of Khelif entered the room, leading chants in support of Khelif and the Algerian team.
The same day, the revelation was made that Carini had been messaged by the IBA prior to the match, as revealed by the president of the Italian National Olympic Committee, Giovanni Malagò. Combined with the $50,000 payout that Carini is set to receive from the IBA, and the IBA’s long history of scandals, match fixing in this case seems to be all but a foregone conclusion.
Regardless of whether the gender verification testing happened or not, or what it actually entailed, the bottom line is that it is problematic that women are being held to an arbitrary standard where their validity as a woman is dictated to them and their ability to compete is infringed upon because of factors out of their control. Hard and fast definitions of what is or isn’t acceptable biology to have as one gender or another only serves to reinforce the special oppression confronting women.
This fact has already been made clear as Khelif and Yu-Ting both face an overwhelming amount of vitriol and transphobic accusations of their “true identities.” Cis or trans, all athletes should be allowed to participate in their sport of choice and have the opportunity to compete at the highest level.
The response
Following the match, figures across politics and the media were quick to jump on Carini’s cries of “It’s not fair!” It brought a response from one of the most powerful capitalists on the planet, Elon Musk, who has a long track record of anti-trans sentiment. including publicly attacking his own trans daughter and rolling back trans protections immediately after purchasing X, formerly known as Twitter.
JK Rowling also was quick to seize on the opportunity to push her transphobic views into the mainstream, with a vile tweet that cynically misgendered Khelif as an agent of the “new men’s rights movement,” a misleading nickname that TERFs have given to the fight for trans rights. Like Kremlev, JK Rowling claims that she is on the frontline of defending women, but her supposed “feminism” is limited to attacking a subset of women.
Other responses came from politicians such as former U.S. President Donald Trump and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. Trump, who has been campaigning on an anti-trans platform, took advantage of the uproar surrounding the match to reiterate his promise that “there will be no men playing in women’s sports when [he’s] elected.” Meloni went a step further, personally meeting with Angela Carini and echoing the sentiment that the match “was not on equal footing,” saying, “Athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to female competitions.”
An underlying theme of much of the speech directed towards the boxers is the racist undertones. Khelif, for example, was subject both to anti-Arab attacks and attacks that tried to drive an Islamophobic wedge between her and her supposed “transness.” The talents, passions, and achievements of women of color and (as well as trans women) are almost always cast aside or scrutinized as supposedly illegitimate. Female athletes of color especially are targets of some of the most vile rhetoric, which more often than not goes hand in hand with “theories” about their “actual” gender or sex.
On the one hand, the femininity of women of color is often disparaged, as it doesn’t hold up to eurocentric/white beauty standards. On the other hand, there is a pervasive disbelief that a woman who isn’t white could achieve anything, let alone on a global scale. Instead, these athletes are portrayed as merely stealing opportunities or spotlight from their white counterparts, as was the case when Khelif defeated Amineva. This fact, far more than any “physical advantages,” is why the victories of athletes of color and gender non-conforming athletes over their cis white counterparts are painted as “unfair.” “That Black girl stole my track and field scholarship!” is just a repackaged form of “that immigrant took my job!” and similar tropes.
The moral panic around the games has been pushed beyond just questioning Khelif and Yu-Ting; a witch hunt has begun for other athletes who are supposedly lying about their sex (from which not even Angela Carini herself was spared). Photos have been circulating online pointing to supposed “giveaways” of transness in a paranoid practice dubbed “transvestigating.”
Who benefits from this? Only those who are trying to police women’s and gender nonconforming bodies. Speculation about gender and transness has dangerous implications, especially as harassment of and violence against trans people ramps up. An increasing number of cis people, particularly women, are being targeted in anti-trans motivated violence.
Where does athletic gender verification come from?
Gender verification testing in sports was introduced in 1966 by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) when fears grew of “men masquerading as women” to gain advantage in athletics (there have been no recorded cases of such a phenomenon). A number of athletes were repulsed by this new barrier to entry and opted to drop out rather than be subjected to invasive and traumatizing procedures.
This testing is a vestige of an era when it was illegal for men to dress as women and vice versa—when Queer and trans people were being arrested left and right and their gathering spaces raided by police (and right-wing mobs). Now, as the worst attacks on LGBTQ communities in years unfold on a global scale, Khelif and Yu-Ting find themselves in the crosshairs of misogynist, racist, and transphobic claims that they too are “masquerading as women.”
Amidst moral panics like these we are seeing genital inspection bills for athletes (including for minors) proliferate in the U.S. and other places. This begs the question, do these tests really protect women, as proponents claim? A greenlight to police bodies on the basis of biological diversity certainly does not protect women. It is part and parcel of a false feminism, an exclusionary feminism.
Notes on biology
First it must be said that sexual biology, like gender identity, is a spectrum. The biodiversity that gives species, including humans, an evolutionary advantage and is a sign of a healthy population includes sexual diversity, which is not limited to endosexual (i.e., not intersex) “male” and “female” bodies but includes bodies that possess intersex traits. Such traits include combinations of genitalia, hormones, or chromosomes. These traits are more common than people think (1-2% of people are born intersex), but this is often swept under the rug, particularly by surgical interventions at birth performed without the knowledge or consent of parents. This is the result of a medical framework that has counterintuitively distanced itself from biology, which is pushed in the interest of maintaining the illusion that the socially imposed gender binary is in any way natural, that gender essentialism holds any basis in reality. As an aside, one example of why gender identity is said to be related to but not tied to biological factors is that not all intersex people identify as trans or nonbinary, and not all endosex people identify as cisgender.
The labeling of traits like testosterone and XY chromosomes as necessarily “male” and the positioning of them as off-limits to women begs the question: why are biological factors out of anyone’s control only being disallowed for athletes identifying as women? The arguments against trans male participation in sports are nowhere to be found. What about athletes like Michael Phelps, who has genetic mutations proven to give him an advantage such as longer arms and a significantly reduced lactic acid production? Is it all just the result of misogyny? Is there any merit to the claims that biological traits in women such as increased testosterone levels or presence of XY chromosomes provide an athletic advantage?
With regard to testosterone, in general, there is quite a lot of data. A 2014 study of elite athletes’ physiological and endocrinological profiles found that the difference in men’s and women’s performance at the Olympic level was almost entirely reducible to differences in lean body mass and the body mass index, and that “there is no clear separation between the testosterone levels of male and female elite athletes. The whole issue of gender within sport is complex, but excluding female athletes on the basis of a serum testosterone level is considered to be unethical.”
Testosterone and estrogen levels are just one factor among many, both “purely” biological as well as socio-behavioral, that affect lean body mass/muscle density, the “true” fundamental reasons for differences in performance between elite men and women athletes, at least as far as bodies are concerned. Interestingly, another study found that male weightlifters had especially low testosterone levels, with some matching high but still relatively normal levels for cis women. Women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome have high-levels of circulating testosterone in their blood, but, as the name suggests, are insensitive to it. While they are over-represented in sports, this is due not to testosterone levels, but to bodily composition, e.g., height and lean body mass.
Fairness in sports?
The notion of “fairness in sports” is given as a basis to keep things like gender verification processes in place. But what does it mean for sports to be fair? Putting aside the observation that if sports were fair, everything would end in a tie and no one would enjoy sports, under capitalism sports are necessarily unfair. Those who have the means can gain a leg up with the best equipment, coaches, diet, etc., to say nothing of actually having time freed up from other labor to commit to developing certain skills and techniques.
The construction of gender and race
What is “male?” What is “female?” These questions have historical and political, not simply biological answers. The concepts of gender and race as we know them are incredibly new in the grand scheme of things. The gender binary and the concept of “whiteness,” and therefore “non-whiteness,” came with the colonization of the Americas and the genocide of millions of Indigenous people, with the enslavement of Africans, with the whistle of the factory clock, an with the fury of two world wars. The subordination of women to men is one way that the working class is divided to keep wages down and to cheapen “feminine labor,” including unpaid labor such as child and elder care. Women are also expected to perform the reproductive labor necessary for the upkeep of this “masculine” productive labor, to cook and clean and free up men to go to work to produce commodities.
Racialized and colonized bodies, especially women’s bodies, are especially exploited and controlled. Historically, racialized women have performed both productive and reproductive labor, both producing commodities and infrastructure and producing more workers to be exploited under capitalism. Racialized and colonized women are especially targets of attacks on bodily autonomy, such as reproductive rights, including attacks on the ability to raise healthy children.
As movements for women’s, Queer, and Black liberation began to advance, the ruling class felt a sense of urgency to reverse the trend. Steady attacks on trans and reproductive rights that picked up with Trump, coupled with the herding of the women’s rights movement into NGOs and the Democratic Party, paved a way for Roe v. Wade to be overturned with little resistance in the streets. Since then, attacks on trans and reproductive rights have been ramped up dramatically, and women around the globe are being reminded of their “duty” as childbearers. It is no surprise that birth rates and trans people were two of the most frequent topics of discussion at the recent Republican National Convention. The fight for trans rights is necessarily a fight for women’s rights, and vice versa.
Which way forward in the fight for gender rights?
At the same time that gender rights are being rolled back, we have seen gains by mass movements for bodily autonomy in some countries. In Argentina, for example, a number of massive demonstrations—most notably, the International Women’s Strike in 2017—brought millions in the streets to win major victories, such as marriage equality in 2010 and legal abortion in 2020. Movements like these will be necessary to achieve women’s and trans liberation, and must be replicated everywhere.
When trans people are attacked, the damage reaches far beyond the trans community and affects cis people as well. Athletics are one way that the trans community is being used to attack women and gender non-conforming people. As anti-trans rhetoric ramps up, we are seeing attacks on gender rights and bodily autonomy globally. Attacks on gender rights are attacks on all working people.
The right of athletes like Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting to compete must be defended. Gender restrictions and testing creates an environment in which witch hunts among competitors and the general population are encouraged. Those in support of women’s and trans rights should be opposing this at every opportunity; the only way to achieve gender liberation and liberation of all forms is via the construction of a mass movement in the streets.
