‘Women’s sport is not a consolation prize for men’

At this year’s Paris Olympics, biological males punching women officially became a spectator sport. Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, two boxers who have twice failed gender-eligibility tests in the past, entered the women’s category with little opposition. Both then went on to win every round in all three of their bouts to reach Olympic finals in their respective weight categories. In the end, Khelif won in the Welterweight final on Friday, while Yu-ting triumphed in Saturday’s featherweight final. At every stage of this charade, the safety of their female opponents were continually put at risk.

Fioana McAnena – director of campaigns at Sex Matters – joined Brendan O’Neill on his podcast this week to discuss how this disturbing display of violence against women came about. What follows is an edited extract of their conversation. You can listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Could you tell us what you understand about this Olympic boxing case and how it fits into the broader discussion about women’s sports today?

Fiona McAnena: In the women’s Olympic boxing, Khelif and Yu-ting clearly punched a lot harder than their female opponents, and there have been mutterings for some time about the possibility that they are male. Now, you might think: ‘How on Earth is it possible for a man to be in a women’s boxing competition?’ Well, we believe that these boxers have the same condition as South African runner Caster Semenya: a disorder of sex development (DSD). In some situations, babies are born with ambiguous genitals. In a developed country, it would be identified that something hasn’t gone quite right in the baby’s development. They would either be treated, or the condition would be accepted.

Sometimes, however, the babies are registered as girls at birth. This is despite the fact that they have internal testicles and produce testosterone. As they get older, it often becomes apparent that these children are boys. As adults, they gain all the advantages of male puberty – advantages that particularly matter in sport. Both Khelif and Yu-ting, supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), still insist that they were born as women and raised as girls. But the fact of the matter is that if a mistake was made and they were registered female at birth, that doesn’t make them female.

There is a simple way to clear this controversy up. If the IOC – which runs Olympic boxing after the International Boxing Association (IBA) was suspended in 2019 – wanted to end the scrutiny, it could get them to take a cheek-swab test. We are told that the IBA actually subjected both boxers to blood tests in 2022 and again in 2023, so there is little doubt that these two boxers have XY chromosomes.

For her part, Angela Carini, an experienced boxer who faced Khelif in one of the early rounds, said that she had never felt a punch like Khelif’s before. That’s because male punching power is double female punching power, even at a matched weight. We do not know for sure what condition both these boxers have, but everything indicates that they have had male development. Maybe they thought they were girls. Maybe their parents thought they were girls. But mistakes can be made.

O’Neill: Is there a meaningful difference between a DSD athlete and a ‘transwoman’ participating in women’s sport?

McAnena: None of us knows exactly how these boxers feel, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They may well have been registered female at birth for the reasons we’ve discussed, and they may have also been surprised by their own development. This is clearly very different from the people who declare that they feel like the other sex. In the end, however, we have to put women at the centre of women’s sport.

One of the most upsetting things for women is that while everyone is so keen to support these DSD athletes, no regard is paid to the women who are being imposed upon. This is the ultimate proof of the intrinsic sexism of the world. We are being told that we must accommodate these athletes, but women’s sport is not a consolation prize for men who have had difficult upbringings. We have to find other ways to try to ease the burden of their lives, and giving them an Olympic medal is not one of them.

What has been made clear in this boxing scandal is that, even though these boxers are not trans, the outcome is the same. Women are not only losing out at the Paris Olympics, but also being put at risk. When a man punches a woman of equal weight in the boxing ring, that’s roughly the same as a heavyweight man punching a lightweight man. Now, can you imagine what would happen if we let a heavyweight boxer into the ring with a lightweight boxer? As soon as the first punch was thrown, and probably even before, almost everyone would be urging the fight to stop.

In the case of Khelif and Yu-ting, I hesitate to use the word ‘cheating’, because I don’t care what their motivations are. The women’s category is simply not their category, and I am determined to change the rules back to what they are meant to be: to exclude all male advantages from the female category. That’s all that matters. And we all know that matters. That is why, even though the IOC bizarrely suggests that we can’t really tell who is male and female, they are still using separate categories. They are insisting that we need to make an exception. There is no ‘cheating’ here because, unfortunately, the sporting authorities have made it okay for boxers like Khelif and Yu-ting to fight women. These boxers have walked through an open door.

Fiona McAnena was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here: