At the 2024 Olympics, a 46-second womens boxing match between Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Italy’s Angela Carini snowballed into a campaign of hate against transgender people, and a shocking legal complaint against controversial figures J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, and President-elect Donald Trump.
The story of Imane Khelif has re-entered the spotlight yet again after French Magazine Le Correspondant published an article on the 25th of October, claiming to have obtained leaked medical records reporting the boxer has “neither ovaries nor uterus, but testicles.” The claims have been unable to be verified by reputable sources. Moreover, one of the doctors alleged to have co-authored the report, Jacques Young of Bicetre Hospital, suggested to German broadcaster DW that “his name was being used to spread false information and an anti-trans agenda.” How have we gotten here?
The clip that sparked it all was Khelif’s opponent Angela Carini giving a tearful press conference after the match saying, “It could be the match of my life but, in that moment, I had to safeguard my life, too.” She continued, “The decision was with the Olympics rather than me, whether this opponent should fight.”
Doubts over Khelif’s eligibility had been swirling even before the Paris Olympics. The Italian Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities, Eugenia Roccella, and the Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi, had both earlier raised concerns. These concerns emerged after Khelif was disqualified in 2023 from the Women’s World Championship in New Delhi before her semi final welterweight fight with Yang Liu, who would go on to win the gold. The reason for the Algerian’s disqualification was not released at the time with the International Boxing Association (IBA) simply citing medical reasons: “The IBA upholds its rules and regulations as well as its athletes’ personal and medical privacy, the eligibility criteria breach therefore cannot be shared by the IBA.”
While Carini’s allusions to unfairness gave no specifics, Carini’s coach, Emanuele Renzini, gave no such care: “[M]any people in Italy tried to call and tell her: ‘Don’t go please: it’s a man, it’s dangerous for you.’” This one sentence would go on to ruin all of our feeds for weeks.
JK Rowling said on X (formally Twitter), “The smirk of a male who’s [sic] knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life ambition he’s just shattered.” Elon Musk shared a post on X, claiming that “men don’t belong in women’s sports.” Donald Trump captioned a picture of the fight with the message “I will keep men out of women’s sports!” This is not even mentioning the millions of other tweets filled with transphobic and bigoted sentiments.
Amid the confusion, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stated this was a Differences in Sex Development (DSD) case. This would mean that Khelif has one of the various conditions involving an atypical sexual development also known in some situations as intersex. This statement was quickly retracted. Despite the retraction, the idea that Khelif was intersex with XY chromosomes stuck in the public consciousness.
Things only got murkier after the IBA held a news conference on the 5th of August, 4 days after the infamous boxing match. Described as “chaotic”, Chief executive Chris Roberts and President Umar Kremlev gave contradictory statements on the reason for Khelif’s disqualification. Roberts claimed Khelif had been disqualified for an inconclusive gender test, while the other Kremlev asserted she failed a testosterone level test. Referring to both Khelif and Taiwanese Boxer Lin Yu-ting, another boxer who faced disqualification by the IBA, Kremlev crudely said that XY chromosomes were found in both cases and tests “show[ed] they were men”.
This was enough vindication for some online to continue their harassment of Khelif and trans women. However, things did not seem to line up.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirmed to BBC Sports that the labs in which the tests were carried out were only involved in testing relating to anti-doping tests and did not conduct gender tests.
Khelif competed in both 2022 and 2023 and hence underwent testing both years. This was the testing that the IBA claimed proved she was not eligible to compete. However, in 2022 Khelif won silver in the light welterweight category with no issue – Ireland’s own Amy Broadhurst won gold.
Furthermore, the IBA) was discredited by the IOC in 2019 after allegations of ties to Russia. Then president Gafur Rahimov, was placed on a US Treasury Department sanctions list “for providing material support” to a criminal organisation. Rahimov strongly denied these allegations. It has been noted by some that Khelif’s final match before disqualification in 2023 was against the previously undefeated Azaliia Amineva from Russia. The IOC commented on the IBA’s decision, saying the “aggression” aimed towards Khelif was “based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure.”
This is not even to mention that Imane Khelif is no newcomer to boxing. At 25 years old this is already her second Olympics. In Tokyo 2020, she was beaten out of a medal in the lightweight category by Kellie Harrington who went on to win gold.
Gender testing was abandoned in 1999 by the IOC. Today, they use legal gender on an athlete’s passport to determine eligibility. Khelif’s legal gender is female and she comes from a country which does not recognise the right to change one’s gender. Despite the recent pressure, the IOC is resistant to change the rules, partly for fear of stigmatising people, saying that “every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination.” IOC President Thomas Bach stated, “It is not as easy as some may now want to portray it – that XX or XY is the clear distinction between men and women. This is scientifically not true anymore.”
The exception to this has been in women’s running, where strict rules regarding testosterone levels for some DSD conditions are enforced. The South African athlete Castor Semenya has become the poster child for discrimination against women with DSD in sports. In 2016, after Semenya had won gold in the women’s 800 metres, Great Britain’s Lynsey Sharp broke down crying saying “everyone can see it’s two separate races.”
In 2011, the track and field governing body International Association of Athletics Federations or IAAF (now known as the World Athletics) instituted new policies for trans women and females with hyperandrogenism. The policy required an athlete’s testosterone levels to be below typical male levels of testosterone. Athletes suspected of hyperandrogenism were required to undergo invasive genital examination. It should be noted that only athletes with a known XY DSD condition or are suspected of having a condition causing hyperandrogenism are required to submit themselves for gender tests to be eligible to compete. How an athlete becomes a suspect, as we have seen throughout the years, is based on her performance and simply how she looks. Women of colour, particularly from developing countries, seem to come under scrutiny far more often than their white counterparts.
The Imane Khelif case has been a sober reminder why intersex is part of the LGBTQIA+ acronym. Any transgression against cis heteronormativity, whether social or biological, is subject to abuse and vitriol. Even as the prevailing online narrative among the trolls shifted from Khelif being a trans woman to Khelif being an intersex person with XY chromosomes, the language used to berate her was the same; the harassment still focused on her looks, her build, the way she held herself. All those who defy the binary are free game to be beaten back into their box or out of existence.
A year after their fight was called off due to Khelif’s disqualification,Yang Liu and Imane Khelif met at the finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics. After a riveting fight, Khelif pulled out the win. Yang proudly held up her opponent’s hand, a sharp contrast to Carini shirking a handshake from Khelif.
“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition,” Khelif said. “I am a woman like any other woman.”
“I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I competed as a woman – there is no doubt about that.”
