imane khelif has been allegedly confirmed to be a man.

snap! datun!

Indeed jaxhog

From certain levels of sport competitors entering any protected category, be it age, or disability or even nationality will require proof. In the 90s something like 80+% female athletes at the Olympic level agreed with sex testing being continued. The IOC instead was convinced by an activist group that to force these male athletes to the indignity of sex testing was a human rights violation.

Not one of those making the decision must have thought about the female athletes rights to safety. And the female athletes were willing to forgo their dignity to ensure that safety and fairness.

Imagine the outrage if a fully sighted runner competed in the Paralympics as a competitor? Yet… because of an emotional life history, somehow these male athletes seem to be considered acceptable.

Also, for those who claim some women beat these men.

That's because these men are crap.

They cannot compete in their own category, so, quite literally, punch down into someone else's.

Would you say the same if an incredibly unfit, unhealthy person identified into the Paralympics? That a paralympian managed to beat them sometimes, so therefore it's completely fair?

People come to watch outstanding female athletes, at the peak of the fitness, competing against each other.

Not rubbish men.

I know that's hard to understand for some people. It's amazing how they simply cannot drag their eyes off the men in question, and focus on the women. In their own sports category.

Considering that the female category was introduced in sport to allow women to compete without risk, surely it should be that you have to PROVE you are female in order to compete in that category? To ASSUME that you are female and to ask someone to PROVE you are male, seems wrong.

Me too on having a brain that instantly pings if something is dissonant about someone’s face. Includes if they’ve had some form of cosmetic procedure, my brain can get stuck in a loop of “but their lips/forehead/cheeks!” which is very distracting and annoying.

Remembering their name is a whole other ballgame…

Oh I have face blindness. If someone isn't in the "right" setting or changes the colour of their hair then it takes ages for me to recognise them BUT I can still tell men from women. Voice, gait, skeletal proportion etc. And I'm one of those lucky women who haven't been sexually assaulted too so my antenna isn't hypervigilant. Show me a photo and I might not get it right, show me a video and I do.

My brain is similarly wired to pick up inconsistency and dissonance when it comes to bodies and facial expressions and tone too.

However, I have a friend who cannot recognise faces at all so it is always possible that some female people really cannot pick up male body cues. What they shouldn’t do is try to shame those who can just because they can’t or they think they can’t.

Absolutely. Fed up with the myth of ‘passing’. I spot a trans actor instantly every fricking time one appears on the TV - I may double take because facially/make up wise it isn’t really obvious yet something has pinged my brain the second they’ve appeared on screen, whether it’s a waist-up scene or they walk into the room - we are not the sum of our facial features and our dress sense, it is the whole package. Movement, facial expressions, posture, gait, joint angles, the mathematically proven ratio of facial features across sexes (and ages: studies show we find women more beautiful the closer that ratio maps onto baby feature ratios, for example).

Ironically as an AuDHD I think my brain picks up the dissonance immediately because I’ve spent a lifetime having to/trying to decode ‘the natural’ and, as an adoptee into a muslim/Iranian household, also cultural nuances which create conflict if you fuck up. Posture is a cue as to tension, aggression, mood, ; vocal tone (which confuses me so often - are they trying to be funny or is the sarcasm mal-intended?) so a male voice, especially one feigning femininity, sets my synapses off.

So no, I’ve never missed that a person in trans in person or on screen…

What we have seen on this thread though has been typical fallacy and misinformed arguments. Posters think they are gotcha points. But they are actually failures in their logic. There have been just plain falsehoods and irrelevancies as well. Here are just a few.

1 But he doesn’t win all the time

This fails because it shows the poster doesn’t understand competitive advantage and why a male being in a female sports category is unfair.

2 But sports are unfair by nature / people don’t complain about Phelps winning.

The Phelps argument is also a logical failure. Because sports is about recognising the best athletes in a category. Those within the category are considered to have the same potential to win, albeit with different advantages. I have linked two experts explanation for this up thread.

3 But males with a 5ARD diagnosis don’t go through normal male puberty they can’t compete in the male category.

Studies have indicated that for the purpose of sports, male people with this diagnosis produce and process all the hormones that are needed for equal sporting performance with all other male people. Therefore this is false information (albeit not a logical fallacy)

If they require a special protected category for themselves, they should campaign for this.

It was never appropriate to allow these male people into the female sporting category.

4 But it is hard to be a male person with 5ARD and therefore this male deserves special treatment.

How hard a person’s life is, to be blunt, irrelevant to their inclusion into a protected sports category they do not belong in. Because for every hardship that person has, there is likely a person who belongs in the sports category with an equally hard life who will have been displaced by that athlete’s inclusion.

5 But people can’t tell who is male and who is female 100%! / Look at her… she looks just as male!

This should be an irrelevant discussion point because the IOC should have continued to protect the female sports category by keeping sex testing as the only acceptable basis of entry into the female sports category.

Women should not have to be put in the position of being demonised for pointing out that a male person is competing in a female sport. And when women discuss when a person’s body has the cues that indicate that the person has a male sexed body, they are not describing how ‘masculine’ a person looks. They are talking about specific male body cues that are unique to the skeletons of male people.

He may have been brought up as a female but he knew categorically he was a biological male and should have completed in the male category.

Even if Khelif lost every single match he shoudln't have been competing.
Winning or losing isn't the point
We can't say that men can box with women but only the shit ones (which they usually are compared to other male competitors)

“The IOC is committed to protecting the human rights of all athletes who have taken part in the Olympic Games. The IOC is saddened by the abuse that Imane Khelif is currently receiving.”

That is the kind of pathetic, scraping the bottom of the barrel, last ditch attempt at a desperate scrambling for the moral high ground, that will be the nail in their coffin.

They couldn't drip with more hypocrisy if they tried.

This!

The IOC needs to go

If Mike Tyson decided today that he was female, would he be able to box as a female? Would a magical ' f' in his passport allow that?
Our eyes would know he was and is a man
And so it is with this person.
Women are being treated like rubbish, as ever. Just collateral damage, literally.

It is irrelevant as to whether Khelif lost to any female boxer.

Khelif has competitive advantage due to going though male
puberty. It is highly dangerous for Khelif to compete against female boxers regardless of winning or losing.

However, when Khelif attended the 2021 Olympics and fought against Kellie Harrington, Khelif had been boxing for 5 years! And during those 5 years lost one or more years due to lockdown!

How many years do you think Kellie Harrington had been boxing? Considering she was 15 when she started? She was born in 1989 and had been boxing since 2004. By the time she got the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 to box Khelif, Harrington had 17 years experience in boxing!

Do you see it yet?

Why do you think a very experienced and exceptional female boxer with 17 years experience of boxing might beat a male boxer with effectively less than 5 years experience with a Covid lockdown impact in that time? So much leas than 5 years of any boxing experience?

Can you name any other female boxer gold medalist at the 2024 Olympics who only started boxing in 2016 when Khelif started? I’d be keen to know.

This is a position that shows your ignorance of how competitive advantage works.

But they didn't win', 'they have been beaten', what does it matter, type arguments really show a complete lack of understanding about competitive advantage.

Just because a male athlete does not win every single time doesn’t mean they don’t have an unfair competitive advantage. It just means that they have an exceptional female opponent. Even if they beat every female competitor, by comparison to those male athletes with the same DSD that Khelif has been said to have, by measuring their potential they are effectively mediocre. When compared in the correct sex category, these are not exceptional male athletes they are well down the rankings.

When a male athlete loses to a female athlete, they are losing because they face an exceptional female athlete. When you consider their physical advantages, if they were elite level male athletes at the same level of peak performance as the female people that they were losing against, they would not have lost. They are not at any where near the level of exceptionality of the female athletes they are competing against.

In many instances, their performance rates as mediocre when compared to male athlete peak performance.

Consider the physical advantage to constitute x% performance advantage over all.

To achieve the same level of exceptionality of the female athletes, their performance will = peak female athlete performance + x%.

If the female athletes are beating the male athletes and those athletes have male pubertal advantage, then they simply are not as good as the female athlete. In fact, if those male athletes with x% pubertal advantage tied with the exceptional female athlete, then by comparison, the female athlete is better.

So this point too is irrelevant for competition. But. Not for safety.

What you are supporting with ignorant statements such as this is, in effect, very dangerous for female athletes due to male people have on average 160+% more punch power than female people (that is not athletes, that is just the general population) and many other advantages. In fact, part of the punch power is derived from skeletal leverage that males have to give this power that female people do not have. And bone mass and density that is greater in male people than female people.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/

This above is the review of 13 studies from Dr Emma Hilton and Tommy Lundberg and it shows these advantages, if anyone wishes to check for themselves.
To be clear. This bone difference means stronger bones!

Female people have been proven to have bones that are more prone to breakage, particularly in the face. And they are more prone to concussion and brain damage due to their more delicate brain fibres. This has been studied and is now shaping Rugby guidelines for female participation, as an example.
Rugby concussion: Swansea University study into protecting women https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51434749

To those who use the 'but they didn't win' what do you believe will happen to a female with those more delicate bones and brain fibres when hit with punches that are 160+% harder than other female boxers?

Can you understand that if a person enters the Tour de France with an electrified bike and still doesn’t win the Tour de France, they are still racing with an unfair advantage, they are just not exceptional. Because if they were at the same level of exceptional fitness and skill they would be winning with a huge margin. Ie. the best performance from a female athlete + x% advantage.

In any case, anyone making such an ignorant statement should check the dates of when that bout happened and the losses by Khelif since then.

How come Kellie Harrington defeated Kelif then? The truth is the other fighters aren't all on par with Kellie. Sour grapes.

I reckon it depends on the grounds.

Suing for breach of GDPR would satisfy the description of ‘taking legal action’.

Something like defamation, I would think the information would become evidence.

The words ‘legal action’ is very broad and unspecific. Like most of IOC statements when you pick them apart to see what they actually say.

Surely his medical records will be subpoenaed by the defence if he sues?

I cannot see how Khelif can take legal action without disclosing the medical records.

Khelif can sue that the hospital somehow allowed a person to breach medical privacy for sure. And that can most likely be done without disclosure.

The endocrinologist or whichever organisation was the destination for the reporter who published in Le correspondent (or the reporter’s source) to gather that information, allowed a GDPR breach. If the person who was responsible still works there, if they ever did, it is likely they will be educated on GDPR and medical data confidentiality. Or they could have their employment terminated.

But if the person is a whistleblower, can they be protected from this action? Under French law can they be considered a whistleblower with protection? This information is in the public interest for female safety in boxing.

If it was a defamation case, doubtful the reports would not have to be produced.

And hey, Le Correspondent may take the article down under legal orders, but this information is now out there.

And still the IOC statement does not contradict the Reduxx reports.

• Female on passport.
• previously played as female (because female on passport).
• reminder that the IOC doesn’t sex test to verify sex.

Nothing here contradicts the claims which are more accurate that Khelif is a male person incorrectly registered as a female at birth due to ambiguous genitalia but later went through male puberty. They talk around the issue and think people can’t see that.

A spokesperson for the IOC said: “We understand that Imane Khelif has taken legal action against individuals who commented on her situation during the Olympic Games Paris 2024, and is also preparing a lawsuit in response to the latest reporting.”

“The IOC will not comment while legal action is ongoing, or on media reports about unverified documents whose origin cannot be confirmed.”

“Imane Khelif has been competing in the women’s category in international boxing competitions for many years, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments.”

“All the athletes who participated in the boxing tournament at Paris 2024 complied with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, together with all the applicable medical regulations enacted by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU),” continued the statement. “As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes were based on their passport details.”

“These rules also applied during the qualification period, including the boxing tournaments of the 2023 European Games, Asian Games, Pan-American Games and Pacific Games, the ad hoc 2023 African qualifying tournament in Dakar (Senegal), and two world qualifying tournaments, held in Busto Arsizio (Italy) and Bangkok (Thailand) in 2024, which involved a total of 1,471 different boxers from 172 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), the Boxing Refugee Team and Individual Neutral Athletes, and featured over 2,000 qualification bouts.”

“The PBU used the Tokyo 2020 boxing rules as a baseline to develop its regulations for Paris 2024. This was to minimise the impact on athletes’ preparations and guarantee consistency between Olympic Games. These Tokyo 2020 rules were based on the post-Rio 2016 rules, which were in place before the suspension of the IBA by the IOC in 2019 and the subsequent withdrawal of IOC recognition in 2023. Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competitions, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence.”

“The IOC is committed to protecting the human rights of all athletes who have taken part in the Olympic Games. The IOC is saddened by the abuse that Imane Khelif is currently receiving.”

Yep! Nothing that contradicts the Reduxx article.

All carefully worded to avoid saying that finally after years of putting female boxers into very harmful situations that the IBA finally changed its policy in 2022/23 to protect women. But by that time the IOC had removed the IBA from regulating the 2024 Olympics. Therefore, the IOC adopted the previous guidelines which allowed males with DSDs that virilise their bodies to compete.

We know this. We have discussed this for threads and threads so far since the end of July.

The IOC have lied though because they have been sent the chromosomal test results and someone there confirmed they received them to the IBA. They dismissed the tests because they didn’t require the tests for eligibility.

Once you understand the history, the sleight of hand deflection tactic the IOC has been using all this time is really clear.

Aspokesperson for the IOC said: “We understand that Imane Khelif has taken legal action against individuals who commented on her situation during the Olympic Games Paris 2024, and is also preparing a lawsuit in response to the latest reporting.
Oh good. Curious as to how many actions are being brought (two, twenty, a hundred?) though. I assume we won't be allowed to guess the actual individuals except for JKR and Musk. 🍿.time

As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes were based on their passport details.
Still absolutely sickened about the stupidity of this though.

So whatever evidence there is is likely to emerge in a more verifiable way.

Bring it on. I doubt there will be any surprises.

I don't blame Khelif for being raised female. I do blame Khelif for continuing to box in female events after being told the truth well before the Olympics.