Imane Khelif not eligible to compete in boxing world championships 2025

Men like Khelif and Caster Semenya, who have 46 XY 5ARD, are typically born with a small penis and undescended testicles. This means that at birth the may be mistaken for having a vulva. However they go through male puberty, at which point their voices break and the testosterone flooding their bodies means they develop a male physique. In fact a colloquial names for this DSD is 'penis at 12'.

Caster Semenya has misleadingly said in the press that he was brought up as a woman, but then in interviews he's also said that he never played with girls because 'they are soft'. He's also published a photo of himself as a teen wearing nothing but men's swimming trunks. This suggests that he knew he was male at least since puberty.

My personal opinion is that when your voice breaks and you never have periods it's a pretty big clue. I can understand that people who haven't been following the Olympics might think that Mumsnet are a load of meanies for being angry about men with 46 XY 5ARD competing in women's sports, but we're reserving our sympathy for the women who should have been given the medals.

At the Rio Olympics, all three medal winners in the women's 800m were men with 46 XY 5ARD.

Khelif sighed to accept that he is not eligible to compete in the female boxing category.

The part of the regulations stated means he cannot have XX chromosomes.

www.iba.sport/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Letter-to-Imane-Khelif-Receipt-acknowledged.pdf

It's obviously an unfortunate set of circumstances for Khelif, who was apparently socialised as a girl pre puberty - but the true sex is very obvious, and to all intents and purposes Khelif has presented as male pretty much all of their adult life ( except for occasional staged media shots in the algerian press):

LOL

I am so glad that he is barred from competing. It's disgraceful and disgusting that it was ever allowed.

Oh good grief, are people still claiming that Khelif is a woman?!

He has internal testes. What other evidence would you like?

Ask yourself why you are quite so enthusiastic to accept, indeed celebrate, an arbitrary decision made by the men of the IBA to opaque criteria without published evidence to support it.

I celebrate the application of objective, material criteria for eligibility to participate in the female category. It's far from an arbitrary position.

I don't want/expect them to publish findings from cheek swabs or blood tests unless athletes consent to this.

@SophieStrange, your posts read as though you are grasping at straws rather than engaging in the distinctive arguments (e.g the IBA decision makers are men, they don't publish the results of tests etc.). Do you think that makes athletes with DSDs should be able to compete in the women's category? This is the issue arising.

My post was in response to
SophieStrange · Today 14:03
No evidence has ever been presented that Khelif is anything other than a naturally-born woman, nor that she is affected by any sort of chromosomal medical condition. It’s a curious thing to celebrate a woman being excluded from her sport simply for being born with a physique that advantages her in it.
Will we be forbidding tall people from basketball next?

Again, it looks like you haven't been following this case in much detail:
a French news website, Le Correspondant, published a report by the journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia which revealed that Khelif has been found to have 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a DSD that is only found in biological males. So he's male.

This didn't come as a big surprise because in an interview in the French magazine Le Point, Georges Cazola, a member of IK's own team freely acknowledged that he had "a chromosome issue" and had been devastated to learn that he "might not be a girl".

You don't have to invoke the dodgy IBA or opaque criteria. The evidence is in the public domain, and the discussion has moved on, there's no going back to 'she is just a big girl' or 'basketball players are tall'.

Even the Guardian - the wokest newspaper in the world - has basically admitted that Yu-ting and Khelif are male. It ran a whole article about the fact more boxing organisations are bringing in sex testing, so the future was uncertain for these two boxers.

After the show: what happened next to Olympic gender row boxers? | Boxing | The Guardian

Its worth remembering that the eligibility test for the Olympic women's boxing was whether it said female in a boxers passport.

You think that a female boxer is being penalised for just being hench? 🤣🤣 All female boxers are well built! Of course there is more to it or half the female boxers would be banned for not 'looking feminine!'

Khelif's own coach confirmed that their own genetic testing confirmed a male karyotype chromosomes and hormones.

https://www.lepoint.fr/sport/exclusif-jo-2024-imane-khelif-a-ete-aneantie-de-decouvrir-d-un-seul-coup-qu-elle-pourrait-ne-pas-etre-une-fille-09-08-2024-2567609_26.php

"despite its karyotype and testosterone levels. He said, "There's a problem with his hormones, with her chromosomes, but she's a woman"

So male karyotype, male chromosomes, male testosterone. "Woman" here is in the sociolinguistic and postmodern sense of "it means whatever I want it to mean"

Exactly. Do you really think an Algerian national coach would do this to a Muslim woman? Imane is a Muslim by the way.

It wasn't suing, as such, but a complaint filed with the hate crime unit in the Paris prosecutor's office in August last year.

Since then, silence.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why you are quite so enthusiastic to accept, indeed celebrate, a man not only repeatedly punching a woman but also taking her rightful place in an Olympic sport?

‘I'd feel sorry for him, but I think Algeria is treating him well, and I think he looked well cool in that Vogue fashion shoot, and I hope he forges a successful new occupation as a model’

Last night, I was watching Mary Beard’s Roman programme which was largely shot in Algeria. Lots of location shots in markets and busy streets , and in cafes. There was not a single woman amongst the many shown who was not wearing a modest, full length Islamic garment, and a hijab. Several were fully veiled ( what used to be called a yashmak). There were no women at all In The cafes.

So Algeria is ‘treating him well’, because they are treating him as a man ( which of course is justified).

PS. A model of which sex?

You want them to publish someone's personal medical information showing that they are biologically male?

The IBA is not allowed to publish the test results without the agreement of the people concerned.

Now why would Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting refuse to consent to the publication of the test results? If the tests proved that they were biologically female, surely they'd be only too glad to do so.

IK has gone awfully quiet on suing a certain female author hasn't he. Funny that.

Khelif is biologically male or at best ambiguous, blood tests have shown this.
Not a woman and should not be given prizes for punching them

Without publishing the criteria or evidence.

Ask yourself why you are quite so enthusiastic to accept, indeed celebrate, an arbitrary decision made by the men of the IBA to opaque criteria without published evidence to support it.

I wish they wouldn't call it a gender test. Gender can't be tested for. It's a test of biological sex. It's not uncommon for DSDs to be undetected at birth in countries (or areas of countries) with less advanced medical facilities and if this happens a male with a DSD can indeed be brought up thinking of themselves as female and developing a self-identity that they would describe as female. However if their DSD is one of the ones where a male puberty goes ahead then they should stop qualifying for any kind of female-only sporting event, while being free to stick with a feminine "gender identity" if that's their choice and they believe in that sort of thing.

I think it's a good idea to do some background research before saying things like this - there is ample evidence - from Khelif's own team - that he is not a woman.

I am somewhat sympathetic to Khelif because I believe that he was brought up as a girl and I believe it was a shock to him to find out that his chromosomes are not female chromosomes.

I also think he was such a national icon in Algeria that there was huge pressure on him to continue boxing as a woman, instead of giving him the caring and professional help he needed to adjust to the proof that he is not in fact a woman.

Ideally of course he should have said 'I'm not a woman? Really?? OK fair cop guv, I'll go back to poverty and obscurity in Algeria' but he didn't, and there were political and sporting structures around him encouraging him to refuse to accept his biological sex.

I'd feel sorry for him, but I think Algeria is treating him well, and I think he looked well cool in that Vogue fashion shoot, and I hope he forges a successful new occupation as a model
And never sets foot in a ring with a woman boxer again, ever.