Can someone explain the Khelif controversy?

[whatsinanameisthis]

I’ll start by saying I’ve read all the major news outlets coverage of the Khelif controversy and am still somewhat baffled. So wondering if anyone who has done more research than I can enlighten me.

From what I’ve read in the papers, Khelif was born a girl, is female, has lived her whole life as a woman. She is not trans, or a man. However she maybe has a condition which leads to elevated testosterone?

I’m trying to understand what the accusation is…

Do we think she’s really a trans man who is lying about having been born female?

Or are we saying that if she is a woman but with a condition, that people with that condition should be screened and excluded from the event? I understand that would seem if the condition isn’t her fault but of course differently abled people are all excluded from the mainstream olympics and instead compete in the paralympics. Or if this condition is real (I simply don’t know enough to understand), could the IOC mandate it’s treated before competitors participate?

Or is this even a question of doping? Is there a suggestion she has been taking testosterone to improve her performance?

Which the IOC ignored knowing it could result in serious injury or death to a woman.

Thank you!

From the article:

PARIS – The athlete who has ignited a worldwide controversy in Olympic women’s boxing was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Assn. world championships in New Delhi after two tests, one in India amid that tournament and a prior test in Turkey in May 2022, “concluded the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes,” according to correspondence the IBA sent in June 2023 – more than a year ago – to the International Olympic Committee.
The June 5, 2023, letter, spotlighting Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reads, “This situation epitomizes the importance of protecting safe sport, and the integrity of sport in which the Olympic Movement is jointly committed to.”
3 Wire Sports has seen the letter and the tests.

In what way is he 'not a man pretending to be a woman'?

Yes, we all know the discredited IBA SAID that she was XY, that was always what they said, but they refuse to provide the IOC with their evidence (which would not be illegal, it'd be sensible....).

And for those who say the the athletes themselves have the results but aren't sharing them - won't have the actual genetic test results, they will have a letter, like the one the ioc have, which is not evidence.

Gosh how heartbreaking

Man, woman, whatever, either way someone with that much extra reach and power should clearly be in a harder category, possibly one for other male DSDs.

You don't put light weights with the heavy weights. It's dangerous. It's not sport, it's slaughter.

Incidentally DSDs are over represented in women's sports. They clearly have an advantage.

The female boxers having to fight these men are also real people with real feelings plus a real risk of serious injury from being punched by a man.

JK Rowling's definition of a woman is "adult human female". There is no other kind of woman, and she is not remotely interested in how feminine they present themselves.

Both of those boxers were subjected to chromosome testing that the organisation is not allowed to share due to it being private medical information. The boxers involved could easily close down this debate by taking a simple chromosome test and making it public - but they won't, because they're male.

Yes, it's awful that they were born with such a condition, but that doesn't mean that they should be allowed to box as/against women.

Yes, we all know the discredited IBA SAID that she was XY, that was always what they said, but they refuse to provide the IOC with their evidence (which would not be illegal, it'd be sensible....).

Well, that's your opinion 🤷‍♀️

I don't see any reason to trust the IOC and not the IBA, plus the World Boxing Organization has also backed up the IBA.

It's clear this boxer is a male with a DSD.

Did you actually read the article? It claims that IOC have been able to see the sex tests:

The June 2023 IBA letter, meantime, says:
“We are kindly writing to offer our support and cooperation on the matter as it directly impacts the safety of our boxers and the integrity of the [competition] results. In confidence, the IBA can share that Imane Khelif was disqualified from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships 2023 in New Delhi for breaching the IBA Technical and Competition Rules and was not medically eligible to participate in the event as a female boxer.”
To reiterate, the letter refers solely to Khelif. It directs the IOC to the attached lab reports.
It also expressly refers the IOC to that IBA “definition” of “women/female/girl” – defined as someone with XX chromosomes.
In a clear and unambiguous signal to the IOC that the IBA had recognized the loophole after New Delhi and closed it, in language mirroring the new rule, the letter says, “For this purpose, the Boxers can be submitted to a random and/or targeted gender test to confirm the above, which will serve for the gender eligibility criteria for the IBA competitions.”
The letter also says, “Regarding these essential principles of sport, we must share that the IBA and Prof. Richard McLaren are concerned,” referring to the Canadian legal expert retained by the IBA for governance review but also well-known within the IOC and the broader Olympic movement for his review of his Russian doping, “as some of the invited technical experts have been previously found to be high risk and their participation will subsequently put athletes’ safety in jeopardy.”
Sent a few weeks before the start of the 2023 European Games in Poland, the letter asks for a formal “technical meeting” to “discuss the necessary steps.”
Such a meeting never took place.
The letter concludes: “We trust that you will give this matter the utmost attention it deserves, and you have our absolute support on doing what is necessary to ensure the safety of competing athletes.”

https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/2024/8/3/0d4ucn50bmvbndhhqjohaneccoqueq

Both boxers had the opportunity to appeal their disqualification to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Neither ultimately went through with that. Why not? A medal rested on it for Yu Ting.

They jabe provided their evidence now.
https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/2024/8/3/0d4ucn50bmvbndhhqjohaneccoqueq

"3 Wire Sports has seen the letter and the tests."

Each boxer was tested twice. They declined to go through the same type of hearing process as Caster Semenya.

In case younger people are unaware, this is not unprecedented. Erika Schenigger was a gold medallist for women's skiing. Erika was tested 4 yrs later when swab tests were introduced and found to be XY.

Wanted to continue to ski but the Austrian authorities refused to let Erik compete with the men - though he was clearly their best skier: he'd already beaten male skiers.

And the test included photographs which they sent to IOC of the chromosomal testing that showed the pair 23 sex chromosomes were one X and one Y in both case ie both have Male XY karyotype.

Incidentally ive always though the whole 'sex assigned at birth' think activists spout is ludicrous as i have simillar photos of my sons chromosome karyotypes from when I had chromosomal analysis done via testing when I was 11 weeks pregnant with them. There was certainly no assignation at birth needed there!

Quite! but they’re only women so their feelings don’t matter

women are only support humans after all

This

Where is all the concern for these types of women? Who have trained just as hard.

Does one need to have a life altering injury to make people consider this risk?

l

I think it's important we face up to the difficulties of taking the IBA's tests as definitive proof. It's not a case of IOC devils/IBA angels. But there's more to the Khelif and Lin saga than the dodginess of the IBA.

I agree with your assessment of the IBA, Jo7890123, and I have posted elsewhere that it was and is? indeed a corrupt organisation - it even commissioned a review into itself, the McLaren report, which agreed that it was corrupt! The IBA is close to Russia. It accepted a huge amount of money from Gazprom. Worst of all, it made Michael Conlon cry on live TV when he was scandalously robbed of a medal at the Rio Olympics - one of the egregious cases of match-fixing by the IBA that 'peaked' the sports world against them.
No argument there.

Given the dodginess of the IBA, which I am freely conceding, Jo7890123, any reasonable person like me or JK Rowling would look for some corroborating evidence to support the IBA tests. And what we find is two people who have the typical physique and strength of men, and who have all the appearance of males with DSDs, a category of men already known to be drawn towards participating in women's sports, cf Caster Semenya, and who are 100% aware that there are existing doubts about their female-ness. We also wonder why they didn't appeal - or in the case of Khelif, dropped their appeal - against the IBA's decision that they were not women.

Even now, Khelif and Lin could stick it to the IBA by repeating their tests and showing the world that the corrupt IBA unfairly classified them as ineligible for women's boxing. Instead they are going along with the IOC's ridiculous definition of a woman as 'a person with F in their passport'.

It won't matter. A woman could die right there in the ring and the media, the IOC and their useful idiots will just pivot to 'well boxing is dangerous she knew what she signed up for'

Utter moral bankruptcy everywhere.

Quite Ova, and we've seen plenty of those opinions on MN this week also the "well sometimes they lose to women so what's all the fuss".

An article about Erik Schinegger, who was in a very similar situation. (Sensationalist headline. Sorry.)

https://www.skimag.com/uncategorized/womens-champ-was-a-man

How about we eliminate categories all together -sex/weight- because gender is fluid- and watch them all slug it out and think about what society has become

So let's say we were all to agree that "it's complicated ".

If so then unless you unequivocally pass a sex test you do not compete in a sec segregated event. Unless it's in a third category.

Because until the ambiguity and complexity can be taken out of sports then it's biological women getting fucked and facing disproportionately higher risks of injury and that is not acceptable.

This is pretty much it.

It's not a trans issue, but there certainly should be discussions on safety when it comes to contact sports such as boxing.

How about we eliminate categories all together -sex/weight- because gender is fluid- and watch them all slug it out and think about what society has become

Yes, exactly. If there are no justifications for sex classes, there aren't any for weight classes either.

And for those who think the IBA might be lying, or have a vested interest, for the love of God, these two boxers can just get retested.

Anytime they like.

It's stretching credulity to the moon and back to imagine the reason they don't is for anything other than they don't want the results known.

Do they really expect women, and the world in general, to bend so far over backwards that they're looking at their own arse?

To me, them not getting retested, insisting on it in fact, is all you need to know.