Imane Khelif appeals sex testing requirements.

[ThatZanyFatball]

Good luck with that.

Olympic champion Imane Khelif fights World Boxing’s genetic sex testing rule

I disagree, because he writes:

“After 18 months in enforced exile, Imane Khelif is back. Not back in boxing, but back in the business of self-serving interviews that frame her inability to compete in the female category less in terms of sporting fairness than of a supposed conspiracy by those with “political agendas”.”

Michael Deacon in the Telegraph

https://archive.ph/29p0p

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/05/i-do-not-believe-experts-trans-athletes-no-advantage-women/

This is Monty Python documentary he referenced

Algeria is extremely socially conservative.

The boxing authorities there maintain Khelif is An Lady, coming over all chivalrous to defend madams honour

https://www.givemesport.com/algeria-boxing-statement-on-imane-khelif/

.and has been lauded as a hero (note they use the term in this article ) there because they maintain they are female.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-13754677/amp/Imane-Khelif-Algeria-Olympic-gold-gender-row-boxer.html

If it's confirmed they are XY , and he's already said he's not transgender, it's going to get Hella awks for the authorities

I can't help wondering about his future. I doubt they'd be comfortable if IK brought a nice young man home. If he's heterosexual though would Algeria be prepared to go along with a 'same sex' relationship? Although if he's got a secret wife and family stashed away already I wouldn't be surprised.

"Boxing does not rely on the level of testosterone. Boxing relies on intelligence, on experience and on discipline,” she added**

Great! In that case you can compete with the other men, no worries. I'm sure you'll soon be getting gold.

Is there not a word for ‘male’?

@Brainworm Yes but that noun doesn't spawn the further noun you want. For "he is a male, his maleness is inescapable" you'd get; "il est un mâle, sa masculinté est inéluctable", for "a man is male" the normal construction would be, "un homme est un homme".

It makes discussing gender issues horribly woolly. (Note that "masculinité" itself takes the feminine. 😂)

“They should protect women, but they need to pay attention that while protecting women, they shouldn’t hurt other women,” she added.

What, hurt other women like in the way he hurt Angela Carini?

Here’s the original interview from L’Equipe:

https://archive.ph/PXW4z

I used Safari to translate to English.

To be clear, you have a female phenotype but have the SRY gene, an indicator of masculinity.
Yes, and it's natural. I have female hormones. And people don't know it, but I've already lowered my testosterone level for competitions. I am surrounded by doctors, a teacher follows me, and I have taken hormonal treatments to lower my testosterone level. For the qualifying tournament at the Paris Games, which took place in Dakar, I lowered my testosterone level to zero (the average level is between 0.3 and 3 nanomoles per liter of blood in women). And I won the gold medal there.

And:

"During the Paris Games, she was caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, and Umar Kremlev, the former president of the IBA," summarizes Dominique Nato, the president of the French Federation, who has just issued her a professional boxing license. "She was up to date on an administrative level, with her residence card and in medical terms," he explains. We looked at the regulations and nothing stipulates the obligation of genetic tests in French sports legislation. The CNOSF is thinking about it but, today, nothing prevents him from boxing. Promoted by Brahim Asloum, Olympic mid-fly champion at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Khelif should make his pro debut in early April.
—————-
In the above para, the ‘nothing prevents him from boxing’ is translated from ‘rien ne lui interdit de boxer’ .

Which might suggest that the French Federation knows Khelif is male.

Well he didn’t lower his T to zero did he? So why would we believe anything else he says?

If he had done, he'd have been too unwell to box.

I think "lui" is gender neutral when used for an indirect object.

Or rather, it is the same whether the indirect object noun is grammatically feminine or masculine.

As one leading male sports journalist argued, in a 2019 column for The Independent: “Let’s say transgender athletes pour into women’s sport, and let’s say, despite the flimsy and poorly understood relationship between testosterone and elite performance, they dominate everything they touch. They sweep up Grand Slam tennis titles and cycling world championships. They monopolise the Olympics. They fill our football and cricket and netball teams. Why would that be bad? …In a way, it would be inspiring.”

Ffs. These men don't even recognise their own absolute raging misogyny.

W*nker

Actually I think it's useful that they are bringing their misogyny out in the open. Most people would read that and be horrified. Most people understand why we have sex-based categories in sport. Because it's obvious. You literally have to be blinded by hatred for women to not get it.

These bros don't understand that the image of Khelif triumphantly punching women is fresh in people's minds, and was the death wound to the "inclusivity is the priority" modus operandi of the Olympics.

I've asked ChatGPT who wrote that, and they said this

Jonathan Liew, Chief Sports Writer at The Independent.

And they said he now works at the Guardian.

Shocked 🙄

Even if the body were fully female, we aren't supposed to have zero testosterone either. It's not healthy for any body to have zero and they wouldn't have been well!

Yes. Liew has form for being a misogynist.

He was definitely, definitely going to sue JKR, or make a criminal complaint, for calling him a man, wasn't he? I wonder how that's going...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2njjm4e2po

Do they not use “elle” as the feminine object any more?

Funny thing is, the only feminine coded thing in any of the pictures I’ve seen is plucked eyebrows. There is nothing else about his picture that undermines the scream of ‘bloke’.

That's the feminine subject pronoun equivalent to 'she', or 'it' if we're talking about a grammatically feminine object. 'la' is the feminine direct object pronoun, 'lui' the indirect object pronoun used for both genders.

Again, I know it's AI, but apparently a man reducing his testosterone to 0 would be life-threatening.

It's all bloody bollocks

Exactly!