Ari Armstrong's Web Log (Main) | Archives | Terms of Use

Reflections on Gender and Olympic Boxing

We should move away from competition categories based on sex and gender.

The Basic Facts

During an August 1 women's Olympic boxing match, Imane Khelif of Algeria defeated Angela Carini of Italy in 46 seconds, when Carini yielded after taking a hard punch to the face (see the Wikipedia account). Due to unsubstantiated claims that Khelif has XY chromosomes, Khelif's victory led to widespread demonization of Khelif by conservative politicians and commentators, many of whom called her a man.

Previously, on July 27, the overtly anti-transgender publication Reduxx published an article with the headline, "Two 'Female Boxers' Set To Compete At Paris 2024 Were Previously Disqualified From Women's World Championship For Having 'XY Chromosomes.'" The two boxers are Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan. The article quotes Umar Kremlev of the International Boxing Association as saying that the boxers "pretend to be women" and "had XY chromosomes" according to a test administered by the IBA.

On August 3, Khelif won a quarterfinals match, assuring her a medal. On August 4, Lin did likewise.

As Les Carpenter reports:

It remains unclear what standards Khelif and Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan failed last year to lead to the disqualifications [under the IBA].

The IOC [International Olympic Committee], which is overseeing the boxing competition in Paris, does not test for gender, and there never has been evidence that either Khelif or Lin had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone. . . .

In a statement this week, the IBA said the women did not "undergo a testosterone examination" but "a separate and recognized test." The statement added that the test and results are "confidential" [which did not stop Kremlev from discussing them]. . . . Fed up by a history of judging and bribery scandals involving the IBA even before Kremlev was first elected as the organization’s president in 2020, the IOC took control of Olympic boxing at the Tokyo Games.

To reiterate, the sole source of of the claim that Khelif and Lin have XY chromosomes is an organization known to be corrupt and led by a Putin crony. This does not, of course, rule out Khelif and Lin having XY chromosomes, but neither do the IBA's claims constitute reliable evidence that they do.

PBS reports, "Khelif was assigned female at birth and it says so on her passport, which is the International Olympic Committee's threshold for eligibility for boxing." Khelif has lost to several women, including in the 2020 Olympics.

More on Differences in Sexual Development

Even the obviously agenda-driven Reduxx article concedes that Khelif and Lin are not just men pretending to be women, nor are they transgender women; instead, "it is suspected that both are impacted by a Difference of Sexual Development (DSD), a category of medical conditions encompassing any problem noted at birth where the genitalia are atypical in relation to the chromosomes or gonads." Again, there is no publicly available evidence of this, just a suspicion based on Kremlev's unreliable testimony.

DSD is not just one condition but "a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs, including genitals," says the NHS.

You or your child may have sex chromosomes (bundles of genes) usually associated with being female (XX chromosomes) or usually associated with being male (XY chromosomes), but reproductive organs and genitals that may look different from usual.

This happens because of a difference with your genes or how you respond to the sex hormones in your body, or both. It can be inherited, but there is often no clear reason why it happens. . . .

Some people have XY (male) chromosomes, but their external genitals may develop in the usual way for girls or boys.

Sometimes it's difficult at first to know whether their genitals are more similar to girls' or boys'. A person may have a womb and may also have testicles inside their body. Sometimes the testicles might not work properly.

Doctors refer to this condition as 46,XY DSD. . . .

Some people have a chromosome pattern other than the usual XY or XX. They may have one X chromosome (XO), or they may have an extra chromosome (XXY).

Their internal and external sex organs can be either male or female, but they may not go through a full physical development at puberty. For example, a child with female sex organs may not start having periods.

Doctors call this sex chromosome DSD.

Notably, "Despite having the XY chromosomal makeup, girls with Swyer syndrome look female and have functional female genitalia and structures including a vagina, uterus and fallopian tubes."

Further, with hormone treatments and donor eggs, it is (rarely) possible for a woman with XY chromosomes to become pregnant and have a baby.

The Demonization of Imane Khelif

Almost immediately after Khelif won her August 1 match, various people started to demonize Khelif.

Citing Charlie Kirk's remark that Khelif is "a biological man" who "pummel[ed]" Carini, Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance said, "This is where Kamala Harris's ideas about gender lead: to a grown man pummeling a woman in a boxing match. This is disgusting, and all of our leaders should condemn it."

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert said the IOC "should be absolutely ashamed of themselves" for allowing a woman to be "beaten up by a biological male."

Author J. K. Rowling called Khelif a "male" and, quoting a Times article, characterized Khelif's victory as "male violence."

The Republican Party of Colorado suggested that Khelif's victory shows that "young girls . . . are at risk of losing their safe spaces and their sports to males."

Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom said the match in question showed "a female athlete get beat up by a man."

The Boston Globe falsely claimed in a headline that Khelif is transgender; the paper later apologized.

To reiterate, no one calling Khelif a "man," a "male," or a "biological male" has solid evidence that Khelif has XY chromosomes. Regardless of whether Khelif has XY chromosomes, she was born female and has identified as female her entire life.

Although Khelif's particular genetics and physiology are unknown to any of the people demonizing her, an implication of the criticisms is that, according to the critics, it is possible for a "man" or "male" to be born with a vagina and to grow up to get pregnant and have a child.

Khelif said of the controversy:

I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects. It can destroy people, it can kill people's thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.

The Fairness of Women with XY Chromosomes Competing

Whether or not Khelif or Lin have XY chromosomes, it seems reasonable to ask whether women who have XY chromosomes have an unfair advantage in certain sports, including boxing. The term testosterone is derived from the term testis. Although other organs also produce testosterone (physiologically typical women have it), the fact that women with XY chromosomes may have underdeveloped testis raises the question of whether they do or might have elevated testosterone levels.

This is a difficult conversation to have, because one side of the public conversation is dominated by seething hatred of transgender people and of preoccupation with rules that allow transgender women or women with masculine characteristics to compete against or share space with other women. As a consequence, LGBTQ-friendly people tend to dismiss the critics of relatively open rules of gender participation as bigots.

As understandable as that reaction is, the bare physiological fact remains that, other things equal, men have a competitive advantage over women in many physical sports. No rule bars women from the NFL or NBA, but, in fact, not a single woman in the world can compete at that level. If both men and women of comparable age and health entered a given weight class of boxing, and they all had comparable levels of training, the men would beat the women most of the time, by a wide margin. No reasonable person doubts this.

The question, then, is whether a woman with XY chromosomes has a competitive advantage over other women, either comparable to what a typical man would have, or to some lesser degree. (We can ask the same question about transgender women on hormone therapies.)

This is an empirical question that admits (at least potentially) of a scientific answer. Lots of people have spent lots of time thinking about such questions, and I have not mastered that literature, so I will not further pursue the matter here. Depending on what the empirical studies show, one might conclude that women with XY chromosomes always have a clear advantage over other women (of comparable weight, say), that they sometimes do, or that they never do. My best, tentative guess at this point is that there's probably some substantial advantage, but this might vary a lot depending on individual characteristics.

Khelif's critics have assumed not only that she has XY chromosomes but that those chromosomes giver her advantages comparable to those of men. If it turns out that having XY chromosomes as a women does not give a person comparable advantages to those of men, then what Khelif's critics are saying is that certain women either must compete against men or not compete at all. Asking a woman with XY chromosomes to compete against men would be fair only if, empirically, having XY chromosomes in the context of DSD confers advantages comparable to those of men. Khelif's critics seem awfully confident that they know the answers to those empirical questions!

The Possibility of Competition Categories Not Based on Sex or Gender

For most people, putting men and women in different categories of competition works fine, because most people are physiologically typical men or women. Obviously at issue are the physiological atypical men and women, and specifically the women.

Current Olympic rules explicitly allow transgender men to compete against other men. No one (that I know of) has a problem with this. Transgender women, on the other hand, can compete against other women only if they meet certain requirements mainly having to do with testosterone levels.

The transgender man Hergie Bacyadan competed in the Olympics, boxing women. In this case, Out Sports praises Bacyadan and does not seem to think that being a transgender man implies that the person must compete only against other men. Bacyadan lost to Li Quan of China.

In this context, we probably also should mention the South African runner Caster Semenya, a woman who seems to have DSD and elevated testosterone.

As even Doriane Lambelet Coleman's unfriendly (to Khelif) article points out, IBA did not disqualify Khelif until 2023. People commit to the Olympics at least four years in advance, so changing the rules midstream would be grotesquely unfair to anyone excluded by midstream changes.

So let us talk, not about Khelif specifically, but about potential rule changes at least four years out.

The Olympics establishes eight weight categories for men, with the lightest at 52 kilograms (115 pounds) and the heaviest at 91 kilograms (200 pounds). It establishes five weight categories for women, with the lightest at 51 kilograms (112 pounds) and the heaviest at 75 kilograms (165 pounds). Obviously the boundaries are inherently somewhat arbitrary.

We all know what would happen if we put the men in with the women, grouped only by weight category; the men would win a disproportionate number of times (probably almost always). Presumably, though, there is a weight category for women, such that, if matched against a lower weight category for men, the women would win about half the time. I'm not sure what those numbers would be, but I guess that 165 pound women could compete well against, say, 130 or 140 pound men. In other words, it would be possible to throw all competitors into the same weight categories, only give (biological) women a weight advantage, such that women won about half the matches. Would that be fair? You tell me. That scenario doesn't strike me as obviously or gratuitously unfair.

Incidentally, I deadlift 300 pounds (I've done a bit more and could pull more if I really had to). The women's record deadlift is around 700 pounds; the men's record is over a thousand pounds. A well-trained woman can beat an average man in most competitions, but a well-trained man generally can beat a well-trained woman, by a lot when strength is paramount.

I am not suggesting that we pit women against men while giving women a weight advantage. One problem is that we're back to the same issue of determining who qualifies as a "woman" under the given rules. What I'm trying to do is open up the possibility of coming up with competition categories based on something other than sex or gender.

Let's just say, for sake of argument, that, if we tested the natural testosterone levels of every athlete in a given event ("natural" here meaning without hormonal treatments), the results formed two partly overlapping standard bell curves. Most of the people within the higher-testosterone curve would be (biological) men, while most of the people within the lower curve would be women. We could just draw a line separating those bells to create broad competition categories, then (for boxing) set weight categories beneath that. That's a division that mostly accomplishes the same thing as a sex or gender category, only it's based on direct measurements of testosterone.

Then we could talk about transgender women who take hormones that lower their testosterone levels. We could just put them straight into the category as defined. Some people claim that transgender women have advantages other than testosterone levels. That, again, is an empirical question. Let's say, for sake of argument, that the claim is true. We could adjust the testosterone points for transgender women, making it more likely that they'd compete against men.

Here is another idea. The category of sex or gender is just a proxy for athletic performance. So is testosterone. Presumably, we could figure out and measure that which is directly relevant to performance. I find it entirely plausible that, if we created competition categories based only on total muscle mass, that would create fair competitions.

Or maybe you think that muscle mass is not all that matters. Okay, you could come up with a list of all the factors that matter, then come up with a score accounting for all those factors. Any reasonable person has to concede this is at least possible. Then the question becomes whether a given standard feasibly can be implemented.

Boxing, with its weight classes, recognizes that some men are at a dramatic advantage relative to other men (and the same with women). Notably, most sports separate participants by sex or gender but not further by weight. What this does is dramatically disadvantage smaller men (relative to larger men) and smaller women (relative to larger women) for any sport in which size and raw strength matter. One large advantage to coming up with competition categories not based on sex or gender, where competitors are not further sorted into subcategories, is that smaller individuals would have a better chance of fitting into a category where they could be competitive. Specifically, with the right standards, smaller men often would find themselves in competition with larger women.

But coming up with rational competition categories not based on sex or gender would largely put to rest the gender culture wars, which probably is why partisans tend not even to bring up the topic.

Ari Armstrong's Web Log (Main) | Archives | Terms of Use