On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a surprising correction after claiming for a week that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting were actually born women and have Differences in Sexual Development (DSD), a range of rare conditions in which a person’s genitalia do not necessarily match with their chromosomes or hormone levels. In this weekend’s column, I cited that IOC claim that Khelif is not a transgender athlete. Yet, there remains considerable confusion on how the IOC and the boxing governing body is framing this issue and the question of gender.
IOC chief Thomas Bach said: “We have two boxers… who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women, who have competed for many years as women. And this is a clear definition of a woman.”
Bach chastised critics and warned them not to “confuse the two issues,” stressing that this was not “about the transgender issue.” However, he then confused many by saying “this is not a DSD case.”
The IOC later issued a correction:
In today’s IOC – Paris 2024 press briefing, IOC President Bach said: ‘But I repeat, here, this is not a DSD case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.”
What was intended was:
‘But I repeat, here, this is not a transgender case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.’
The key claim of the IOC is that both boxers were “born women.” Clearly, the identification on their passports (and how they were raised) can differ from country to country.
In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev explained the IBA’s decision to disqualify Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting and Algeria’s Imane Khelif from 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships. While there remains confusion on the testing used by the IBA (or the reliability of those tests), it issued this statement:
“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”
Various media also did their own “fact checks” with outlets like USA Today stating that the “outcries from anti-trans celebrities and politicians” were based on false claims and the boxers were born women.
NBC also cited “attacks from anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives online who claim they’re transgender.” It stressed that the IBA could not be trusted since the group was banned by the IOC. (IBA was banned for corruption and financial related issues).
Notably, buried down in the CNN report on the controversy is a line that would seem significant that “Khelif… has not said she has DSD.”
In the meantime, IOC spokesman Mark Adams has said that these determinations are left up to each sport’s international governing body because “they know their sport and their discipline the best,” Adams added that “I hope we all agree that we’re not calling for people to go back to the days of sex testing which was a terrible, terrible thing to do. This involves real people and we’re talking about real people’s lives here.”
Yet, it seems odd that such major criteria of qualification would be left up to each governing body. There should be a consistent rule across the Olympics. Yet, the Human Rights Watch maintains that gender testing violates fundamental rights to privacy and dignity.
My friend Marc Siegel, Fox medical analyst, argues that the testing side can be as simple as a hormone swab.
Media is still insisting that these are not transgender athletes. Many articles cited GLAAD and InterACT. On Sunday, GLAAD was insisting that Khelif is not transgender, but is now referring to the DSD claim as something the IOC has maintained:
Imane Khelif is a woman.
Imane Khelif is not transgender and does not identify as intersex.
Because Imane Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) championship due to an unspecified gender eligibility test, which has different eligibility criteria than the IOC, there have been unconfirmed reports that she may have a variation in her sex traits, also known as differences of sexual development (DSDs).
DSDs are a group of conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs. According to the NIH, some people with DSDs are raised as female but may have sex chromosomes other than XX, or elevated testosterone levels.
Athletes with variations in their sex traits, or DSDs, are not the same as transgender athletes. Conflating the two is inaccurate.
It is not verified that Imane Khelif has a variation in sex traits or DSDs.
If you are confused, you are not alone.
Legally, there continues to be a debate on the criteria used in these competitions. However, the GLADD statements seems to suggest that there is uncertainty on the underlying facts.
Some of the confusion may be due to the use of transgender versus intersex.
There is a difference between transgender athletes and intersex athletes. Transgender refers to someone who has a gender identity that is not in alignment with their sex.
Intersex refers to someone who has reproductive anatomy or genes that align with conventional definitions of male or female, including different chromosomal profiles. ESPN explained that “an example is someone who is partially or completely insensitive to androgens, such as testosterone. They may be assigned female at birth but have XY chromosomes because of their body’s physiological insensitivity to androgens.”
The athletes defending these two boxers have supported the claim that they are intersex athletes who were born female but have chromosomal differences.
What is most striking about the boxing controversy is that there appears little agreement on the underlying facts and testing. It is not even clear what Khelif has claimed in the past on these issues. That seems curiously undefined and irregular for a classification criteria. That was brought home by the confusion of Bach himself in warning against confusion on the issues.
On Saturday, Khelif defeated another female contestant, Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori and Taiwan fighter Lin Yu-Ting also won the day before to advance to the semi-finals.
look at the first picture in the link
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/02/sport/who-is-imane-khelif-olympic-boxer-intl/index.html
There in the red with the islamic moon and star thing is THE MAN, THE MALE.
Is everyone blind ? You can tell by his face and his shoulders and arms and their shape and tendons.
You can see it in the top of his forearm and shape to his elbow.
I frankly do not care what his life story is, or what has occurred with his groin. THAT IS A MALE, THE BODY MORPHOLOGY IS CLEARLY VISIBLE.
I submit we have so many lying idiots, and so many morons, that what is plainly obvious is something their tiny drug addled brains cannot decipher.
IT’S A MAN YOU MORNS !
It’s birth defects. People can’t say that because the lgbt community wants to normalize all things lgbtq. There are defects in the sex chromosomes is the truth. The truth is a man cannot become a woman. Males cannot become females.
This is at its root pedophilia as is being practiced. A person can be murdered for saying that.
It’s the LGBT Olympics. Not much sympathy because it’s a lesbian fighting another lgbt, right?
I’d have boarded the plane after the opening ceremony.
It’s not as if France didn’t know the opening wouldn’t be well received as in Budd-lite? For those unfamiliar with the French language, for those with classes in German instead the last supper is stated in the title of the skit. 😏
OMG: why the over complication? Do they have one or don’t they? Geeeeezzzz…
Babylon Bee notes that the referee warns Olympic women’s boxing finalists not to punch each other in the testicles.
https://babylonbee.com/news/referee-warns-olympic-womens-boxing-finalists-not-to-punch-each-other-in-the-testicles
xx girlsteam
xy boys team
Aint gold enough for boys team?
NO you do not get to whale on girls to polish your “ego.”
Go to the Kamala Harris for President web page. You will find that an issues page is conspicuously missing. A prominent Democratic leader once said that they had to pass the bill before you could read it. I guess you’ll just have to elect Kamala so that you can know how she stands on the issues. We do know that she once said that fracking should be outlawed and now that she’s discovered that oil production is important in Pennsylvania so she now says that she wouldn’t ban fracking. Now she has discovered that jobs in the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania are more important than the Green New Deal. No problem we’ll just do the old switcharoo to get more votes and we’ll screw em good after the election. They claim to hate the rich but they have no problem with the millions of dollars contributed by billionaires to the Democratic Party. Don’t forget she said that when she was a little girl her momma asked what she wanted most and she said fweedom and lots and lots of money from billionaires. Momma said, thats my girl.
Even when the boxer himself says that he has a penis and testing says that he has an X and Y chromosome they still try to claim that he is a woman. Are you dumb enough to think that the women’s high jump and pole vaulting won’t be next? Women must be sacrificed on the idol of so called inclusion. Somehow they continue to vote for the people who lay them atop the sacrificial alter.
Can you tell me where the boxer (I assume you reference Khelif) said he has a penis? I have not seen that (the comment, not the penis 🙂 )
Kamala Harris is absolutely nothing but a barren, childless, gold digger, entirely bereft of any raison d’être.
Kamala Harris was a subpar, “WEIRD,” assistant DA.
The very FOUNDATION of “Kamala Harris” is an affair with a man who was married with children and who was nothing more than a political benefactor.
Kamala Harris didn’t achieve her way up; she —-ed her way up.
Kamala Harris engendered an exceptional CV; everyone agrees.
“RFK Jr. admits to leaving dead bear in Central Park”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4810844-rfk-jr-admits-he-was-behind-famous-dead-bear-story-in-central-park/
LOL — I think we have a winner in the Clean & Sober presidential contender competition.
See if this synopsis makes sense concerning the judgment of a mature adult who supposedly was thinking clearly and wasn’t drunk:
“Well, I was on my way to go falconing with some friends when I came across this dead bear. So I was gonna load it on the Cadillac and take it home and eat it — because that’s what we Hyannis Port Kennedys do in a situation like that — but I was late for a meeting and didn’t have time to eat the bear. So instead, I decided to dump it in Central Park and make it look like it had been killed by a bicyclist — because that’s the kind of thing that might sound stupid to a drunk person but makes perfect sense if you’re clean and sober.”
Maybe it’w juwt me, but I think that story beats the heck out of an Olympic tranny story — and I didn’t have to go all the way to Paris to find it.
It was sickening. I already hate that Minor Attracted Persons Newspeak. https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/minor-attracted-persons-newspeak
Will you look at that, Mabel, two men will be competing for the women’s boxing championship.
https://x.com/TheQuartering/status/1819824835138142667
XX or XY at birth…..if the athlete is xy they would compete against other xy’s. xx’s would compete with other xx’s.
People with Rare chromosomes like ‘XXY’, etc. would compete with others in their own category.
Settle this with Biology facts, not with what the athlete ‘identifies”as (i.e. what they THINK they are, or whatever is printed on a Passport).
The one thing that liberals are experts at is using a word salad that tells you absolutely nothing. We can see the same thing happening in the recent stabbing attack in Southport, England. Was the perpetrator of this crime a practicing Muslim or not? All we get, is statements like he was born in Wales. Liberals want to avoid giving a clear answer to avoid being held accountable for their answers. The same thing is happening here at the Olympics.
Yes, Khelif and Yu-Ting are not trans, in that they make no claim of doing anything to transition from one gender to another (presuming such a thing can be done). They both claim to have been female for their entire lives, and the IOC has simply taken their word for it. For as long as I have been aware of the issue gender has been based on the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. For some reason the IOC has chosen not do the test. The only thing clear in this dispute is that the IOC needs to state a standard. It cannot continue to simply take the athlete’s or the athlete’s nation’s word for it.
no such THING!
test the DNA…that is your GENDER!
Harris is taking hundreds of millions of dollars in “inflation reduction act@ money and giving it to far-left radical environmental groups and other far-left groups that don’t think the US is a legitimate country, don’t think Israel has a right to exist, want to abolish ICE, CBP, defund police, abolish all prisons, and use that money to lobby Washington. Yeah that should reduce inflation and help the environment /sarc
https://www.capito.senate.gov/news/press-releases/video-capito-ricketts-epa-vice-president-harris-doling-out-inflation-reduction-act-funds-for-radical-groups
* SENATOR KEELEY
Yes, and it’s a form of money laundering. To understand, DEI is the controlling scheme. Punishment is included. Imposed diversity without regard for merit, harm imposed upon other groups, truth, any other consideration is of no importance.
The USA was a privileged nation and must be punished. Lgbt were not included nor various other groups. The 2 boxers have more merit than a woman because they were more excluded or faced greater hardship. There’s always punishment on a sadistic level.
Don’t accept it. Punishment isn’t necessary. Surely people are smarter than this very ill scheme? The Olympics have changed for now.
Women can have a new Olympic category that includes only XX leaving the men’s category intact and the third is for lgbt and women if they choose.
Let XX category as exclusive and voluntary and in the minority. Happy to sit in the back of the bus to avoid injury and provide fairness and truth. Take a share of title IX money. The original text was written for XX. originalism.
The 2 boxers mystery shall remain a mystery.
Turley’s commitment to the value of free speech is being nicely demonstrated in the UK just now.
The government cut off and condemned and punished all speech that was counter to their narrative.
Being denied the right to protest peacefully the people are responding less peacefully.
The corporate/government media is, as usual, lying. They describe the rioters as far-right thugs but, as it happens, the riots are happening primarily in Labour, far left, strongholds. They are left or far left if anything.
Perhaps they are best described in non-political terms. Thoroughly and completely pi**ed off with government betrayal by all parties in power will do.
A bit of riot might help with their immediate rage but if they want to be truly effective, stock up on supplies and then just stop. No work. No trains. No buses. No NHS. No anything that requires these people to show up. And if you do show up drag your feet and sabotage the job.
I wish them well.
Ah, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
It’s not quite the same as the “Land of the Free,” free speech, free press, freedom, free enterprise, free markets, private property, and severely limited and restricted government prescribed by, and under the dominion of, the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
____________________________________________________________________________________
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
Perhaps Khelif would like to go into the ring with other boxers who have XY chromosomes.
The surest sign that this is all horsepucky is that the transsexuals and transgenders never seem to show up in male sports.
Sex is determined by chromosomes from conception: male and female. Gender refers to sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation): masculine and feminine, developed in utero and through puberty. Trans- denotes a state or process of divergence (e.g. transgender spectrum) through natural or anthropogenic forcings. The male sex develops structural and systemic differences that are positively enhanced in the presence of testosterone that the female sex does not.
If female lives matter, then the choice is to either discern sex or identify classes to divide athletes by other objective criteria (e.g. force, structural robustness) . We could also throw all of the carbon clusters into the ring, and the last one standing will be deemed viable as a testament to equity and inclusion, and the others will be sequestered in our quest for Net Zero to mitigate climate progress.
Either way, throw another baby on the barbie, flambe a fetus, it’s over.
All you need to know about Biology can be derived from the song sung by George Strait who is as as name implies.
He sang, “All my X’s live in Texas, not all my X-Y’s live in Texas.
Since male transvestites regularily have plastic surgery to change their external appearance to female, only the presence of the XY or XX Chromosome group can reliably determine sex (gender). Cellular biology controls not appearances or imagination.
“Transgender or Intersex? Confusion Reigns Over the Gender Status of Two Olympic Boxers”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
WEIRD!
Kamalala (Kuh Ma La La) Harris and the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) could safely apply their descriptive to this “transgender” (whatever the hell that is) situation in the Olympics.
One must inquire of one’s self how the eminently “weird” transgender phenomenon impossibly and counterintuitively became mainstream, the new normal.
However did the coherent and rational nation of the American Founders get twisted into an ideological pretzel?
You listened to fools and idiots.
Oh, and WEIRDOS!
Had patriotic and free Americans been listening to the Founders, paying attention, and endeavoring to “keep” the analytic and reasonable restricted-vote republic of freedom, free enterprise, and free markets, given them by Ben Franklin et al., they would have never considered amendments after those of the Founders and Framers themselves through the 12th, one of the worst being the 16th, the Income Tax Amendment.
The 16th merely facilitated the wholly unconstitutional regulation and dictatorship—the administrative state—by wholly unconstitutional governmental agencies and departments.
Article 1, Section 8, does not provide Congress the power to regulate Social Security, Medicare, Labor, Agriculture, Education, Energy, Environment, Small Business, etc.
Americans need to endeavor to stop the WEIRD in the Olympics and the WEIRD in their self-governance and freedom.
Repeal the Income Tax Amendment.
The 21st Amendment correctly repealed the 18th.
The 28th Amendment must repeal the WEIRD 16th.
* Senator Keeley
Hear, hear..
While I have proposed specific criteria for determining who can compete in women’s sports – with different criteria for contact and non contact sports.
The FACT is that globally, societally, we can decide whatever we want.
There is no established rule that defines whether womens sports even need to exist.
But the choices we make have consequences.
If you allow doping – all athletes will dope.
Some of us are born with genetic advantages at birth. If I started training from birth it is highly unlikely I could qualify for the Olympics in any sport
Nor could the overwhelming majority of us.
Most sports outside of kids and sports for fun is limited to the 1% who have genetic advantages over the rest of us.
We can chose to allow whoever we wish to compete as women – if we do – we can expect those with the advantage of XY chromosomes or steriods to totally completely dominate. And we can expect contact sports to become dangerous and bloody.
The IOC does not seem to understand that they are not deciding these issues in a vaccum.
What matters is what people watching the Olympics want.
This is not about “cheating”: -= probably.
If you allow althetes to take steroids – those athletes will win everything.
If have womens sports and you allow people with Y chromosomes to compete – they will replace all XX women in sport.
Is that actually what we want ?
This is not about what is fair – life is not fair.
While many of us suspect some gaming of the system here – it does not matter if that is not true.
What matters is that whatever the rules are determined to be – those viewing and supporting sports and the olympics find those rules acceptable.
You cant use XX vs XY as your criteria. 46,XX Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is an actual diagnosis, and many women in athletic events are top performers because they have 46,XX CAH. That is an unfair advantage over normal XX individuals but never discussed.
Better to investigate whether the individual has a history of a surge in testosterone synthesis during puberty. If so, they are at an advantage because testis producing testosterone >>> congenital adrenal hyperplasia
The International Olympic Committee framework on fairness, inclusion and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations does not protect fairness for female athletes
The IOC framework suggests that testosterone concentrations could be investigated as a means to mitigate performance in transgender women. However, no study has demonstrated that transgender women with suppressed testosterone levels after puberty reach biological or physical parity with females. Conversely, numerous studies have shown that biological differences persist after testosterone is suppressed,25, 44, 46 with physical performance implications. There is no plausible biological mechanism by which testosterone suppression could reduce height and associated skeletal measurements (e.g., bone length and hip or shoulder width) that may confer a discipline-dependent performance advantage. Consequently, no study has reported reductions in skeletal advantages in transgender women who suppress testosterone after puberty.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sms.14581
“You cant use XX vs XY as your criteria. ”
Estovir, that sounds correct (your sole criteria), but checking for a Y is a solid metric to exclude many questions. Other criteria (drug testing) are undoubtedly present, and more can be added. Can that testosterone surge you talk about be proven with drug testing later in life, or is it an assumption to have occurred based on observation? Aren’t these disorders frequently treated with drugs that are banned?