File photo of Imane Khelif© AFP

File photo of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif© AFP

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is once again in the news. Her ‘leaked’ medical report, suggesting the presence of ambiguous genitalia and secondary male characteristics has made many suggest that the pugilist is indeed a ‘biological male’. A report by French journalist Djaffar Ait Aoudia stressed that Imane Khelif had internal testicles and an XY chromosome makeup, which hint towards a 5-alpha reductase deficiency. As the report became public, IBA President Umar Kremlev demanded apology from International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach for allowing a ‘man’ to compete against women in the Paris Olympic Games.

The international boxing body has been fighting a war against the IOC over Imane Khelif and boxers of similar conditions. While the IBA had banned Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting from participating in their events, the IOC allowed them to compete in the Olympic Games.

A leaked medical report, published in Le Correspondent, seems to have backed the findings that IBA had shared on Khelif and Yu-ting, with a war of wards between the boxing body’s chief and Bach getting triggered again.

Taking a fresh swipe at Bach after the leaked medical report surfaced, IBA chief Umar Kremlev has asked his IOC counterpart to “kneel and apologise”.

“Everyone already knows the news. The International Olympic Committee has violated all sports rules by putting a man against a woman. Tests have again confirmed that Imane Khelif is indeed a man. Today, as the President of the International Boxing Association, which upholds gender equality and protects both women’s and men’s boxing, I demand that Thomas Bach and his team both verbally and in writing, apologise to the global boxing community.

“Thomas Bach himself bears direct responsibility for this, as he personally lobbied for this to happen – for men to compete against women. On behalf of all boxers in the world, I demand them to kneel and apologise to the boxing community and to those girls who have been beaten and abused. Thomas Bach, I am now waiting, as is everyone in IBA, for your official apology,” Kremlev said.

Since the medical report became public on social media, several sporting and non-sporting celebrities have taken to the internet and shared their views on the matter, most them aligning in favour of IBA.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif remained in the news throughout the Paris Olympics 2024 campaign. Labeled as a biological man by many, Khelif went on to secure a gold medal in the women’s 66kg category despite her eligibility for the competition being questioned by many. Months after the conclusion of the Paris Games, a new controversy erupted after a leaked medical report confirmed that Khelif, was in fact, a man. Even former India cricketer Harbhajan Singh reacted to the report, tagging the Olympics on social media while asking them to take the gold medal awarded to the Algerian back.

As per the leaked medal report, which French journalist Djaffar Ait Aoudia was able to secure, the Algerian boxer has internal testicles and XY chromosomes. The condition, as per the report, hints at a disorder called 5-alpha reductase insufficiency.

Take the Gold back @Olympics This isn’t fair https://t.co/ZO3yJmqdpY

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) November 5, 2024

The report was said to be drafted by experts from the Kremlin-Bicetre Hospital in Paris and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine Hospital in Algiers in June 2023. In the detailed report, Khelif’s biological traits, such as the existence of internal testicles and the lack of a uterus have been thoroughly described. Even an MRI report suggested the presence of a micropenis, as reported by Redux.

Remember the man who won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing?

His medical reports show he has XY chromosomes, male testosterone levels, testicles, & a micropenis.

But that never mattered—they believe that words & feelings make you woman, not biology.https://t.co/Ip8KLvEt6S

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 4, 2024

In 2023, Khelif was banned by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from participating in the World Championship Gold Medal fight in New Delhi.

In fact, US presidential candidate Donald Trump even used Khelif’s example in an ad campaign criticising the Biden-Harris administration’s gender-ad sports policy, hoping to help his case by converting the controversy into an election issue.

File photos of Taapsee Pannu (left) and Imane Khelif.© Instagram – @Taapsee and @jeuxolympiques

Washington:

Former US President Donald Trump once again sparked controversy by criticising two Olympic gold medalist female boxers, labelling them as men during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump’s remarks, made in the context of his pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports,” have reignited debates over gender and sports.

Referring to the athletes at the recently concluded Paris Olympics, Trump stated, “They were men. They transitioned to women, and they were in the boxing,” adding that it is “so demeaning to women.”

Trump’s comments follow a pattern of his rallies where he has frequently targeted transgender athletes.

The two Olympic gold medalist athletes in question, Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria have been at the centre of global scrutiny due to misconceptions about their gender.

Both athletes were disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships by the now-banned International Boxing Association (IBA) over alleged failures in gender eligibility tests, despite both being born and raised as women.

Khelif and Lin, who were cleared to compete in women’s boxing at the Paris 2024 Olympics, had been disqualified from the Women’s World Championships in India due to elevated testosterone levels, according to the IBA.

The IBA’s decision, which stripped both boxers of their medals and barred them from women’s competition, was widely criticised for its lack of transparency and fairness.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is overseeing the boxing events in Paris, cleared both Lin and Khelif to compete in the Olympics, basing their eligibility on the athletes’ passport gender.

The IOC condemned the harassment faced by Khelif, who has been subjected to online abuse and threats following the ruling by the IBA. Khelif spoke out against the bullying, warning of its potential to ruin lives.

Trump’s repeated criticism of Khelif, including referring to her as a man, has drawn widespread condemnation from various quarters. His remarks come amidst ongoing debates about the inclusion of transgender athletes in sports, an issue that has polarised opinions across the globe.

The situation has highlighted the broader challenges faced by athletes like Khelif and Lin, who are caught in the crossfire of debates over gender, fairness, and the intersection of sports and identity.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The kind of bullying and abuse Olympic boxer Imane Khelif has been subjected to makes one thing crystal clear: in the age of social media, misinformation is easiest to amplify when it’s rooted in misogyny, transphobia and racism, and amplified by verified, blue-ticked accounts on X. It has also made it clear that trans-hate will eventually come to haunt all women who do not fit traditional, conservative definitions of femininity.

Now that Imane Khelif has refused to take the online abuse in silence and is suing the key amplifiers – J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk – let’s revisit the brutal online hate campaign unleashed against the Olympic gold medallist, all for being a ‘non-feminine’ woman of colour. 

The Prime Purveyors Of Hate

On August 1, after facing Khelif for a whopping 45-second battle, Italian boxer Angela Carini forfeited the match. Later, she would tell the press, “I have never been punched so hard” and shed tears in front of the camera, as anyone would have in her position. However, seeing a white woman cry on television was, of course, too much to bear for champions of women’s rights like author J. K. Rowling, who has had a history of making transphobic comments. Rowling cried foul on X about a “man” punching a woman and about men’s rights activism having gone too far. Even the owner of X, Elon Musk, could not resist chiming in. It’s another story that Musk’s own views about transgender persons are worth some scrutiny and may be best described by his estranged daughter who he refuses to acknowledge.

The Imane Khelif case underlines a hard but unsurprising truth: we are not as progressive in 2024 as we would like to believe. Sure, there are more people today who are accepting of queer rights, gender equality, and just human rights in general, but in the country called the internet, this population is sparse.

Trans Hate Is Misogyny

When two people with a combined following of over 200 million people put out such derogatory posts against a woman, their legions of followers are bound to spew out the same misinformation, often with vile language. But Rowling and Musk’s comments also fanned the fire of deep-rooted transphobia and misogyny that still burns in all stratas of human classes, races, and nationalities. 

Trans hate is just another catalyst for overall misogyny. Groups abound on Reddit and Facebook where people aligned with the Rowling ideology simply attack any female celebrity they don’t think is “woman enough” and must therefore, be a transsexual or transgender; there is a word for this group too, “transvestigators”.  For example, if you like to lift weights and be muscular, then you are not feminine, and hence make for a perfect target for these ‘tranvestigators’. Like sports? Big cars? Not dainty, petite, blonde, and light-eyed enough? Wear too much makeup as if to hide male appearance? Wear too little makeup because you are a man trying to pass off as a ‘sporty woman’? Well, women who exhibit such traits “aren’t women”, according to tranvestigators. 

Coming back to the hate campaign against Khelif. Soon after her win in Paris and its fallout, conservative-leaning media outlets and social media handles started talking about her 2023 disqualification by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing a ‘gender eligibility test’. No matter the fact that the IBA itself was questioned by the Olympics for their ‘methods’ and that there have been accusations of corruption as well. The International Olympic Association (IOC) banned the IBA last year over its governance and finance issues, with the Olympic body allowing the boxing competition to be held in Paris. But alas, this grain of truth was buried deep under the rubble of misinformation that flooded the internet. 

A number of questions have been raised amid this storm. “How can ‘he’ be a woman?”, “IBA must have banned ‘him’ for a reason!”, “XY is a man! Only men have Testosterone!”, “He clearly looks like a man. He is built like a man.” 

Let’s try to answer them. 

Man, Woman, Other?

Khelif’s story is very Dangal-like. Indian audiences, if they read her full interview with UNICEF, may relate to the story of a young girl joining a sport that’s dominated by men. But unlike Dangal, she did not have a father ready to fight the world. She fought mostly alone in her childhood, while her family battled poverty to feed their children and sustain the family.

There’s also the fact that Algeria is a deeply religious Islamic country, where being trans may invite a host of legal challenges. If any of the ‘tranvestigators’ like Rowling or Musk followers had bothered to do a simple Google search, they would know Algeria would probably never send a ‘trans’ person to represent their country in the Olympics.  

XX or XY?

Doesn’t matter, honestly. Anyone who has studied genetics and chromosomes can answer this: the set of chromosomes that define sex (not gender) are named so based on their shape. Zoya Fatima, a teacher at Jamia Senior Secondary School, explains that women have two chromosomes shaped like ‘X’, while in men, one of them is shaped like a ‘Y’. “Genetic mutation can cause a foetus with XX to have a Y-shaped chromosome,” she explains, “They can have all female genitalia, even uterus in some cases, but ovaries in almost all cases are non-functional. But they can be mothers via IVF and have normal pregnancies. So it is incorrect to say that all XY automatically classify as male and man.”

If we were to go by the definitions recommended by conservative social media, then millions of women would immediately lose their right to be called a woman for having elevated testosterone levels. While testosterone is considered the ‘male hormone’, women produce it too – many with hormonal disorders, such as PCOS, tend to produce too much of it. Will these conditions void a woman’s right to be called a ‘woman’? 

If we consider science for our definitions, the majority of women with XY or XXY or XXYY chromosomal structures have one common denominator: a non-functional ovary. So that begs the question, is a perfectly functional ovary fundamental for being classified as a ‘woman’? If yes, what about a few thousand women who have ovarian insufficiency? Will they cease to be known as women? 

The Question Of Race

Women of colour who don’t fit conservative definitions of femininity have always had it worse. Barely a day before her match, Khelif’s Hungarian opponent, Luca Hamori, posted an incendiary picture on Instagram that showed Khelif as a ‘beast’. For centuries now, Black women have been mocked for their ‘masculinity’. Not too far in India itself, sprinter Duttee Chand had been on the receiving end of primitive gender tests. “In 2014, I challenged the IOC’s rule that a person with a higher testosterone level should not participate in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. It was noted that hormonal levels cannot increase athletic performance. I suffered a lot at that time. I faced a lot of controversy regarding my gender,” Chand told PTI after the Imane Khelif controversy erupted.

The abuse and attacks Imane Khelif has faced online will be remembered for years to come. The key takeaway is this: misinformation driven by racist, misogynist ideologies often travels much, much faster than the truth. 

(Anwiti Singh is Assistant Producer, NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

The kind of bullying and abuse Olympic boxer Imane Khelif has been subjected to makes one thing crystal clear: in the age of social media, misinformation is easiest to amplify when it’s rooted in misogyny, transphobia and racism, and amplified by verified, blue-ticked accounts on X. It has also made it clear that trans-hate will eventually come to haunt all women who do not fit traditional, conservative definitions of femininity.

Now that Imane Khelif has refused to take the online abuse in silence and is suing the key amplifiers – J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk – let’s revisit the brutal online hate campaign unleashed against the Olympic gold medallist, all for being a ‘non-feminine’ woman of colour. 

The Prime Purveyors Of Hate

On August 1, after facing Khelif for a whopping 45-second battle, Italian boxer Angela Carini forfeited the match. Later, she would tell the press, “I have never been punched so hard” and shed tears in front of the camera, as anyone would have in her position. However, seeing a white woman cry on television was, of course, too much to bear for champions of women’s rights like author J. K. Rowling, who has had a history of making transphobic comments. Rowling cried foul on X about a “man” punching a woman and about men’s rights activism having gone too far. Even the owner of X, Elon Musk, could not resist chiming in. It’s another story that Musk’s own views about transgender persons are worth some scrutiny and may be best described by his estranged daughter who he refuses to acknowledge.

The Imane Khelif case underlines a hard but unsurprising truth: we are not as progressive in 2024 as we would like to believe. Sure, there are more people today who are accepting of queer rights, gender equality, and just human rights in general, but in the country called the internet, this population is sparse.

Trans Hate Is Misogyny

When two people with a combined following of over 200 million people put out such derogatory posts against a woman, their legions of followers are bound to spew out the same misinformation, often with vile language. But Rowling and Musk’s comments also fanned the fire of deep-rooted transphobia and misogyny that still burns in all stratas of human classes, races, and nationalities. 

Trans hate is just another catalyst for overall misogyny. Groups abound on Reddit and Facebook where people aligned with the Rowling ideology simply attack any female celebrity they don’t think is “woman enough” and must therefore, be a transsexual or transgender; there is a word for this group too, “transvestigators”.  For example, if you like to lift weights and be muscular, then you are not feminine, and hence make for a perfect target for these ‘tranvestigators’. Like sports? Big cars? Not dainty, petite, blonde, and light-eyed enough? Wear too much makeup as if to hide male appearance? Wear too little makeup because you are a man trying to pass off as a ‘sporty woman’? Well, women who exhibit such traits “aren’t women”, according to tranvestigators. 

Coming back to the hate campaign against Khelif. Soon after her win in Paris and its fallout, conservative-leaning media outlets and social media handles started talking about her 2023 disqualification by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing a ‘gender eligibility test’. No matter the fact that the IBA itself was questioned by the Olympics for their ‘methods’ and that there have been accusations of corruption as well. The International Olympic Association (IOC) banned the IBA last year over its governance and finance issues, with the Olympic body allowing the boxing competition to be held in Paris. But alas, this grain of truth was buried deep under the rubble of misinformation that flooded the internet. 

A number of questions have been raised amid this storm. “How can ‘he’ be a woman?”, “IBA must have banned ‘him’ for a reason!”, “XY is a man! Only men have Testosterone!”, “He clearly looks like a man. He is built like a man.” 

Let’s try to answer them. 

Man, Woman, Other?

Khelif’s story is very Dangal-like. Indian audiences, if they read her full interview with UNICEF, may relate to the story of a young girl joining a sport that’s dominated by men. But unlike Dangal, she did not have a father ready to fight the world. She fought mostly alone in her childhood, while her family battled poverty to feed their children and sustain the family.

There’s also the fact that Algeria is a deeply religious Islamic country, where being trans may invite a host of legal challenges. If any of the ‘tranvestigators’ like Rowling or Musk followers had bothered to do a simple Google search, they would know Algeria would probably never send a ‘trans’ person to represent their country in the Olympics.  

XX or XY?

Doesn’t matter, honestly. Anyone who has studied genetics and chromosomes can answer this: the set of chromosomes that define sex (not gender) are named so based on their shape. Zoya Fatima, a teacher at Jamia Senior Secondary School, explains that women have two chromosomes shaped like ‘X’, while in men, one of them is shaped like a ‘Y’. “Genetic mutation can cause a foetus with XX to have a Y-shaped chromosome,” she explains, “They can have all female genitalia, even uterus in some cases, but ovaries in almost all cases are non-functional. But they can be mothers via IVF and have normal pregnancies. So it is incorrect to say that all XY automatically classify as male and man.”

If we were to go by the definitions recommended by conservative social media, then millions of women would immediately lose their right to be called a woman for having elevated testosterone levels. While testosterone is considered the ‘male hormone’, women produce it too – many with hormonal disorders, such as PCOS, tend to produce too much of it. Will these conditions void a woman’s right to be called a ‘woman’? 

If we consider science for our definitions, the majority of women with XY or XXY or XXYY chromosomal structures have one common denominator: a non-functional ovary. So that begs the question, is a perfectly functional ovary fundamental for being classified as a ‘woman’? If yes, what about a few thousand women who have ovarian insufficiency? Will they cease to be known as women? 

The Question Of Race

Women of colour who don’t fit conservative definitions of femininity have always had it worse. Barely a day before her match, Khelif’s Hungarian opponent, Luca Hamori, posted an incendiary picture on Instagram that showed Khelif as a ‘beast’. For centuries now, Black women have been mocked for their ‘masculinity’. Not too far in India itself, sprinter Duttee Chand had been on the receiving end of primitive gender tests. “In 2014, I challenged the IOC’s rule that a person with a higher testosterone level should not participate in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. It was noted that hormonal levels cannot increase athletic performance. I suffered a lot at that time. I faced a lot of controversy regarding my gender,” Chand told PTI after the Imane Khelif controversy erupted.

The abuse and attacks Imane Khelif has faced online will be remembered for years to come. The key takeaway is this: misinformation driven by racist, misogynist ideologies often travels much, much faster than the truth. 

(Anwiti Singh is Assistant Producer, NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Despite being labelled a ‘biological male’, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won the gold medal for his country at the just-concluded Paris Olympics. She saw questions being raised over her gender whenever she won a boxing bout. However, this didn’t stop Imane from keeping her focus completely on the in-ring action. However, as soon as the Olympic games came to a conclusion, Imane Khelif filed a lawsuit over online harassment, while also including Tesla owner Elon Musk and famous British author JK Rowling in it.

While the debate over her gender row continues to gain prominance, a new video of Imane, dressed in an Algerian caftan, has gone viral. In the video, Imane was also wearing some make-up, with her Olympic gold medal hanging around the neck. She was also wearing a floral-hoop earrings, which were matching her outfit.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif shows off dramatic new feminine makeover, days after winning gold at the Paris Olympics. pic.twitter.com/6nlFR9HSJr

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 15, 2024

Khelif filed a complaint on Wednesday with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate that she received during the Olympic Games. Her lawyer Nabil Boudi described the campaign against the boxer, as “misogynist, racist and sexist”.

Boudi informed American publication Variety: “JK Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others. Trump tweeted, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution.”

While certain names have been put in the complaint, more people could be added if the case goes to court. “What we’re asking is that the prosecution investigates not only these people but whoever it feels necessary. If the case goes to court, they will stand trial.”

Both Musk and Rowling referred to Khelif as a “male”, with the British author saying Khelif was “enjoying the distress of a woman” after the Algerican boxer’s win against Italy’s Angela Carini.

For the record, Carini was seen crying after Khelif beat her in the Round of 16 bout earlier this month at Paris Olympics.

Khelif only broke her silence on the matter after winning the gold medal at the Paris Games.

“Now the whole world knows the story of Imane Khelif,” said the Algerian. “It’s a dream for every athlete. If I qualify or not? If I’m a woman or not? I made many statements in the media. I’m fully qualified, I’m a woman, I was born a woman, I lived a woman, there’s no doubt about that.

“These people [who claim I am not], they are the enemies of success, it’s what I call them, it gives my success a special taste because of these attacks.

“… I hope that people will commit to the Olympic charter and its values. We’re here to perform to our audience and families. I hope we will not see similar attacks in these Olympics.”

Paris, France:

France has launched a cyberbullying probe following a complaint by Algerian Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, who was at the centre of a gender controversy at the Paris Olympic Games, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The investigation was opened Tuesday into “cyberharrassment” following the high-profile gender row at the Games, the Paris public prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The athlete’s lawyer Nabil Boudi said last week that Khelif, 25, had filed a complaint for online harassment, calling it a “fight for justice.”

“The investigation will determine who was behind this misogynist, racist and sexist campaign, but will also have to concern itself with those who fed the online lynching,” he said at the time.

Khelif won the women’s 66kg final against China’s Yang Liu in a unanimous points decision, having been the focus of intense scrutiny in the French capital during the Olympics.

Together with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won the 57kg women’s final, Khelif was disqualified from last year’s world championships after they failed gender eligibility testing.

However, they were cleared to compete in Paris, setting the stage for one of the biggest controversies of the Games.

The International Boxing Association’s Russian president Umar Kremlev has targeted both athletes, claiming that Khelif and Lin had undergone “genetic testing that shows that these are men”.

The IBA was responsible for the world championships in 2023 that Lin and Khelif were thrown out of, but the IOC cleared them to box in Paris.

Khelif said she is “a woman like any other.”

“I was born a woman, lived a woman and competed as a woman,” she told reporters about her eligibility.

Russia’s team has been banned from the Paris Olympics over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)