Imane Khelif: Perspectives from a Former boxer and High School Biology Teacher
It has been 32 years since I started seriously paying attention to the Olympics. I remember watching my first Olympics in 1984 at 10 years-old, where I was mesmerized by all the competitions, especially the gymnastics competition. My cousin and I spent our days practicing front hand-springs at our grandparents’ home while I kept trying to get that back walk-over right. As a Chinese-American, I remember cheering for both the USA and China, even though our family is from Taiwan. I was still confused why the few times Taiwan was represented, it was referred to as Chinese Taipei. Occasionally, I would cheer on the smaller nations with fewer resources, as I viewed them as underdogs. However, after 1992, my interest in these quadrennial, athletic competitions began to wane.
Perhaps, it was because life got in the way, as I focused more on school and then work, and, if I did watch any Olympic events, it was usually soccer (football) or boxing since I had started training at Gleason’s Gym in the late 90s. Even with my older son who is now a young adult, I rarely watched the Olympics with him like my mother and grandmother would sometimes watch with me when I was a kid. I did try to watch the World Cup with him, although not always successfully. He never got into it and preferred American football. Eventually, I developed a renewed interest in gymnastics, not just because of the G.O.A.T, but the many other gymnasts from diverse nations and ethnicities, instead of the same five or six countries that were always represented during the 80s and 90s. (Raising the age to 16 was the best decision they made in the gymnastics competitions.)
This year, however, I had taken a keen interest in the games, especially with my younger son catching some mysterious virus where he was forced to stay home from day camp for almost two weeks. Of course, I found myself immersed in the controversy of Imane Khelif’s 46-second defeat over Italian fighter, Angela Carini, as it resulted in a storm of online personal attacks on Khelif. All of it was based on some dubious tests conducted by an opaque and questionable athletic organization called the International Boxing Association (IBA).
Never mind that Khelif has fought for years and was only disqualified by the IBA last year, along with Taiwanese boxer, Lin Yu-Ting. Never mind that she has had five losses in her professional career, so she could not have had that much of an advantage. Never mind that she got knocked out in 2021 during the Tokyo Games. Every troll on social media decided to be a self-subscribed expert on sex and gender and claimed that she should not fight in the women’s competition because she was Intersex or “really a man” and had a “genetic and biological advantage” due to her “testosterone levels”. Never mind that the IBA could not provide any test results to support their claims.
As someone who used to box and also has a degree in biology, I think I have a little more insight on this issue. The elephant in the room everyone forgot is that boxing is such a male-dominated sport that female boxers are used to sparring with men, which is why I never bought the argument that it was a safety issue. I respect Carini’s decision to forfeit, but she opened a Pandora’s box when she uttered those three words: It’s not right. Her actions were made worse when she refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the match. While Carini did eventually apologize and now claims that she had overreacted and was more upset with herself than feeling overpowered by Khelif, she needs to do much more to make things right for the sake of Khelif, herself, and the future of women’s boxing.
At the very least, Carini can denounce the Italian media and the right-wing politicians who continued to hammer the idea that Carini was “beaten up by the Algerian man”, including her prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a right-winger who claimed that it was “wasn’t an equal fight” because Khelif was “genetically male”. Much of this plays into the anti-Arab sentiment that has existed and has been growing even more in much of Europe, particularly towards Arab men and other non-white men, whom they see as a threat to white European women, except that Khelif is a woman. I also hope Carini rejects the money raised from a crowdfunding campaign set up by Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boehbert, which has already raised over $67,000 the last I checked, as well as the $100,000 IBA president, Umar Kremlev, offered her.
As for those claiming that Khelif is male because her karyotype is XY, according to the IBA, the first thing I learned in my Introductory Physiology class during my undergraduate studies is that sex determination is much more complex and occurs at many different levels. There is the genetic determination of sex, which is found in the chromosomes, but there is also what happens during the development of the fetus in the womb, and a lot can happen between conception and birth.
All embryos are born with both the Mullerian Ducts, which develop into the female reproductive organs, and Wolffian Ducts, which develop into the male reproductive organs. A hormone called the Anti-Mullerian Hormone, sometimes called the Mullerian Regression Factor, prevents the Mullerian ducts from developing into the female reproductive system for fetuses genetically programmed as male, and sometimes a deficiency of that hormone leads to the development of female reproductive organs even if they are not fully functional. We do not know for sure if this is what either Khelif or Lin has, as the IBA has not specified as such, but this could be one of the many scenarios that may apply to either or both of their conditions. However, that does not mean they are not women, and, frankly, it is none of our business; that is between them and their doctors.
In short, there is much more in biology than just two chromosomes that determine whether someone is male or female. There are plenty of women who present phenotypically as a woman but may also have the XY chromosome and are unaware of it for much of their life. It may not even be known until issues of infertility are raised.
As for the claim that she has an advantage because she produces more testosterone, yes and no. Having an exceptionally high IQ gives you an advantage in chess tournaments, but it is not guaranteed that you will win, and, sometimes, it may even be an impediment. Should people with exceptionally high IQs be barred from competing in chess tournaments? What about this 13-year-old who just threw a 77 mph fastball in the Little League World Series? It may seem unfair, but why should this 13-year-old be condemned for just being much more talented than his peers? There is no guarantee that Mexico will win just because of this pitcher.
Both of these women deserve to compete with other women and should not be harassed or scrutinized because they do not meet some femininity or beauty standard set forth by men. Surprise, boxing is a tough and grueling sport, and women drawn to this sport are not going to be your Tara Lipinski-types, which goes back to another reason I stopped following the Olympics after 1992.
Many of us remember the story of Tonya Harding and how she kept on losing to Nancy Kerrigan because she was not as feminine and graceful on the ice as Kerrigan was, relying on her athleticism instead. This eventually led to her staging an attack on Kerrigan and the beginning of her legal troubles. The public showered Kerrigan with sympathy while berating Harding’s “enormous thighs” and overly masculine body. As a young adult, I was so irritated by this and sympathized with Harding as I learned about her difficult childhood, which both Khelif and Lin also had. It did not justify her actions against Kerrigan, but I wound up tuning out of the 1994 Winter Games and much of the Olympics after that.
Fast forward 30 years later, and we are seeing the same situation, but this time it does not involve a sport where women are judged by grace and artistic interpretation, along with athleticism. It is a sport, where the winner is determined by speed, power, accuracy, strategy, and stamina. It is a sport where both men and women subject themselves to hours and hours of grueling training, where the women sometimes spar with both men and women to make themselves better fighters, and somehow we are complaining that Khelif and Lin should not be able to compete because they “hit too hard”. Maybe they should eliminate basketball players who are over 7 feet from competing, too. Either way, women are always forced to conform to some kind of standard for everyone else.
Khelif and Lin finished with a gold medal in their respective weight classes despite many claiming that they “cheated”; they didn’t. Now, both are taking legal action against those who have slandered them, as they should. This legal complaint was even enough to silence a certain transphobic children’s book author who never seems to stop inserting her opinion when no one asked her to. It is a shame that this children’s author was once praised as progressive since she was once part of the wealthy class who advocated for a more progressive tax structure that she gladly paid.
