Two days after hate erupted against Imane Khelif, she entered the ring to face Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori in the women’s welterweight semi-final at the Paris Olympics. Hours before the match, Hamori had shared on social media a now-deleted image of a woman facing a horned monster in the ring, reinforcing previous accusations that Khelif was not a woman.
The fierce attacks against Khelif lay bare the pervasive racism, sexism, and queerphobia that are endemic to competitive sports. Gender policing is just one arsenal in the aggressive gatekeeping that keeps athletes of the Global South from historic victories or from celebrating them when they break barriers.
In her previous match on the 1st of August, Italian boxer Angela Carini conceded to Khelif in 46 seconds, complaining she had “never been hit so hard.” Refusing to shake winner Khelif’s hand, Carini wept on her knees in the middle of the ring, and later when speaking to the press. The internet erupted with transphobic vitriol and disdain. Khelif faced misgendering and painful scrutiny whereas Carini was rewarded with not just public sympathy, but the promise of a hefty cash payment equivalent to the Olympic champion prize money by the International Boxing Association (IBA). Carini had weaponised her White woman tears successfully, gaining White supremacist empathy and turning Khelif into a perpetrator.
In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) disqualified Khelif for failing a vague eligibility test. They chose to keep the specifics of the test confidential, only stating that these were not testosterone-based. News of Khelif failing the test resurfaced with her win against Carini, prompting a large section of mainstream media and famous bigots like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and JK Rowling to chime in. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Miloni, wrote an encouraging note to Carini bemoaning the supposed unfairness of it all, with a photo where she is cradling Carini’s face affectionately. Even the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem, condemned Khelif’s win as gender-based “physical and psychological violence.”
The IOC stated that all women’s category players were following rules and Khelif’s was “not a transgender issue.” Not only was this a grossly inadequate defence, it was also outright discriminatory against transgender persons, whose inclusion was not even considered worth defending or commenting upon.
Carini has since apologized for her lack of sportsmanship after losing to Khelif. But the damage has already been done, dehumanizing not just Khelif, but women and transwomen of colour everywhere.
It’s hard to imagine what Khelif, an athlete in the middle of one of the most important events of her career, is going through. After the quarter-final match, a visibly distraught Khelif said an injustice was done to her by IBA, alluding to the disqualification. People should refrain from bullying athletes, Imane told SNTV-AP. She said bullying has “massive effects” and it can “destroy people” and “kill their thoughts, spirit, and mind.”
The Fascist History of Eligibility Tests
Khelif shares history with a long line of women athletes, such as Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, who were subjected to invasive “eligibility tests” on their perceived gender nonconformity. Though had they not been successful, it’s unlikely that anyone would care. Even tennis star Serena Williams was trans investigated. As per rigid norms of White femininity, their sports performances were so spectacular, that they could only be “biological men.”
Eligibility tests in international sports have a long history that started with Nazi Germany’s campaign to exclude a trans man who they saw as a “fraud” because he participated in the Women’s World Games before transitioning. The stated intention now is to provide a “level playing field” to ciswomen. Earlier, the attempt was to weed out “(cisgender) men masquerading as women”, and “manhood” was established entirely by either testing for XY chromosomes or checking athletes for any diversity in the appearance of their external genitalia. In simpler words, checking for signs of a penis. The established inaccuracy of these tests led to the emergence of the more recent hormone testing, which has also been debunked as unscientific.
The XY Chromosomes and Testosterone
The Intersex Society of North America explains that despite having a Y chromosome, some ciswomen show much less bodily “masculinisation” than average ciswomen with XX chromosomes because their bodies don’t respond to the androgens that they produce. In her book, Testosterone Rex, Unmasking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds (2017), Cordelia Fine highlights that the essentialist view of the binary ignores the fact that genetic sex isn’t located in a stark binary—Y chromosome present or absent—but rather in a scattered mosaic where many other genes (not just X and Y) are involved in sexual development.
Fine offers that the much-publicized hormone is not the primary driver of behaviours considered “male/masculine”, including aggression, promiscuity, and risk-taking. Even though testosterone levels are relatively higher in most cismen, the hormone is produced in all human bodies and affects them as well. Hormone tests in sports are based on the scientifically unproven and flawed idea that higher levels of testosterone in ciswomen athletes confer them a “competitive advantage”.
The Double Standards of Competitive Advantages
No accurate or conclusive research points to the significant advantage that elevated levels of testosterone, independent of any other factors, have on athletic performance. Besides, who determines the baseline for testosterone in cis women athletes?
Take Indian sprinter Dutee Chand’s case, where the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) noted that “females with elevated natural testosterone” do not enjoy a significant enough advantage for them to be excluded from women’s sprinting competitions. If elevated testosterone was the sole determinant, women athletes with higher levels would never lose, yet this is not true.
Moreover, the accusations of unfair competitive advantages in sports are not universal, they are often reserved for ciswomen athletes of colour. Swimmer Michael Phelps, a White cisgender cisman, is never censured for the competitive advantages his reportedly supernatural bodily features give him. It seems Phelps’ body produces less than half of the lactic acid of his rivals and his lung capacity is double that of an average human. He has an extraordinary wing span, joint hyperextension, double-jointed ankles, and flipper-like feet and his torso is proportioned in ways that make him a “flying fish.”
Yet, this diversity in Phelps’ body that seemingly gives him a “competitive advantage” in swimming has never rendered him ineligible. Instead, he is one of the most celebrated athletes of our times, with the world gushing over his “exceptional” body.
If superior physical characteristics are foundational to sports, why should these attributes be disqualifying for certain women? What about better training, equipment, diet, and opportunities that give a significant advantage to athletes from the Global North? The mainstream perception of competitive disadvantage also excludes the negative impact that marginalization has on the psychological health of players from the Global South.
Misogyny Disguised as Women’s Rights
Misogyny in sports is systemic. When Olympic-winning Sakshi Phogat and other Indian wrestlers accused the then-president of the Indian Wrestling Federation, Brij Bhushan Singh, of sexual harassment, they were harassed, ignored, and re-traumatised.
Sexism is still rampant and bodily autonomy in women’s categories is a fraught issue. Women’s beach volleyball rules impose tight tank tops and shorts and French players aren’t allowed to wear hijabs. Commercial track and field outfits require “constant pube vigilance or the mental gymnastics of having every vulnerable piece of your body on display,” according to Laurent Fleshman, a former athlete.
All this bigoted swirling of misinformation and hypocrisy is aimed at undermining the idea that the sex binary is a social construct. It is impossible to assume good faith when selective outrage for “protecting women” justifies attacks on racialized ciswomen, intersex, transgender or gender-diverse persons.
Khelif, Williams, Semenya, Chand and other athletes whose bodies do not fit into the normative idea of what “female” bodies should be are expected to not only outperform their opponents on the field but battle vilification off the field as well. Eligibility tests in sports fuel a dangerous discourse that puts lives at risk. Let’s name them for what they are—intrusive, dehumanizing, and a gross violation of human rights.
