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Summary
Imane Khelif, though raised as a girl, is a man. He is not transgender. However, the trans movement making a case for males to be allowed in female sports led to Imane competing and winning over women in their category during the 2024 Olympics game.
People whose heads are screwed on straight knew that Imane Khelif is a man. Now, a leaked Algerian report confirms his male sex. Khelif isn’t trans, but his win in women’s boxing is often attributed to the trans movement.
The true story is far more complicated: Despite being unable to pass a sex test to compete against women in previous competitions, Khelif was allowed into the women’s category of the Olympics because his passport said he was female. Passports can be changed, but sex cannot. Many thought that because Algeria is a Muslim country, there was no way Khelif could’ve been a male with a “gender-affirming” female passport. Pictures of Imane as a child were widely circulated as evidence that he was born a girl.
It’s true that Khelif was raised as a girl. He was born with a condition called 5-ARD, which afflicts only males. His external genitals at birth appeared more female than male & he was raised as a girl. At puberty, his internal testes produced testosterone & he masculinised.
In a rich country, Imane Khelif’s condition of 5-ARD would’ve been diagnosed at birth. But Khelif was born in a poor, rural area. So the doctors took one look at him, didn’t see external male genitalia and declared him to be a girl. Khelif is not transgender he is a male with a condition called 5-ARD, which was undiagnosed at birth, so he was raised as a girl.
But did the transgender movement play a role in what got us here? The Olympic ban on sex testing in 2000 wasn’t related to the transgender movement. Mandatory sex testing was stopped because it was expensive and ‘potentially inaccurate.’ The ‘potential inaccuracies’ refer to athletes with DSDs, which made their sex more difficult to identify. Olympic sex testing was initiated to prevent masquerading men from competing against females.
Before chromosomal testing, women had to walk naked before judges to prove their sex. Chromosomal testing was abandoned because it was seen as ‘harmful’ to women with ‘abnormalities’. Sex testing as a requirement to compete in women’s sports was abandoned for everyone;
Despite its accuracy in detecting sex in the vast majority of cases, because of a small number of athletes with DSDs who were ‘harmed’ by the results of their sex detection, because of how difficult it was to determine the sex of an athlete in a small number of cases, a multidisciplinary team essentially threw their hands up in defeat. They noted that supervised urine samples and skimpy sportswear were ‘good enough’ ways to identify sex.
Instead of requiring more rigorous and comprehensive testing to determine the sex and eligibility of a small number of athletes with chromosomal abnormalities, the Olympics did away with sex testing for EVERYONE who wished to compete in the female category.
In 2004, following pressure from trans activists, the Stockholm Consensus laid out eligibility guidelines for transgender athletes. This committee determined that surgical, legal and hormonal changes could meaningfully change sex enough to reduce male competitive advantages.
Chromosomal abnormalities’ were such a bureaucratic headache. Because transgender males who suppressed testosterone could already compete against women, the IOC took the lazy route and said that passports determine sex for eligibility.
While Khelif’s clearly unfair Olympic win against female competitors in women’s boxing is often discussed as the result of the transgender movement, this is only part of the story.
The precedent for male athletes to be allowed into women’s sports began through a combination of bureaucratic laziness and empathy for athletes with DSDs. Instead of developing better sex detection methods for complicated cases, required sex testing was eliminated for EVERYONE.
Sex testing requirements were eliminated 24 years ago because it was impossible to find one inexpensive test to accurately detect sex even in the most complicated cases. Transactivists were then able to make a case for why some males should be able to compete against females.
Because sex testing was eliminated as a competitive requirement in women’s sports due to rare “intersex” conditions, trans activists had a precedent by which to lobby for unambiguously male people to compete against women. This is unfair & unsafe for female athletes.
The Olympic Committee needs to do away with its toxic empathy & chronic laziness. The IOC must unequivocally disqualify male trans athletes from competing against women. Comprehensive sex testing to detect DSDs must be a requirement regardless of the ‘headache’ it causes.
Editor’s note: This post was first published on @thepeacepoet99 ‘s X platform.
