Algeria celebrates: Imane Khelif wins Olympic women’s boxing final

Algerian I. Khelif in the fight for the gold, she defeated the Chinese boxer Liu Yang by unanimous decision of the judges (5-0).

Imane Khelif At the start of the Olympic boxing tournament, radical right-wing commentators, politicians, and anti-transgender influencers were introduced, the athlete continues to receive a lot of criticism and Bullying on the Internet: there is no shortage of people who want to take advantage of the situation and thus promote a larger culture war about gender identity, writes CNN.

The former President of the United States and the re-seeker Donald Trump, the entrepreneur Elon Musk, the author JK Rowling and the guardian of the opinion Logan Paul are just a few famous people who did not miss the opportunity to speak – out

“Watch this and then explain why you think it’s normal for a man to abuse a woman in public for the entertainment of others,” wrote JK Rowling on social network X, prompting more information wrong about Khelif gender.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who visited the country’s athletes in the Olympic city on Thursday, said the clash with Angela Carini was “not an equal fight”.

The radical right prime minister has confirmed she is opposed to allowing athletes with “genetically determined male characteristics” to compete with women in sport from 2021.

However, several athletes sided with the Algerian. Support for I. Khelif was expressed by the Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst, who fought with her in 2022. and beat her in the world championship. A. Broadusrt shared a joint photo taken before March 2022 on social network X with the caption: “Look, all this hatred is just absurd.”

I. Khelif is not new to the Olympic ring: she also participated in the Tokyo Olympics, but she did not clear mountains there – Imane went down in the quarterfinals and was one step away from the podium.

Algerian and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting was banned from last year’s World Boxing Championship held in India. Even the Taiwanese athlete was stripped of her bronze medal (weight category up to 57 kg) after the results of the sex test, which according to the International Boxing Federation registered a deviation from the norm. It is true that the results of the examinations have not been published by the IBA.

The IOC did not provide details on the criteria Khelif and Yu-Ting met to compete in Paris and Tokyo, but stressed that the boxers’ passports indicated they were women they were and that there was no legal restriction on them competing in women’s boxing.

US media watchdog GLAAD, which defends LGBT+ rights, and “InterACT” (an organization protecting the rights of intersex youth) on August 3. released reports claiming that I. Khelif is a non-transgender woman, and does not identify as intersex.

In the published reports, the groups claim that I. Khelif has sexual developmental disorders. differences in sexual development (DSD)). DSD is not the same as being transgender.

Disorders of sex development (DSDs) are specific conditions related to genes, hormones and reproductive organs. For example, a woman’s body naturally produces more testosterone than normal.

Disturbances in sex development only appear at puberty, when secondary sex characteristics such as facial hair, breasts, or other sex-specific changes in body shape begin to appear.

It is very difficult to accurately count the number of people with sexual development problems – many of them live their whole lives without even suspecting that they have them. Scientists say that one in 50 people are born with some kind of developmental disorder.

In addition, a person with gender dysphoria can have a different gender identity.

Groups such as Human Rights Watch have repeatedly questioned gender testing, arguing that such testing violates basic human rights to privacy and dignity.

The results of the test, which, according to the controversial International Boxing Federation (IBA), eliminated I. Khelif and the boxer Lin Yu-ting (Taiwan) in 2023, are secret, so it is not known why couldn’t the athletes finally fight. year.

Female athletes with sexual development problems often have to go through the mentioned tests (it is important to note that I. Khelif never said that she had them).

Ahead of the Paris Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has introduced new rules and regulations related to gender-disabled athletes.

IOC rules state that inclusion is the only decision made in such cases, and athletes with gender development problems can only be excluded from women’s competitions in cases where there are obvious fair competition or safety concerns.

And on Friday, the IOC reiterated that all athletes participating in the boxing event “follow the rules of eligibility and participation, as well as the relevant medical rules.” “

IOC spokesman Mark Adams said he understood the questions about testing, fair competition and safety: “Everyone would like to be able to make it very clear, but it is not a matter of the you can say it’s white here and it’s black here. Neither the scientific community nor anyone else has an explanation. “

Paying attention to women’s bodies in sports is not a new practice. Systematic medical research has been conducted since around the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

In 1966, at the European Athletics Championships in Budapest, a commission of three female doctors examined and evaluated female athletes’ reproductive and secondary sex characteristics. Such investigations were called “naked marches”.

Universal gender testing was only abandoned in the last decade of the 20th century, and most major sports organizations did so (the International Olympic Committee did so in 1999). Now only isolated cases are evaluated.

Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic champion in the 800 meters, whose testosterone levels are naturally higher due to gender dysphoria, has always been at the center of these debates. Since 2019, according to the rules of the International Athletics Federation, she is prohibited from participating in certain competitions if she does not take testosterone-reducing drugs. This year, she continues her fight against the federation at the European Court of Human Rights.

In the last few years, the sports world has been talking more and more about the body of female athletes. Athletics, cycling, swimming and rugby governing bodies have taken steps to tighten the rules that disqualify female athletes who have undergone menopause from women’s events.