In light of plans to introduce this policy and the particular circumstances surrounding some boxers that competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing.
I think you’re being sarcastic here, but there is a trend in that direction, with paralympics and such. It all comes down to this. How is the protected class of athletes defined? If a space for female athletes is going to exist at all, there needs to be some definition, which inevitably is going to feel arbitrary to some. The one they’ve gone with excludes males and most intersex individuals - allowing a little wiggle room here for folks with XY who have no male testosterone production which medically speaking makes it into a “woman at birth with low androgens” competition since those people will usually have a female phenotype at birth.
In the case of Imane - it may speculatively (after now reading a little about the circumstances and the “leaked” results) be a case of XY intersex with some kind of androgen dysfunction, either through reduced production via enzyme deficiency or partial insensitivity to testo. Being from a less developed country it’s quite possible that Imane wouldn’t even be aware of such a condition until it came to light due to the testing, and even if it was noticed earlier by Algerian medical professionals it may have been hidden from the patient due to how controversial intersex individuals are in traditionally muslim countries. This was the case for a long time even in the west, some countries even into the 2000’s - “in the best interest of the patient”. Quite tragic really.
I’m not being sarcastic. High level competition is defined by outliers. There’s many cis women competing in top level sports who naturally have high testosterone, and they’re often blocked by these rules despite them supposedly being to “protect the integrity of women in sports.” They should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, if we’re calling it women’s sports. If we want to divide it by testosterone level then fine, but be honest about that and allow men with naturally low testosterone too. Women’s sports should include all women.
There are many things it could be. We could speculate all day. This rule is not targeting those strictly though. It’s targeting testosterone level, which varies by person and there are cis women with higher levels than some men. Biology is complex. Top level sports will inharently choose those best at the sport. It’s going to choose outliers, not representative of the average person. Women’s sports still don’t allow most women to compete reasonably. It never has, and probably never should. If it self-selects for people with higher testosterone then fine. They shouldn’t be banned for it, especially since they also can’t compete with men usually.
I’m going to stop you right there. Given changes that are slowly permeating both language and legal systems across the world, “man” or “woman” doesn’t really have anything to do with biology anymore, nor are terms like “cis” or “trans” really relevant to biology (more so a persons current legal/presenting gender compared to the one they were assigned at birth). As such they aren’t useful terms when discussing in the context of what biologically is normal with regards to hormone levels.
The terms that do exist and are relevant (at least in English, my other native language doesn’t have separate words for sex and gender which can complicate medical discussions and also makes folks more attached to the biological definition -_-) are male, female and intersex. When looking at a healthy human female they won’t have anywhere near the testosterone levels of a healthy male - it’s a 5x order of magnitude between the upper female and lower male ranges, even when accounting for PCO/S - which isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but just that extra 10-20% outside the normal female range can be enough to start having effects such as growing facial hair in puberty. The gap - along with XY individuals with low testosterone and XX individuals with high testosterone are those who end up developing in an intersex manner, in one way or another (this is already during the fetal stage).
Honestly I feel like we’re getting far from the original conversation here, but it’s part of what makes these topics so inherently difficult. Balancing between how sensitive some people can find the topic on a social level (particularly when having dealt with actual bad actors), the huge risk of misinterpretations/miscommunications and then the medical field dealing with the biological situation that ultimately is the basis of all this. Evaluating these topics is amongst the most difficult ethical dilemmas we have in the field - right up there with human euthanasia and I don’t think there can be a single “right” answer. You’re going to end up with different people being hurt wherever the balance is struck and that really, really sucks.