Justice for All Boxers

On Monday, the International Boxing Association will be in Paris to explain what test Imane Khelif failed which led to disqualification from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championship. This detail was previously undisclosed.

It’s not too hard to deduce, however. The IBA defines a woman as “an individual with chromosome XX.” They perform DNA tests.

If Khelif were asked to remove her clothes instead, the world’s most famous boxer could very well be considered a woman. This case might not be so clear cut as viral memes on social media like to suggest.

In rare cases, a person may not be anatomically male, yet have the male XY chromosome. This does not confirm the worldview of progressive gender ideology. The differences between the sexes are obvious in most instances. Yet, we should consider justice for the small number of folks born into ambiguity.

Having female genitalia is the default condition of human development. Some people born with XY chromosomes have a deformity that prevents male development. These defects are called Disorders of Sex Development (DSD). There are several:

• Swyer syndrome when the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is missing or disabled, prevents the development of testes. As a fetus, such children develop female genitalia. They also lack testosterone.
• Androgen insensitivity syndrome develops normal testes yet children with this condition have cells with defective androgen receptors. So the production of testosterone has no or little impact on their development.
• 5-alpha reductase deficiency inhibits the conversion of dihydrotestosterone, preventing the development of a penis and scrotum, yet such children eventually produce testosterone with testes that remain embedded in their bodies. They go through male puberty with female genitalia.

Khelif could have any of these three conditions. What if it’s 5-ARD? What’s more important to define manhood: having a penis or having XY chromosomes when these two traits are in contradiction? That seems like an arbitrary choice. Khelif could plausibly have grown up as a girl and known nothing about it until this Algerian took a DNA test for the first time last year. This would not be a case of transgender choice or a case of progressive gender theory run amok. This would simply be a genuine case where a human being falls through the cracks of human biology. Where then should Khelif be allowed to compete?

My answer departs from both progressives and conservatives. Khelif should be allowed to compete with both men and women.

The true root of the controversy is the segregation of sexes in sports. There should simply be one Olympic boxing competition. Same for everything else from track to basketball, all the other games should be a gender-integrated competition to establish the best humans in each sport.

The real farce here is not whether Imane Khelif is a he or a she. It’s the notion that we need a separate, second-class competition for women to compete. Let women with Khelif’s talent compete with men. While the International Boxing Association wouldn’t let Khelif compete with women, the International Olympic Committee wouldn’t let Khelif compete with men. At the Olympics, Khelif is required to fight boxers who would likely lose to the male boxers who failed their countries’ Olympic trials. Integrating these matches would best bring justice to Khelif and all boxers because all Olympians should be competing to be the best in their sport among all humanity.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.