Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) in the women’s featherweight division and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif in the women’s welterweight division at this year’s Paris Summer Olympics have become the focus of international attention over gender eligibility disputes.
The controversy began on Aug. 1 after Italian boxer Angela Carini abruptly abandoned her fight with Khelif after 46 seconds in the first round. She later fell to her knees sobbing and declined to shake hands with Khelif. She said she had never been punched so hard, and decided to quit the fight.
Khelif’s victory roused transgender anxiety among some well-known public figures, including British author J.K. Rowling, who baselessly called Khelif a man and her win “a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment.” Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk also endorsed a post that included a photo of Carini with the statement “men don’t belong in women’s sports,” and replied: “absolutely.”
After Lin beat Bulgarian boxer Svetlana Staneva in the featherweight quarter-final and Turkey’s Esra Yildiz Kahraman in the semi-final, Staneva and Kahraman crossed their fingers into an “X” sign, interpreted by many as hinting they have a pair of X chromosomes and are “real biological women.”
Lin and Khelif were disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from its World Boxing Championships last year, saying that a gender eligibility test showed they had “competitive advantages over other female competitors.” Lin was stripped of her bronze medal, and Khelif disqualified shortly after she defeated a Russian boxer and hours before her gold medal bout.
However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) removed the IBA from its governing role in 2019 due to concerns about its ethics, credibility and lack of financial transparency. The IBA also failed to specify what tests the boxers took, provided no documentation and gave conflicting statements.
IBA president Umar Kremlev reportedly said that Khelif and Lin had “XY chromosomes,” but on Monday last week said the tests showed the boxers had “elevated testosterone,” contradicting an IBA written statement that “the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination.”
Meanwhile, IOC officials have strongly backed the two boxers, saying that Khelif “was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport. This is not a transgender case,” and repeatedly confirmed Lin’s eligibility to fight in a women’s division.
“This is not a question of inclusion. That never played a role in all this,” IOC president Thomas Bach said. “Women must be allowed to take part in women’s competitions, and the two are women.”
Moreover, changing one’s registered gender in Algeria is illegal, and Khelif and Lin have never been identified as transgender or intersex. Both have also competed in women’s boxing for years, including the Tokyo Olympics 2020, and have lost to many women.
It is ironic that anti-trans advocates have long argued that people remain the sex they were assigned at birth, but call Khelif and Lin “men,” even though they are cisgender women who were born female, and identified and lived their life as females, because they were “too strong” or “don’t look feminine enough.”
The Games are about fair play, and a fundamental principle is the practice of sport as a human right without discrimination. Fairness can be questioned if athletes do not respect the rules, or enhanced their performance through doping; it should not be based on misogynistic speculation. As there is no proof Khelif and Lin have higher testosterone levels or XY chromosomes, and they have complied with the Games’ eligibility, entry and medical requirements, they should not be bullied, discriminated against or denied their right to compete just because they seem “masculine.”
The IOC made the right decision to protect Khelif’s and Lin’s right to compete fairly, as the women they were born as and continue to be.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS