I don’t even like the Olympics. I don’t care if you ban me from that snooze fest. It doesn’t interest me at all.
But the latest ruling from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banning transgender women and intersex athletes from competing in female categories, and requiring all future female Olympians to take a chromosome test, speaks to something more sinister. So we need to talk about it.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry said the ruling was made “based on science.” But this year, a meta-analysis by the British Journal of Sports Medicine found trans women who had been taking hormones for one to three years had no clear performance advantage in measured fitness metrics.
Additionally, a 2024 study, also by the BJSM, tested the body composition, lung and cardiopulmonary capacity, and strength of cis and trans athletes. The study found trans women were weaker and less fit than cis women in all categories besides grip strength.
So it wasn’t about the science, was it, Kirsty?
Perhaps it was based on the rampant scourge of trans women beating cis women at the Olympics? Perhaps trans athletes are just totally mopping the floor with cis women, and dramatic action had to be taken. ERRR goes the loud, incorrect buzzer.
Do you know the total number of openly trans women to ever compete at the Olympics?
It’s one: Laurel Hubbard. In 2021, she competed in weightlifting. She won no medals. And no offence to her, but that just doesn’t seem dramatic enough to justify excluding an entire community.
More likely, then, the ruling is a response to the controversial Olympic Games victory of Imane Khelif, a women’s welterweight boxer, at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, who was barraged with online abuse after it was revealed she had previously tested positive for a Y chromosome.
In 2023, at a different tournament, Khelif beat the (at the time undefeated) Russian boxer Azalia Amineva. Then, just before her championship bout with Yang Liu, both Khelif and Liu were disqualified by the Russian-led IBA, restoring Amineva’s undefeated record. The IBA claimed both finalists had failed an earlier gender test.
The IOC (at the time still in possession of a spine), said the IBA’s decision was “sudden and arbitrary.”
A year later, Khelif was fighting Angela Carini, when the Italian boxer said, “It’s not fair,” after Khelif hit her. Carini apologised later. But the online backlash against Khelif from “transvestigators” (online creeps arguing Khelif was definitely trans and they had the proof) only grew. Eventually, they dragged the IBA’s ruling back up to argue for her exclusion, but their initial problem with her competing was based on the way she looked. And many people, rightly, pointed out that that is racist.
Let’s be clear: Imane Khelif isn’t transgender. She is a woman who might have, in one test, registered as having a Y chromosome. But it had never impacted her, or the way she was treated, before that test.
There’s a history here. The Olympics used to do the same sort of sex tests they’re now bringing back. They never identified secret male competitors, but they did sometimes produce incorrect results which excluded women from competing, such as in Atlanta in 1996, when eight women failed genetic testing but were “allowed to compete after further examinations were carried out.” Or in Poland, 1967, where Ewa Kłobukowska failed a “close-up visual inspection of the genitalia,” and was promptly barred from competing in the European Cup.
And yes, sometimes they’d surprise women by telling them they had intersex characteristics. But that leads me to wonder: if some women can be intersex and not know about it, maybe it’s not that significant?