Mick Hartley

Brendan O'Neill at Spiked on the Olympic boxing:

There’s a new sport at the Olympics: violence against women. Yes, biological males laying hands on women might be a crime in the real world, but at Paris 2024 it’s a must-see event. Leave your feminist morals at the door, park your petty worries about male power, and enjoy the sight of two people with XY chromosomes punching women in the face for 10 minutes straight….

We need to talk about this. That before the eyes of the world, at the literal Olympics, a woman was whacked so forcefully by a biological male that she struggled to catch her breath is an outrage. It is a testament to the irrationalism of the new elites. These people have tumbled so hard down the rabbit hole of gender ideology that even the sight of a male hitting a female fails to stir their conscience or make them recall their GCSE biology. Their devotion to the religion of gender is unflinching – so much so, they’ll happily sacrifice a woman or two at its altar.

Khelif and Lin’s cases are complicated, for sure. These aren’t ‘transwomen’. They’re not normal blokes who suddenly decided to ‘change sex’ and invade women’s sports for an easy win and undeserved medal. They’re not like Lia Thomas, the huge fella who competed (let’s say it: cheated) against women in US collegiate swimming. They’re not like Laurel Hubbard, the big dude from New Zealand who competed in the women’s weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics. And they’re not like those people with penises who insist on swimming in the ladies’ pond at Hampstead Heath or parading around bollock-naked in ladies’ changing rooms, presumably for some cheap thrill of power.

No, their cases are more sad than outrageous, more likely to induce pity than fury. It would appear that both suffer from some kind of disorder of sex development (DSD). This might mean that they were born with abnormal genitalia. It might mean they were believed to be girls at birth and were raised as such. However, it seems clear, from the evidence we have, that their lives will have changed dramatically when they reached puberty. Then, their underlying male characteristics would have become apparent. Their innate maleness will have surged through their bodies.

For here’s the most important thing about the IBA tests on Khelif and Lin: they were not testosterone tests but genetic tests. The tests found, ‘conclusively’, says the IBA, that ‘both athletes did not meet required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors’. IBA officials say the tests found that Khelif and Lin have ‘XY chromosomes’. In the mammal world, including the human world, only one sex has XY chromosomes: the male sex. Khelif and Lin are males.

Strikingly, Lin did not appeal the IBA’s decision. Khelif did, briefly, but later withdrew the appeal. This means the IBA’s findings are legally binding. It is a legally enforceable observation, in the world of sport, that Khelif and Lin have genetic benefits that make them unsuitable for women’s boxing.

So why are they at Paris 2024 punching women? Shockingly – or perhaps not – the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was informed in June 2023 that Khelif had failed her IBA gender-eligibility testing. It was told that the tests ‘concluded the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes’. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. And yet still the IOC flung open the doors of Paris 2024 to this genetic male who fights women. The IBA’s British chief executive, Chris Roberts, says this is down to the IOC using its ‘own criteria’, which is basically a passport test: Khelif and Lin presumably have female passports, so they’re female, right? That’s the IOC’s post-truth attitude.

It's particularly unfortunate that the IBA present themselves as such a bunch of clowns, with president Umar Kremlev – a friend of Putin – calling the IOC's Thomas Bach a “sodomite”. It just makes it easier to dismiss the whole business as a cack-handed Russian attempt to blacken the Olympic name after they were banned. But on this they're right: these are men beating up women in the name of sport.