The Olympics are to blame for a vicious culture war – and three women are its casualties

For all her muscular strength, Lin Yu-ting cut a vulnerable figure in the Olympic boxing ring.

Her headgear can soften the physical jabs, but nothing could protect her from the invisible blows flying thick and fast from beyond the arena, as the world speculated about the most intimate parts of her body and used her as a pawn in a vicious culture war.

Still, Lin – a tiny slip of a thing who fights in the 57kg weight category – walked bravely into the ring on Friday, right into the eye of the storm. She beat her opponent decisively, but whether that was due to biological advantage, or to the kind of mismatch that’s common in women’s boxing, it was hard to tell.

Lin Yu-ting following her bout at the North Paris Arena.Credit: Getty Images

Taiwan’s Lin has always identified as a woman. So has Imane Khelif, a UNICEF ambassador who was bullied so badly by boys in her rural Algerian village that she switched from soccer to boxing as a way to defend herself. Khelif sold scrap metal and bread to raise money for the bus fare to training. She wanted to succeed in Paris to “inspire girls and children who are disadvantaged in Algeria”.

Instead, both women have been flung into the centre of a global storm, as pundits across the world speculate about their body chemistry, the completeness of their genitalia and their hormone levels from the trenches of a raging culture war over how to define a woman, and which of those definitions should be followed to ensure fair contests in high-level sport.

Although no medical information has been officially released, International Boxing Association President Umar Kremlev asserted in a 2023 interview with Russia’s state-backed news agency TASS that Lin and Khelif had been born as women with “XY chromosomes”, a rare condition that influences hormones.

That biological quirk, argue many in boxing – a sport with finely calibrated weight divisions to ensure a fair fight – would give the women an edge and expose their opponents to a risk of greater injury.

Both were declared ineligible for last year’s boxing world championships, run by the IBA, after undergoing unspecified tests. However, both were declared eligible for the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee, which took over the sport in Paris after booting out the IBA over governance concerns (boxing’s future at the Games hangs by a thread).

It’s not clear if all athletes at the world championships underwent these tests, or if they were singled out. Neither Lin nor Khelif has a suspicious history of mowing down their opponents and they certainly don’t dominate their sport the way controversial intersex runner Caster Semenya ruled middle-distance running.

But when Khelif’s opponent, Italian Angela Carini, pulled out of a fight due to a blow to the nose, the raging debate over how the gender wars can influence sport was wrapped up in a 46-second vignette.

From left: Imane Khelif, Lin Yu-ting and Angela Carini.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

The uglier elements of the backlash have been fuelled by comments reportedly made last year in Russian media by IBA president Kremlev, who claimed the pair were “posing” as women in some kind of elaborate, life-long fraud in a bid to attain Olympic gold, reminiscent of the Spaniards who pretended to be intellectually disabled to win Paralympic gold in Sydney.

Since the furore erupted, high-profile voices such as author JK Rowling, who have long argued that the gender identity movement impinges on the rights and safety of women, say this amounts to officially sanctioned domestic violence.

None of this is Khelif or Lin’s fault. There were three victims in that ring on Thursday; the Italian, because she may well have been put in a position that was neither fair nor safe, and the two women, who are dealing with a humiliating debate during their Olympic campaign for nothing more than entering a competition for which they were declared eligible.

There is fault here, and it sits with the IOC.

Sporting federations have been agonising over this issue for years. They’re the ones that manage eligibility on behalf of the Olympics, and have often been through painful debates to reach a position. Some ended up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which has ruled that restrictions on athletes with chromosomal differences are discriminatory, yet also “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to preserve fair play.

When it sacked the IBA, the IOC took on a job for which it was neither experienced nor qualified. It went for a light-touch, people-pleasing policy on eligibility, which seems to be that it looks no further than the gender declared on an athlete’s passport.

Its failures have been exposed by this debacle. Worse still, it has let down not just Carini, Khelif and Lin, but every female boxer by exposing them to potential danger and violating scrutiny.

And in doing so, it has undermined its own attempts at creating an inclusive, gender-equal Games.

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