Opinion
Manu Joseph: Why there’s a clash over classifying an athlete as female
Summary
- In pursuit of decency, the global mainstream tends to go overboard in its approach to gender classification. Take the case of boxer Imane Khelif, for example.
Who is a female athlete? The attempt at an answer has created confusion and rage in top sporting competitions. As we saw at the Olympics few weeks ago when Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was at the centre of a storm after an Italian boxer quit in less than a minute of a bout, and later gave fear of death as the reason because Khelif’s blows were too strong. Khelif’s gender came under question, once again.
The people who run global sports and those who frame mainstream decency have since defended Khelif vehemently. As far as the Olympics are concerned, Khelif is a woman because she says she is one and her passport says so.
On her part, she has never revealed details that can put the matter to rest. For instance, if she has XX chromosomes, there can be no further argument.
Almost all humans have 46 chromosomes in every cell and they exist as 23 pairs. The 23rd pair is of sex chromosomes. Depending on your age, you may or may not have learnt in school that a woman is considered a person whose 23rd pairing of sex chromosomes are XX and a man is one whose are XY. But this is not the scientific opinion anymore.
Also read: Paris Olympics 2024: Amid gender row, Imane Khelif enters gold-medal bout in women’s boxing event after semifinals win
For clarity, I will refer to humans who have XX pairing as ‘XX’ and those with XY pairing as ‘XY.’ This is how things stand today: All men are XY but not all XY are men; and all XX are women but not all women are XX.
This means there are XY women. They have many attributes of most women, even reproductive structures. Also, they consider themselves women. But their condition may give them high testosterone levels that are in the range observed in men.
Testosterone greatly contributes to muscle size and strength, and create other features that help in sports. How much the hormone contributes to sporting prowess and in which sport is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt that its high level is useful.
So there has for long been a debate around whether women who have XY chromosomes should be allowed to compete against ‘normal’ women. There are powerful arguments on both sides.
A sporting contest is primarily a measure of physical inequalities. When seen that way, all great sporting geniuses are physical freaks. Why shouldn’t the Y chromosome in a woman and her high testosterone be considered ingredients of genius?
Sports are also a measure of economic disparity. The boxer who surrendered to Khelif was from Italy, which is many times richer than Algeria, where Khelif was raised by a family of modest means. Who is to tell which is a greater unfair advantage—the backing of an advanced European nation or a Y-chromosome?
The Olympics are also a moral festival. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gives precedence to freedom of participation and the framing of the world as a decent place that does not discriminate based on who you are.
In any case, the IOC has tried hard to be fair to XX women, those who are widely considered ‘normal women.’ For instance, it requires XY women to have low testosterone levels or to medicate themselves to bring down those levels.
But women with XX chromosomes do not have a cap on testosterone levels. However, I don’t think the world knows of a single XX woman who has male-range testosterone levels.
Also read: Imane Khelif is ‘male’, disqualified from world championships, IBA says; Algeria hits back amid Olympics gender row
Also, in aquatics, apart from requiring XY women to have low testosterone, transgenders who went through puberty as males are not allowed to compete. So, it is not as though the IOC has not tried hard to be fair to XX women.
There are equally powerful arguments against the decency of the Olympics, why it is important to define women, and why the world should stop pretending that there is no such thing as a ‘normal woman.’ In pursuit of decency, the mainstream tends to go overboard in denying normality, ending up putting a majority at a disadvantage.
This is happening with XY women. Ten years ago, anecdotally, the biggest champions of transgenders, XY women, or women with differences in sex development, or simply women who didn’t look like women, were ‘normal’ XX women. But now I see a shift.
When a minority grows stronger, easy compassion for them dries up. There can be no moral argument in favour of the view that XY women should not be considered women. Only practical.
For instance, consider the nature of influence. Why are there separate tournaments and grading systems for women in chess? Isn’t that an insult in a mental sport?
But if you have a daughter, you will understand why it makes a lot of sense. The sport’s organizers are trying to create female chess icons and encourage more girls to play. We are inspired by people who look like us, or who are us. Girls are inspired women.
In physical sports, there is already a feeling among gifted XX girls, in their formative years of athleticism, that they don’t stand a chance against women whose chromosomes differ.
In many physical sports, XY women are set to change how future female sporting icons are going to look. This can create a scarcity of ‘normal women’ in some sports.
People can say decent things, and maybe they should, but people do feel a lot of things that may not be decent yet are human nature. And I do believe that XX girls are more inspired by XX women than XY.
Also read: Paris Olympics 2024: ‘Who cares about fair competition,’ Netizens fume as women’s boxing match sparks gender row
On many turfs of women, what creeps in and colonizes are not the ploys of patriarchs, but a certain soft maleness.
