Transgender Or Intersex? Confusion Reigns Over The Gender Status Of Two Olympic Boxers
5th August 2024
On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a surprising correction after claiming for a week that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting were actually born women and have Differences in Sexual Development (DSD), a range of rare conditions in which a person’s genitalia do not necessarily match with their chromosomes or hormone levels. In this weekend’s column, I cited that IOC claim that Khelif is not a transgender athlete. Yet, there remains considerable confusion on how the IOC and the boxing governing body is framing this issue and the question of gender.