The Misleading Controversy Over an Olympic Women’s Boxing Match, Briefly Explained
Li Zhou is a politics reporter at Vox, where she covers Congress and elections. Previously, she was a tech policy reporter at Politico and an editorial fellow at the Atlantic.
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An Olympic women’s boxing match — and misinformation about one of the athletes involved — is now being used by conservatives to promote their anti-trans agenda.
On Thursday, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif faced off against Italian boxer Angela Carini, winning in 46 seconds after Carini abruptly pulled out of the fight. Following the match, Carini burst into tears and declined to shake Khelif’s hand, telling reporters that she withdrew due to the intensity of her opponent’s initial punches. “I put an end to the match because after the second blow,” Carini said, “I felt a strong pain in my nose.”
That reaction has since spawned scrutiny of Khelif, who was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman. False claims that she is a trans person or that she is a man pretending to be a woman quickly spread thanks to reports she was disqualified from a 2023 International Boxing Association event and the resurfacing of comments by the president of that organization suggesting that her elimination was because she failed a hormone test.
The inaccurate statements about her identity were boosted by prominent anti-trans individuals like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, as well as politicians like US Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Their statements stirred up a storm of anger on the right despite the fact that Khelif is a cisgender woman.
As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos has explained, there aren’t any transgender athletes at the Olympics this year who are competing outside of the sex they were assigned at birth, though IOC rules don’t bar their inclusion so long as they meet certain eligibility criteria. “There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters. “The question you have to ask yourself is, are these athletes women? The answer is yes.”
The 2024 Olympic boxing match between Imane Khelif and Angela Carini, explained
During their match this week, Carini and Khelif competed against one another in their respective first fights of this Olympics. Olympic boxing contests group competitors by weight class and operate in a knockout fashion, meaning the winner of a match moves forward while the loser is eliminated. Both had also previously competed in Tokyo, with Carini getting eliminated in her first bout during those Olympics, and Khelif getting eliminated in her second bout.
The two fighters started the round trading blows; after Carini paused the match to adjust her headgear, Khelif went on the offensive, landing a solid punch to her opponent’s face. Rather than continue, Carini, pulling at her nose, relinquished the competition completely. That’s atypical for a boxing match, which often includes three rounds of combat.
As the referee prepared to call the match, Carini told her team, “It’s not fair.” Carini could then be seen dropping to her knees and refusing any attempts at a handshake or other customary gestures of sportsmanship from Khelif.
The match may have passed unnoticed except for the controversy that erupted after it, which was fueled by events that occurred more than a year before it even began.
In 2023, Kehlif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting hoped to compete in the boxing world championships held by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in New Delhi, India. Kehlif and Lin were disqualified by the IBA, and press reports suggested that it was because they failed a test of some sort and had elevated testosterone levels. The IBA’s president reportedly told a Russia outlet at the time that both Khelif and Lin had “XY chromosomes” — a chromosomal composition most commonly seen in those assigned male at birth.
Exactly what led to this statement is unclear. The IBA did not disclose documentation at the time or reveal what tests were conducted. Questions were also raised because the organization, which was led by Russian official Umar Kremlev, did not disqualify Khelif until after she had already beaten a Russian boxer.
In recent days, the IBA released a statement claiming that in 2023, Khelif and Lin “did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.” The statement also said the test “conclusively indicated that both athletes … have competitive advantages over other female competitors.” Both Khelif and Lin had also competed in the 2022 world championships, also administered by the IBA the year before.
The IBA’s 2023 decision was heavily criticized by the IOC, which deemed it “arbitrary” and not transparent. Both athletes competed without issue in the Olympics in 2021. At the time, neither medaled, and both lost to multiple female opponents. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the IOC has declared the IBA an unreliable steward of global boxing: Officials banished the group from regulating the sport at the Olympic level due to concerns over its financial dealings, leadership, and allegations of match-fixing.
The lack of clarity about what happened in 2023 has helped mis- and disinformation about Khelif to fester. The IOC, however, has been clear that Khelif and Lin qualify to compete based on its rules.
Those do not include sex testing, which the IOC abandoned in 2000 and which has long been scrutinized for operating off questionable and flawed science. The committee does still disqualify some athletes who have Differences of Sexual Development (DSD), “a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs,” per Reuters. When it comes to DSDs, IOC rules governing eligibility use factors like safety and fairness to determine who can compete.
Beyond questions of sex, there are racial dynamics at play in the perceptions of this match. Female athletes of color — particularly those of African and African American descent — have long been accused of being men when they’ve beaten white women in competition. This happened most notably with tennis phenom Serena Williams and track star Caster Semenya, both of whom endured tropes that cast Black women as more masculine and threatening.
Following the attention on this week’s match, Carini has said she’d like to apologize to Khelif: “If the I.O.C. said she can fight, I respect that decision.”
Other boxers have expressed they aren’t concerned about competing against Khelif. “I don’t care about the press story and social media,” said Anna Luca Hamori, a boxer from Hungary who will compete against Khelif next. Lin’s first match proceeded as planned — like Khelif, she won.
The attention is being used to advance conservatives’ agenda
The facts of Khelif’s Olympic journey have not gotten in the way of the false narrative that exploded in the wake of her win. Her victory proved to be an opportunity for those with transphobic views to score rhetorical and political points.
Rowling and other prominent anti-trans figures like Tesla CEO Elon Musk were quick to spread lies and cite the boxing match as an example of why they believe it is important to back stark gender binaries. “We object because we saw a male punching a female,” Rowling wrote in a post on X.
US conservatives who misattributed and questioned Khelif’s gender identity also used the fight to weaponize the anti-trans rhetoric they’ve utilized in the past to activate their voter base. Vance was quick to wrongly link Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to the international boxing match in a nonsensical post, writing on X, “This is where Kamala Harris’s ideas about gender lead: to a grown man pummeling a woman in a boxing match.”
Former President Donald Trump similarly wrote on Truth Social that he would “keep men out of women’s sports.”
As Vox’s Nicole Narea and Fabiola Cineas have explained, this sort of rhetoric on the part of GOP leaders is tied to an explosion of anti-trans legislation in states across the country focused on bathroom access, women’s sports, and gender-affirming care for minors. Collectively, these bills have sought to frame trans people as a threat and to stoke fear among GOP voters.
Women’s sports is an arena where the GOP has leaned into this messaging because they see it as activating religious Republicans, including Evangelical voters, and potentially resonating with more moderate women, too.
“Trans issues in particular challenge … biblical concepts of gender,” Sophie Bjork-James, a Vanderbilt University anthropologist who studies the religious right, previously told Vox. “Evangelicals tend to believe that men and women have very different qualities that are innate in us. I think there’s a huge interest in maintaining a gender binary because it really does provide a foundation for their theology and their everyday lives.”
Republican state legislatures including those in Tennessee and Texas have successfully passed bills that limit athletes to participating in sports for the sex they were assigned at birth. The attacks on Khelif are just the latest manifestation of such ideas.