Max Stearns
By now most everyone is familiar with the extraordinarily sad women's match between Italian boxer Angela Carini and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. Following two head guard failures and an intense hit to the nose, Carini decided against continuing. In a moment she came later to regret, even offering to apologize, she declined to shake Khelif’s hand when the stunningly brief match ended. (Full match here).
Immediately following this incident, a flood of news stories and social media posts centered on an earlier disqualification in the 2023 World Championship based on an unspecified test, although Khelif met the Olympic boxing gender-qualification requirements. (Notably, the IOC policy on transgender and intersex athletes, revised in 2021, leaves many details to sports-specific international associations.) Many commentators claimed, almost certainly mistakenly, that Khelif should not have participated in women's boxing because she is a transgender woman, which, its important to note, isn't invariably disqualifying. Although the media reports aren’t definitive, it appears more likely that Khelif may have exhibited what’s known as partial androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Here is a description from the National Library of Medicine’s Medline Plus:
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS) is when a person who has one X and one Y chromosome (typically seen in males) but is resistant to hormones that produce a male appearance (called androgens). As a result, the person has some of the physical traits of a female, but the genetic makeup of a male.
PAIS is a type of androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS). AIS is one of the conditions that are described as differences of sex development (DSD).
I want to be clear: I am not a physician or scientist, and I have no relevant expertise in this area. I also am not athletic, and I’m only peripherally familiar with women’s boxing. (I once had the privilege of teaching a brilliant women’s collegiate boxing champion!) I’m not diagnosing Khelif, although I'll share my impressions. I'm writing about this to illuminate something I know more about--public discourse and the 2024 presidential election.
Beyond some corroborating reporting, my personal intuition is that the PAIS account is likely for two reasons. First, it appears that Khelif was, by all accounts, born with female appearing genitalia, and, second, gender-affirming surgery is unavailable in Algeria. There is no indication that Khelif ever identified or presented other than as female.
Immediately after this event, I searched online to determine what I could about the background story. Instead, I found myself mired in competing narratives about the implications of this story, from the right about “wokism” and from the left about the right’s insensitivity to transgender persons. Among the most remarkable claims, which I observed repeatedly, were that this women’s boxing match explains the need to support Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Obviously that claim is absurd, but it provides the basis for a valuable insight. I’ve long been convinced that the ultimate threat to democracy is not disagreement, however intense. Rather the real threat arises from an unwavering commitment to absolutist world view.
Ideologues necessarily view the world in a manner that seeks out constant reaffirmation. They seek out data that reinforces what economists would call Bayesian priors. They never look for possible disconfirming evidence, other than to denigrate those who present it. And when presented with such evidence, ideologues look for the quickest available means of dispensing with the contrary data. This remarkable Olympic women’s boxing match perfectly exemplifies this phenomenon.
One of the more stunning aspects of the online commentary from the right was its cruelty. I saw posts exhibiting red circles and arrows targeting Khelif’s boxer shorts to highlight claimed folds or shadows as somehow proving (non-existent) male genitalia. I saw more posts claiming the presence of a Y chromosome (those with PAIS have X and Y chromosomes) proves Khelif is, and always was, a man—end of story. These commenters didn’t simply claim that those who disagreed were uninformed, but rather that they lacked the most basic knowledge of human biology or anatomy. Setting aside that this is mistaken, more notable is the unwillingness to acknowledge any nuance and complexity in prenatal human sexual development.
Although I am not claiming symmetry across the divides, especially on this issue, it’s worth observing that this isn’t only a problem on the hard right. Both extremes can and often do exhibit absolutist ideologies over a variety of issues, just different ones.
Even well intended memes can paper over complexity and nuance. A common meme surrounding transgender rights, which I certainly support, is “transgender women are women.” I agree. Every individual deserves respect not only for their sexuality, but also for their gender identity—male, female, gender fluid, nonbinary, etc. If somebody presents as female or male despite having been born male or female, or despite a contrary external sex manifestation, respect means honoring that individual’s claim on a matter that absolutely no one but her, him, or they, can possibly know better. It’s difficult to imagine (“conceive” is tricky here) something more insulting than a societal determination that someone other than you best understands how you should identify respecting a matter so obviously intimate and personal.
I don’t claim to know how to resolve all questions that follow in the world of women’s elite athletics. Different institutions have their own rules (e.g., NCAA, NAIA, various state laws). But it’s not an affront to the identity of an individual to take seriously concerns that a transgender female athlete risks disadvantaging a cisgender female in the same sport, especially in one-on-one competition. Complexity includes acknowledging the possibility that respecting an individual’s gender identity yet disallowing nuance risks potentially disadvantaging others in specific circumstances. Not everything is, or should be, simple. Similar challenges are apt to arise with PAIS. Nuance confounds in more than one direction.
Nuance doesn’t mean there are never clear answers. But it does mean not all answers are clear.
A fundamental difficulty in US politics is an unwillingness on the ideological extremes to concede nuance. This includes replacing analysis with soundbites as the means of dispensing with meaningful conversations or even intense debates on vital yet complicated political issues: climate change, gun policy, pandemic management, women’s reproductive rights, racial justice, Israel/Gaza, and more.
Life seems easier when everything is black and white, and yes, male or female. Or as Archie Bunker famously sang, hoping for another Herbert Hoover, “when girls were girls and men were men.” But memes, or catchy (yet sexist) lines, won’t resolve complex issues; they simply hide the complexity.
I leave to the experts how to manage difficult questions arising from DSD or transgender women in high level athletics. There are rules on such matters, and those rules will almost certainly continue to evolve. Others are thoughtfully studying such questions. Closer to home, I’ll simply observe that this 46-second match might tell us more than we’d like to know about what the next few months are going to look like.
I welcome your comments
[Thanks to David S. Cohen for a helpful read on an earlier draft.]
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