The Paris Olympics is the first Olympics to achieve gender parity between men and women in terms of participation. But it deeply saddens and angers me that Women's Boxing is now being used as a battleground by those with harmful gender-critical views.
Imane Khelif, a cisgender woman, has been facing accusations of ‘being a man’ after a Russian-based organisation that lost its Olympic status called her one. This spread of disinformation is both harmful to female athletes and risks perpetuating the discriminatory bans against trans and intersex people in sport.
Crucially, it also distracts us from more important conversations around the inclusivity and fairness of different sports.
There are all sorts of differences between humans beyond our chromosomes. Our reproductive systems, hormone levels, are just the start of the multitude of differences at play. Far more significant than gender, they affect what athletic feats we are able to achieve with our bodies.
Professional female athletes likely have more shared biological traits with their male counterparts than the general population of women.
Professional cyclists and swimmers, for example, have much larger lung capacities than the average person. That’s somewhat due to training, but also partly due to genetic traits that mean they excelled in the sport originally.
People’s ability to build and retain muscle mass can also be genetically predetermined. Those who excel in many sports may be genetically predisposed to do so, regardless of sex.
And beyond what is programmed in our bodies, the access humans have to training and facilities is often determined by class, wealth and geography.
If anything, dividing competitions by gender lines is one of the most arbitrary measures we could choose.
Boxing already demonstrates that it is possible to be more nuanced, by grouping contestants by weight. In my experience as a non-binary boxer, the multitude of ways that you can win a boxing match is also what makes it one of the most inclusive sports available.
If we took this type of approach in other sports, perhaps those who are technically gifted and athletic in their own way but who simply don’t fit the narrow body types associated with particular sports would get to participate.
Creating more nuanced categories instead of gendered divides would also create more opportunities for women to compete against men, which would in turn generate more interest and investment in women’s sport. Women’s world records are being broken at a much faster rate than men’s - because the increased access to sport means that women can finally demonstrate what they are capable of.
If we want to talk about what is actually unfair, it should be the generations worth of underinvestment in women’s sport, not the strength of one boxer’s punches.
Perhaps we are also only just noticing the increased testosterone in female athletes because women have only had access to the same intensive training as men in relatively recent history. Or perhaps it’s because testing it has become a hallmark of sports amid rising transphobic moral panics.
Ultimately, women's empowerment and trans inclusion are not mutually exclusive. We are all fighting against the oppressive patriarchal norms that limit us all.
We have still not yet experienced the full extent of what is humanly possible for our bodies to achieve, and equal access to sport for everyone regardless of gender identity could allow us to transcend the gender binary in ways we have not yet imagined.
Building solidarity between women and gender non-conforming people in the Olympics would drive sport forward in a way that creates a fairer and more enjoyable experience for everyone.
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