Terrifying in its ignorance and wickedness. Astonishing in its confusion when all levels, sports politics, general politics and nationalism, ideology and finance get involved. Olympic fans, in this month of August 2024, will of course have guessed that we wanted to evoke here the infamous controversy that has just (re)agitated the world of sport, social networks overflowing with insanities, the reactionaries Trump, Musk and JK Rowling not being left out in the insults.
"Hyperandrogenism"
The victim is Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who will be in the final on Friday, August 9, against Chinese Yang Liu. At the heart of the melee, a femininity test. Carried out by the International Boxing Federation (IBF), it led to the athlete's exclusion from the World Championships in 2023. Except that the said Federation is not recognized by the International Olympic Committee, for whom Imane Khelif can perfectly compete at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the women's -66kg category.
Who says a woman is a woman? The question, which some might have thought was a thing of the past, has come back to the forefront. As for ignorance or the desire not to let people know, the IBF wins the gold medal, not even having deigned to specify its examination methods and their results during a press conference on August 5. For fear of revealing its incompetence or even its spite?
In fact, in recent years, controversies targeting female athletes have always revolved around the issue of "hyperandrogenism." In other words, in everyday French, the very strong presence of male sex hormones (androgens) in a woman's blood. And in particular the hormone whose name almost everyone knows today, namely testosterone.
Considered the male hormone par excellence, it is equivalent to increased strength and unbalanced competitiveness. A simplistic vision, if we do not look carefully at what scientists say. As recalled Science and Future from 2019, "There is no scientific consensus on 'the magnitude of the performance advantage derived from endogenous testosterone' according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), an institution that decides legal disputes related to sport.
Endogenous means that the hormone in question is produced by the athlete's own body and that it is in no way an exogenous contribution of a product, by doping for example. This is the Gordian knot that some cut with great contempt for the individuals concerned in the exercise of their sport. Because the question is raised of what, biologically, would determine exactly their sex, with a display of their intimacy. And flouted, at the same time, what makes the athlete's gender, in other words the vision of his family, and more broadly of the society which surrounds him, even his nation...
As for biology and its subtleties, we suspect that simplism also tends to prevail, the knowledge of everyone being generally limited to thinking that there are only two sexes, themselves easily determined by the famous chromosomes XX and XY. Except that the genes on said chromosomes may have mutated, the development at the embryonic stage of an individual may have led to certain hormone receptors being inactive etc., leading to multiple situations.
"A scandal mixing racism, control of women's bodies and violation of human rights"
To cite just two easily understandable examples, this is how some XX people can have testicles and be assimilated to the male gender and some XY people can have a vaginal slit and be assimilated to the female gender. Who wants to see their sexual intimacy exposed in broad daylight like this? This is more or less what sports federations have been doing for years, requiring female athletes to expose themselves naked in front of doctors or others, thus judging their femininity.
In recent years, claiming to be more scientific, hyperandrogenic women have been required to undergo treatment for lower their testosterone levels. Which could lead to real tragedies for some athletes even undergoing surgery, as recalled in particular by the remarkable documentary "Sports cars too powerful" still visible on Arte.
Focusing on the athletics world, this film accuses "the governing bodies [to find themselves] at the heart of a scandal mixing racism, control of women's bodies and violation of human rights". Nothing less. It should be noted that the high-profile cases of controversy have targeted sportswomen from Africa – the famous Caster Semenya from South Africa; from India – Dutee Chand, who brought the case before the CAS to protest…, to cite just these two examples.
The boxing final on August 9
As for Imane Khelif today, we have successively seen her Italian competitor Angela Carini lose her temper and burst into tears, abandon the fight in the eighth finals on August 1st and question the femininity of her opponent, before retracting.
Then politics took over through the voice of Giorgia Meloni, the far-right Italian Prime Minister who, setting herself up as an expert in genetics, detected an unfair fight. We will have heard the interview with the boxer's father assure that his daughter has always been first in sports since she was little, the photos of her as a smiling little girl circulating on the networks, proof of her gender... feminine.
And on Tuesday, August 6, the streets of Algiers were set ablaze for the champion after her victory over the Thai Janjaem Suwannapheng, national pride obliges, waiting for the final. You have to be strong to resist, outside the ring and without gloves, this mental punching bag with international resonance, against the ignorant and hateful who only have strikes below the belt as a reference.
English 
French