1w ago

World Boxing to introduce mandatory sex testing for all boxers

worldboxing.org World Boxing to introduce mandatory sex testing for all boxers - World Boxing

World Boxing will introduce mandatory sex testing, to determine the eligibility of male and female athletes that want to take part in its competitions. The introduction of mandatory testing will be part of a new policy on “Sex, Age and Weight” to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a c...

In light of plans to introduce this policy and the particular circumstances surrounding some boxers that competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing.

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Olympics testing sex means they will be testing women, and never men, it means they'll come up with a test that requires different representatives of different competing nations to agree a woman doesn't technically qualify as a woman despite her fully functioning uterus, and again they'll be invasive and humiliating and poor countries will have twice or more disqualified athletes, they will go after women of color twice as hard, and the more extreme countries they send these women back to live in will treat these women horrifyingly bad.
- In a way they do testing on men in sports all the time. They test for testosterone levels for one to see if the athlete is not utilizing Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs).
  But I also haven’t read the article on the methodology they will be going to be utilizing.
- Generally because the differences in male and female biology mean that ftm athletes are coming in at a disadvantage and only risk end up being hurt themselves by male athletes who generally have them at a disadvantage. Mtf athletes however, due to the aspects of male physiology that remain, have a higher likelihood of having an advantage over female athletes and also posing a danger to the other athletes. This is generally why most womens categories were introduced in the first place (female physical disadvantage).
  Especially in martial arts and combat sports like boxing, which are already inherently dangerous, the physical safety of the athletes and protecting them must come above more ephemeral goals such as inclusion in my view.
  As it stands with current day medical technology, there are limits to how close a transitioning individual can be changed to resemble the opposing gender.
  Given how deep the differences are physiologically between the sexes with things such as lyonization I'm not entirely sure that it will ever be possible to fully transition a person outside of weird and ethically questionable future tech such as vat-growing a genetically modified clone and somehow transferring the consciousness of the person.
  
  There are several cases in sports already where people who are born women and have a female phenotype and genotype, but have naturally higher levels of testosterone, who have been banned from competition.
  The message they use is the they're "protecting women" but it isn't actually the goal. Often there aren't any cases of transgender athletes outperforming their cis opponents, yet they still try to create these rules. It's frequently actively harmful to many cisgendered women.
  The problem with all of this is the "basic biology" crowd never learn that biology is really fucking complex. What they learn in grade school is not the totality of biology, yet they assume they must be experts and force their very limited and wrong views on other people. It's bad and harmful and siding with them makes them feel all the more justified in their crusade of bullshit and misinformation.
  
  I'm not particularly familiar with the politics of sports, nor am I particularly interested - as such I won't comment on what their goals are. I am, however, very familiar with human biology and healthcare. 5 yrs of secondary + tertiary education familiar in addition to several years of work experience. You'll unfortunately have to take my word for that. I don't intend to dox myself with documentation.
  With my outlook on the topic, it doesn't seem like a "crusade of bullshit and misinformation". Headline news, physiology and most importantly "data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world" - as they claim. I don't have time to personally look into that (sucks to have a life amirite) but am inclined to trust that they care for the athletes and have done due diligence. If you (or anyone else for that matter!) has material that disputes the validity of their work do feel free to link it in a reply. I and others I'm sure would be interested in reading such material.
  Thanks.
  
  Headline news, physiology and most importantly "data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world" - as they claim. I don't have time to personally look into that (sucks to have a life amirite) but am inclined to trust that they care for the athletes and have done due diligence.
  Here's the issue we have: you trust them because they put out a press release with this claim. I don't, because it's a press release. You want others to prove them wrong instead of needing them to prove they're right.
  I'm sure there's some truth to the statement, but did they actively look at the points made by the opposition and weigh it all? There's no claim for this here even, and even if there were I wouldn't trust it implicitly. To be scientific you need to actively try to disprove your assumptions. If they still hold then cool, but you have to be critical.
  At the end of the day, this is a business. They're trying to make money. This is something that I'll never just give my trust to. If they prove their claims then fine, but I'm going to assume all decisions are business decisions first, not the best decision for all athletes necessarily.
  
  Thing is, my time is limited. I don't have time to look into every single thing. No, this isn't some empiric process on my part. It comes down to judgement.
  On the one hand there is a well established organization (and several others actually, I did do a cursory internet search) backed by an army medical professionals, which will get sued into oblivion by these athletes if they are egregiously wrong. What they're saying also happens to check out with my own knowledge on the topic and news that has circulated (both in regular papers and on occasion medical news).
  On the other hand, there are a bunch of random internet strangers who, without citing any external sources say that the well established organization is wrong and lying.
  So, which one would you be inclined to believe?
  Again, feel free to drop in some material that you think disproves this, I would love to have a look!
  
  You can't disprove it. It's a value call. Is it worth restricting players who should (in my opinion at least) be allowed to play for this? Are the trans (or higher testosterone cis) players actually that big of an issue, or is it a culture issue?
  Here's a case where cis-female Zambian soccer player was barred from playing. Did that do more good than harm? I doubt it. This is far from the only case where cis women are prevented from competing because of made up rules that make them ineligible. I'm sure it'll happen in this scenario too.
  
  You can though - at least to the extent that we in empirical science usually refer to "proving" or "disproving" (or rather, indicate or contraindicate a hypothesis). In this case it'd be studies/metastudies on injuries in different kinds of matchups (which can either show a statistically significant difference or not) or in performance of different athletes.
  The case you linked here is regarding football, not boxing, which simply makes it a question of performance rather than also safety (as it is with boxing or other combat sports). The key difference in judgement here is the same reason that there are weight classes - simply wouldn't be safe (or fair for that matter) to match up a 120kg vs a 60 kg athlete - the latter might literally get killed.
  Performance wise, the most "fair" might be to sort athletes into leagues based on testosterone levels. It's already known that higher testosterone levels tend to correlate with higher performance, so rather than imposing an arbitrary limit where only the athletes in the "sweet spot" just below the limit get to excel, grade them into brackets based on that. Women's sports were established in the first place to give women a fair chance at competing, since male vs female competitions in the vast majority of cases end up very one sided.
  
  You can though - at least to the extent that we in empirical science usually refer to "proving" or "disproving" (or rather, indicate or contraindicate a hypothesis). In this case it'd be studies/metastudies on injuries in different kinds of matchups (which can either show a statistically significant difference or not) or in performance of different athletes.
  Yes, and I'm sure (especially for boxing) there are more injuries. I'm not trying to argue against that. I'm saying, it isn't worth the witch hunt. Iif you care about injuries caused by trans athletes, are there actually a large enough number to warrant this. Presumably we shouldn't be preventing cis-women from competing, even if they cause more injuries, right? It's boxing. Injuries are going to happen. If there are cis-women who just hit really hard for some reason, that's part of the sport.
  The case you linked here is regarding football, not boxing, which simply makes it a question of performance rather than also safety (as it is with boxing or other combat sports).
  Exactly. Even when injuries aren't the issue they're pushing these rules, so I don't trust that this is particularly strongly inspired by injuries. It's about people complaining trans athletes (or rather people they, usually baselessly, suspect are trans) are ruining the sport for "real" women.
  Performance wise, the most "fair" might be to sort athletes into leagues based on testosterone levels. It's already known that higher testosterone levels tend to correlate with higher performance, so rather than imposing an arbitrary limit where only the athletes in the "sweet spot" just below the limit get to excel, grade them into brackets based on that.
  This has been my argument for ages, or at least it's the logical extension of the argument that we should be protecting women in sports by banning certain women who we don't want competing. The fact of the matter is high level sports selectively choose certain attributes. I'm sure as hell not a top athlete and could never be. I'm not asking for rules to be made that allow me to compete against top athletes, but if we need to protect women's "fair" competition strongly for some reason, shouldn't we also have leagues for all types of people? Doesn't longer arms lead to more injuries in boxing? Is it "fair" that sports aren't designed specifically for me to be able to win?
  I don't know what the answer is, but breaking sports into a "premier" league (no barriers; anyone can compete so only the best of the best rise) and then having a ton of leagues with different sets of rules to exclude people seems like the logical conclusion to this. I can't honestly say I think that's the best solution, because it'd make it ridiculously hard to watch, find teams, and track. I do think it's the only way the argument for testosterone testing works though. It doesn't work if you're excluding cis women from women's sports, otherwise it isn't actually protecting the integrity of women's sports. Top level competition is a game of outliers.
  
  but if we need to protect women’s “fair” competition strongly for some reason, shouldn’t we also have leagues for all types of people?
  I think you're being sarcastic here, but there is a trend in that direction, with paralympics and such. It all comes down to this. How is the protected class of athletes defined? If a space for female athletes is going to exist at all, there needs to be some definition, which inevitably is going to feel arbitrary to some. The one they've gone with excludes males and most intersex individuals - allowing a little wiggle room here for folks with XY who have no male testosterone production which medically speaking makes it into a "woman at birth with low androgens" competition since those people will usually have a female phenotype at birth.
  In the case of Imane - it may speculatively (after now reading a little about the circumstances and the "leaked" results) be a case of XY intersex with some kind of androgen dysfunction, either through reduced production via enzyme deficiency or partial insensitivity to testo. Being from a less developed country it's quite possible that Imane wouldn't even be aware of such a condition until it came to light due to the testing, and even if it was noticed earlier by Algerian medical professionals it may have been hidden from the patient due to how controversial intersex individuals are in traditionally muslim countries. This was the case for a long time even in the west, some countries even into the 2000's - "in the best interest of the patient". Quite tragic really.
  
  I think you're being sarcastic here, but there is a trend in that direction, with paralympics and such. It all comes down to this. How is the protected class of athletes defined? If a space for female athletes is going to exist at all, there needs to be some definition, which inevitably is going to feel arbitrary to some. The one they've gone with excludes males and most intersex individuals - allowing a little wiggle room here for folks with XY who have no male testosterone production which medically speaking makes it into a "woman at birth with low androgens" competition since those people will usually have a female phenotype at birth.
  I'm not being sarcastic. High level competition is defined by outliers. There's many cis women competing in top level sports who naturally have high testosterone, and they're often blocked by these rules despite them supposedly being to "protect the integrity of women in sports." They should be allowed to compete in women's sports, if we're calling it women's sports. If we want to divide it by testosterone level then fine, but be honest about that and allow men with naturally low testosterone too. Women's sports should include all women.
  In the case of Imane - it may speculatively (after now reading a little about the circumstances and the "leaked" results) be a case of XY intersex with some kind of androgen dysfunction, either through reduced production via enzyme deficiency or partial insensitivity to testo.
  There are many things it could be. We could speculate all day. This rule is not targeting those strictly though. It's targeting testosterone level, which varies by person and there are cis women with higher levels than some men. Biology is complex. Top level sports will inharently choose those best at the sport. It's going to choose outliers, not representative of the average person. Women's sports still don't allow most women to compete reasonably. It never has, and probably never should. If it self-selects for people with higher testosterone then fine. They shouldn't be banned for it, especially since they also can't compete with men usually.
  
  What are you talking about? This is not about transgender at all. For those you could require a birth certificate. This is targeting women that are born as girls but, due to genetic anomalies, do not appear as such on genetic tests. Many (most?) would never discover the genetic anomaly during their lifetime.
  
  At least from what I've read previously, these rules changes are primarily related to incidents where female athletes have been severely injured when competing against mtf athletes - but it's long been a contentious issue. As is often the case, when rules are changed/implemented they end up being broad and catching others in the crossfire.
  It's unfortunate that it's ended up being necessary. However, there are many professions where people can't work due to genetics or health (eyesight, cardiac issues etc.) and athletics in general is already a field highly affected by genetics. C'est la vie...
  
  For Christmas's sake, boxing is a combat sport. The whole point of combat sports is to incapacitate your opponent via violent means. Do you actually think safety is the real concern here? If it was, you'd think the focus would be on better equipment, rule changes, rule enforcement, etc., not the (largely irrelevant) existence of a Y chromosome in an athlete's genome.
  
  Do you actually think safety is the real concern here?
  ...yes, in fact combat sports are usually more safety conscious given that they constantly have to deal with the issue. One slip up and zip, someone's dead.
  
  Again, mtf or any transgender issue can be solved with birth certificates. It doesn’t require genetic testing. Genetic testing is targeted at humans that according to all our traditional laws and practices are treated as female, yet may potentially be banned from female sports.
  
  Some countries permit people to have the gender on their birth certificate changed after transition, which unfortunately renders your suggestion moot. Also from the wording in the article I think the testing will be applied to male athletes also.
  Testing for chromosomes in this day and age is also quite simple and rather cheap. The main issue really is how privacy is handled. Personally I wouldn't want to have to be subjected to a gene test for a job.
  
  citation needed
  
  ...from the article
  ... to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women.
  ...which has examined data and medical evidence from an extensive range of sources and consulted widely with other sports and experts across the world.
  This decision reflects concerns over the safety and wellbeing of all boxers, including Imane Khelif, and aims to protect the mental and physical health of all participants...
  ...and another citation for good measure.
  
  That's just World Boxing's statement, it's not actually substantiating any of their claims.
  
  No, it's not "just World Boxing’s statement". Have a look at the author. If you take issue with the validity of the claims maybe try and contact him, he's a medical professional with literal decades of experience in this exact field.

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