TESTED: Updates on Khelif and Mboma and a confusing new(ish) UN report
Hi all,
Rose here, and I wanted to send a short newsletter this week with a few newsier bits and bobs about sex testing. We have a quick update on Imane Khelif's next stage, a recap of Christine Mboma’s season, and a dive into a recent UN report that endorsed sex testing and is full of unreliable information.
Imani Khelif Goes Pro, Legal Case Still Pending
On Sunday, Algeiran boxer Imani Khelif announced that she'd be going pro. "I intend to participate in professional fights, without leaving the amateur competitions organized by the new world body, World Boxing. I also aim to develop boxing in Algeria and to create academies specialized in this discipline," she said.
Finding a place to box that is supportive and safe is not going to be easy. Boxing is (to put it lightly) not exactly a progressive sport. I've noted in the past that the culture and public perception of boxing really influenced the way the conversations happened around Khelif and Lin during the Olympics. We talked a tiny bit in this newsletter about the Russian influence over the International Boxing Association, and the ways in which they tried to use Khelif and Lin as a wedge to get back at the Olympics.
The Washington Post recently published a story about Umar Kremlev, the man who orchestrated the Olympic "controversy" and it's a real doozy. Here's the lead:
With the future of international boxing hanging in the balance, as it so often is, the 2006 election of its top official featured the usual chaos: bribes, shouting matches and shows of physical intimidation in the lobby of an upscale Dominican hotel.
But the body flying down an elevator shaft was a new twist.
Many boxing organizations are aligned with Russia, and are going to therefor be unfriendly to Khelif’s participation. Even those who aren't aligned with Russia, might make things hard for her. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. If you want to support good boxing coverage and commentary on this front Eddie Goldman's newsletter/Patreon No Holds Barred is a great source. Eddie has been super on top of this for a while, and his recent analysis of Khelif's decision to go pro is really fascinating.
What this means, big picture, is two things. First, we might be able to watch Khelif box more! Which is great and exciting. Second, and related, is that she's going to continue to be the center of scrutiny about her body.
The harassment of Khelif during the Olympics is also the center of a legal complaint that I mentioned a few months ago on this newsletter. As far as I know there are no real updates on that front — I've reached out to Khelif's lawyer a few times asking for comment but I haven't heard back.
The complaint was brought to the "Office central de lutte contre les crimes contre l'humanité et les crimes de haine (OCLCH)" of the Paris public prosecutor's office. One report on hate crimes in France describes this office as "an inter-agency body composed of police officers and gendarmes that is mandated to expedite hate crime investigations and monitor and analyse relevant developments."
Okay but what does that mean in practice? As you likely know, in many places it's hard to enforce laws around online harassment (if those laws even exists). But we do have at least on case in France that might serve as precedent. In 2021 a French musician named Eddy de Pretto performed a concert in a church in Paris, and was subsequently inundated with homophobic hatred online. (You can read some of those messages here, if you desire to do so.) A year later, after an investigation by the OCLCH, eleven people were given "suspeneded prison sentences" for online harassment.
This is notable in particular in the Khelif case because de Pretto is a "public figure," which sometimes makes the bar higher when it comes to online hate. But it's also not exactly equivalent, because Khelif’s lawyers have decided not to file their case against any individuals, but rather against X (formerly Twitter) itself. "It is the role of the prosecutors to determine whether an investigation will proceed and who might be at fault," Seema Patel, an Associate Professor in law at Nottingham Trent University told me. "This is quite a nuanced situation and there are no previous cases that are comparable."
I asked Patel what she thought might happen here — if Khelif wins some kind of sanction or even criminal charges against individuals, what impact might that have? "Very hard to predict," Patel said. "In relation to sport, it is unlikely to change the tide of false assumptions about sex and gender and the abuse that athletes experience. This is an issue that remains at the heart of the gender eligibility debate and it is something that requires specific attention. It might act as a deterrent in some cases but not likely in most."
This isn't to say it's not worth doing of course, but I was curious what a legal expert might think. I'll be keeping my eye on this and let you know as things progress.
Christine Mbomba's Season
Last time you heard from Christine on Tested, she was focused on finishing out her season. That didn't quite happen as planned. Her last race was in June, at the African Athletics Championships you heard about on the show. Henk says he wants to take things slow, and not rush her into anything after such a high intensity spring — mentally and emotionally.
In a recent interview with The Namibian, Henk said that he's focusing on getting Christine and Beatrice back on the track in a smaller, less intense setting. "We have been concentrating on the 60m sprint, because I want to enter them for the Indoor World Championships next year. I think it will be a good platform to get them back into the system, because neither Christine nor Beatrice have competed in any big races for almost two years now. We want to get them back on the international scene, mostly just to get their confidence back and obviously to earn some money as well, because they are professional athletes,” he told The Namibian.
“They are both just training in their tekkies at the moment1, but Beatrice posted an impressive time of 7.23 seconds, which is just outside the indoor world champs qualifying time of 7.15 seconds, while Christine posted 7.65 seconds."
She also signed with a new agency company based in the United States to help manage her sponsorships. She's still working with Henk as her coach. That Namibian story also features Henk talking about some of his other athletes — some of whom I spent time with while I was there.
The UN comes out in favor of sex testing?
I have a google alert setup for the athletes impacted by sex testing — which is unfortunately regularly full of anti-trans clickbait and people screaming at eachother on Twitter about Caster Semenya's biology (it's bleak). I usually skim these emails and move on. But recently one particular story caught my eye — an article on PJ Media that claimed that "Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has issued a bombshell report that states that "over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports,” due to transgendered athletes competing as females."
This caught my attention for a few reasons — first, the numbers. What are we actually measuring here? Medals in what? Elite international competition? Certainly not — the entire Olympics only hands out about 900 medals every four years. So what kinds of competitions are we even counting here? And where did these numbers come from?
The second was the phrasing. The idea that "female athletes" have "lost" medals "due to transgendered athletes" is a very particular way of talking about the inclusion and potential success of trans women in sports. Why would the UN say that kind of thing in a report? What is the context?
So, obviously, I went and looked at the report which was published in August (I missed it when it came out, somehow, and I haven't seen a lot of coverage of it, but if you have please let me know). The first thing to note, is that this report summarizes "over 100 submissions from relevant stakeholders," and consultations in which 50 persons participated."
Here's the graph in question:
Policies implemented by international federations and national governing bodies, along with national legislation in some countries, allow males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories.(28) In other cases, this practice is not explicitly prohibited and is thus tolerated in practice. The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.(29)
Let's look at the citations on this, shall we?
"Policies implemented by international federations and national governing bodies, along with national legislation in some countries, allow males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories." The citation on this sentence says that it comes from a "Submission by Sex Matters." Sex Matters is an organization that believes, per their website, things like: "No child or teenager believes they need to modify their body to match their gender non-conformity." (This is false, obviously, per a huge amount of research and personal experiences.)
You can see this bias in the language — "males who identify as women," clearly implies that trans women are not women, but rather "males." The same bias continues on in the paragraph saying: "The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males." I'm not aware very many sports that have replaced the female sports category with a "mixed-sex" category. Most places that allow for mixed gender competitions have added it on top of the female category, as an additional choice. I would love to know what specific examples the UN can point to of a sport nixing the women's category and insisting that everybody compete in a mixed gender event.
Which brings us to the numbers. "According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports." The citation on this one is "Submission from Women’s Liberation Front, International Consortium on Female Sport and Dianne Post on behalf of Lavender Patch." The link on this citation takes you to this website which says it "is dedicated to archiving the achievements of female athletes who were displaced by males in women’s sporting events and other types of competitions expressly for women."
The database is a list of women who these folks believe have lost to a trans person in a competition. This includes entries for things like eSports, Masters Disc Golf, Irish Dance, and the "2023 Inter County Logistics English Women's Snooker Championship." It seems to be largely self-submitted information via a Submission form, and also includes a list of "male athletes," that they believe have unfairly stolen medals from women. It's notable that several of the "male athletes" on the list are not featured in their database of people who have "unfairly" won against women. The list includes women like Caster Semenya and Christine Mboma, who are not trans.
Most of the citation links they provide do not seem to work, or simply link to a post on X complaining about a trans woman in a sporting context. There are a handful of entries on the table where the "Name of Participant" column simply says "Unknown" — they can't even figure out who would have won if a nefarious trans person had not competed.
In short, this is not reliable data, and should absolutely not be cited in a UN report this incredulously. Because now, even though the report itself includes the hedge phrase "According to information received," anti-trans outlets can run with headlines like "Almost 900 Medals Lost to Trans Competitors in Women's Sports, Says UN Report." Which is exactly what has happened.
Unfortunately, this UN report does ultimately come down against the inclusion of trans women in sports and in favor of sex testing. At the bottom of its list of recommendations it says that we should:
Ensure that female categories in organized sport are exclusively accessible to persons whose biological sex is female. In cases where the sex of an athlete is unknown or uncertain, a dignified, swift, non-invasive and accurate sex screening method (such as a cheek swab) or, where necessary for exceptional reasons, genetic testing should be applied to confirm the athlete’s sex. In non-professional sports spaces, the original birth certificates for verification maybe appropriate. In some exceptional circumstances, such tests may need to be followed up by more complex tests.
They do then go on to say that people should "Refrain from subjecting anyone to invasive sex screening or forcing a person to lower testosterone levels to compete in any category;" but also that "Ensure the inclusive participation of all persons wishing to play sports, through the creation of open categories for those persons who do not wish to compete in the category of their biological sex, or convert the male category into an open category."
If these recommendations were followed, it might force Christine to race in the male category — depending on who got to decide what her "biological sex" is. Not great!
Footnotes & Reminders
South Africans call sneakers “tekkies.”
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