Olympic competition is meant to celebrate the best of the best \u2014 often serving as a career high point for elite athletes.<\/p>\n
For gold-medal-winning Olympic boxers Imane Khelif, of Algeria, and Lin Yu-ting, of Taiwan, however, their success at the Paris Games brought as much scrutiny as celebration when a firestorm of misinformation erupted about their eligibility to compete as women in their respective weight classes.<\/p>\n
Brock University Associate Professor of Sport Management Michele Donnelly says the ordeal was \u201c<\/strong>horrifying,\u201d and that it was \u201cincredibly sad to see that these athletes had made it all the way to the Olympic Games \u2014 and this is the story being told about them.\u201d<\/p>\n The commentary circulating in mainstream and social media is loosely linked to the two athletes being disqualified from last year\u2019s World Boxing Championships after allegedly failing gender eligibility tests administered by the International Boxing Association. Khelif has since filed a lawsuit about online harassment related to the ongoing situation.<\/p>\n Donnelly says one statement from a \u201ccompletely discredited, unrecognized \u2014 by the International Olympic Committee \u2014 International Boxing Association\u201d did not warrant the international criticism thrust onto the two athletes.<\/p>\n \u201cKhelif and Yu-ting were used by some individuals with large social media followings to forward an anti-trans or trans-exclusionary agenda that really has nothing to do with them, or, I would argue, has very little to do with women\u2019s sport,\u201d she says. \u201cTo me, it reinforces how harmful gender or sex-based eligibility requirements are for all women athletes. These women are being targeted based on their appearance, their skill sets, the sport they participate in and people\u2019s continued discomfort with women in a combat sport, like boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n The situation also plays into rhetoric that women athletes and women\u2019s sport categories need to be \u201cprotected,\u201d Donnelly says, which is fuelled by a \u201cpatronizing, condescending notion that if a man did compete in a women’s competition, of course, he would be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n She also says some believe in the \u201cbizarre notion that someone would change their gender or disguise themselves as a woman to compete in a women’s competition \u2014 but nobody is choosing to be trans to compete in women\u2019s sport. Full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Further to that, Donnelly adds that both Yu-ting and Khelif are cisgender women who have competed in the women\u2019s category for their entire boxing careers.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first \u2014 or last \u2014 conversation surrounding gender identity and regulation in sport, either.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a continuation of policing women\u2019s bodies and activities and after many years of sex and gender-based testing in sport, we know that there’s no one characteristic that easily distinguishes between male and female bodies \u2014 human bodies are much more complex than that,\u201d Donnelly says. \u201cThere\u2019s a racialized element, too, and it\u2019s been consistent in the time that sex testing has been in place that Brown and Black women are targeted with these questions about their femininity and womanness. What we see is an expectation of a very specific version of what it means to be or look like a woman in the world, and in sport.\u201d<\/p>\n While Khelif and Yu-ting will return home as heroes in their home countries, the scrutiny they endured may also be of concern to young athletes.<\/p>\n \u201cThey may question what could happen to them if they continue to compete in their sport, and want to compete at the highest level, and don’t want to or cannot meet the imposed and limited standards of femininity and what it means to look and act like a woman,\u201d Donnelly says. \u201cWe celebrate exceptional bodies in men\u2019s sport, but we don\u2019t have the same conversations when women’s bodies are exceptional.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Olympic competition is meant to celebrate the best of the best \u2014 often serving as a career high point for elite athletes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":94993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,1],"tags":[12863,13712,28,4753,7488,8463],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94994,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94992\/revisions\/94994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}