The below contents originally arose as part of my “various” page on 2024-08-02. After repeated additions, they grew unnecessarily lengthy, and I moved them to a separate page. While some changes were made with the move, the contents were not straightened out to the level of a typical page. The formal division, in particular, was added without much in terms of restructuring. I have not added (but probably should add) information on the background to the conflict, which has become more important as we move away from a “current event”. Ditto the potential political aspect in a confrontation between the IOC and IBA, of which I was only vaguely aware at the time of original writing.
Due to the great uncertainties involved, cf. below, statements about specifics must be taken with corresponding reservations. (While the big-picture issues remain the same. Note that the later events of the tournament did nothing to resolve these uncertainties.)
I also caution that I have not seen Imane Khelif fight, but, with my interest more on the societal, political, whatnot, aspects, this is no great detriment. (But a below excursion might or might not have looked differently, had I seen her fight.)
In my subjective impression, the press mellowed considerable as time went by and compared to a day or two after the 46-second fight. (Maybe, to the point that I would not have bothered with a text, had the press started where it ended.)
During the Olympic boxing tournament controversies arose around the participation of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, and who is or is not a female fighter/a fighter eligible to compete among women. The below will discuss some aspects of the controversies, centered on Khelif (whose 46-second fight was my original starting point).
At the conclusion of the tournament, more than a week after my first writings, the two stood as clear winners, having won each and every fight 5–0, excepting Khelif’s 46-second fight. However, as predicted (cf. excursion), no-one died. No-one was, to my knowledge, seriously injured either, and there was not even a KO from either of the two. (With reservations for how the 46-second fight was formally counted.)
In her first fight of the tournament, Imane Khelif won after 46 seconds of the first round, as her opponent quit, citing pain and fear for her life, causing the existing pre-competition controversy to explode.
My position on transgender athletes has been discussed elsewhere (TODO import from Wordpress and link), but here we seem to have another issue—someone who has lived her entire life as a woman while (unbeknownst to herself) having an atypical chromosome combination. (And this with a great “maybe”, as I have read conflicting accounts; notably, regarding whether a genetic or hormone test had been made.)
If we go by a chromosomal explanation and assume that Khelif biologically manifests as a woman, a ban on competition might still be justified, but, if so, not in a manner that casts blame on Khelif. (Much unlike if she was someone like Lia Thomas or, if for different reasons, someone who had doped herself with e.g. testosterone.) Exactly this, however, is what parts of the press seem to do. Here they might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Moreover, this poses an interesting historical problem: Transgenders/-sexuals in female competitions are a new phenomenon, which has only become a major topic over the last few years. (Some very rare earlier cases exist, e.g. the 1970s tennis player Renée Richards, née Richard Raskin.) The issue of humans that manifest as women but have unusual chromosome combinations (at all or for a woman) is, presumably, nothing new at all—there is no obvious reason why there would be more of them today than in the past. (However, better tests, a greater interest in testing, and/or a greater awareness of what types of tests might be relevant could easily have brought the number of known cases up.)
But, no, I cannot categorically rule an increase in the proportion out. Maybe, e.g., some change in radiation levels or the spread of some chemical could have such an effect. The point is that there is no a priori reasons to assume such an increase.
Even if athletes like Khelif actually are more common today, however, some caution is needed. It might, e.g., be that she and Lin Yu-ting underwent a test because of their success, that this test revealed a condition, and that the combination of success and test results made the headlines—while some less successful boxers also have the same condition, but did not undergo the test, leaving us (and them!) in ignorance of the condition. (This would be an interesting example of sample bias.)
Looking at that 46-second fight: If Khelif had been a newcomer, fighting women for the first time, this would have been potentially incriminating (as with e.g. Lia Thomas—a mediocre competitor among men who suddenly was a quite good competitor among women). However, she is not. Wikipedia currently (2024-08-02) gives her record as 42 victories (including some later disqualifications; presumably, for exactly the issue at hand) to 9 losses, with 6 KOs, going back to 2018. Moreover, even allowing for the lesser punching power of women and the generally fewer KOs in amateur boxing, this is not the record of a female Ivan Drago.
Claressa Shields, for comparison and also going by Wikipedia, appears to have an amateur record of 64 wins to 1 loss with 5 KOs, and, as a pro, additionally 15 victories, with no losses and 3 KOs. Khelif, then, has a higher KO ratio, but not by a Drago-ic distance—and going (almost) undefeated is more valuable than having a high KO ratio. (And it might well be that some other woman has a much higher percentage. I am not very knowledgable about female boxers, and picked Shields based on her high status, not her KO record.)
According to an Internet search, the fictional Ivan Drago was 100–0, all by KO; after which he went pro and knocked out all opponents except Rocky. He also appears to have been the Olympic champion five times in a row (1968–1984).
If (!) something has changed in her performance, it is not a matter of chromosomes or a “new kid on the block”. (What this change might be, should one exist, I do not know. Alternatives range from better training to doping. Reservation: I assume that we have a continuity of identity. If we include far-fetched scenarios like a legitimate woman at some point being replaced by her brother, we might very well have a “new kid on the block”, but such an explanation would not meet the approval of Occam.)
From another angle, her participation at this level is very unfortunate, should she rightfully have been excluded (a point where I currently make no claim): Either she wins the tournament and controversy is prolonged and deepened, while a greater injustice is done towards the boxer that would have been the winner in an alternate reality—or she does not win, after which her participation would be seen as justified by the deranged Left and similar groups: After all, if some “regular” woman can beat her, she does, ipso facto, not have an unfair advantage. This type of reasoning does not hold water, as can be seen e.g. by the aforementioned Lia Thomas and Renée Richards, neither of which reached the highest levels even among women—any advantage must be measured against the right base line. (By analogy, Tom Cruise wearing lifts is still not a tall-seeming guy—but he does have an unfair/artificial advantage over Tom Cruise without lifts.) Experience shows, however, that what does or does not hold water is of little relevance to Leftist propaganda.
To look at some related issues:
The prevalence and (here) abuse of the word/concept “gender” over sex is unfortunate: If (!) she has an unfair advantage for “being a man”, this is clearly a matter of biology and sex—not gender, self-identification, or whatnot. Nevertheless, media use irrelevant formulations relating to “gender identity”, “gender controversy”, and similar. (Reservation: Should the underlying explanation be different, e.g. that “she” actually is man engaging in a very long game, this changes. However, in my readings, I have seen no indications that speak for this. Ditto the above brother scenario.)
Repeated formulations fall into the nonsensical trap of “men being mean to women”, as if this was yet another attempt by the fictitious “Patriarchy” to “oppress” or “abolish” women. (The latter word being particularly idiotic.) The overriding issue of men-competing-as-women (which Khelif might not be) is not a matter of men opposing women—it is a matter of “first they came” and, in the continuation, two branches of the “comers”, gender-fanatics and Feminists, slugging it out. Women just happened to be further down the list of those on the receiving end than e.g. men, Whites, and Trump voters. (To boot, chances are that many individual cases go back to opportunism, where mediocre male athletes might see a chance to get some success by abusing the current societal situation, without themselves having an ideological interest in the involved causes and without themselves genuinely being “women in a man’s body”.)
Should Khelif have an unfair advantage, it is not a given that this advantage corresponds to that of an indisputable man. For instance, following the fight, I have ever again seen the claim that men would (on average) punch 160-something percent harder than women. (A claim that I have not verified, but which I take to be true for the purposes of this paragraph.) But would someone with unusual chromosomes, who still manifests (wholly or mostly) as a woman, actually have that full advantage, or might it be that she punches, say, 20 percent harder? If in doubt, the average man is much heavier than the average woman, while weight classes prevent Khelif from having this weight advantage. (How much harder does a man punch than a woman of the same weight?) Another potential complication is level of training: I have seen no mention of what samples have been compared, but if they refer to the overall population, the average man might have a greater advantage in training than the average male boxer (compared to respectively an average woman and an average female boxer). If so, those 160-something percent might suddenly be much smaller.
This point also illustrates a common complication—that we must not only pay attention to what is or is not fair to the athletes but also to what is good or bad journalism (argumentation, whatnot).
Apparently, the IOC (for the time being replacing IBA as arranger) uses passports to determine sex and/or “gender”. This is, of course, idiotic: different countries could have radically different rules, many might ignore biological realities in favor of political or ideological concerns, and an increased risk of cheating remains (e.g. in that a shady country issues the “right” passport to give a man-passing-as-woman an unfair opportunity or that a suitable bribe opens the door).
An interesting side-development is that the Feminist fiction of e.g. female tennis players being as good as their male counterparts is taking an indirect whacking. (Ditto, e.g. the ease with which women routinely beat up men twice their size in modern fiction.) The idea was ridiculous to begin with, exactly due to differences in physique, but was nevertheless pushed by some and apparently believed by many of the naive. Note e.g. that those who did not give Serena Williams much of a chance against top men were decried as sexist. Possibly related, some seem to consider tennis viewers sexist if they prefer to watch men’s tennis. (In sports, the top men also usually move on a higher skill level, be it through greater competition or harder training, but this is off topic.)
I have repeatedly heard anecdotes about non-boxers facing a professional boxer for the first time (e.g. a professional wrestler vs. a boxer doing some boxing sparring) and being shocked by the pain involved. The issue for them, then, is not that the damage done by the punches is too large—but that they are unprepared for the pain. I do not have practical experiences as a boxer, but I have some personal experiences that, on a lesser scale, make these anecdotes plausible. If so, it is not a given that even a great perception of danger caused by pain reflects a great danger. This might or might not be a factor in the 46-second fight and other similar experiences (should they exist).
While boxing deaths do happen, they are rare, even with great apparent mismatches. Mike Tyson never actually killed an opponent, for instance. Moreover, they do not usually seem to happen in the context of a massive superiority that brings a KO within the first three rounds. (Note that amateur fights are limited to three rounds.) Instead they are a matter of prolonged, and often mutual, beatings over many rounds. (A non-mutual beating, if in doubt, would likely be stopped by the referee at an early stage.) With less certainty, I would also see a connection with prior beatings and bad knock-outs. Correspondingly, I suspect, that the risk of actual death from boxing Khelif would be very, very small—even the lack of prior deaths on her record aside. (This notwithstanding the possibility that the risk for lesser injuries might be increased relative fighting a “regular” opponent. If such injuries have happened at an unusual rate in her prior fights, I am not aware of it.)
There is more to punching power than muscle mass and whatnot. The true key appears to be to use the entire body in the right manner, from foot to fist, which goes a long way to explain differences even among male boxers of a similar body type. (With other factors including who goes for a big punch and who goes for control.) If Khelif is a fantastically hard puncher by the standards of the competition, great care must be taken to investigate why, before conclusions are drawn.
While big punchers can have a significant advantage, the conventional wisdom is that unexpected punches, punches from unusual angles, etc., are greater weapons than unusually hard punches. As demonstrated by Deontay Wilder, exceptional punching power can overcome a skill deficit and create a top-few-in-the-world boxer, but it is very rare and, if Khelif is a juggernaut, chances are that there is more to that story than just punching power. Especially, cf. above, as her KO record is not that of Ivan Drago.
Other purported advantages must also be taken with a grain of salt or seen in the right context. For instance, if one boxer has a greater reach, this can be a considerably advantage in some styles of boxing and some match-ups—but it need not be so. The undefeated Marciano, e.g., had comparatively short arms and used them to great advantage close up. Frazier had nowhere near the reach of Ali, yet beat him once and gave him a very hard fight in two rematch losses. The gigantic (7 foot!) Valuev lost against the much smaller Chagaev and David Haye (a former cruiser-weight), and came very close to losing to Holyfield (another former cruiser-weight and well past his prime at the time).
Now, all other factors equal, someone like Valuev has an enormous advantage over someone like Chagaev—much, much larger than Khelif vs. her competition. (If in doubt, the use of weight classes prevents even an indisputable man from gaining that type of size advantage, even should he fare better than the women on strength-relative-own-weight or reach-relative-own-weight.) Chagaev still took the fight against the then undefeated Valuev and won.
Which is by no means to rule out that Khelif had an unfair advantage and/or should have been banned from the competition (I remain agnostic on both issues, for now). The point is that (a) the likes of reach and strength are not the only determinants, (b) male heavyweights have often gone up against even greater disadvantages than Khelif’s opponents purportedly did.
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