NZ media punches down on women

Our mainstream media's coverage of the Olympic women's boxing controversy

Background

Back in the late 1990s, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stopped routine sex verification testing of Olympic participants. With the rise in numbers of transgender athletes, and a better understanding of differences of sex development (DSDs) sometimes called intersex conditions, the Olympics criteria for participation in single-sex sports has been evolving. The current policy, in place for the first time at these Olympics, is that the Olympics would set no sex requirements. Instead, the IOC directed relevant international sporting federations to set and manage sex-eligibility criteria, testing and compliance within each of their respective sports.

Boxing has been a bit complicated in this regard. In 2023, due to ongoing governance and finance issues, the IOC stripped the boxing federation, the International Boxing Association (IBA), of its official status. With no international federation in place, the IOC took on the responsibility for running Olympic boxing. In terms of managing sex eligibility, the IOC made an odd decision for a combat sport: there would be no sex testing.

Tighter or looser eligibility for inclusion in single-sex sports impacts female sports far more than it impacts male sports. Males (whether they have experienced male puberty or not) have physical advantages. They are stronger, faster, and need less body fat to be healthy. They have bigger hearts, greater lung capacity and a skeletal structure with mechanical advantages. Normal male testosterone and female testosterone levels are vastly different and never overlap.

The difference is obvious to those familiar with sports. “Men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely, almost, two different sports” says Serena Williams. “The men are a lot faster, they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game.” The women’s world record for the 100-meter sprint has been surpassed by around 1900 men. The gap between male and female swimmers sits consistently at seven percent. Of particular relevance to boxing, the average male punch power is a staggering 162% more powerful than the average female.

This is the background to the 2024 Paris Olympics: a well-established understanding of the vast physiological advantage of males to females, a discredited international boxing federation and no sex testing. Into this strolled two boxers who, according to the debunked IBA were not eligible to box as females. One was Algeria’s Imane Khelif who would go on to win gold in the women’s welterweight boxing and the other was Lin Yu-Ting from Taiwan who won gold in the women’s featherweight division. Their participation in the Paris Olympics sparked fierce debate.

The debate

The motion

Khelif and Lin were entitled to participate in Olympic female sports without any sex testing in place and despite previous questions about their sex eligibility.

Those in favour

The International Olympic Committee and those supporting the inclusion of Imane Khelif and Lin-Yu Ting in female sports are saying (in summary):

• The two athletes were born female and have lived their entire lives as females;

• Their passports show them as female and that is enough to be eligible for female sports;

• The International Boxing Association (IBA) is a discredited organisation and therefore we can ignore any test results associated with it;

• The IBA tests are illegitimate and flawed;

• “I hope we’re all agreed, that we’re not calling for people to go back to the bad old days of sex testing” (IOC spokesperson Mark Adams);

• There is no easy, reliable way to test for sex.

• Questions about the sex of the boxers are in bad faith.

Those against

The International Boxing Association and those who questioned or argued against the inclusion of the two athletes:

• The integrity of single-sex sports depends on definitions of male and female that are accurate, explicit and biologically-based—males are those with bodies that are organised around producing sperm, females are those with bodies that are organised around producing eggs.

• The IBA sent blood samples of the two athletes to two different independent and internationally credited sex-testing labs. It was not conducting the tests themselves, so, regardless of the IBA’s current status with the Olympics, these tests should be taken seriously;

• The tests organised by the IBA showed that both athletes did not meet the criteria for female boxing;

• Both boxers had the opportunity to appeal the tests. If the results of the test are not appealed the tests are legally binding;

• Lin did not appeal the test results. After initially appealing Khelif withdrew their appeal. Both tests are therefore legally valid;

• The details of the tests can not be released because the information is confidential to Khelif and Lin;

• The IOC could have spared further speculation and run sex tests on the athletes thereby protecting Khelif and Lin from further scrutiny;

• Contrary to the IOC claim sex testing is easier and more accurate than ever before.

• In 1999 when the IOC stopped sex testing, they did this despite 82 percent of female Olympians wanting to retain sex testing;

• Males fighting females is legitimising male violence against women;

• Because of male physical advantage females put into a boxing ring with males are in danger of serious injury and death;

• Some critics speculate that confusion around Khelif and Lin’s sex is because both have a DSD—probably 5-ARD. With 5-ARD and some other DSDs, male babies can appear and are registered as female at birth because their genitals have not developed typically in the womb. Those with 5-ARD are, however, biologically male. They have male bodies, go through male puberty and retain male physiological advantages in sports. Their sex, sometimes to the distress of the individual and their families, becomes obvious at puberty.

NZ media coverage

The great story

It’s quite a story. The New Zealand media had an opportunity to report the furore and its context accurately. It could have made for fascinating reading. Was this an unfair attack on Khelif and Lin or had the IOC put female athletes in danger? Why was the IOC spokesperson so determinedly saying sex tests were difficult and unethical when others said they could be done discreetly and were non-invasive, accurate and essential for preserving female sports? If sex inclusion is based on passports or other documents rather than medical testing what does this mean for the future of female sport? Why did the IOC choose not to do sex testing for boxing when the world federations for athletics, aquatics, cycling and rugby all have sex-based criteria and testing. If the two athletes were female why didn’t the IOC just run tests and stop the unfair rumours? Why didn’t the athletes volunteer to get tested or voluntarily release the results of the IBA tests? Were the IBA tests actually a Russian plot as some claimed? Why were so many female athletes adamant that the whole thing was unfair? Why did scientists question the IOC? What’s with the XX hand signals made by some of the athletes? Surely, all that is, shall we say, journalistic gold.

The dull, predictable reckons

Alas, these are not the stories New Zealanders got to read. I looked at 14 freely available text-based articles that have been run on The Spinoff, RNZ, NZ Herald and Stuff over the past week. New Zealand mainstream media has yet again punched down on women. Rather than covering the story properly and staking out the nuances of the argument, the writers all felt compelled to come down heavily on one side. There is little difference now between straight reporting and opinion pieces. The side NZ writers published by the mainstream media landed on was, without fail, the IOC position: the two athletes were unquestioningly female and anyone who disagreed didn’t know what they were talking about, had probably never thought about women’s sports until two minutes ago and were hateful liars.

The hateful, liar thing is a theory repeated so often, it’s worth testing. Among high-profile critics of the lack of IOC’s sex testing are notable sportswomen including tennis great Martina Navratilova, NCAA track and field champion Linda Blade, North American deadlift record holder April Hutchison and Olympian swimmer Sharon Davies. Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls is also critical and calls for the re-introduction of sex testing. Scientists who critiqued or questioned the IOC’s seeming disregard for women’s safety included evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, University of Manchester developmental biologist Emma Hilton, Tommy Lundberg, a physiologist at the Karolinska Institute and Ross Tucker, science and research consultant for World Rugby. To dismiss the arguments presented by this rather prestigious, informed mix of people as hateful, misinformation is invidious. Sadly, that’s just what NZ MSM did.

The Spinoff

On The Spinoff Hera Lindsay Bird (The biggest scandals of the 2024 Paris Olympics so far) referred to those calling for sex tests for, um, single-sex sports as (here we go) “hateful losers”, “the world’s biggest haters and losers”, “transphobic activists”, “irate transvestigators”; “shameless” and “the most stupid and hateful people on the internet”.

RNZ

Criticisms about IOC were summed up by Hayden Donnell on RNZ (Online misinformation, real world damage) as “rampant misinformation online”, “generalised freakout from conservative pundits”, “mass meltdown” and involving “some kind of malice”.

RNZ republished Misinformation, abuse and injustice: Breaking down the Olympic boxing firestorm from The Conversation. In this article, University of Waikato Professor of Sport and Gender, Holly Thorpe, and research fellow, Ryon Storr, are similarly outraged by demands to protect women’s sports.

Rather than addressing the key issue at hand—are actual males playing in actual female sports and thereby compromising safety and fairness for women?—Thorpe and Storr lash out at anyone daring to ask reasonable questions. The accusations flow as fast and dirty as some suspected the Seine was. The authors talk of “harmful inaccuracies and widespread online hate speech”; suggest that “many sportswomen who appear too powerful, too successful, or look ‘too masculine’ according to a particular set of values are at risk of being targeted”; and claim “the extreme levels of online abuse directed to sportswomen such as Khelif and Lin reveal new ways in which women's bodies are being policed and regulated.”

This notion—that the serious critiques of Khelif and Lin’s inclusion were about the athletes being insufficiently feminine—is disingenuous, inaccurate and a favourite talking point in Aotearoa. Prominent scientists, athletes and commentators have repeatedly said that they are concerned only about the sex of the athletes. Facts, I guess, never got in the way of a good trope.

Other RNZ articles were also one-sided. Olympics 2024: Paris gold has 'special taste' for Khelif after gender dispute quotes Khelif as saying "I am a woman like any woman. I was born a woman and I have lived as a woman but there are enemies to success and they can't digest my success. That also gives my success a special taste."

IBA gender tests on boxers were flawed and illegitimate, says IOC quotes the Taiwanese president as saying "In recent days, Taiwan's people have been indignant at the slander against her. Facing the challenge, Yu-ting is fearless and uses her strength to crush the rumours. Let us continue to cheer for her!"

Credit where credit’s due RNZ did publish the most balanced reports I found. Sadly I can’t hat-tip any New Zealand journalists. Olympics games: Boxing gender row as Italian Carini pulls out of Paris came from Katie Falkingham of the BBC and Two boxers who failed gender tests cleared for Olympics was a Reuters story.

NZ Herald

NZ Herald republished Ben Mackay’s piece from the Australian Associated Press. That piece dismissed the IBA position, upheld the IOC position and said any claims that Khelif was male were false. NZ Herald also republished a slightly more balanced piece from The Washington Post which at least fairly stated some of what IBA was saying.

Olympics 2024: Boxing - Why the two women at centre of gender row are allowed to compete in Paris states the IOC position clearly, the IBA position with many caveats, and complains that JK Rowling and Elon Musk’s opposition to the boxers’ inclusion did not acknowledge two athletes were cis-women.

Bonnie Jansen’s opinion piece: Paris 2024: Imane Khelif, Lin Yu-ting and the contradiction in Olympic boxing’s gender debate ridiculed complaints about Khelif’s and Lin’s inclusion as “excuses” which would be similar to runner Samuel Tanner blaming a recent blunder on his shortness, or Roger Federer complaining that an opponent had an edge because he was left-handed. Jansen calls Khelif “a female boxer, born with a slight difference” who has “physical attributes out of her control” and “that she is called out for being too dominant or dangerous in her field”. This is far from a fair representation of the issue at stake. If the boxers are male these are not slight differences. Maleness is not a physical attribute analogous to height. Not to be outdone by other commentators Jansen goes on to reprimand anyone’s suspicions about Khelif or Lin as “hate-speech”, “misinformation” and “damaging, unfair and contradictory”. As a final drumroll Jansen talks of “spectacular bodies” and “unrivalled talent”.

Stuff

Stuff reprinted three pieces from Greg Beachem of the US’s Associated Press. Boxer quits in seconds after taking hardest punch of her life while still chiming with IOC’s take is the most reserved of the three articles. Boxing group answers some questions but raises many more about tests on Imane Khelif, Lin Yu-ting covered an IBA press conference saying the IBA “refused” to release the results of the sex tests conducted on the two athletes but did not mention, as IBA have on several occasions, that issues of medical privacy prevented them from doing so. In the third Beachem article ‘Gold tastes sweeter’, says Olympic champ boxer after ‘attacks’ about her womanhood the author makes no attempts to hide his enthusiasm for Khelif’s win. He quotes liberally from Khelif and IOC while citing critiques as “attacks”; “intense scrutiny”, “online abuse”, “criticisms and attacks on her femininity” and “slander”. Khelif’s first opponent at the Olympics, Angela Carini, withdrew after 46 seconds citing overwhelming pain, an incident that, by the time of this article, Beachem is describing as “bizarre”.

Prudish, close-minded misogyny

We get the picture. Two brave and dazzling athletes overcoming adversity and sticking it to their villainous enemies.

There’s a prudishness in all this fawning though. It’s all very No sex please, we’re Kiwis. Biology, the journalists seem to say, so central to sport, is a bit crass and rude. We’d rather not talk about it.

The writers featured on the media platforms I looked at were quick to gush about Khelif and Lin, tripped over themselves to play the misinformation gambit, but were glacier-slow to give a good faith hearing to the arguments at hand. Most of the stories followed a single narrative so closely they could have been written by the same person.

This kind of one-sided reporting is boring and it doesn’t serve New Zealanders well. And there’s more than a whiff of now predictable misogyny involved. Over recent years we’ve seen a new lease of life to this old tradition. Women’s rights are problematic. Those who take a scientific view of sex, one steeped in material reality and common sense, those who are keen to retain sex-based spaces, sports and language, and those who want to talk about their rights are painted as enemies of a civilised society.

The tragedy is that, yet again, this women bashing is disguised as something else.