The simple way to protect women’s sport at the Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) needs to find some far better answers to the transgender question if it is to restore its credibility in eyes of those who care about women’s sport. We might not have the spectacle of Laurel Hubbard – the transgender weightlifter who displaced a woman from the last games in Tokyo – but the debate is far from settled.

Some potential transgender competitors, such as the American swimmer Lia Thomas or British cyclist Emily Bridges, were excluded ahead of the Games in Paris by their own governing bodies. There was no place for them there. That is a good thing. Nobody is excluding Thomas, Bridges or any other male transsexual from competing altogether; rather the rules quite rightly prevent them from competing in categories reserved for the female sex.

But, nevertheless, a row has blown up over two boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan, who – according to the president of the International Boxing Association (IBA) – have taken DNA tests that ‘proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the [women’s] sports events’.

That should have been the end of it, but the IBA president is Russian, and that interview was given to TASS – the Russian news agency. For one reason or another, the IBA was prevented from running the boxing competitions in Paris. Responsibility passed instead to the IOC’s Paris 2024 boxing unit, which is rather more relaxed about the issue.

Appearing at the daily news conference in Paris, IOC spokesman Mark Adams announced that ‘everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules’. His justification? – ‘They are women on their passport, they have competed for many years’.

That’s just not good enough. There are many different passport issuing authorities, each with their own rules on changing sex markers. Australia – among others – even allows the applicant to withhold their sex. The UK might not allow that, but the sex marker can be swapped if the applicant’s doctor is willing to sign a letter confirming that the ‘change of gender is likely to be permanent’.

That can be very helpful to individuals if they have already been perceived by immigration officers to be the opposite sex. The purpose of the sex marker is to help connect the 80 kg of flesh and blood standing at the front of the line with the national status and any visas in their passport. But crucially, HM Passport Office adds, ‘Unlike the gender recognition certificate (GRC) the issue of a passport in an acquired gender does not give legal recognition of the change of gender.’ Adams – formerly of the BBC and ITN – please take note!

Where sport is concerned, how individuals choose to identify or even how they are perceived by others is far less important than the bodies they walk around in. So, for example, the two athletes in Paris who openly identify as transgender or non-binary, Nikki Hiltz and Quinn, present no problem whatsoever by competing in women’s events. American runner Hiltz and Canadian footballer Quinn are both biologically female, and neither has taken testosterone (which is a performance enhancing drug). But someone with XY chromosomes who went through a normal male puberty (like me, in fact) has no business whatsoever competing in women’s sports.

Few people might have had their chromosomes tested, but it’s not a particularly complicated or expensive process. The NHS can run a genetic test from a sample of blood or saliva. Elite athletes can expect to be subjected to regular dope tests; if the rules were based simply on genetics, then their chromosomes can be tested at the same time.

If there is room for debate, it concerns certain intersex conditions – or differences of sexual development, as they are sometimes known – where individuals develop differently during puberty. But let’s leave individuals out of it; what matters are specific – and diagnosable – medical conditions.

If sports’ governing bodies decide that CAIS women (people with XY chromosomes whose bodies are insensitive to the masculinising effect of the testosterone produced by their internal testes) are specifically eligible for women’s sports, then they are eligible – all of them. On the other hand, if people with 5-Alpha-Reductase Deficiency (the chromosome condition attributed to Caster Semenya that impacts her muscle mass and strength) are ineligible then they are all ineligible.

That way everyone knows where they stand, and there would be no need for Adams to point out that ‘we all have a responsibility to try to dial down this and not turn it into some kind of witch hunt’. Adams was correct when he said that it was not right to ‘stigmatise’ people, but this is a problem of the IOC’s making, and one the IOC needs to sort out.

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Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.

Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum

* This article was first published by The Spectator on 1 August 2024: The simple way to protect women’s sport at the Olympics.