Are there male boxers fighting in the women’s division at the Olympics?

 By Denny Burk

Perhaps you saw the news about an Italian boxer name Angela Carini, who threw in the towel after 46 seconds in the ring with Algeria’s Imane Khelif at the Olympics. Carini said that she had never been hit so hard by another boxer and that she had to stop the fight. Olympic hopes dashed, she fell to her knees after the forfeit weeping and crying out that it’s not fair. Why wasn’t it fair?

As clips from the fight began flooding social media feeds, many viewers concluded that Carini’s opponent was a man identifying as a woman (i.e., transgender). Riley Gaines tweeted, “This is glorified male violence against women.” J. K. Rowling wrote,

Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.

It looked very much like another Lia Thomas situation, the man who infamously crushed his female competition in NCAA swimming but who was ultimately disqualified from the Olympics. Was Imane Khelif pulling a Lia Thomas?

The answer to that question is a little more complicated than viewers might expect. Lia Thomas is unambiguously a biological male who has a adopted the “identity” of a woman. Imane Khelif’s situation, however, is not so straightforward.

Continue here.

See also:

• How should Christians respond to the gender controversy in women’s Olympic boxing? (denisonforum.org)