For female athletes of color, challenging gender rules and identity is part of a long trend

PARIS (AP) — Overcome with emotion, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif left the ring in tears after a resounding victory this weekend. Khelif has endured days of hateful comments and false accusations about her gender after her first fight against an Italian opponent who quit after just seconds.

“It’s because she’s African, because she’s Algerian,” Algerian fan Adel Mohammed, 38, said Saturday, as Khelif won an Olympic medal. “These comments come from white people… it’s a kind of racism.”

Female athletes of color have historically faced disproportionate scrutiny and discrimination when it comes to gender testing and false accusations that they are male or transgender, historians and anthropologists say. Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, who won her bout Sunday after similar abuse and questions about her gender, are the latest examples of women of color caught in the contentious debate over gender prescriptions and perceptions in sports.

More women from the Global South or developing countries are affected by sex testing in sports, said Payoshni Mitra, director of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, a Switzerland-based human rights organization. She has worked with dozens of female athletes in Asia and Africa to combat sex testing practices.

“Sports is very Eurocentric — the approach is not necessarily global,” Mitra said. “We need to accept women in all their diversity. And we don’t see that at the moment.”

Mitra and other advocates and anthropologists note that international sports federations typically fail to promote an understanding of diversity in sex and gender identity, and that gender testing often targets female athletes of color who do not conform to typically Western, white ideals of femininity.

In 2009, after her 800m World Championship win, South African runner Caster Semanya was sidelined for 11 months due to athletics rules on hormone levels. She spent years fighting demands that she suppress her natural testosterone in order to compete.

Semenya was identified as female at birth, raised as a girl, and has legally identified as female her entire life. She has a condition known as differences of sex development, or DSDs, which causes naturally high testosterone levels.

World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, said Semenya’s testosterone levels give her an athletic advantage similar to that of a man competing in women’s events and that rules are needed to address that. Critics of the rules — which were introduced in 2011 and have been tightened over the years — view naturally high testosterone levels as a genetic gift, comparing it to a basketball player’s height or a swimmer’s long arms.

“No one disqualified Michael Phelps because he had certain biological characteristics that enabled him to excel in swimming,” said medical anthropologist Danyal Kade Doyle Griffiths, an associate professor at the City University of New York.

Indian sprinter Dutee Chand also faced a flurry of criticism and was removed from the 2014 Commonwealth Games after reports of elevated testosterone levels. She underwent a series of tests and eventually took the International Athletics Federation to court, challenging rules that placed a limit on natural testosterone levels in female athletes.

Regardless of gender or hormonal differences, women of color—and Black women in particular—are often subjected to stereotypes that paint them as more masculine. Dehumanization and objectification date back to slavery, when enslaved Black women were auctioned off based on their physical appearance and abilities that were seen as more masculine or feminine.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation have spread online surrounding tennis star Serena Williams, who falsely claims she was born male. In 2017, she wrote an open letter to her mother, thanking her for being an example in confronting people “too ignorant to understand the power of a black woman.”

Basketball star Brittney Griner has also faced similar false accusations amid the scrutiny of Black women and their bodies that is rooted in historical racism: they are often seen as not feminine enough, too muscular, intimidating or masculine.

“These examples seem to me to be specific cases where racism, transphobia and intersexphobia are inextricably linked,” Griffiths said. “It goes back to a much longer history of the way race is gendered, where black women are seen as more masculine than white women.”

The definition of femininity “is often based on Western ideas of white femininity or standards of white beauty,” said Cheryl Cooky, a professor of American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Purdue University. If a female athlete doesn’t fit into those white, Western standards, “they’re subjected to these questions and accusations.”

In Khelif’s case, the banned International Boxing Association disqualified her from the 2023 world championships after alleging she failed unspecified fitness tests for the women’s boxing competition, citing elevated testosterone levels. The Russian-dominated organization — which has been in conflict with the International Olympic Committee for years — has refused to provide information about the tests.

“The whole process is flawed,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Sunday. “From the genesis of the test, to how the test was shared with us, to how the tests became public, it is so flawed that it is impossible to deal with.”

Adams previously said that Khelif “was born female, is registered female, has lived her life as a female, is registered female and has a female passport.”

The Olympic body published a 10-principle approach to gender and sex inclusion in 2021 that recognized the need for a “safe, harassment-free environment” that honors athletes’ identities while ensuring competition is fair. Advocates like Mitra hope it will be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, Algerians have rallied behind Khelif and defended her from hateful comments. Algerian athlete Zahra Tatar, who competed in the hammer throw, called Khelif’s fight “beautiful” and said “we all hope she gets the gold medal.”