Festivus — the fictional holiday alternative to Christmas introduced by the “Seinfeld” cinematic universe in which the airing of grievances plays a significant part — is Dec. 23, so this message reaches you a little bit later than I’d have liked it to.
However, the world — in particular, the non-Y-chromosome-having world — has a mighty grievance to air, particularly as it regards women’s athletics.
If you take serious stock in the Associated Press’ year-end honors, it comes as no surprise that the outlet’s Female Athlete of the Year is Caitlin Clark, who first made the NCAA women’s college basketball tournament more exciting than the men’s for the first time then ignited actual interest in the WNBA with a stellar rookie performance that ended with her winning Rookie of the Year by near-unanimous vote.
“Fans packed sold-out arenas and millions of television viewers tuned in to follow her journey. Clark’s exploits were far reaching, casting a light on other women’s sports leagues along the way,” the AP wrote in its Tuesday story.
But wait — note the dateline. Why would the world’s premiere wire service put something like this out on Christmas Eve, when most of us are gathering with family? When Simone Biles was the AP’s Female Athlete of the Year last year, for instance, it came out on Dec. 22, when people were paying attention to the news and not the NFL games in between helpings of ham and yule log.
Perhaps I’m being a conspiracy theorist here, but the next paragraph might hold the key:
“A group of 74 sports journalists from The Associated Press and its members voted on the award. Clark received 35 votes, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was second with 25, and boxer Imane Khelif was third, getting four votes,” the article read. [Emphasis ours.]
Sigh.
OK, so let’s go through a recapitulation of Khelif’s accomplishments, such as they are, because the Paris Olympics are long in our cultural rear-view mirrors and, so I had hoped, was the fact that the Algerian boxer was cause célèbre of the left for reasons that had nothing to do with her skills.
Khelif was one of two women’s boxers at the Olympics who had been disqualified by the International Boxing Association in 2023 because they failed chromosomal tests. The IBA, however, had a falling out with the International Olympics Committee, one which had nothing to do with the validity of these chromosomal tests and centered more on quibbles over governance.
Should the AP judges who voted for Khelif be removed from any position of influence going forward?
The IOC thus took over governance of boxing, which is different than other sports in that the point of boxing — indeed, of combat sports, period — is to hit the other person, which can cause profound injury either in the short or long term if one competitor has an unfair advantage. However, the IOC’s governance — at least in terms of determining who can compete as a man and who can compete as a woman — entails basically checking the gender on a person’s passport.
No, seriously. That wokeness may work in track and field, even if it’s grotesquely unfair, but boxing is a different story.
In this case, Khelif reportedly had a condition that falls under the umbrella of Disorders of Sexual Differentiation; roughly stated, while she had female genitalia, she had the chromosomal makeup of a man, along with the athletic advantages that come with it.
“Women’s sports categories exist in most sports in recognition of the clear advantage that going through male puberty gives an athlete,” Reuters noted in an explainer.
“That advantage is not just through higher testosterone levels but also in muscle mass, skeletal advantage, and faster twitch muscle,” it continued. “In combat sports such as boxing, this can be a serious safety issue.”
Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured during Khelif’s gold-medal run, although her first opponent pulled out in tears after she said she’d never been hit harder in her life.
Generally speaking, this is a heartbreaking ethical conundrum. Those with DSDs are generally referred to by the sex of their genital presentation, even if their chromosomal makeup is opposite of what it should be. However, this wasn’t helped by the circumstances surrounding Khelif’s appearance at the Games.
Khelif maintained that the test was a lie and that there was some sort of nefarious underpinnings to it. Furthermore, she said that any criticism of her competing with XY chromosmes was tantamount to bullying — and you didn’t want to be a bully, did you?
One is even willing to forgive some level of self-delusion, especially coming from a more traditional society like Algeria where DSD — along with terms like “gender dysphoria,” “LGBT,” and “heteronormative” — aren’t common cultural currency. However, her backers seemed to split into two camps, usually not aligned: Algerian partisans and progressive Westerners.
Algerian partisans again can be forgiven; they’re rooting for one of their best-known athletes. What was the West’s excuse? Quite simple: Even if the tests were valid, admitting XY chromosomes gave someone an athletic advantage even if they presented as a biological female naturally would necessarily put the lie to the idea that transgender men competing in women’s sports isn’t unfair.
Oh, and by the way — the tests were valid, all right! After Khelif won the gold, one of her coaches gave an interview to French outlet Le Point in which he admitted they knew this all along and had for years.
“I discovered this while following the world championships by video in March 2023. She was disqualified for the final against a Chinese woman. At the time, I assumed that it was a diplomatic or international quarrel … But the decision was based on tests,” said coach Georges Cazorla, who still said he “found it disgusting” she would be disqualified.
He noted, however, that Khelif had “a rather particular body type.”
“After the 2023 world championships, where she was disqualified, I took the lead by contacting a renowned endocrinologist from the Parisian University Hospital, Kremlin-Bicêtre, who examined her,” Cazorla said. “He confirmed that Imane is indeed a woman, despite her karyotype and her testosterone level. He said: ‘There is a problem with her hormones, with her chromosomes, but she is a woman.’ That’s all that mattered to us.”
So, in short: Khelif pounded upon her competition, probably with some help from her DSD. She and her team continued to lie by either commission or omission throughout the Olympic Games, then finally told the truth in a low-key interview published in the French press afterwards.
This netted her four votes for female athlete of the year because, one only assumes, for a certain kind of sports journalist to not affirm that this was an uplifting story would be to admit that much of their views on transgender athletics are based on erroneous but pleasant-sounding illogic regarding differences between the genders.
To be fair: 70 out of 74 AP sports journalists aren’t frothing ideologues and voted for Clark and Biles, both of whom had spectacular 2024s. Four decided that they were going to plant their flag upon one of the worst cultural hills of an annus horribilis for the Olympics.
I’m not saying this is the reason this slipped out on a day of the year where Americans were paying little attention to the news. I’m also not saying it isn’t, either. I’m just saying. And, as for the airing of grievances, I think that all of these four woke, hive-mind residents should be removed from any position of serious authority within the AP. A happy belated Festivus for the rest of us, y’all.
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