2 Olympic gold-medal boxers in Paris faced repeated questions about their gender

Transcript

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won the gold medal in the women's Olympic welterweight division, and so did Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting in the flyweight division. Now, these boxers faced much more than their opponents in Paris - they also repeatedly had their gender questioned. Rose Eveleth is the host of the new podcast series Tested, from NPR's Embedded and CBC in Canada. It's about the history of sex testing in sports. So, Rose, for people who are not familiar with that history, fill us in on how women in sports have been subjected to sex tests over the years.

ROSE EVELETH, BYLINE: Yeah, so sex testing has a almost 100-year history. We've started with visual exams, switched to something called nude parades, which are visual exams that everybody had to do - get naked in front of a doctor and have their woman's body be examined. Then we went to chromosome tests. That lasted for about 30 years, and then now, we're sort of in this era of testosterone - this idea that testosterone is going to be this singular thing that is the marker for who is allowed to compete as a woman. So we've sort of bounced between test to test to test to try to find this marker.

MARTÍNEZ: But just to be clear, there's no one test - one single test - that can tell us who is a woman or a man.

EVELETH: That's right. There is no singular test. Each thing I mentioned - visual exams, chromosomes, testosterone - none of them is a complete or accurate test of sex or gender.

MARTÍNEZ: And what we're talking about here - I mean, we're not talking about trans athletes.

EVELETH: No, none of the women we're talking about in this boxing case are trans. In the history of sex testing, there have been a couple of trans athletes, but largely, these tests are aimed at women who don't seem womanly enough.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, the International Olympic Committee defended these boxers that we mentioned, and they're denouncing the hate speech targeting them. I mean, how meaningful was it for the IOC to take up on their behalf?

EVELETH: I think hugely meaningful because in the past, the IOC has kind of flip-flopped on this. They've been involved in sex testing. They've been out of sex testing. They're currently out of the sex-testing business, and they've said that, you know, sex testing should not be done unless it's really well-supported by scientific evidence. They have a long list of things that you should be doing, and that's great, and they've come out for these boxers really well. The problem is that they haven't come out for other athletes in other sports who have been impacted by these policies, like track and field. There are a bunch of athletes who can't compete in track and field unless they change their bodies to fit a certain testosterone profile. And the IOC has let that happen, while they've defended these boxers, which I think is a little bit complicated.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, the rationale for testing is to ensure that no female athlete has a, quote, "unfair advantage." Rose, who decides what unfair is? Because I think it's unfair that I'm not 7 feet tall.

EVELETH: (Laughter) Yeah, I too would love to be taller than I am. And this is, like, the big question. This is the big question at play. Who gets to decide which advantages are just part of sports, and celebrated, in fact? Which genetic mutations get you on the cover of a magazine as this incredible, amazing elite athlete, and which ones don't? Which ones are regulated, and we say, no, you can't have that? And the technical answer of who decides is the sports federations themselves in each sport, but I think the bigger-picture question is one that we all kind of have to grapple with. Why is it that certain advantages are celebrated, and certain ones are not?

MARTÍNEZ: Now, the Olympics are over, but what happens now with these questions of sex and gender in sports?

EVELETH: Will we ever escape them? I'm not sure. I think, you know, sports is really one of the last places that has really doubled down and committed to this gender binary in sex or gender, and if you're going to stay committed to that, you're always going to have complications because human sex and gender are not binary. I think there are people thinking about really cool and interesting ways to potentially break out of that, but we can't have those conversations until we get out from underneath the weight of these sort of culture-war conversations about gender.

MARTÍNEZ: That's Rose Eveleth, host of the new podcast series Tested, from NPR's Embedded and CBC in Canada. Rose, thanks.

EVELETH: Thanks for having me.

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