XX vs XY: A simple solution for athletics  

At the Olympics in Paris, two controversial individuals won gold medals in women’s boxing: Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan in the 57kg weight class and Imane Khalif of Algeria in the 66kg class.  

Both of these boxers had previously been barred from competing as females by the International Boxing Association, which stands by its decisions, citing “DNA evidence.” The International Olympic Committee, however, claims that the association’s ruling was “arbitrary,” and therefore allowed Khalif and Yu-Ting to fight against women — that is, athletes with XX chromosomes — despite reports they may actually be men, who by definition have XY chromosomes. 

After Italian boxer Angela Carini ended a bout with Khalif after 46 seconds, claiming that she had never been punched anywhere near so hard, the culture war over gender ideology took over the Paris Olympics.  

Those of us who oppose the de facto elimination of women’s sports — which is what those trying to include biological men identifying as women are trying to do — are winning that battle.  

On something this self-evident, reality will ultimately prevail. However, the battle is far from finished.  

To hasten the end of this madness, female athletes from the collegiate level upward must refuse en masse to compete against men, full stop. A universal boycott would cut through all the culture war noise that gets attached to this issue and take it back to the stark reality: Do we want girls and women to have fair athletic opportunities, or not? 

In a healthier society than we have, a man punching a woman would never be given acclaim by progressives. It would never be permitted, let alone celebrated by anyone who claims the mantle of feminism.

Nevertheless, allowing this sidebar about who is supposed to be protecting Angela Carini — a world-class athlete who could pummel nearly all women and plenty of men, too — to take center stage, can result in our considering this question solely as one of safety when it is even more centrally one of truth.  

If Yu-Ting and Khalif are boxing as women, then women’s boxing effectively does not exist. There is men’s boxing, and there is co-ed boxing. If women do not want to participate in co-ed boxing, they cannot participate at all.

Ditto for all other women’s sports in which males are not barred from participation — as they now are, thanks to relentless efforts by many, in the non-contact sport of swimming.   

This kind of simplicity would also eliminate any plausible justification for the despicable trolling of female athletes’ bodies by members of the online right. Rugby star Ilona Maher has been the subject of particularly hateful attacks, with a predominantly male cadre of online trash talkers questioning her sex. Why? Because compared to other women, Maher is large, fast and strong — as befits a rugby star.  

Of course, there is zero excuse for this despicable mean spiritedness. Moreover, to the extent that the right buys into the idea of womanhood as a gendered performance of delicacy rather than a biological fact of chromosomes, it both feeds unhealthy and infantilizing mainstream narratives of what women are and helps to create the impetus for the left’s “gender ideology” in the first place.  

Yet under present circumstances, it is unfortunately not unreasonable to wonder whether exceptional female athletes are actually male. After all, several of the exceptionally talented athletes we have been instructed to categorize as female are in fact biologically male.  

Who does this hurt most? Exceptional female athletes, whose bodies and lives come under scrutiny because we have in fact decided that women’s sports as such do not necessarily exist.  

Cutting questions of appearance, performance and even genitalia (given the back and forth about who is or is not intersex) out of the dialogue about who is or is not a woman — that is, treating “woman” as just another word for “human being with XX chromosomes” — would render irrelevant the “women are whatever anyone who claims womanhood says they are” word salad of many on the elite left. It would also render irrelevant the “real women are delicate angels with flowing blonde hair” fetish of many on the hyper-online alt-right.  

Yes, it is an absolute disgrace that the burden falls upon girls, women and their families to re-create women’s sports as a clear-cut category after decades of progress that is now being undone. But it is also the fastest way to fix the problem. And since it’s athletics we’re talking about, that should mean something.  

Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about education, culture, religion, and politics. Her work has appeared in USA Today, Law and Liberty, America Magazine, and Deseret News.