Intersex Human Rights Australia

We need to speak up about hateful rhetoric about women Olympic athletes, competing in Paris, who are purported to have innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex variations/differences of sex development).

Some of this rhetoric has sadly attached to athletes from Zambia, a country where, according to Human Dignity Trust, being LGBT is criminalised and the national Ministry of Health is reported to have banned use of the term “sexual and reproductive health rights”.

Some of this rhetoric has sadly attached to Imane Khelif, an athlete from rural Algeria. LGBT people are also criminalised in Algeria. Khelif is competing in her second Olympics in boxing. No concerns were raised at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where Khelif reached the quarter finals. Boxing is a sex and weight stratified sport. This hate appears to have arisen out of claims made on Telegram by a since-discredited sporting organisation, without due process. We thank the International Olympic Committee for issuing a statement documenting this and challenging the aggression faced by athletes who may have innate variations of sex characteristics.

Much of the hate focuses on their appearance and assertions and speculation about their sex characteristics. This should be concerning to all women. We have seen statements about women with innate variations of sex characteristics sandwiched between statements about transgender women. Much of this debate is vile and misleading, as if to conjure up images of large masculine men punching down on petite feminine women.

Reports from southern and eastern Africa, and some other regions, have identified risks and instances of infanticide where infants are born visibly different, including where innate variations of sex characteristics are evident at birth.

We see hate from commenters in Western countries focusing on the health systems in athletes’ countries, suggesting that these athletes were somehow incorrectly assigned, as if observation and assignment of infants with these traits as female does not occur in Western countries. It does. In high income settings and countries, elimination of innate variations of sex characteristics occurs differently, through genetic deselection and prenatal elimination, and through surgical intervention, typically preempting personal informed consent.

Our position

Irrespective of their actual sex characteristics, athletes should always be able to compete, without preconditions, in their birth-observed, birth-assigned sex.

It is never ethical to re-classify an adult or adolescent out of their birth-observed, birth-assigned sex, without their personal free, prior and informed consent.

Further, women competing in sport are not able to provide free and informed consent to coercive regulations intended to restrict their right to compete. They are faced with “impossible choices“.

Additionally, it is not ethical to speculate about the identities of women athletes in countries where LGBT identities are criminalised, nor is it ethical to call for their sex to be reclassified.

This debate has consequences for all people with innate variations of sex characteristics, irrespective of whether or not our traits are problematised in sport, and irrespective of our birth-assigned sex categories and our identities. We reject hate and call for respect.

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Statement attributable to Morgan Carpenter, PhD (bioethics, University of Sydney)