On Twitter (now X), several users have claimed that the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is a transgender man or woman (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). This follows her victory over the Italian boxer Angela Carini, who withdrew from the competition after less than a minute of fighting at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
One of the tweets claims that Khelif supposedly won a gold medal after the victory, and another asserts that the boxer “did not pass a gender test, and yet they let her participate (sic).”
Even the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, shared this tweet that also claims Khelif is a man and that “she was disqualified last year after it was confirmed that she had XY chromosomes with a DNA test.”
Other politicians in Italy also spoke out. The head of government of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, said it was not a fair fight and that “with the levels of testosterone in the blood of the Algerian athlete, the race at the starting point does not seem fair.”
The Algerian Olympic Committee defended Khelif and stated that these were “attempts at defamation, based on lies.”
We ran the Lie Detector and found no evidence that the Algerian boxer is transgender. Throughout her career, Khelif has competed in the women’s category. In Algeria, gender change is prohibited, and transgender people do not have legal recognition in official documents.
In 2023, the Algerian athlete was disqualified from the World Boxing Championship for failing to meet the “eligibility criteria” set forth by the International Boxing Association (IBA). This followed an examination, which was not for testosterone, but whose results are not public.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) rejected the IBA’s decision to disqualify Khelif in 2023, calling it “sudden and arbitrary.” Moreover, the IOC clarified that the Algerian boxer does meet the requirements to compete in the Olympics as a woman. That competition, and its qualifying rounds, are not organized by the IBA, as its recognition was suspended in 2019, withdrawn in 2022, and confirmed last year.
In her first round at the Paris Olympics, the 25-year-old Algerian athlete advanced to the quarter-finals (she has not won a gold medal).
This is one of the false posts:
Imane Khelif advanced to the quarter-finals in the Olympics
The circulating content refers to the participation on August 1 of the boxer Imane Khelif in the Paris 2024 Olympics in the first round, against the Italian Angela Carini. The Algerian won against the Italian after she withdrew from the competition in the first round.
With that victory, Khelif advanced to the quarter-finals, as stated on the Olympics page. This means it is not true that Khelif had already won the gold medal.
In 2023, the IBA disqualified Khelif, but the reason is not public
The claim that Khelif is transgender — that her gender identity and expression do not align with the sex assigned to her at birth — is not new. It arose at least since late March 2023, following that year’s World Boxing Championship in New Delhi (India) (1, 2, 3 and 4).
On March 24, 2023, hours before the Algerian competed in the final of that Championship, the International Boxing Association (IBA) disqualified her along with Taiwanese Lin Yu-Ting. The IBA recently stated in a statement that the “disqualification was due to failure to meet the eligibility criteria to participate in the women’s competition, as set forth in the IBA Regulations.”
The IBA has not stated which criteria or specific test determined the decision. The IBA president, Umar Krem, told the Russian media outlet Tass that they based it on DNA tests that supposedly showed “they had XY chromosomes.” While this matter is more complex, women typically have two X chromosomes, and men typically have one X and one Y chromosome. However, the IBA did not officially state this, nor have those results been made public.
In its recent statement, the Association clarified that the athletes did not undergo a testosterone test but rather an “independent and recognized test, the details of which are kept confidential.” The IBA limited itself to stating that the test “conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the necessary eligibility criteria and were determined to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”
The technical and competitive regulations of the IBA define a woman as “an individual with XX chromosomes.” To prove this, the document states that boxers can undergo a verification test. That’s why sports lawyer Irene Aguiar tweeted, “the disqualification of Khelif and Yu-ting can only be due to finding them with XY chromosomes.”
The IBA stated that while the Taiwanese did not appeal the disqualification to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Khelif did appeal but later withdrew her appeal.
In response to this disqualification, according to NBC, Khelif told Ennahar TV that some “did not want Algeria to win a gold medal” and added that it was “a conspiracy and a grand conspiracy, and we will not be silent about it.” In an Instagram post last September, Khelif said, “I am a woman standing up!”
Disinformative posts about Imane Khelif started circulating even before her fight with the Italian Angela Carini. The feminist media outlet Volcánicas found that since July 27 (5 days before the fight between the boxers) more than 10,000 tweets have been published with messages of hate, misinformation, and transphobia against the Algerian fighter.
Khelif did pass the tests and was admitted to the Olympics
Following the scrutiny on social media, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a statement together with the Boxing Unit of Paris 2024 lamenting “the abuse that both athletes are currently experiencing.”
The IOC clarified that “all athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Paris 2024 Olympics comply with the eligibility and registration rules of the competition, as well as all applicable medical regulations.”
Moreover, the Committee assured that “similar to previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.”
The spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Mark Adams, stated that the Algerian boxer “was born a woman, was registered as a woman, lives her life as a woman, boxes as a woman, has a woman’s passport.”
Both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting “have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category,” the IOC recalled, including the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the World Championships of the International Boxing Association (IBA), and IBA-sanctioned tournaments.
Regarding the disqualification at the 2023 Championship, the Olympic Committee remarked that it was “a sudden and arbitrary decision” and that there was no “due process.”
The IOC mentioned that in the IBA board meeting minutes, it appears that the decision was initially taken solely by the IBA Secretary General and CEO. The disqualification was ratified by the IBA Board one day later, on March 25, 2023.
The Olympic Committee noted that after ratifying the decision, the board “only subsequently requested that a procedure be established for similar cases in the future.” Thus this is effectively seen in the minutes that ratified the disqualification of the boxers.
Due to this case, that entity indicated that “eligibility rules must not be changed during the ongoing competition, and any rule changes must follow appropriate processes and must be based on scientific evidence.”
The IOC also reminded that in 2022 it withdrew Olympic recognition from the International Boxing Association (IBA), after suspending it in 2019. The decision, according to reports by Reuters, was “for governance, financial, arbitration, and ethics issues.” The decision was confirmed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last June.
This is why that Association did not organize the qualifying tournaments or the boxing competition in the 2024 Olympics. In its place, an ad hoc unit called the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit was created.
In summary, it is not true that the Algerian boxer Khelif “did not pass a gender test” at the Olympics. The organizing committee clarified that she did meet the medical and eligibility standards to compete in Paris 2024.
In Algeria, gender change is prohibited
Imane Khelif was born and grew up in Tiaret, western Algeria. As noted in this UNICEF article that interviewed her, at 16 she excelled in soccer but faced difficulties as it was “not considered a suitable sport for girls.” The article notes that “it was her ability to dodge the boys’ punches that led her to practice boxing.”
The article highlights, following Khelif’s testimony, that her father also disapproved of girls practicing boxing. But she decided to sell scrap metal and her mother, food, to raise money for transportation to the city where she trained.
In this interview with the Algérie Channel, Khelif also told that story. Furthermore, the media outlet showed photos that would be of the boxer as a young girl:
The UNICEF note states that after three years of hard training, Khelif placed 17th in the 2018 World Championship and 33rd in 2019, representing Algeria. After other competitions, she reached both the 2021 and 2024 Olympics. “My two parents come to support me. They are my biggest fans,” said the boxer, who became a national ambassador for UNICEF this January.
As verified by Maldita, Khelif also said in another interview that she faced discrimination because in Algeria “it is not common for a woman to practice boxing.”
Furthermore, in Algeria, the LGBTIQ+ community is not protected, as homosexuality and other ‘acts against nature’ are criminalized, leading to a wide range of persecution against anything outside of cis-heteronormativity. In that country, among other things, gender change is prohibited, and there is no legal recognition for transgender people in official documents.
This is explained by Equaldex, a site that compiles data on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world; also by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), and was confirmed by the feminist collective Jacarandas: “In Algeria, there is no gender change in documents, nor hormonal treatment or gender affirmation surgery in the healthcare system.”
For all these reasons, it is not possible for Khelif or any other person from Algeria to change their documents to a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth and be able to compete in the Olympics.
On March 8, 2022, the President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, honored boxer Khelif on International Women’s Day.
Women also have testosterone, and some may be born with XY chromosomes
Although the IBA stated that the test that disqualified Khelif was not for testosterone and would remain confidential, two explanations have emerged.
On one hand, Reuters reported that other Algerian media outlets claimed that the boxer underwent a hormonal test that revealed she had a high testosterone level.
But it is normal for a woman to have testosterone.
This is a hormone produced by men’s testicles, but also by women’s ovaries, and the adrenal glands, as explained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. For women, the entity explains, “testosterone is important for bone and muscle growth, and for having healthy organs.” In other words, a testosterone test is not sufficient to determine gender.
In women, high testosterone levels can be caused by polycystic ovary syndrome, ovarian cancer, or an adrenal gland disorder.
On the other hand, IBA president Umar Krem told the Russian media outlet Tass that to disqualify the boxer, they based it on DNA tests that supposedly showed “they had XY chromosomes.”
But although it is typically assumed that women have two XX chromosomes and men have the XY pair, the concepts are more complex.
As explained to Maldita by Eduardo Costas, a professor of Genetics at the Complutense University of Madrid, “there is a much broader gender spectrum than the binary female and male. The line between the sexes is often blurry.”
Humans typically have 46 chromosomes in each cell, arranged in 23 pairs. Two of these chromosomes, X and Y, are the sex chromosomes.
However, not all people have the XX or XY sex chromosomes. As explained by the Spanish outlet, within the karyotypic sex, marked by the sex chromosomes, there are people with 47 or 45 chromosomes.
Moreover, some people may have XXY chromosomes, a single X chromosome, or even have XY chromosomes and develop female genitalia such as a vagina and uterus, but do not produce eggs. There are also cases where a person has sexual traits associated with both female and male sexes. Even individuals exist who have both cells with XX chromosomes and cells with XY chromosomes, as the outlet explained.
These are referred to as differences in sexual development (DSD), “a group of conditions in which there is a discrepancy between external genitalia (exterior) (the penis, scrotum, vulva, labia majora) and internal genitalia (interior) (testes, vagina, and ovaries),” as explained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
“A world where gender is defined in binary terms does not fit well into objective biological reality,” Costas told Maldita.
In any case, today there is no public evidence that Khelif has any differences in sexual development (DSD) or any chromosomes other than the normative XX for a woman.
For all these reasons, we classify the claim that boxer Imane Khelif is transgender as false.