The actual issue was that this athlete, Imane Khelif, is male. And was competing in a women's boxing match, despite having previously been deemed ineligible by the International Boxing Association for this reason, after a karyotype test revealed XY chromosomes.
The problem is that women's boxing in the Olympics doesn't verify sex other than via identity documents such as passports. Even though the other categorical attribute - weight - is directly verified during competition.
As Khelif (and another male boxer, Lin) had a female passport, this permitted competition in the tournament despite the fact that it enabled a male to pummel female boxers, to an eventual unanimous victory.
Obviously, many people are against this, for the same reason as why mixed-sex boxing tournaments aren't considered acceptable, for reasons of fairness and safety.
> The actual issue was that this athlete, Imane Khelif, is male.
No, she’s not, even in terms of assigned gender at birth, and she represents an Islamic country in which she would be imprisoned if she was and was living as a woman.
> despite having previously been deemed ineligible by the International Boxing Association for this reason, after a karyotype test revealed XY chromosomes.
The IBA had already been stripped of its role as a governing body with regard Olympic boxing due to the rather extraordinary and flagrant corruption in that organization (and for that to reach a level intolerable to the IOC is saying quite a bit), but even if the IBA’s claim of karyotype testing wasn’t fraudulent or carried out under unreliable conditions, a detected XY karyotype doesn't mean you are male, even in nonsocial medical terms, or phenotype without intervention terms. Swyer syndrome can result in a female phenotype with exclusively XY karyotype, and chimerism (possibly combined with Swyer) can result in a female phenotype where XY karyotype would be detected (potentially exclusively, without sampling different tissue in a way that a simple test would not).
All the evidence revealed so far indicates that Khelif is male. Regardless of the IBA's other issues, there are two blood tests from independent labs showing XY karyotype, and a member of Khelif's coaching team described problems with chromosomes and hormones such that Khelif has been on medication to adjust testosterone levels to bring this closer to the female range.
This implies that Khelif went through male puberty and has the male physical advantage in sport that is caused by male sexual development. Most likely, Khelif was assigned female at birth due to having a difference of sex development (DSD) conferring an external genital appearance that at first glance may seem female.
I don't know where this oft-repeated idea that Khelif has Swyer syndrome came from, but it's nonsensical. Swyer comes with bone defects due to hormone deficiency, and suffering from osteopenia and osteoporesis is not compatible with an elite athletic career, particularly not boxing. Anyone with Swyer would be getting fractures from all the punching and being punched. Nothing about Khelif's situation aligns with this.
However, there was previously in the Olympics a very similar situation with Caster Semenya, a male runner whose penis didn't develop properly due to having the DSD 5-ARD, and was therefore erroneously assumed to be female, and given identity documents to match. Semenya was eventually disqualified from track events due to having internal testes that produce male levels of testosterone and have done since puberty. Probably Khelif has the same or similar condition.
I would like to reiterate that, like I said, people were specifically spreading the misinformation that she was a trans person that was allowed to compete only under some new policies coming from their political enemies- as part of a broader movement and large group of people that spread anti-trans hate online.
In this context, hardly anyone would care about this if not fueled by an anti-trans political movement that latched onto it. Personally, I think it is in poor taste to publicly comment about if someone else may or may not be medically an intersex person- especially when fueled by an undercurrent of hating people for being different in some way. This person is legally a woman, and is a skilled athlete competing in the only way they are legally allowed to.
Some underinformed people weren't cognisant of the exact details, and assumed because Khelif is a male competing in the women's division, that this implies Khelif has a transgender identity. When in fact, Khelif described accusations of this as "a big shame for my family, for the honor of my family, for the honor of Algeria, for the women of Algeria and especially the Arab world."
Nonetheless, the main reason that people opposed Khelif (and Lin) competing in women's boxing is precisely the same reason as to oppose transwomen competing in women's sports: because they are male.
So while for some Twitter users the exact details may have been wrong, the underlying principle was the same. That is, fairness and safety for female athletes.
The problem is that women's boxing in the Olympics doesn't verify sex other than via identity documents such as passports. Even though the other categorical attribute - weight - is directly verified during competition.
As Khelif (and another male boxer, Lin) had a female passport, this permitted competition in the tournament despite the fact that it enabled a male to pummel female boxers, to an eventual unanimous victory.
Obviously, many people are against this, for the same reason as why mixed-sex boxing tournaments aren't considered acceptable, for reasons of fairness and safety.