Another quick post from vacationland. In case you missed it, The Boston Globe has gotten itself into trouble for publishing a headline that claimed Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is transgender. The headline was affixed to an accurate AP story. Step two: The Globe botched the correction. Finally, it published this editor’s note:
A significant error was made in a headline on a story in Friday’s print sports section about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif incorrectly describing her as transgender. She is not. Additionally, our initial correction of this error neglected to note that she was born female. We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regrettable and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.
Social media has erupted in fury at the Globe. This was a mistake that could have been avoided with the right training and editing processes in place. I hope the Globe takes steps to ensure that this sort of error doesn’t happen again.
Follow-up, Aug. 5: My old Boston Phoenix and “Beat the Press” friend Adam Reilly reports for GBH News on the fallout. I’m quoted.
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Unforgivable.
Women with higher testosterone aren’t necessarily transgender nor intersex/hermaphrodite. They often just have polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos), cushing’s syndrome, or might just be aged. Heck, I’m not even sure that Khelif was disqualified for her testosterone/androgen levels, and we probably won’t know as the International Boxing League had to follow the Hippocratic Oath like a lot of nations, but as pcos patient, I’d happily adopt Khelif as one of our “cysters.” 😁I’m sorry all the angry conspiracy theorists influenced the Globe’s disinfo.
The thing is, if anyone read past the headline (and clearly whoever wrote the headline didn’t read the story), you’d know that the only “evidence” of anything outside the norms in cis-gender females is highly suspect. This whole controversy appears to be a Russian disinformation operation. The supposed higher testosterone test from 2023 has never been independently verified and appears to have been invented to disqualify her in a match where she had just defeated a Russian boxer. This whole controversy is unadultared bullshit. A female boxer from Algeria is doing well in the Olympics — that’s the story.
Amen, Dan!
My only journalism training is from high school, when I took intro to journalism and worked for two years on my high school year book. And yet it took me less than five minutes after seeing a story about this “trans” boxer to look up a few other articles and discover that she’s AFAB — the very definition of a woman according to the anti-trans community.
Granted that I am also a lifelong female athlete who has had a personal interest in rules regarding who gets to compete in women’s sports, and I knew that if nothing else, Khelif has to have tested below a certain testosterone level to be allowed to participate in the Olympics. Nobody with male testosterone levels is competing in Olympic level women’s events.
The idea that women’s sports are constantly threatened by men pretending to be women has been around for the 100+ years that women have been allowed to compete in sports at high levels, fed a bit by sexually ambiguous athletes like the Polish runner Stella Walsh. But there’s not much actual evidence of it happening, partly because where would there be any genuine sense of achievement in that?, and mostly because once you rise to serious achievement levels, testing for performance-enhancing substances weeds high-testosterone competitors right out of women’s sports whether it’s naturally produced or artificially introduced.
My apologies for this long comment, but this is a subject I’ve actually read up on for decades, and seeing the Globe bungle it is a bit upsetting.
Actually, my last sentence should state that ALL of the reporting I’ve seen on Khelif has been pretty bad, across the board.