#OlympicBoxing 🧵 cultural context and the role of the IOC (and whether Khalif “knows he’s a man”) First off, I am hesitant to analyze someone else’s life in this forum, but on the public world stage of the Olympics, Iman Khalif’s status has become a point of debate so I’ll say tentatively a few things… I’ve been watching Arabic interviews (and translating with help from my tutor) for the last few days to try and understand the context around Iman Khalif. Khalif has clearly been raised as a girl. Photos of her childhood show her in typical female attire. In interviews, in fact, great sympathy is extended to her because she came from a poor family with separated parents and as a child, she took on a lot of responsibility to help her mother. This is seen as a hardship not appropriate to place on girls so it’s a point of sympathy in those conversations. And Hijab is NOT required for women in Algeria, so images of Khalif in adulthood with short hair and no Hijab are not at all proof that she lives “as a man.” Then again I’m sure strangers looking at Khalif have perceived her as a man because she is clearly masculinized. But to people who know her and in all interviews I’ve seen, she’s a woman. Gender nonconformity (though looked down upon in the ME) does happen. But known cross-sex dressing in the Arab world does not imply trans or cross-sex identity. It’s just not a concept there as it is in the west. And Iman wearing men’s clothes does not mean she saw herself as a man or that anyone else intimately in her life saw her that way either. In a conservative, Islamic Middle Eastern countries, genital anatomy is the foundation for understanding biological sex. If she does have ARD5 (which has been suggested as a hypothesis by knowledgeable scientists and other individuals), then she was likely born with pretty typical-looking female genitalia. Even after discovering the anomalies of the DSD around puberty (becoming extremely masculinized) intersex conditions are highly taboo and not well understood. There is no concept of an “intersex person” - Iman likely perceives herself as a woman with a strange condition It’s culturally impossible for her family to say at her puberty, “oops we guess Iman is really a guy”. People in the West cannot fully grasp the cultural context and social consequences of such a declaration. Interestingly, my teacher (a highly educated woman in Cairo in her 30s) suspected that upon discovering their daughter would be much more masculine than other girls, perhaps her parents thought it would be best to put her in a sport which might house other masculine girls and women: boxing. Just a guess of course, as we have no idea why Khalif chose the sport, but remember that in the Middle East helping your child to blend in naturally with their own birth-sex is among the most important things you can do for them. So my point here is yes, biologically Khalif is actually male, but even after learning about the DSD, is still conceptualizing herself as female. This context does NOT alter the answer in the question of ethics: Is it wrong for the IOC to have standards which allow DSD males (regardless of their social or legal identity) to compete against biological women? @hoovlet @SwipeWright @FondOfBeetles @widerlenspod