It took just 46 seconds for Italian boxer Angela Carini to realize at the Paris Olympics that if she stayed in the ring with the male she was being forced to compete against, she might not leave with her face intact. That’s how hard she was hit by Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who has sexual male characteristics according to genetic testing conducted by the International Boxing Association.
Video footage of Carini on her knees in the ring sobbing after having to abandon the fight while Khelif gives her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder summed up the atrocity of the event: Here was a young woman who had worked her entire life to compete at the highest level possible, only to have any opportunity of success stolen from her by a male with an undeniable physical advantage over her.
"I have always honored my country with loyalty," Carini said afterward. "This time, I didn't succeed because I couldn't fight anymore. I put an end to the match because after the second blow, after years of experience in the ring and a life of fighting, I felt a severe pain in my nose, and with the maturity of a boxer, I said ‘enough,’ because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to, I couldn’t finish the match.”
She added that she had “never felt punches” as hard as Khelif’s in a fight before.
This is exactly why Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championship by the IBA. The organization made Khelif take a genetic test, not a hormonal test, and discovered Khelif had XY chromosomes. In other words, Khelif is a male and has many of the physical attributes of a male, including higher testosterone, a more muscular build, and the ability to knock a woman out with a single punch.
The International Olympic Committee, however, does not recognize the Russia-affiliated IBA anymore and conducted its own eligibility tests this year. That would be fine if those eligibility tests dealt with biology. Instead, it seems the IOC only “verified” the sex of its athletes by looking at their passports.
“Everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. ”They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female.”
It is not clear whether Khelif is intersex or transgender. It seems more likely that Khelif is the former, which means the boxer could have sexual characteristics of both sexes. This is, of course, a very difficult, albeit rare, genetic condition. But when it comes to athletics, the solution is pretty straightforward: Male characteristics belong on men’s sports teams.
The risk is simply too great for women. Any person with XY chromosomes, intersex or not, can cause serious and even permanent injury to female athletes unintentionally.
This used to be common sense, but since major athletic organizing bodies, including the Olympics, for God’s sake, seem unwilling to face the facts, here are just a few recent examples. In 2014, Fallon Fox, a male who identifies as a woman, broke his female opponent’s orbital bone during the first round of an MMA fight, fracturing her skull. In 2022, 17-year-old Payton McNabb was left with brain damage and paralysis on her right side after a male who identifies as a woman hit her in the face with a volleyball traveling 70 mph. And in 2023, a female field hockey player at a Massachusetts high school had her teeth knocked out by a male who identifies as a woman after he sent a ball flying at her face.
Can anyone blame Carini for deciding she didn’t want to become the next victim?
Carini deserves better. Women deserve better. Shame on the Olympics for the half-baked misogyny they’ve left us with instead.
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Kaylee McGhee White is the editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.
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