A new report from Reduxx magazine citing French-Algerian medical records reveals that controversial boxer Imane Khelif, who competed as a woman in the Paris Olympics after being disqualified from the World Championships just a year earlier due to failing a genetic test, does, in fact, have both XY chromosomes and “testicles.”
That’s according to a new medial analysis conducted well before the Paris Olympics that confirmed Khelif has a condition known as 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a disorder of sexual development that only affects biological males and often causes boys to appear female at birth. This leads many sufferers to genuinely believe they are female, as they are often raised female throughout early adolescence. This would also explain why early photos of Khelif provided by the boxer’s family show Khelif - who, notably, was raised in the anti-trans, Muslim country of Algeria - dressed as a little girl.
However, during the onset of male puberty during the teen years, distinctly male attributes emerge, including the development of testicles, the lack of female menstruation, increased muscle mass, and an increase in testosterone exponentially greater than that found in biological females.
Related: Imane Khelif Announces Switch to Pro Boxing After Paris Controversy
Which is apparently exactly what Khelif has.
Reduxx reports:
At the end of October, French journalist Djaffar Ait Aoudia obtained a copy of a thorough physical examination that was conducted on Khelif in order to verify the presence of a disorder of sexual development.
According to Aoudia, the clinical report reveals that an MRI determined that Khelif had no uterus, but instead had internal testicles and a “micropenis” resembling an enlarged clitoris. A chromosomal test further confirmed that Khelif has an XY karyotype, while a hormone test found that Khelif had a testosterone level typical of males. Aoudia also noted that doctors suggested Khelif’s parents may have been blood relatives.
All of which should be extremely personal, private information that would be kept between a person and their physician. Except that Khelif, a biological male with male muscle mass and testosterone levels, was permitted to enter a boxing ring and pummel his female competitors on the most prominent athletic stage in the world, where he went on to earn a gold medal. He has since announced he will be making the switch to professional boxing, where he will continue to compete as a woman.
That medial report, which Reduxx says was compiled collaboratively by the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital in Paris, France, and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine hospital in Algiers, Algeria in June of 2023 (a solid two months before Khelif's gold medal win), appears to confirm findings by the International Boxing Association in 2023 that found both Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting, who went on to win gold in the women's featherweight division in Paris, had XY chromosomes, marking them as biological males. Both boxers were disqualified from the world's, but her permitted by the IOC to compete as women in Paris, supposedly based on the female designations in their passports.
While Disorders of Sex Development - or DSDs - are statistically rare and can be devastating for those born with them and their families for obvious reasons, and while persons born with DSDs are deserving of compassion and the fullest extent of available medical care, the existence of such situations does not justify the physical risks or ethical problems associated with putting women into a boxing ring with a male against whom they cannot possibly compete, and who could cause them severe physical and psychological harm. Nor should it require female athletes to surrender their medals, trophies, championships, scholarships, or hard-earned accolades to men.
I genuinely pray Khelif gets the medical, psychological, and emotional care he needs, and my heart breaks over a condition he couldn’t help being born with.
But he deserves better than to be fed a lie. And so do the women against whom he knowingly competes.