Who gets to be a woman?
If you ask conservatives, they’ll tell you the answer is simple: if a person’s sex is female (by which they mean, they have a vagina), then they’re a woman. That’s it. No ifs, buts or intersex people accounted for.
In fact, the simplicity of this argument is what transphobes believe makes it so convincing — there’s a yes/no, m/f binary that leaves no room for “confusion”. Except, this apparently simple and God-given definition of gender falls apart in the face of women of colour who are still excluded from womanhood, even when they meet the only criteria transphobes have actually set to be one: that they were assigned female at birth.
Earlier this week it was announced that Paris Olympics gold medallist, Imane Khelif will not be allowed to compete in World Boxing until she undergoes mandatory sex testing via a swab test that will determine if she has a Y chromosome. The test will be rolled out for all boxers in the competition, but World Boxing specifically singled out Khelif in its statement announcing the change.
“Imane Khelif may not participate in the female category at … any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes genetic sex screening in accordance with World Boxing’s rules and testing procedures,” World Boxing said in a statement, per ABC News.
“The introduction of mandatory testing will be part of a new policy on ‘Sex, Age and Weight’ to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women.”
This new rule comes two years after the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) accused Imane Khelif of failing a gender test and disqualified her from IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships (thereby reinstating the previous champion, a Russian superstar).
But, here’s where things get weird: Imane Khelif is a cis woman. In a world where transgender people are banned from sports in the name of “protecting women”, she should be safe. So, why isn’t she?
Spoiler alert: it’s because she’s brown.
When race and gender collide
The goalposts for defining womanhood are constantly shifting in conservative spaces to become more and more exclusive, while still being anchored in terms like “biological” and “natural”. This insidious language is not just used today to exclude trans women from womanhood — it’s been used historically to exclude non-white cis women, and specifically Black women, from womanhood in order to justify abuse.
In her fascinating and informative book The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century (2017), professor of race, sex and science at Rutger University Kyla Schuller tells a “racial history of sex” which interrogates the notion of a biological sex and reveals how it was used by European scientists to argue that sex differentiation is something unique to the more evolved European.
At the time, the American School of Evolution argued that while black and brown people did have male and female sexes, they weren’t particularly distinct from one another. Black (and brown) women were masculinised, in direct juxtaposition to European women, who were considered delicate, feminine and civilised.
Author and academic Ruby Hamad brings it together in White Tears Brown Scars (2019), writing, “binary sex is both a function and feature of white supremacy” which the west “imposed its own definitions as a uniform measure and, unsurprisingly, everyone else came up short.”
By denying black women womanhood, they were not entitled to its protections: “White men and their female accomplices removed [black and brown women] from the concept of womanhood and humanity altogether.”
In fact, you could argue that our narrow concepts of sex and gender today are results of white supremacy. In Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (2020) by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Associate Professor of Literature at Duke University, argues that the way we’ve come to understand and shape gender and sex is rooted in anti-blackness and colonialism, with black gender being inherently “other”.
Back to sports
In recent years, there are no shortage of examples of cis women of colour, and specifically black women, being accused of not being real or ‘natural’ women due to their biology.
In 2021, the International Swimming Federation denied an application submitted by Soul Cap, a company that manufactures caps for swimmers who have “thick, curly, and voluminous hair”, to have its gear officially approved for black competitive swimmers at every level. In its rejection, FINA declared the caps do not “follow the natural form of the head” — a loaded claim that implies black athletes’ head shapes are not ‘natural’.
That same year, Namibian sprinters Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi were barred from competing in the women’s 400 meters at the Tokyo Olympics due to having naturally high testosterone levels. According to World Athletics, “female classification is ‘protected'” and “individuals who identify as female but have a certain difference of sex development (DSD) can pose a challenge to that protected category.” So, basically, Mboma and Masilingi were told they are not eligible for female classification. Sound familiar? Ask yourself who decides what actually constitutes a female. Who made these rules?
Fast forward to now, and Imane Khelif — an Algerian athlete — is being made to prove she is eligible for female classification, even though she is a cis woman. The natural conclusion to this hysteria surrounding “protecting women” from trans women is that women of colour will become victims of what is purported to be friendly fire.
And then, of course, there’s the transphobia of it all: even if these women did all have high testosterone levels that “prove” they aren’t eligible to be classified as “female” (whatever that means), where’s the evidence to suggest this will give them an advantage?
In a 2021 article in Scientific American titled ‘Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams’, medical anthropologist and bioethicist expert Katrina Karkazis wrote, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.”
Testosterone is not the defining feature of being male, and having high levels of it does not automatically make someone a man. Furthermore, it also doesn’t make them better at sport, and suggesting so actually undermines the vigorous training and skill that goes into being a competitive athlete.
But even if it did — even if all you needed to be good at sport was high testosterone levels, isn’t having physiological or biological advantages over your competitors normal, if not desired?
Isn’t this why basketball teams recruit tall players? Or why having a long stride is ideal for running? Michael Phelps has a wingspan 10cm wider than his height, and his body only creates half the amount of lactic acid than the average human body does, which contributes to his success in swimming. These are celebrated qualities, but when women have a physiology that gives them an advantage, it’s perceived as “unfair”.
So, who gets to be a woman?
While this article dives into examples of gender and race intersecting in sport, chances are, if you are a woman of colour, chances are you’ve come across this in everyday life. It’s why we are made to feel masculine for having darker skin, thicker eyebrows, and more “severe” features. It’s why so many of us (myself included) feel the need to perform our femininity — because we know that, otherwise, we will be perceived as a threat. We have to constantly prove we aren’t scary, loud, angry — and this is something we have in common with trans women (who, obviously, can also be black and brown women).
Trans women, cis black women, and cis brown women are all facing renewed attacks on their gender because transphobia and racism are inherently linked. Gender is racial — which is why we are seeing this uptick of women of colour being treated with suspicion around their sex. If trans women don’t get to be women, then we don’t either.
It’s with this in mind that I urge all women of colour to stand with trans women in the fight against transphobia — because it’s the right thing to do, and also because we, too, are excluded from conservative ideas of womanhood.
So, when organisations and individuals claim gender policing is necessary to “protect women”, remember that the opposite is true. A world which demands proof of sex is never going to be a safe place for any woman, trans or otherwise.
Top photo: Imane Khelif (pictured), Ulrik Pedersen/Cal Sport Media/Sipa USA via AAP (source)
