Intersex Aotearoa’s Co-Chair, Dr Rogena Sterling, reflects on the Olympic controversy around the inclusion of boxer Imane Khelif and its impact on all intersex athletes.
The Olympics is an event that I look forward to every four years as someone who has participated in sports from a young age. These athletes are at the pinnacle of their careers, coming together as a beacon of community spirit on the world stage.
The 2024 Olympics has been very conflicting for me. On one hand, Aotearoa, New Zealand, has done particularly well. On the other hand, the impact on intersex athletes at the Olympics has raised its ugly head again. Intersex athletes have once again been caught up in the ‘transgender in sport’ issue, even though we do not know the facts of the case.
Intersex participation is not new, and this is not the first time uniqueness as intersex persons has become an issue for high-level sports competitions. Intersex athletes were known to compete in the 1932 Olympics. The issue in 2024 is that they get caught up in the trans athlete debate even though they are not transgender.
While football was literally played at the Olympics, intersex athletes have once again been used as a football in the who should and should not be participating in the Olympics row. The fight for trans athletes in sports often places intersex athletes in the crosshairs and thus under further scrutiny, sometimes even danger, while those fighting for fairness in women’s sports use language deliberately excluding the possibility of intersex participation.
Intersex sportspersons want to participate in sports and do so as they have been raised. The vast majority of intersex sportspeople are not aware that they may have chromosomes, hormonal variation and bodily variation that does not conform to the standard male or female. They have worked hard to get to their level of sport, like other sports competitors.
However, at elite level sports, many intersex athletes get ‘outed’ in that they are told that they cannot compete because their bodies do not conform to the requirements for competition, especially for those assigned and raised as females. Some athletes have no idea that their bodies are different, so they are shocked not only by the exclusion but also by learning information about themselves that they may have never known before.
Whether naturally or due to enforced medicalisation to fit the binary of male or female, this is not the individual’s issue. It is a societal issue.
Naturally, the lives of intersex persons are going to be unruly for a society based on a binary notion of male and female. To add to this, most nations, and in particular Western nations, have enforced a medical regime on our bodies and assigned us a male or female persona to live in.
Intersex persons will always be unique. Even for those who recognise and accept themselves as the social assignment, male or female, as a sportsperson in this binary world, they will never fit the regulations.
This is a big reason I began to slowly reduce doing sports. The bodily shame and coming to understand that, in reality, I would never fit in resulted in me slowly giving up on sports. This has led to major health issues in my life, in particular as I have a sedentary job.
Until the Olympics can truly be inclusive, understanding that bodies are more complex than the standardised male or female, we need competitions like the Rainbow Games, not only for community belonging but also to support health and well-being.
One day, there is hope that the Olympics will recognise classes outside of male and female or reconsider how competition categories are systematised within each sport. I still hold out hope.
Find out more about Intersex Aotearoa at intersexaotearoa.org
