International Olympics Committee (IOC) President, Thomas Bach on Saturday responded to the outcry surrounding the IOC’s decision to allow boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting to compete in the women’s category in Paris, despite both previously failing gender tests.
Bach said the IOC “Will not take part in a politically-motivated…cultural war.”
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TRANSCRIPT
“What we see now is that some want to own the definition of who is a woman. And there I can only invite them to come up with a scientific-based, new definition of who is a woman, and how can somebody being born, raised, competed and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman. If they are coming up with something, we are ready to listen.
“We are ready to look into it. But we will not take part in a politically-motivated, sometimes politically-motivated, cultural war.
“And allow me to say that what is going on in this context, in the social media, with all this hate speech, with this aggression and abuse, and fueled by this agenda, is totally unacceptable.”