Column | Hear that you are not a woman, how should that feel?

They say I’m not a girl.

The words are echoing. What should it be like to hear that, if you have always thought you are a woman? Or better: if you have always been yourself. Without too many thoughts. After all, you are who you are.

How old would Ianane Khelif have been when she discovered that she might be different, different from others? The Algerian boxer who won Olympic gold last summer in the class up to 66 kilos, and who is said to be not a woman. No girl.

Do you discover that as a child because you feel it yourself? Do you discover that how others whisper about you, point to you, if they think you are not looking? Or do you only discover when you are forced to do a sex test?

Imane Khelif has not yet taken such a test. And that is why she is no longer welcome in her sport. She was almost on her way to Eindhoven where a boxing tournament is being held this weekend. Was she already on her way to the airport when she heard that she first had to prove that she is a woman to be allowed to participate? Did she have to return, go home?

They say that the test was introduced in boxing in accordance with exactly such a recently introduced sex test in athletics. But that’s not true. There was such a test much earlier. Already in 1950. Foekje Dillema was on the way to an international tournament in France when she was forced to take off her clothing at Utrecht station, to have herself viewed and to be examined internally. Admittedly: that is no longer the case. Now a little saliva can be determined whether you are a woman. A girl.

Foekje was removed from the other girls of the national selection, and sent back home. Back to Burum in Friesland. Only. And, to theater group Tryater, desperately. This week I saw their performance About the Frisian athlete, who won her first race in the absence of running shoes, made a stormy international advance, and God was a good: multiple Olympic champion and national folk hero of Fanny Blankers-Koen.

She looked male, Foekje. She had long, muscular legs. Here and there a stubble on her chin. She took giant steps, wild and strong. And in no time she won everyone. So she had to be a guy. Fanny’s husband, also national coach, eliminated the competition of his wife with the test at Utrecht Central.

They say I’m not a girl, she just muttered. They say I can’t be there the way I am. In Leeuwarden, hours later, Foekje put it up. She ran back to Burum in the dark, 35 kilometers away, with every step further away from the uninhibited girl she once was. With every pass to the international riot about how the world would see her when storing the morning newspaper.

Her DNA was tested posthumously in 2012. Foekje turned out to be a girl. One with some Y chromosomes, albeit, a girl with a special genetic mosaic at most. Perhaps the same applies to Imane Khelif.

They say I’m not a girl. How should that feel, if the world tells you that you are not who you always thought you were?

Marijn de Vries is a former professional cyclist and journalist.

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