At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, a right-wing media firestorm spread disinformation that Imane Khelif of Algeria was transgender. As this article from the October 1988 issue of Ms. reminds us, sex testing in women’s sports is nothing new—and its origins are blatantly unscientific.

“Sports are not democratic. They’re elitist. The tallest play basketball. The shortest are jockeys. The ultimate would be to break the Olympics into biological classes and run them like the Westminster Dog Show.”