Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-20
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Adam Tremblay, PhD candidate in sociology, University of Ottawa
The recent controversies surrounding academic freedom, cultural appropriation, or transgender identity in sports are not mere opinion disputes. Speaking of a “social controversy” allows us to understand them as new forms of confrontation that are redefining, before our eyes, the norms of our coexistence.
The 1erIn August 2024, during the Paris Olympic Games, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif faces the Italian Angela Carini. The fight, interrupted after 46 seconds, sparks a global controversy. Carini, dazed and in tears, refuses to acknowledge her opponent, stating that she hasnever taken such powerful blows.
This gesture is part of a specific context: since March 2023, the International Boxing Associationcalls into question Khelif’s eligibility for the female category, claiming to have tests revealing XY chromosomes. In a few hours, the case crystallizes a global polarization around intersexuality in sports and the definition of “female” in international competition.
Regarding Khelif’s sexual identity, certainties dissolve into a fog of contradictory statements. The International Olympic Committee (2024) states thatshe is a woman, with a female biological sex and a female passport since her birth, while a French media outlet publishes in November 2024 what it presents as aconfidential medical reportindicating a difference in sexual development with XY chromosomes, internal testes, and micropenis.
Faced with this conflicting information, the distinction between “true” and “false” itself becomes a subject of controversy, especially since no scientific consensus has emerged onthe extent of the benefits conferred by hyperandrogenismnor on theethical legitimacy of the regulations in place.
The Khelif case is therefore not primarily played out on the field of scientific evidence. It raises moral and identity questions: what is a woman? Who has the power to define these categories? These questions remain without a consensual answer, because opposing coalitions do not share the same ontological premises (what exists?), nor the same epistemological criteria (how to know?), nor the same normative priorities (should inclusion or sports equity be prioritized?). That one of these positions is, in the “absolute,” more solid than the other does not prevent the coalition that defends it from suffering concrete setbacks, nor the one that contests it from obtaining lasting institutional gains.
A fully-fledged form of conflict
The Khelif controversy is neither marginal nor anecdotal. One can think, in Quebec, of thecancellation of shows SLÄV and Kanataby Robert Lepage in the summer of 2018, or at thesuspension of teacher Verushka Lieutenant-DuvalIn the fall of 2020 for having pronounced the word with the “n” in an educational context. In the United States, one can think of the controversy around thetransgender swimmer Lia Thomasduring the 2021–2022 academic year.
The Khelif case came to add as an additional confirmation of a form of conflictuality that I was already analyzing in my doctoral research, focusing on the numerous controversies surrounding the claims of sexual, gender, and ethnoracial minorities in the public space. It is this type of conflictuality, recurrent but still poorly named, that I sought to conceptualize in my thesis.
The context of the social controversy
The transformation of mass media and the rise of digital networks haveaccelerated and intensified the circulation of speeches in the public space. It is in this new communicational environment that social controversies arise.
These media and digital transformations are indeed drastically changing the way of participating in public debate, with struggles for recognition being no exception. Thanks to social networks, people who do not know each other, but whose positions coincide occasionally, find themselves as members of the same“coalition”Â: circumstantial groupings of actors, without formal organization.
These transformations effectively connect local experiences (a boxing match, a university class, a theater performance) to the broader conflicting trajectories of the political and moral polarizations of the time. Some cases then take on extreme proportions. That of Khelif exemplifies this well: the scale it takes is due to the fact that it crystallizes while amplifying the fault lines already present in society.
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The multiple faces of the public conflict
To characterize this conflictual form, one must first situate it in relation to existing categories. The Khelif case bears resemblance to several known forms, without being reducible to any of them.
There are first elements ofclassic public debate, in the sense given by the French linguist Patrick Charaudeau. A question arises – is it fair for Khelif to participate in the female category? – and it triggers a media frenzy. Coalitions form immediately: political leaders, athletes, federations, and commentators quickly align themselves “for” or “against.” In this conception, disagreement is framed by an established setup (parliament, television set, official platform) and by discussion rules aimed at making disagreement surmountable and at opening the possibility of a compromise.
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Now, in the Khelif case, the dispute goes beyond these institutional frameworks: the opposing coalitions do not recognize any common frame of reference, and any compromise appears either impossible or at least unlikely. It is neither about cooperating to reach a consensus nor settling for a dissensus, but about urging the IOC to decide in favor of one camp against the other.
Is it then a question of ascientific controversy? Experts intervene, tests are mentioned, reports circulate. But the disagreement does not only concern figures or hormonal thresholds: it concerns what a woman is, inclusion, and sports equity. Even if the science were perfect, the camps would remain in disagreement because they do not share the same values. American endocrinologist Bradley Anawalt, professor at the University of Washington, also doubts that science will ever be able to definitively settle the matter.who must be admitted or not into the female category.
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Scandal surrounding boxer Imane Khelifa: a geopolitical showdown
There remains the temptation to understand the case from the angle ofcontroversy, in the sense of discourse theorist Ruth Amossy, professor at Tel Aviv University. She brings together several elements: outrageous declarations, repeated indignation, disqualification, strong presence of emotions and affective components. But polemics, as Amossy conceives it, requires remaining at dissensus, being content with it: as she constantly reminds, polemics is a mode of “coexistence in dissensus.”
We clash violently over immigration or climate, but the discourse we engage in fully participates in the public debate: polemicists primarily seek to convince public opinion. Yet, through the Khelif case, what is directly questioned is no longer just the outcome of a debate, but the very framework of the competition itself. Thus, the conflict does not unfold within the bounds of living together; it concerns those very boundaries.
Social controversy: an emerging form
What I call “social controversy” takes this logic one step further. In the Khelif case, it is no longer just about saying “I am right, you are wrong,” but about redefining who has the right to participate in what, according to which rules, and under what conditions one belongs to a category such as “woman” in sports. Each side seeks to impose its hierarchy of values as the organizing principle of a social environment. The conflict thus concerns the very foundations of living together.
This conflictual trajectory is not limited to the Khelif case. It is also found in cases involvingacademic freedom, at thecultural appropriation, atpronouns, toquotas, atIslamic veilor atremoval of statues. Each time, a local incident becomes the starting point of a clash between incompatible visions of what is right or legitimate.
Digital architecture amplifies these shocks: the peak is rapid, polarization is maximal, each coalition records victories and defeats, then the controversy exhausts itself without a real resolution, until the next case reactivates the same divide. In some cases, however, a cardinal value eventually imposes itself as a principle of arbitration. The controversy then takes the form of a crossroads where a social milieu chooses, explicitly or not, one normative direction against another.
Speaking in terms of a “social controversy” is therefore not renaming old disputes. It means emphasizing a type of conflict where one no longer only discusses opinions, but the very categories through which the social world is seen, and the values that should govern them. Understanding these confrontations is to equip oneself to grasp how, through cases like that of Imane Khelif, the boundaries of our identities and the conditions of our coexistence are being redrawn today.
Adam Tremblay does not work for, advise, own shares in, receive funds from an organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than his research organization.
–ref. Beyond broken dialogue: how social controversies reshuffle the rules of living together –https://theconversation.com/beyond-broken-dialogue-how-social-controversies-redeal-the-rules-of-living-together-282459