The rapper, stage name Zuby, videoed the lifts to show ‘the fallacies of the arguments’

He has become an unlikely feminist icon: the weightlifting hip-hop artist and Oxford graduate who set out to demonstrate that athletes who are genetically male should not be competing alongside women.

The rapper, whose stage name is Zuby, was filmed last week smashing the British women’s deadlift record, in which the weights are raised from the ground to thigh level, while he said he was “identifying as a woman”. The video has had almost 1m views on Twitter.

The 32-year-old later beat the UK women’s bench press record too, joking that his work was “strong, stunning and brave”.

It comes amid a debate about the participation of transgender athletes in sport.

Critics including the tennis champion Martina Navratilova, who is a long-term campaigner for LGBT…