Despite the obnoxious bluster from the right that the growing visibility of trans women in public life would end women's sports as we know it, the Olympics have been yet again dominated by cis athletes. Lacking a talented target for their rage, but needing fuel for the only subject they ever talk about, the commentators most obsessed with trans women have turned their attention to the Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif.
Khelif is not trans. This is evident because, according to the IOC, her passport lists her as female, which is something that the extraordinarily repressive Algerian laws would not allow if she were trans. She was, however, disqualified from the 2023 women’s world championships because tests showed she had XY chromosomes, which is possible for cis women with certain conditions. Khelif made it to the quarterfinals of the 2020 Olympics, where she was defeated by Kellie Harrington, without incident, and she has been boxing on the international circuit for years without any of her wins or defeats gaining much attention. But her fight against Angela Carini on Thursday made her a magnet for some truly disgusting hate.
Carini quit the fight after just 46 seconds, claiming that Khelif's punches hurt too much for her to continue. As a result, Khelif became an immediate villain for those just itching for a trans controversy. Lots and lots of people are out there making unhinged statements about Khelif's anatomy, but this post from the world's most famous bigot, J.K. Rowling, is truly stunning for the way a supposed feminist so eagerly calls a cis woman "he" based simply on the way she looks and the effect of years of brain-rotting propaganda.
Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered. #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/Q5SbKiksXQ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 1, 2024
The Olympics, like all sports, are about celebrating the most awe-inspiring humans (or horses) for both their physical and mental superiority. Essentially any athlete who succeeds at this level is going to wield some difference that sets them apart from the rest of the competition, that shatters the life's ambitions of their opponents. When those athletes are men, we celebrate them unconditionally. But athletes like Khelif or Brittney Griner or Caster Semenya or Lia Thomas, when they excel, have to endure their femininity getting picked apart by freaks. In response to discussions about the complication of gender—the fact that no one trait is going to be shared by every man or woman in the world—the right loves to sneeringly ask "What is a woman?" with the implication that they can explain it straightforwardly and the left can't. But if they're going to narrow their definition so much that a cis woman with a difference only revealed through DNA tests instantly loses her claim to womanhood, it's hard to believe "woman" signifies anything to them besides "a means for oppression."
