Olympic Boxing ‘Controversy’ Is Nothing but Desperate Transphobic Lies
The 2024 Paris Olympics has been muddled in manufactured controversy as transphobes spread loads of misinformation about a boxing match between Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Italy’s Angela Carini.
Prior to the match, Reuters reported that Khelif and another boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, had been cleared to participate in the Olympics despite past ambiguous gender tests. The report revealed that Khelif and Yu-ting had allegedly failed gender tests at the 2023 World Championships. However, it emphasized that they had never failed a gender test before. Neither identified as transgender or intersex and their coaches stated there could be a number of reasons for the ambiguous gender test. Even so, that didn’t stop transphobes from J. K. Rowling to J.D. Vance from spreading misinformation about Khelif, falsely claiming that she was a man.
What happened in Imane Khelif and Angela Carini’s match?
On August 1st, Khelif had her first match against Carini. The game lasted only 46 seconds before Khelif was named the winner. After being hit in the nose, Carini withdrew from the match due to the pain. Naturally, it was a highly emotional moment for Carini, who was photographed kneeling in the ring with tears in her eyes and later cried while speaking with the press. She’s not the first, nor will she be the last athlete to have such a reaction. Athletes train their whole lives for the Olympics, and it’s understandably devastating to have one’s participation cut short. Still, Khelif won the match fair and square.
However, conservatives quickly began twisting the match and Carini’s emotion into something it wasn’t. They promptly began citing Khelif’s past failed gender test, claiming that it proved she was a man. Transphobes like Robby Starbuck and Rowling took to X, posting footage and images of the fight while referring to Khelif as “he” and a “biological man,” even though, as mentioned previously, she is not transgender. (And if she were, their deliberate misgendering would still be vile.) The misinformation quickly spread like wildfire, with #IStandWithAngelaCarini trending on X as conservatives raised hysteria, claiming that Carini was forced to fight a “biological man” and that boxing is allowing men to beat up women.
Khelif’s match is not a “transgender issue”
Given the wild spread of misinformation, the International Olympic Committee was forced to give a statement on the matter. The IOC stated adamantly, “This is not a transgender issue.” It’s not a transgender issue because Khelif is a cisgender woman and has been competing as a woman for years without issue. She was assigned female at birth, has a female passport, and has identified and lived her whole life as a woman. The IOC emphasized that testosterone tests are not “perfect ” because women can have testosterone in “what would be called ‘male levels'” and “still be women.”
Many have speculated that Khelif is intersex or has disorders/differences of sex development (DSD). DSD are a group of conditions that impact one’s sexual development. These conditions often mean that one’s anatomy or reproductive organs don’t fit the typical definition of male or female. Hence, someone with DSD may be assigned female at birth and live life as a woman despite having XY chromosomes or elevated testosterone levels. These conditions prove that gender is not binary, which conflicts with sports gender rules that try to treat gender as binary. However, these stringent gender rules in sports hurt all women by subjecting them to invasive gender tests and suggesting that some women who have lived their whole lives as women are somehow “not women enough.”
In this case, though, there’s no indication that Khelif has DSD. Until the 2023 World Championship and 2024 Olympics, she had competed for years as a woman, passing all gender tests and participating without a single issue. In fact, she passed the initial 2023 World Championships gender test. It was only after she beat a Russian fighter that officials claimed her performance was suspicious and forced her to take another test, which she allegedly failed. The test was ordered and conducted by the International Boxing Association, which is controlled by Umar Kremlev, who is also Russian, and the organization has been vague about the test results. So, claims that she had high testosterone levels or XY chromosomes may not even be factual.
Needless to say, the speculation on her gender and identity with absolutely no evidence is shameful. It’s a startling example of how transphobic rhetoric is not only hurting transgender women but cisgender women, too. Now, any woman who doesn’t meet society’s stereotypical idea of a woman is falsely labeled a man and subjected to horrific harassment and invasive speculation about their identity. The IOC cleared Khelif to compete, which should’ve been the end of the discussion, as the details should’ve been confidential. However, transphobes’ desperation to make a hateful point led to an unfair and unnecessary invasion of Khelif’s privacy.
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