The Olympics are known as a time of unity and celebration – yet there are covert politics at play, obscured from audiences by the flashy opening ceremonies and blingy medals. Stronger nations perform at a level that reinforces their strength on the global stage; smaller countries can play underdog and gain cultural “relevancy ” by snagging a gold medal. With the rise of “culture wars”, a new talking point has emerged from the chaos of the Olympics. Imane Khelif, a 25-year-old boxer from Algeria, competed in her second Olympics this year in Paris. She was able to beat Italian Angela Carini in only 46 seconds, when Carini ended the match prematurely, broke down in tears, and refused to shake Khelif’s hand. Her actions snowballed into big names like Donald Trump using Khelif as an example of a “transitioned [man]” in boxing and pledged to “keep men out of women’s sports”. The shocker is that Imane Khelif is a cis woman, and these allegations are not only transphobic, they reflect a growing trend of Transvestigations– “outing” public figures as trans based on no evidence.
The claims put forward by the likes of JK Rowling and Elon Musk rest on gender eligibility test conducted by the International Boxing Association (IBA) at the 2023 World Boxing Championships. Had they spent time on actual research, instead on scrolling on X, they could have found out two key pieces of information that drastically affect the authenticity of these allegations: the nature of the test conducted has been contradicted multiple times by Umar Kremlev, the head of the IBA; and the IBA is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – the IOC has called the IBA “flawed” and therefore the tests conducted “impossible to engage [with]”. Even though it has almost been a month since Khelif won the gold medal against Chinese boxer Yang Liu, her story is still being distorted and used by public figures to pedal transphobic and misogynistic narratives. Lauren Boebert, a Coloradan Republican politician, attempted to raise funds for Angela Carini, believing her chance at winning had been “stolen”. Carini didn’t accept the money in the end, showing that funds were raised without her knowledge and were just a stunt to get people talking about the topic again.
The racial aspect of the claims against Khelif are hard to ignore – it was two White European boxers, Carini and Hungarian Luca Anna Hamori, who were Khelif ’s most vocal critics amongst her competitors. Hamori’s Instagram story post before her fight against Khelif depicts Khelif as a large, horned creature who towers over a petite, blonde woman supposed to represent Hamori. In actuality, Khelif and Hamori’s builds and heights are similar, and all this AI image does is attempt to compare Hamori and Khelif’s fight to the story of David and Goliath, reinforcing the idea that Khelif had a physical advantage over Hamori. The turning point in the competition where Khelif was treated fairly by her peers was when she fought Thai boxer Janjaem Suwannapheng, her first non-white competitor after the fight against Carini, who did not play into the theories surrounding Khelif and showed true sportsmanship as expected from an Olympian.
The Olympics are currently the most elite sporting event globally, but have been criticised in the past for their strict rules regarding “gender eligibility”. Caster Semenya, a South-African gold medalist banned from competing in the Olympics after refusing to take testosterone-reducing drugs, has now turned her attention to fighting against the new rules. Semenya was born with an intersex condition, and the ruling of World Athletics (formally the International Association of Athletic Federations) requires those with DSD (differences of sexual development) to reduce their testosterone levels if they wanted to compete in all female events. Her case is still ongoing and has become a key moment in this era of strict sport regulations and testing. The reoccurrence of cases like these bring to light the fact that the sample used for deciding the hormonal levels of female athletes is not an accurate representation of women as a whole, and even women who fit the restricted ideal of “female” do not always fall between the boundaries.
The Orientalism at play here is glaringly apparent – the western idea that women from the “East” are masculine and a direct threat to European women. As a SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) woman, I have women who look like Khelif in my family, and many of the facial features used by Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) to “out” her are features that many women, especially in the region Khelif and I are from, have. Her sharp jawline, thicker eyebrows and aquiline nose are physical features familiar to me, and ironically reflect an aesthetics so many in the West try to emulate using cosmetic procedures.
This pattern of women not being “woman” enough to compete in sports shows the direction the anti-trans moment is going – even women who once fit the definition of female find that people on twitter have now deemed them as a male, an imposter in the protected group of women, defined as being smaller and softer than a man. The fundamental feminist idea of protecting women from physical violence from men has been twisted to fit a bigoted obsession with demonising women of colour. Do you have hair on your knuckles? Do you have short hair? Are you taller than 5’8? If you answered yes to any of these questions, and think you are a woman, then you might be wrong!