The latest epistle from the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage surrounds Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who defeated Italy's Angela Carini after a 46-second bout at the Paris Summer Olympics this week. Carini complained that Khelif "had an advantage" over her, which could be said by just about anyone who loses, because... well, that's why they lost, isn't it?
But the allegation was that Khelif was a man fighting as a woman, a claim that got amplified by such malicious disinformation specialists as J. K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Logan Paul, and Donald Trump, the last-mentioned of whom crowed that if he was elected he would "keep men out of women's sports."
Let's get a few things straight.
First of all, the Olympics do not allow anatomically male individuals to participate in women's sports (or vice versa). There is a genital inspection by a doctor prior to qualification -- the athletes call it the "nude parade" -- and yes, there have been people disqualified on those grounds. Khelif passed, meaning she's anatomically female.
Second, it's illegal to be trans (or any identity of LGBTQ+) in Algeria. You really believe that someone representing one of the most fervently Muslim countries in the world would have been allowed to get this far if she was LGBTQ+? And sent to France to represent the country's pride? Get real.
Third, yes, there are disorders that cause differences in sexual development and/or differences in levels of hormones than the average person. Khelif (and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu Ting) were disqualified last year by the International Boxing Association for failing some undisclosed eligibility test; the rumors are it was because she has high testosterone. But allow me to remind the people who are screaming about this -- you are the ones who want to pretend these things are simple. You are the ones who say, "It's black-and-white -- if you have a penis, you're male; if you have a vagina, you're female." Well, Khelif had a medical examination, and has female genitalia.
By your own goddamn standards, the fact that she has higher-than-average testosterone should not matter.
This hasn't stopped the screeching, because apparently I'm wrong about facts, truth, and science mattering to these people. Just this morning I saw someone post a photo of Khelif fighting Carini, and captioned it, "First ridiculing the Last Supper! Now this! I'm done with these WOKE OLYMPICS!" "Woke," now, apparently being the code word for "this makes me feel squinky." The whole Last Supper thing has been dealt with so thoroughly that I would think at this point people would be embarrassed even to bring it up, but apparently I'm wrong about that, too. The pageant at the opening ceremony had nothing to do with Christianity at all, but was a representation of a bacchanal from Greek mythology.
My own take on that is that if the services in the church I attended as a kid had involved half-naked feasting, drinking, and carousing, I'd still be a member.
But now that the anger over the opening ceremonies has dissipated, these people have to find something else to be outraged about, so they've settled on Khelif. Here, though, the stakes are way higher. These completely fabricated and fact-free rumors are not only putting her career at risk, but her life. You think the imams back home in Algeria aren't listening to all of this?
Are you that wedded to your desperate desire to be angry that you're willing to put a young woman's life in danger?
The bottom line is that sexual development, gender, and sexual orientation are complicated. You might want to be able to fall back on the biblical "male and female he created them" thing, but allow me to remind you that the same source also says that bats are birds (Leviticus 11), so maybe learning your science from the Bible isn't such a hot idea. In a previous post, I already went through a lot of the ways in which gender and sexuality can confound your desire to keep things simple and binary (you can read the post here if you want), so I won't go back through it all again.
Suffice it to say that by the bigots' own stated standards, Imane Khelif is female. Your snarling about her being male or trans or whatnot is not only false, but it's putting her in danger, and you need to shut the hell up about it now.
Time to move on to whatever you feel like being outraged about next. This time try to pick something that won't destroy an innocent athlete's life.
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