Olympic outrage

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.

Khelif at the Pan-Arab Games in 2023 [Image licensed under the Creative Commons ALGÉRIE PRESSE SERVICE | وكالة الأنباء الجزائرية , Imane Khelif Jeux panarabes 2023, CC BY 3.0]

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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The cost of personal courage

I have been following, from some distance, the hue-and-cry over Simone Biles's removing herself from competition on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.  Biles was completely up-front about why.  "You have to be there 100%," she told reporters.  "If not, you get hurt.  Today has been really stressful.  I was shaking.  I couldn't nap.  I have never felt like this going into a competition, and I tried to go out and have fun.  But once I came out, I was like, 'No.  My mental is not there.'  It's been a long year, and I think we are too stressed out.  We should be out here having fun.  Sometimes that's not the case."

Well, immediately the pundits started weighing in.  Charlie Kirk called her a "selfish sociopath" and bemoaned the fact that "we are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles."  Clay Travis suggested she be removed from future competition because she couldn't be relied on.  Piers Morgan was perhaps the worst -- not surprising given his ugly commentary in the past.  "Are 'mental health issues' now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport?  What a joke...  Sorry Simone Biles, but there's nothing heroic or brave about quitting because you're not having 'fun' – you let down your team-mates, your fans and your country."

And so on.  The criticism came fast and furious.  There were voices who spoke up in support of her decision, but it seemed to me the nastiness was a lot louder.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Agência Brasil Fotografias, Simone Biles Rio 2016e, CC BY 2.0]

Or maybe I'm just sensitive.  Other writers have spoken with more authority about the rigors of Olympic training and gymnastics in particular, not only the physical aspects but the mental, topics which I am unqualified to discuss.  But whatever the context, there is one thing I'm dead certain about.

If someone says they're struggling mentally and/or emotionally, you fucking well believe them.

I have fought mental illness all my life.  I've been open about this here before; I have come to realize it is no more shameful than any other chronic condition.  I do know, however, first-hand how debilitating anxiety can be.  I've also suffered from moderate-to-severe depression, fortunately now ameliorated by medications and a family who is understanding and supportive.  So at present, I'm doing okay.

But it hasn't always been that way.  For much of my life, I was in a situation where "suck it up and deal" and "be tough, be a man" and "you should be thankful for what you have" were the consistent messages.  Therapy was for the weak; psychiatric care (and meds) were for people who were crazy.  There's nothing wrong with you, I was told.  You just spend too much time feeling sorry for yourself and worrying about things you can't control.

The result?  Twice I was suicidal, once at age seventeen and once at age twenty, to the point that I had a plan and a method and was ready to go for it.  That I didn't -- fortunately -- is really only due to one thing; I was scared.  I spent a good bit of my first marriage haunted by suicidal ideation, and there the only thing that kept me alive was my commitment to my students, and later, to my children.

But I thought about it.  Every.  Single.  Damn.  Day.

That a bunch of self-appointed arbiters of proper behavior have told this remarkable young woman "No, I don't care how you feel or what you're going through, get back in there and keep performing for us" is somewhere beyond reprehensible.  I don't even have a word strong enough for it.  If you haven't experienced the hell of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression, you have zero right to criticize someone else, especially when she's doing what people in a bad mental space should be doing -- advocating for herself, setting her limits, and admitting when she can't manage to do something.

I wish I had known how to do that when I was twenty-four (Simone Biles's age).  But I was still a good fifteen years from understanding the mental illness I have and seeking out help -- and unashamedly establishing my own personal boundaries.

So to all the critics out there who think they know what Simone Biles should do better than she does -- shut the fuck up.  I presume you wouldn't go up to a person with a serious physical illness and have the temerity to tell them what they can and can't do, and to pass judgment on them if they don't meet your standards.  This is no different.  We have a mental health crisis in this country; skyrocketing incidence of diagnosed mental illnesses and uncounted numbers who go undiagnosed and unaided, and a health care system that is unable (or unwilling) to address these problems effectively.  What Simone Biles did was an act of bravery, and she deserves unequivocal support for it.  The cost of personal courage shouldn't be nasty invective from a bunch of self-appointed authorities who have never set foot on the road she has walked.

And those who can't understand that should at least have the good grace to keep their damn opinions to themselves.

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One of the characteristics which is -- as far as we know -- unique to the human species is invention.

Given a problem, we will invent a tool to solve it.  We're not just tool users; lots of animal species, from crows to monkeys, do that.  We're tool innovators.  Not that all of these tools have been unequivocal successes -- the internal combustion engine comes to mind -- but our capacity for invention is still astonishing.

In The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, author Ainissa Ramirez takes eight human inventions (clocks, steel rails, copper telegraph wires, photographic film, carbon filaments for light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips) and looks not only at how they were invented, but how those inventions changed the world.  (To take one example -- consider how clocks and artificial light changed our sleep and work schedules.)

Ramirez's book is a fascinating lens into how our capacity for innovation has reflected back and altered us in fundamental ways.  We are born inventors, and that ability has changed the world -- and, in the end, changed ourselves along with it.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Higher, faster, stronger

I'm of two minds with regards to the Olympics.

Okay, to be fair, I'm of two minds with regards to most things.  More than two minds, sometimes.  My friends have been known to quote Tolkien at me - "Go not to the Elves for advice, for they will say both yes and no."  I can usually argue both sides of any point, often equally persuasively - and can talk myself into almost anything.

Well, except for the whole evolution thing.  I'm pretty rabid about that.  Other than that, I'm kind of ambivalent by nature.

But I digress.

This evening will be the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics, when the most talented athletes will meet in London to being a series of grueling competitions for the gold.  Most of these young men and women have trained all of their lives for this moment, and a tremendous amount rides on success.  You don't get that far without a huge competitive streak -- and the fact that the majority of the participants will not receive a medal is simple mathematics.  So, my question: is the heartbreak worth it?

I still remember watching an event in the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Some friends and I were in a bar following a Cornell hockey game, and the television was tuned in to the women's hockey game between Canada and Slovakia.  Evidently not having had enough opportunities that evening to watch a puck sliding around, I became glued to the set.

When we came in, it was 13-0 in Canada's favor, with 19 minutes to go in the third period.  As I watched, the score finally climbed its way up to 18-0.

I couldn't take my eyes off it.  Besides loving hockey, it was a little like watching a car crash.  You're seeing it, you know it's going to be bad, but you can't take your eyes off it.  That poor Slovakian goalie was powerless to do anything about facing an offense that basically steamrolled her own defense, and one shot after another went in to the net. When the teams lined up to shake hands afterwards, she was in tears.

Don't get me wrong; I like watching skill.  The Canadians were clearly more talented and better trained, and deserved the win.  But the compassionate side of me hates to watch what amounts to an athletic car crash happening, in full view of millions.

This, of course, isn't the only time this sort of thing has happened.  I still remember some years ago when French figure skater Laetitia Hubert was catapulted from 20-some-oddth place into 5th by a flawless short program, and had to go into the finals against the Big Dogs of the likes of Surya Bonaly and Midori Ito.  The poor kid couldn't take the pressure, and completely fell apart.  The tears of amazed joy from the previous day turned into a performance that was acutely painful to watch, as she tried again and again to land jumps that her nerves just wouldn't handle.  It is the only time I've ever seen the camera cut to a commercial break in the middle of someone's performance -- even the network techs couldn't bear to have her humiliation televised.

It's an odd thing, the Olympics.  We watch it to see the best of the best strut their stuff, to see people do what 99% of us couldn't in a hundred years dream of doing ourselves.  When the inevitable happens, and some of them fail, they sometimes do so in such a spectacular fashion that it makes us want to turn away, to pretend it isn't happening, but we know that we will remember these people as much - or perhaps more - than the ones who get the medals.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not against competition per se.  And I think that our current self-esteem obsessed educational establishment's emphasis on making sure that everyone wins is wrong-headed; true self esteem comes from challenging yourself, working hard, and succeeding at something you didn't think you'd be able to do.  But I do have to wonder if extremely high-stakes competition, from medical schools to American Idol to the Olympics, is more destructive than constructive.

I know that the athletes would say -- most of them, anyway -- that it's the mere fact of making the Olympic team, of getting there, that is the most important, and that the medals are secondary.  I only believe that up to a point.  If we set up a contest whose sole aim is to raise the fastest, strongest, and most skilled to the skies, then the ones who fall will always draw our sympathy.  I honestly don't know if the whole Olympic concept is a good thing or a bad; probably some of both.  But for me, the despairing face of Laetitia Hubert, picking herself up off the ice after the sixth bad fall, and the tears on the face of the Slovakian goalie are as much a part of it as is the joy of the gold medalist.  If you want the one, you have to accept the other.