Madeline wrote up this Olympic atrocity last week: a supposedly transgender Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, beat up a woman to advance. The match lasted 46 seconds before the biological female, Angela Carini of Italy tapped out; she didn’t want to get killed. Was it a match or an assault in the ring? Khelif slid through protocol since he/she/it has “Differences of Sexual Development.”
An absolute travesty at the Olympics.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 1, 2024
Angela Carini is forced to box against a biological male. She quits after just 45 seconds, and cries hysterically as her opponent is declared the winner.
Don't look away. This is wokeness. pic.twitter.com/wOkVRs88t5
Differences of Sexual Development are a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs. Some people with DSDs are raised as female but have XY sex chromosomes, blood testosterone levels in the male range and the ability to use testosterone circulating within their bodies.
[…]
"Federations need to make the rules to make sure that there is fairness but at the same time with the ability for everyone to take part who wants to. That's a difficult balance," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. "In the end it's up to the experts for each discipline. They know very well where there is an advantage, and if that is a big advantage then that is clearly not acceptable. But that decision needs to be made at that level."
Predictably, women’s sports advocates spoke out about Khelif’s participation in the Olympics.
“The consequence of the insane trans ideology is on full display at the Olympics: biological men pretending to be women beating up female boxers, with full IOC approval. In the name of equality, they are putting actual women in danger,” Former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard wrote on X.
“This happens the SAME DAY the Biden-Harris administration's Title IX rewrite goes into effect in the US THIS is exactly what it allows for & celebrates. Don't be surprised or ask ‘how did we get here?’ when this continues to happen at an exponential rate,” women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines wrote.
Pretty remarkable stuff by the AP pic.twitter.com/NaSexYpTbO
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 4, 2024
3/ Just... no. Factually, no. The IBA specifically said the test was *not* about elevated T levels. This AP reporter had time to interview a number of humanities "gender" "experts," but not to familiarize herself with the basic facts of the case. pic.twitter.com/2ptdU2yNkz
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 4, 2024
4/ One of the most consistent features of botched science stories involving hot-button subjects are that the journalists have no science reporting background to speak of, but instead cover "race," "identity," etc. Which are important beats! But don't qualify you to cover science. pic.twitter.com/INZfcBdfZz
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 4, 2024
Of course, the liberal media wants us to feel bad for Khelif. The Associated Press took the racism route, while Vox went full Nazi:
Discrimination against trans Olympians has roots in Nazi Germany https://t.co/6JNSWVmIpV
— Vox (@voxdotcom) August 1, 2024
Athletes who do not identify as trans, like Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, have also been scrutinized for their gender. Along with China’s Lin Yu-ting, Khelif is one of two women boxers who failed a “sex test” from the International Boxing Association last year. They have since been connected to discussions of sports and Differences of Sexual Development (DSD), a rare group of genetic and hormonal disorders allowed under International Olympic Committee guidelines. After Khelif’s Italian competitor Angela Carini conceded their match less than a minute into their bout, many have weighed in, including Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling.
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It all raises the question: How did we get to this point, and did it always have to be this way?
The answers found in historian and journalist Michael Waters’s The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports might be surprising. Waters’s book traces the emergence of Zdeněk Koubek, a track and field star representing the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia who, at 21, won two medals — a gold in the 800m and a bronze in the long jump — at the 1934 Women’s World Games. (The Women’s World Games was the precursor to women competing at the Olympics). In 1935, Koubek announced that he would be living life as a man and swiftly became an international celebrity.
Perhaps the most intriguing facet to Koubek’s story was in the public response. Koubek was more welcomed and celebrated than we might imagine. There was an open-mindedness and empathy to the reception of Koubek and his gender identity and expression in the 1930s.
Waters also pinpoints where and when that changed, specifically at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. Armed with a propensity for eugenics, gender anxiety, and a startling lack of scientific evidence, a small set of Nazi officials influenced the International Olympic Committee into gender surveillance and trans panic — stuff that eerily mirrors the transphobic attacks that athletes, cis and trans alike, face today.
In reading Waters’s account of Koubek and other trans and intersex athletes’ lives, it all feels like those Olympics were a breaking point. The Nazi era has substantially shaped the conversation surrounding trans athletes today.
That’s where I stopped reading. I have tolerance for a lot of stuff, but if we’re going to invoke the Nazis to defend dudes beating up women in the ring—we’re done here.
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