Imane Khelif, an Algerian Olympic boxer, won her first boxing match of the 2024 Paris Olympics today against Italian boxer Angela Carini. Last year, Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association's world championships because she had "elevated levels of testosterone."
Khelif is not transgender nor is she intersex. Despite that, the boxer is facing transphobic backlash as many online are categorizing her as male and connecting her win to the debate around transgender athletes in sports.
Forty-six seconds into her fight with Khelif, Carini pulled out from the match, claiming that one punch from Khelif "hurt too much."
"I felt a strong pain in the nose," Carini said, according to the Guardian. "I couldn’t finish the fight after the punch to the nose. So it was better to put an end to it."
Now, some online have rallied around Carini using #IStandWithAngelaCarini on X. In many tweets, X users are misidentifying Khelif as a man.
"A man punching a woman in front of the world. Match lasted 45 secs before she abandoned with a suspected broken nose," an X user who included the hashtag in their tweet posted. "World is acting like that guy that hears the neighbor beating his wife and does nothing to help."
"The IOC has legitimized male violence against women as entertainment. Get men out of women's sports," another person said. "#IStandWithAngelaCarini who should never have been made to enter a boxing ring with Imane Khelif."
Prominent anti-trans figures have bashed Khelif, too.
"Men don't belong in women's sports #IStandWithAngelaCarini," Riley Gaines tweeted. Gaines is a former collegiate swimmer who advocates against transgender women participating in women's sports.
J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books and is vocal about her anti-trans views, tweeted that Khelif's win is an example of the "men's rights movement."
"Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better?" Rowling tweeted alongside a photo of Carini and Khelif. "The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered."
James Dreyfus, an anti-trans English actor who is currently appearing in HBO's House of the Dragon's second season, also called Khelif a man.
"What I saw. A woman getting hit SO hard, in the head, by a man, that she wisely chose to stop it, because she KNEW if she didn’t, she’d be seriously injured or worse," Dreyfus tweeted. "Blood, sweat, tears, training, dreams…shattered…."
In response to the controversy, the International Olympic Committee shared a statement in support of Khelif that affirmed her eligibility to compete in women's boxing at the games.
"These two athletes were victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA," the statement said of Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting, who is also facing transphobic backlash. "The IOC is committed to protecting the human rights of all athletes participating in the Olympic Games... [and] saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving."
But this isn’t the first time that a female Olympian competing at the 2024 games has been falsely brigaded by transphobes. Ilona Maher, an Olympic Rugby player from the U.S. said she has been called a “man” and “masculine” in a viral video addressing the attacks.
“Women can be strong. And they can have broad shoulders,” she says in the video. “And they can take up space and they can be big.”
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