A female boxer who has competed as a woman her whole life is now accused of being transgender by the ultimate experts: right-wing U.S. politicians and influencers.
At the Paris Olympics on Thursday, Imane Khelif of Algeria defeated her opponent after only 46 seconds, when Italy’s Angela Carini stopped the fight and forfeited the match. Then the rumors started flying, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator J.D. Vance wrongfully called Khelif a “man” and somehow made it about Democrats.
“A real women [sic], Angela Carini, who trained for years to box at the Olympics is ‘defeated’ by a real man pretending to be a woman. HE is a fraud, an imposter, and a liar,” wrote Greene. “Democrats support this.”
Vance, who is also the Republican vice presidential nominee, was quick to try to somehow blame the nonissue on the Democratic presidential candidate. “This is where Kamala Harris’s ideas about gender lead: to a grown man pummeling a woman in a boxing match. This is disgusting, and all of our leaders should condemn it,” he weighed in.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was quick to join the fray. “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Khelif was born female and has always competed as a woman—including at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where she lost in the quarterfinals. Despite hearsay, there is no evidence that she identifies as transgender or intersex.
Other trans-exclusionary radical feminists and right-wingers also tried to pile on for their 15 minutes of fame, including author J.K. Rowling and YouTuber Logan Paul.
“So punching a woman in the face is apparently ok as long as the man doing it says he’s a woman and it’s at the Olympics,” wrote Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok.
The politicians and people elevating this conspiracy are quite literally putting Khelif’s life in danger. Her home country of Algeria does not recognize the rights of LGBTQ people, there is no legal recognition of transgender people, and some queer people are even jailed simply for their sexuality.
Right-wingers are citing an incident last year when the boxer was disqualified by the International Boxing Association after failing an unspecified gender-eligibility test. Some alleged that Khelif has heightened testosterone or XY chromosomes. Cisgender women can naturally have both of those things. Khelif has previously called her disqualification last year a “conspiracy.”
The International Olympic Committee tried (weakly) to come to Khelif’s defense. “I should make this absolutely clear for everyone; this isn’t a transgender issue. I think there has been some misreporting on this,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams. The IOC does not recognize the IBA as the governing body over Olympic boxing.
To be clear, there are no transgender women competing in any Olympic sports this year. However, there is actually a transgender male boxer: Hergie Bacyadan of the Philippines, who was forced to compete in the women’s division, his assigned gender at birth, and lost. However, you won’t hear about that, since it doesn’t fit the far right’s narrative.
