Algeria’s Imane Khelif (right) and Italy’s Angela Carini react after their preliminary round in the women’s 66 kilogram class at the Olympic Games in Paris on Thursday.
11:19 JST, August 3, 2024
PARIS (AP) — LGBTQ+ athletes, officials and observers have warned that a flood of hateful comments misidentifying a female boxer at the Paris Olympics as transgender or male could pose dangers to the LGBTQ+ community and female athletes.
The concerns come after high-profile figures — from former US President Donald Trump to Harry Potter author JK Rowling — spoke out against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after her Italian competitor Angela Carini abandoned their bout on Thursday. She and other social media commentators falsely claimed that Khelif was a man fighting a woman.
The comments spread through social media and brought Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting into the broader societal conversation about women in sports.
International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said Friday that Khelif “was born a woman, is registered as a woman, has lived her life as a woman, has been pigeonholed as a woman and has a female passport.”
He warned against ‘turning it into a witch hunt’.
Some athletes and LGBTQ+ observers worry that hateful comments from critics — and the IOC’s failure to engage in a larger global conversation ahead of the Olympics — have already begun to vilify transgender, non-binary and other LGBTQ+ people at an event that is committed to inclusion. That’s as expanding interpretations of gender identity have fueled a larger political tug-of-war, often centered around sport.
While the Paris Olympics have promoted an agenda of openness, drawing a record 193 openly LGBTQ+ athletes, a drag performance at the opening ceremony drew fierce criticism from religious conservatives and others who claimed it mocked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Some performers and the opening ceremony’s artistic director say they have received threats.
Nikki Hiltz, one of the world’s best middle-distance runners who competes in the women’s category for the U.S. Olympic team, has experienced such hateful comments firsthand. Hiltz was assigned female at birth and identifies as nonbinary.
Transphobia is on full display at these Olympics, Hiltz wrote in an Instagram post in response to the boxing debate. “Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman. These people are not ‘protecting women’s sports,’ they are enforcing rigid gender norms and anyone who doesn’t fit into those norms is targeted and vilified.”
The controversy is rooted in claims by the International Boxing Association that Khelif and Lin failed unspecified and opaque eligibility tests for women’s competitions, which the IOC described as “a sudden and arbitrary decision” by an umbrella organization that has banned it from the Olympics since 2019.
While some sports have detailed guidelines regarding transgender athletes and hormone levels during competition, boxing relies on rules dating back to the 2016 Olympics that state that the barrier to entry is the information on an athlete’s passport. This follows a growing disagreement between the IBA and the IOC.
The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision (by the IBA), which was taken without any proper procedure, said Adams of the IOC. “These dangerous, misogynistic and unfounded attacks can lead to misinformation.”
Athletes have faced “quite a few cases of online aggression,” the IOC’s Adams said. He said it was the Olympic body’s responsibility to “look after” the athletes and “ensure they are safe.”
However, some, like Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports, a website that tracks LGBTQ+ participation in the Olympics, say the IOC’s failure to provide clarity ahead of the Games has disadvantaged both female athletes and LGBTQ+ participants, both of whom have long struggled for recognition.
The problem is not the athlete trying to compete, but the one making the policy, Zeigler said. “The horrible thing about this is that the vitriol of the last two days has been directed at these athletes.”
Zeigler said the negative reactions will likely hinder LGBTQ+ participation in the Games in the future, despite activists saying the Olympics has made great strides in recent years.
By trying to bury the problem they knew was coming, transphobic[people]are starting to lead the conversation, Zeigler said. “We can have conversations about trans athlete inclusion. There are thoughtful conversations to be had. It’s the vitriol, the vile, horrible, graphic, horrific language that’s been used around this that’s been eating away at me.”
Former athletes such as 33-year-old Belgian Charline Van Snick, a former judo champion at the 2012 Games, said the tests and comments about the bodies of Khelif and Hamori undo years of work by female athletes to combat the stigma.
While many say they’ve made great strides in recent years, US women’s rugby team star Ilona Maher broke down in tears in a social media post before the Olympics after she revealed she was a man.
There are women with higher testosterone or different body types, Van Snick said. “In judo, you fight and you have to remain a woman, which is accepted of a woman. If you look too much like a man, they say, ‘Oh, she’s a man.’ But I’m a woman” who can beat a man in the sport.
