Frenzy Over Olympic Boxer Imane Khelif Reveals Anti-Trans Absurdity on the Right

When Algerian boxer Imane Khelif beat her competitor Angela Carini in just 46 seconds during an Olympic bout, it set off a firestorm. Right-wing media was quick to regurgitate false claims about Khelif’s gender. And those claims were spread in the United States by the same anti-LGBTQ groups fighting legal battles against federal civil rights protections for queer and trans students.

As Khelif and Olympic officials have confirmed, she is a woman who was assigned female at birth and found eligible to compete in the Paris Olympics, where she is a finalist in women’s boxing.

Now, Khelif is speaking out against bullying after facing a torrent of online hate fueled by anti-trans sensationalists who latched onto faulty media reports to claim that a “biological male” was boxing women in the Olympics.

The misinformation about Khelif’s gender, which was originally reported in Russian state-controlled media and later debunked, enraged Christian nationalists and trans-exclusionary ideologues who are working with the Republican Party to attack the rights of transgender youth in states across the United States.

Major anti-trans figures, such as Donald Trump, J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk joined the circus of performative outrage against Khelif as the false claims about her gender went viral across social media. Now that marriage rights for same-sex couples are no longer a flashpoint of controversy, conservatives have set their sights on queer youth while attempting to turn the extremely small number of transgender women and girls participating in competitive sports into a political wedge issue.

Khelif is not transgender, but Kristen Waggoner, president of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom, jumped in on the controversy to highlight lawsuits against new civil rights protections for LGBTQ students attending U.S. schools and universities that receive federal funding.

After Khelif quickly won the match against Carini on August 1, Waggoner blamed “gender ideology” for the loss and said it was “most disgraceful” to watch a “female athlete get beat up by a man.”

As it turns out, Khelif is a woman who also happens to be really good at boxing. However, in her initial statement, Waggoner suggested without any evidence that the Biden administration is plotting to allow men to compete against women in combat sports.

“What unfolded in women’s boxing at the Olympics is a glimpse into the future the Biden-Harris [administration] envisions for women with the Title IX ruling going into effect today,” Waggoner said in a statement. Her group is a longtime opponent of gay rights and joined Republican-led states in filing lawsuits against the Biden administration for expanding civil rights protections to LGBTQ students under Title IX, the federal law that bans gender-based discrimination in education.

Asked whether Waggoner would retract the statement based on new information from Olympic officials about Khelif, a spokesperson for the Alliance Defending Freedom did not provide a response to Truthout at the time this story was published.

The targeting of Black and Brown athletes for not being “woman enough” has been going on for years, fueled by politicians and social media accounts that thrive on outrage, misogyny and anti-queer hate. As a result, athletes from African nations are disproportionately targets of online vitriol and forced to prove their womanhood by submitting to invasive medical tests in order to compete, according to human rights groups.

David J. Johns, CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition, said the right’s twisted obsession with race and gender has also followed U.S. athletes such as Serena Williams, the tennis megastar who faced harassment and discriminatory drug testing throughout her career.

“This moment, sparked by author J.K. Rowling, is a reminder that Black and other nonwhite women are often the prime targets of transphobic and racist individuals and actions designed to diminish their achievements and wipe white tears,” Johns said in a statement.

Johns said “internet trolls and evangelical zealots” are known to single out Black female athletes for scrutiny in order to promote outdated ideas about gender and influence public policy.

“Instead of educating themselves on the diverse expressions of sex characteristics that encompass womanhood and femaleness, they perpetuate harmful stereotypes and discriminatory practices designed to exclude, divide, and conquer,” Johns said.

As Natasha Lennard explains at The Intercept, the intrusive “sex testing” of female athletes has revealed that science cannot always determine an individual’s “biological sex” based only on hormone levels and sex chromosomes:

Attacks on Khelif — like previous discriminatory treatment of other female athletes like South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya — reveal the right’s gender ideology for what it is: intellectually untenable and racist. Pointing this out will not stop their vile gender policing; it should, however, give pause to anyone who might entertain Republican and trans-exclusionary positions on gender as worthy even of debate.

In her statement about Khelif, Waggoner promoted her role in the Republican-led campaign to exclude transgender students from safely attending school and participating in sports that is now being debated in courtrooms and campus halls across the country. While transgender and nonbinary youth are most often targeted, the right’s obsession with queerness has inspired a massive spike in online harassment and hate crimes that impacts all LGBTQ people.

Last week, the Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX rules went into effect in nearly half the country while judges temporarily blocked the change in at least 26 states as legal challenges wind through the courts. The new rules expand the federal ban on gender-based discrimination in education to include discrimination due to “sex stereotypes,” “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity.”

The new rules also strengthen protections against sexual violence and clarify that schools and universities cannot discriminate against students, employees and applicants who are pregnant.

Republicans and anti-trans activists claim the Title IX change is meant to force schools to allow transgender girls to use facilities and join teams corresponding to their gender, but the Biden administration says the newly finalized Title IX rules do not apply to sports.

Republican lawmakers passed laws in 25 states banning transgender students from playing on school sports teams that correspond to their gender. The Biden administration has introduced a separate rule that would forbid such blanket bans while still allowing for flexibility at the local level. Opponents say blanket bans on trans kids in sports prevent parents, coaches and leagues from making decisions that are best for their own students and communities.

In a television interview on Sunday, Khelif encouraged the “people of the world” to respect the Olympic spirit and refrain from bullying athletes.

“It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind,” Khelif said in Arabic. “It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”