The Right’s Stupid, Anti-Trans Temper Tantrum Over Olympic Boxer, Explained 

We’re seven days into the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and it only took six days for right-wing freaks to orchestrate an anti-trans panic out of thin air. On Thursday, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif—who is a woman—defeated her Italian opponent Angela Carini in particularly decisive fashion during the second-round match in the women’s welterweight division. Carini withdrew 46 seconds into the match after a clean hit to the face, because, simply put, Khelif is a better boxer than Carini.

After the match, Carini very publicly cried and complained about being hit: “I thought about my family, I looked at my brother in the stands and I went to my corner to retire,” she told reporters. “I’ve never been hit with such a powerful punch.” On Friday, Carini semi-apologized for her overreaction, conceding, “All this controversy makes me sad. I’m sorry for my opponent, too. … If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision.” Of course, the damage was already done.

Since Carini and Khelif’s match, right-wingers, anti-trans influencers, and even some members of sports media took Carini’s quotes and the fact that she quit the match, and ran with the completely baseless narrative that Khelif is “a biological male” and “trans woman.” Many feigned outrage that “a man hit a woman,” including one Twitter user who tweeted at Jezebel that “men are pummeling women in the face at the Olympics,” and why aren’t we covering it. (To answer that user: Hmm, maybe because that’s not what’s happening??) As one Defector headline aptly put it, right-wingers have “invented a trans Olympian to get mad at.”

The right particularly latched onto Khelif’s suspension from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships by the International Boxing Association. The IBA subjected Khelif to genetic testing and claimed she had “XY chromosomes,” but never made the results public, and Khelif challenged the results. Regardless, cis women with certain conditions can have XY chromosomes, which doesn’t make Khelif a “man,” but a woman with XY chromosomes.

For what it’s worth, Khelif was defeated by Irish boxer Kellie Harrington in the quarterfinals during the Tokyo Olympics—so maybe Carini should just be a better boxer?? Khelif’s passport also identifies her as “female,” which seems like an important fact since Algeria has strict anti-LGBTQ laws—especially anti-trans laws—and right-wingers are callously endangering her with their propaganda campaign.

This is all just racist, stupid, and entirely rooted in masculinizing and dehumanizing Black women while weaponizing white women’s tears. For the record, trans women are women and should absolutely be able to participate in the Olympics—that said, Khelif isn’t a trans woman; she’s just the latest victim of a heinous right-wing culture war, which has paid no mind to how their lies could seriously endanger Khelif in her home country

Former President Trump, who knows a little something about being fairly defeated and throwing a highly politicized hissy-fit, referenced the fight in a Truth Social post and wrote, “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” Of course, someone accused of sexual misconduct, including rape, probably shouldn’t be weighing in on how to best keep women safe. But it’s no matter to the right-wing, anti-trans movement, which has no interest in actual violence against women, and is exclusively interested in policing gender expression.

imagine being so much better than your shitty opponent on a purely technical level that it starts a worldwide trans panic event

— zach (@zach_idiot) August 1, 2024

Riley Gaines, failed college swimmer and delusional anti-trans activist, wrote on social media that the fight shows “the Olympics glorifies men punching women in the face with the intent of knocking them unconscious.” Professional right-wing idiot Elon Musk also railed against Khelif on Twitter throughout Thursday, pointing to her match and writing that “men don’t belong in women’s sports.” J.K. Rowling, who’s devoted the last several years of her life to cyberbullying trans people, called Khelif the face of “our new men’s rights movement.”

Later on Thursday, Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt referred to Khelif as a “biological male” who “identifies as a trans woman” on his show. Logan Paul—himself an amateur boxer who’s somehow skirted consequences for filming himself with corpses in a notorious Japanese site for suicides—called Khelif’s fight against Carini “the purest form of evil unfolding right before our eyes” in a since-deleted tweet, adding, “A man was allowed to beat up a woman on a global stage, crushing her life’s dream while fighting for her deceased father. This delusion must end.” He’s since conceded this was bullshit, but not before spreading a lie to his millions of followers that endangers Khelif’s life.

ESPN’s Pat McAfee—the same moron who frequently invites Aaron Rodgers on his show to smear Jimmy Kimmel as a pedophile and push anti-vax conspiracy theories—suggested that there’s ambiguity in Khelif’s gender: “We’re all very confused by what’s going on in Women’s Boxing,” McAfee said on his Thursday show. Actually, Pat, no human being with a single, semi-functioning brain cell is “confused” at all, but thanks for your input!

The idea that c!s men pretend to be women to abuse women is an obfuscation. C!s men abuse women every day without consequences. The idea that they need to do something to “get away with it” is harmful to abuse victims, and that is often the point

— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge) August 1, 2024

Rolling Stone notes that the IBA was barred from helping to organize the Olympics in 2019, amid ongoing corruption allegations. The outlet also pointed out that the Olympics and international sporting bodies broadly “have a long and complicated history of attempting to police the gender presentation of female athletes,” including “sex-testing” athletes to confirm their biology. So, while that entire process is highly questionable, the International Olympic Committee and Paris 2024 Boxing unit have stood by Khelif and her inclusion in the Olympics.

Nonetheless, since conservatives launched their propaganda war against Khelif, right-wingers have expanded the scope of their heinous trans-vestigations to other Olympic athletes like American swimmer Katie Ledecky. Essentially, any woman who doesn’t sufficiently demonstrate their femininity for the gender police is likely to stoke their ire and witch hunts. And despite the right’s nonstop refrain that they want to protect women from being attacked by “men,” they… don’t care about that. Violence against women is endemic, cisgender men get away with it all the time with little effort, and the only thing that anti-trans, white supremacists will bat an eyelash over is an Algerian woman beating a white woman in a boxing match.

Khelif will face Hungary’s Luca Anna Hamori next in the women’s welterweight quarterfinal on Saturday. NBC reports that Hungary is expected to challenge Khelif’s eligibility on the basis of gender.