Array
A bellicose quarrel over who should and shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports has erupted over the last few days following Imane Khelif’s Olympic boxing victory over the Italian contender Angela Carini. Sites like CNN, USA Today, AP, Reuters, and innumerable others with a pronounced left-wing bias are adamant that Imane Khelif, despite possessing “genetically male” attributes, is a woman in every possible sense of the term—even Ketanji Jackson would have no trouble identifying Khelif as a woman. This is to be expected. Khelif is not to be blamed for his decisive victory over a woman even if she/he is in some way “trans.” For the left, gender dysphoria is the way to go.
But nothing is as clear as the left professes it to be and whatever cause or phenomenon it may champion should be immediately treated with skepticism. The IOC’s justifications ring desperately hollow. The Hungarian Boxing Association was not impressed by the gender raffle and said it would send letters of protest to the International Olympic Committee. (Nonetheless, as of this writing, Khelif has defeated Hungary’s Luca Anna Hamori.)
The International Boxing Association deposes that Khelif failed to meet eligibility requirements for the women’s competition and—what is key—was not subject to a testosterone exam but put through a separate test that found “she” had competitive advantages over women athletes. “IBA president Umar Kremlev alleged to Russian news agency TASS last year that Khelif had XY chromosomes—a pair of chromosomes typically possessed by men.” The question will no doubt remain vexed for some time though the more important issue must be placed, as we will see, in the context of the feminist outcry over unfair male advantage.
We’ve all heard about the need for a “course correction” in the development of certain affairs, but rarely, especially when it comes to the most crucial aspects of a culture, of a “thought correction.” This is certainly true of one of the most damaging ideological deformities of the modern West, namely, feminism. When it comes to feminism, whether as a practice or a theory, even its most astute and honorable adversaries do not tend to think clearly, as I hope to show.
If it should turn out that Khelif is indeed female, then there is no argument. She is just a very big girl with a competitive advantage over others of her sex. If her chromosomal packet remains disputable and it turns out that Khelif is a bivalent creature, there is ample room for suspicion and disbelief of those who claim that Khelif is a woman. Khalif not only looks like a man, is built like a man, and may well possess x/y chromosomes, but is a man in effect and action and not a woman or a hermaphrodite. In which case, sympathy and concern for the young woman whose nose he broke in the ring is precisely what any decent person would feel—as many have. But caution is required about the real issue.
Forbes writes of the necessity to “protect the right of female athletes to be able to compete on equal terms.” Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, a notorious feminist, blasted the Olympics as “a misogynist sporting establishment,” which in its current form it manifestly is not.
