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The Gender Police attack female boxer for being trans. They were wrong. [1]

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Date: 2024-08-03  

If you’ve been paying attention to the Olympics no doubt you’ve heard the controversy surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. On Thursday she won her bout after only 46 seconds when her opponent, Italy’s Angele Carini abandoned the fight after only two punches, stating that she felt it would be too dangerous to finish the fight.

Cue the Right Wing Anti-Trans Hate Machine which swung into overdrive. England’s most notorious transphobe and TERF JK Rowling of course accused her of being a man, as did Trump himself. Adding fuel to the fire, the now discredited International Boxing Association (which has been banned from the Olympics since 2019) claimed that she had previously failed a gender exam, citing Khelif possession of XY chromosomes.

Now it should be noted that Algeria has outlawed gender transformation and photos have emerged of Khelif as a little girl in Algeria. Her father has also clearly stated that she was born female and has the documents to prove it.

But of course that’s not enough for the transphobes. Even the Boston Globe decided to falsely accuse her of being transgender in their front page headline.

Other female boxers have stood up for Khelif, stating that her record shows 9 losses to other female boxers. IOC President Thomas Bach has also decried the bigots, who have also gone after Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting.

“Let’s be very clear here: We are talking about women’s boxing,” Bach said Saturday. “We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised a woman, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women. And this is the clear definition of a woman. There was never any doubt about them being a woman.”

The allegations against Khelif were frequently framed as a call to protect the integrity of women's sports and, by extension, the women themselves.

But that's an inauthentic argument according to Michele Donnelly, an associate professor of sport management and a gender issues researcher at Brock University. She sees it as an excuse to push a transphobic agenda.

"It's so obviously not about women's sport at all. It's about really forwarding a trans-exclusionary, transphobic agenda," she said.

Rowling then proved her point by calling Khelif a "male" who was "enjoying the distress of a woman he just punched in the head." She has since doubled down on her accusation stating on Xitter: “We saw a male punching a female."

In actuality, we saw a female athlete punching another female athlete as Khelif has never identified as transgender and her documents prove that she was assigned female at birth. In actuality there are no transgender athletes competing this year at the Olympics.

Imane Khelif has now qualified for at least a Bronze medal as today she defeated Anna Luca Hamori of Hungary to advance to the semi-finals.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/8/3/2260437/-The-Gender-Police-thought-they-got-a-scalp-They-were-wrong?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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