For the last few weeks, the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has been in the news frequently. Her success at the 2024 Olympics, winning a gold medal in the women's welterweight, has led to much speculation on social media that she might actually be a man. A similar situation has occurred with the Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, although to less public scrutiny.
To make clear to anyone who isn't sure, Imane Khelif is not a trans woman. In her native Algeria, trans people are not accepted, and there is no way she would be allowed to compete as a woman had she not been assigned female at birth. She isn't, to the best of anyone's understanding, even intersex. There was an occasion last year when she and Lin were disqualified from the International Boxing Association 's Women's World Boxing Champions, allegedly for failing eligibility tests. However, the International Boxing Association is not considered by the International Olympic Committee to be a reliable body. Later last year, it was formally stripped of its international federation status, having previously been suspended due to governance, finance and corruption issues. The exact testing methodology that Khelif and Lin apparently failed has never been revealed. There is no evidence that their chromosomes had any relevance to this decision. Given that the body that made this decision is discredited, its opinion on this matter, and on all matters, should be treated with scepticism anyway.
In all the discourse around Imane Khelif, I've seen quite a few people on the left say, 'But what if she had been a trans woman? Would you defend her then?' And that's a fair question. To be clear, I do not believe it would matter if Imane Khelif had been a trans woman. I do not believe it would matter if she had been intersex. I'm a firm believer in trans athletes being able to compete as a member of their considered gender in sports, and truthfully I think that most sportspeople are as well. If we're going to start policing the differences in people's bodies to that degree, it creates an absolutely impossible precedent to enforce, because every successful sportsperson in history has had some kind of biological advantage over their peers. As an example, the reason Michael Phelps was able to hold his breath underwater for such a long time is because his body had a quirk which meant he produced half the lactic acid that most people's do. In the twenty years trans sportspeople have been able to compete in the category of their preferred gender in the UK, there hasn't been an influx of trans champions (i.e. more than the law of averages would expect). I think most people would struggle to name three trans sportspeople.
But the fact that this has caused a cis woman so much harm emphasises a point that I've been trying to make for a long time, which is that transphobia harms cis people. We hear quite often people arguing that women's toilets, changing rooms, refuges and so on should not include trans women 'for safety measures'. It's a bullshit argument anyway because trans women are some of the most unsafe people in the world, but to keep this logic going, how exactly would this be enforced? Are we intending to have genital inspections for everyone who wants to enter? Is this the way you intend to keep women safe? There is never an answer, because as I've said in the past, this conversation has never been about finding a solution. All it's about is stoking up hate and suspicion between each other. Not to mention the fact that even if those kind of extreme measures were enforced, Imane Khelif would still pass that test. She's a cis woman, she has female genitalia, she was assigned female at birth. Although it's such a serious case of cruelty and aggression towards an innocent person, it is also quite laughable that a group of bigots who have spent years insisting that the only thing that makes you a man or a woman is what genitals you have suddenly backtracking and saying that it's about something else as well. These people will move the goalposts whenever they like to back up whichever toxic point they're trying to make at the time, because there is no consistent logic behind the argument. The argument is motivated purely by spite.
I know that some people will question why, as an advocate for social justice, I've focussed my blog about how prejudice harms privileged majorities rather than marginalised minorities. The reason is that I think we already know about small vulnerable communities and how much they are harmed by prejudice, and I don't think my voice would add very much to that argument. I think prejudice is an awful, terrible thing, and it's something I've experienced myself. But a valid question to ask whenever someone doesn't like something is, 'Is anyone better off as a result of this thing?' And the answer, in this case at least, is no. No one is better off as a result of prejudice. If they were, I still wouldn't like it but I'd have a little more patience with it, because at least I'd know that someone's quality of life had improved because of it even if not everyone's had. But it doesn't work like that.
A few years ago I read an article by Dr Jessica Taylor (which has since been taken down, and unfortunately the author turned out to be a bit transphobic herself but she was right about this) entitled 'Why I Don't Want Women To Become Equal To Men'. Admittedly I read it because I can never resist a controversial title, but I was really intrigued by her points. Her argument was that in saying that women should be equal to men, we're presenting the current male experience as something that women should aspire towards having, and that this would actually not be at all desirable. If women were equal to men, it wouldn't just be things like being paid more or being respected more. It would also mean that women would commit violent crime at the same rates as men do, be unable to express their emotions in ways other than anger, would have increased cancer mortality rates because of shame preventing them from seeking treatment the first time they find a lump. The fact that men experience these things is because the patriarchy harms them as well as harming women, and if the aim of feminism is to dismantle the patriarchy, this is something that men would experience a net benefit from.
Men do not benefit from the patriarchy. Cis people do not benefit from transphobia. White people do not benefit from racism. Straight people do not benefit from homophobia. If you're unfortunate enough to live in a patriarchal, transphobic, racist, homophobic society (and we are all unfortunate enough to live there) the best you can hope for is to have a marginally less hard time of it than someone else. Not everyone suffers from prejudice to the same extent, but if it exists we all suffer from it somewhat. This is the reason why the far-right is so successful in perpetuating these forms of prejudice; because ultimately everyone knows that they're suffering, and when they're constantly being told how privileged they are and they really don't feel very privileged it can be very easy to be persuaded to fear the 'other'. And then the whole ghastly thing continues to spiral, and nothing ever improves.
There should be no opposition, even from the world's most selfish person, to break down our systems and rebuild them with equality in mind. If we did that, every single one of us would be happier. This ought to be the least controversial proposal in the world, and I believe that if we stopped pitting us all against one another we would be capable of doing so.
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