Gender debate at the Olympics.
When biological men, whether trans or inter, compete against women in sport, it can't be fair. But the debate surrounding Imane Khelif and her Olympic participation in women's boxing shows that the ideology of diversity harms women.
The public sympathy for the Italian boxer Angela Carini lasted less than a day in Germany. Media such as the "Volksverpetzer" quickly worked on a narrative that diverted the outrage away from the fact that a biological man was competing against a biological woman in boxing.
Suddenly it was said that Imane Khelif was not a man at all. Even if he had XY chromosomes, which has not been proven. As an intersex person, Khelif was merely a woman with high testosterone levels. The fact that Khelif, like the former runner Caster Semenya, can also be a biological man with the same advantages as any other man as an intersex person is deliberately ignored.
Instead, numerous media outlets, including even the Bild newspaper, are adopting the narrative of the "people's snitch", which is based purely on speculation and ideological wishful thinking.
Not one major medium in Germany has managed to allow at least one thought of doubt. Yet this would be entirely appropriate. If only for the fact that it would be easy for Khelif and his team to dispel the concerns about his gender.
Why would someone prefer to accept worldwide speculation and the associated public pressure instead of simply providing clarity?
A legitimate question and, above all, one that every critical journalist would have to ask if the main focus of many press representatives in Germany were not now on pandering to ideologues instead of seeking the truth.
Media missteps: from victim to perpetrator
So the narrative of the poor woman who is now wrongly referred to as a man because she looks too masculine. This is followed by maudlin stories about Khelif's childhood, who, as a girl in patriarchal Algeria, would have found it so difficult to gain a foothold in boxing.
A picture circulates in which he can be seen as a child wearing a dress with his family, while another photo showing him next to a female boxer with a headscarf, while he strangely doesn't have to wear one, is hidden from public view.
Die Welt even goes so far as to describe in a headline not the fact that a biological man is competing against a biological woman as a scandal, but Carini's refusal to shake hands with Khelif after the fight.
The Austrian newspaper Krone takes an even more tasteless approach, writing today that giving up would have been worth it for the Italian in retrospect. After all, the International Boxing Federation would have paid Carini 100,000 dollars in compensation. Just as much as she would have received for winning Olympic gold. So it's not all that bad, is it?
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International are also getting involved to criticize the hatred that is being poured out against Khelif online.
What they are less interested in: The hatred and attempts at intimidation faced by female athletes who dare to speak out against this injustice in women's sport. Carini has now publicly apologized and backtracked. The pressure on the Italian appears to have been too great. However, the images of the disheveled boxer after the fight against Khelif remain.
Biological men rob women of their performance
The Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori, who has to compete against Imane Khelif this Saturday, has also felt the wrath of the tolerant. Her Instagram stories disappeared after death threats and insults, as did those of former boxing world champion Regina Halmich, who also made critical comments.
These are women who are being systematically silenced by those who claim to stand up for democracy and tolerance. Unlike people like Khelif, they no longer have a lobby within Western societies.
It would be so important to focus on what this alleged diversity ideology means for women. What it means specifically for female athletes and not always just for trans or intersex people.
Not to focus on how hard it supposedly was for Khelif to box her way to the top, but on the fact that somewhere in Algeria there is now a female boxer who was robbed of her Olympic ticket by a biological man.
Outrage turns to anger
That it is always and only women who lose out in this "trans game". That there will never be even one trans man who will snatch a victory away from male athletes in men's sport and rob them of their chances.
No, it's not just men who need to start feeling more compassion for women than for their gender peers who are unfortunate enough to feel in the wrong body or have a gender anomaly. No, women in particular need to start feeling more compassion for women. To show solidarity with their own gender instead of with men who humiliate women in sport.
Because outrage grows out of compassion and outrage grows out of anger. And that's what we need now so that those who have been fooling us for days don't get away with it this time.
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