On the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 3, 1995, while sitting in section 543 at Three Rivers Stadium, my friend Tom and I attempted to diagnose the knee injury sustained by Pittsburgh Steelers star cornerback Rod Woodson when he reacted to a sudden fake by the Detroit Lions’ Barry Sanders by attempting to turn faster than his leg would allow.
We were in the upper deck, and the play occurred on the opposite sideline at the other end of the field. Tom was a dentist, so he at least had some medical training. And we were right: We called it a torn ACL. Woodson did not play again for the Steelers until that season’s Super Bowl.
That was a private conversation, though.
No consequences for anyone if we’d been wrong.
That’s not quite the same as someone ascertaining another person’s gender from 4,000 miles away with a glance at a computer screen – and then generating a torrent of anger, outrage, even hate toward that person, unchecked and amplified as only social media can.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is in the welterweight quarterfinals of the 2024 Olympics and will fight Saturday against Luca Ann Hamori of Hungary. It took a single bout in Paris, and less than a round of that, for Khelif to come this far. She won her first fight of these Olympics by a first-round stoppage when Italy’s Angela Carini took a hard right to the face within the first 46 seconds and chose not to continue.
Khelif has been battling for more than a year, though, merely to climb into the Olympic ring. And it appears that was the least of what she will face for as long as she remains an active athlete.
MORE: Angela Carina wants to ‘apologize’ to Imane Khelif for handshake snub
Boxing experts J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Lauren Boebert and Tommy Tuberville publicly condemned Khelif’s presence in the Games. Rowling was the most verbose, of course, pointedly calling Khelif “a man” and a “bullying cheat” in a post on “X” and also condemning Olympic organizers for permitting her to compete.
It is illegal for a person to be transgender in Algeria, where Khelif grew up in a small rural village in the Tiaret province. Pretty much every letter in the LBGTQ descriptor can lead to a person spending up to three years in prison in that country. This is a religiously strict nation that is vigorously defending Khelif, not some Northern California liberal conclave. The Algeria Olympic Committee released a statement calling out the “lies” and “baseless propaganda” that fueled the “unethical targeting and maligning of our esteemed athlete, Imane Khelif.”
On her passport, Khelif is listed as female. By every account, she was raised as a girl. By her account, when she wanted to play her country’s most popular sport, soccer, she was discouraged by the boys in her village. When she decided to take up boxing, she had to evade the disapproval of her father, who did not see it as a sport fit for girls.
Khelif had passed any and all tests relative to her gender from the time she began competing internationally a half-dozen years ago until she reached the final of the 2023 World Championships. She has not been some sort of monstrous machine in her boxing career. She has fought 51 times and lost nine. She finished 17th at the 2018 World Championships, 33rd a year later. In the 2021 Olympics, she fell in the quarterfinals to eventual gold medalist Kellie Harrington of Ireland.
MORE: Who is Imane Khelif? Bio, history of controversial Algerian boxer
In her most recent world competition, the 2022 Women’s World Championships, Khelif lost a unanimous decision in the light welterweight class final to Ireland’s Amy Broadhurst.
When Khelif returned to fight in that same event a year ago, she advanced to the gold medal bout but then was disqualified by the organizer, the International Boxing Association. The International Olympic Committee is not trusting the IBA to run the competition in Paris – nor in Los Angeles four years hence, with the IOC indicating in a statement issued Thursday it wants the boxing federations of competing nations to found a new governing body. Eliminating boxing from the Olympic program is a possibility if that does not develop.
Even the IBA, though, while refusing to allow Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting to continue fighting at last year’s Worlds, cited tests that showed they have competitive advantages “over other female competitors”. Right. They said “other female”. We do not know the nature, or the veracity, of the test involved. One thing the IBA as an organization apparently has done right is decline to officially release what sort of test led to its conclusion.
The IOC called the ban “sudden and arbitrary”, though, and criticized the lack of due process accorded the athletes, calling out the IBA for allowing its secretary-general, Umar Kremlev of Russia, to issue these determinations on his own with only subsequent board approval.
“Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination,” the IOC said in its statement.
“The IOC is saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving.”
Nadia Whittome, a member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament, pointed out in an X post the vitriol being aired by public figures — and embraced by those who follow them — has an impact that goes beyond Khelif.
Imane Khelif was assigned female at birth. She’s spoken about being initially banned from boxing by her dad who said it wasn’t for girls.
The attacks on her show that transphobia doesn’t only hurt trans people, but also other women who don’t fit conventional ideas of femininity.
— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) August 2, 2024
“The attacks on her show that transphobia doesn’t only hurt trans people,” Whittome posted, “but also other women who don’t fit conventional ideas of femininity.”
It was interesting Rowling so vehemently condemned Khelif for shattering the “life’s ambition” of Carina in their Olympic bout. When Khelif was named an ambassador for UNICEF earlier in the year, she spoke of how boxing has changed her life.
“I started with nothing and now I have everything,” she told UNICEF.org. “My message to young people is to follow your dreams. Don’t let obstacles come in your way, resist any obstacles and overcome them. My dream is to win a gold medal. If I win, mothers and fathers can see how far their children can go. I particularly want to inspire girls and children who are disadvantaged in Algeria.”
Even from half a world away, it’s clear to see there is no just cause to excoriate and vilify this person. Justice, though, does not appear to be the point.
