What ever happened to decency and taking the time to figure out the truth?
Let’s get the facts straight. For those who couldn’t do a simple Google search, I did it for you.
Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer at the Paris Olympics who made her Italian opponent drop in 46 seconds, is not a transwoman. Her assigned birth is female. Contrary to some blatantly homophobic remarks, mistaken as empathy by many, Khelif did not undergo any operation to change her sex.
But when some news items referred to her as “biologically male” and that she had “high levels of testosterones,” you started yelling, “She’s a transwoman!”
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If you had been getting your news from credible sources or exercised any critical thinking at all, you would have known that Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country, has, for a long time, criminalized and marginalized the LGBTQ+ community, and so you would have realized that there’s no way their government would allow a transwoman to represent their country in the Olympics.
But the truth is that it’s way easier to be transphobic and homophobic. It doesn’t require any level of critical thinking and it’s convenient to casually throw the classic argument into the comments section, “I have LGBTQ+ friends, but…”
Let’s be clear: at that moment, you were not their friend. You were not an ally. You were a bully.
So why did Khelif fail the “gender” eligibility test in the first place? I’m glad you asked.
Here’s fact number two that you could have learned before reacting if you wanted to: Khelif reportedly had high levels of testosterone. She was disqualified from the 2023 boxing World Championships by the International Boxing Association, the competition’s organizing body, for failing a gender eligibility test.
No, she didn’t have a cheat code that won all her matches. In 2022, she reached the finals of the World Championships in Istanbul but was defeated and took home the silver instead. In Tokyo 2020, the first time she participated in the Olympics, she was eliminated in the quarterfinals. Her career professional record is 9-5.
International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams said, “Testosterone is not a perfect test. Many women can have testosterone, which is in what would be called ‘male levels’ and still be women, still compete as women. This idea that suddenly you do one test for testosterone and that sorts everything out—not the case, I’m afraid.”
This discourse may be related to the issues around queer individuals’ participation in sports, which is an entirely different discussion, but this is not what you’re making it out to be. There is no transwoman involved in this particular issue, and yet, again, it’s being attributed to a community that has always been reminded of their boundaries.
You read a misinformed caption that’s meant to spread hate towards the people you call friends and your first reaction was to look at them and say, “You know what, you guys have asked for too much!” as if you’ve been waiting for this exact moment.
Somehow, Filipinos, especially, see this as a license to openly discriminate. They do not care for any informed discussions nor for any efforts to get their facts straight. In a single day, the issues around use and misuse of bathrooms and pronouns took a turn and produced the lowest form of arguments.
When you read “biologically male,” did you immediately think transgender? Did you think, “Oh my god, these LGBTQ+ folks again,” as if you’re counting their sins and favors since at least the 1960s?
Perhaps a lot of people did. And maybe they don’t realize that that in itself is a form of homophobia. Honestly, it may not be entirely your fault with all the misinformation and homophobic propaganda going around and having been left unchecked.
But to spread hate and misinformation (and transphobia and homophobia) without first getting the facts straight (or doing a single Google search), is another discussion. That is where your accountability lies. Sure, your emotions got the best of you. That’s valid and it happens to the best of us.
And in case you didn’t know, another fighter, Lin Yu-Ting, who’s representing Taiwan in Paris 2024, was also deemed “biologically male” and was disqualified in the 2023 World Championships. The fighter is a woman who fought and lost to our very own Nesthy Petecio in the Round of 16 at the Tokyo Olympics.
Repeating the same uninformed discussion means discrediting these female athletes (win or lose) of their talent and years of hard work, and disrespecting the LGBTQ+ community.
They would never ask, but you owe these athletes, trans people, and the LGBTQ+ community in general an apology. And if you ever do apologize, I hope that you do it as loudly as your disrespect. But maybe that’s asking for too much.
