PARIS– Athletes, officials and LGBTQ+ observers have warned that a flood of hateful comments misidentifying a female boxer on Paris Olympics as transgender or male can pose a danger to the LGBTQ+ community and female athletes.
The concerns come as famous figures – from former US President Donald Trump to “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling – have protested against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after her Italian competitor Angela Carini withdrew from the fight Thursday. They and other comments on social media falsely claimed that Khelif was a man fighting a woman.
The comments resonated on social media, drawing Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting into the broader social dispute over women in sport.
International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said Friday that Khelif was “born a woman, registered as a woman, lived her life as a woman, boxed as a woman, has a female passport.”
He warned “don’t turn this into some kind of witch hunt.”
Some LGBTQ+ athletes and observers fear that hateful comments from critics – and the IOC’s failure to address a broader global conversation before the Olympics – have already begun to vilify transgender, non-binary and other LGBTQ+ people at an event. that defends inclusion. It comes at a time when growing interpretations of gender identity have spurred a broader political tug-of-war, often centered on sport.
Although the Paris Olympics boosted opening schedule and a record 193 openly LGBTQ+ athletes are competinga performance of drag queens during the opening ceremony it faced intense backlash from religious conservatives and others who claimed it mocked Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” Some artists and the opening ceremony artistic director they say they received threats.
Nikki Hiltz, one of the best middle-distance runners in the world competing in the women’s category for the US Olympic team, faced such hateful comments firsthand. Assigned female at birth, Hiltz identifies as non-binary.
“Transphobia is going crazy these Olympics,” Hiltz wrote in an Instagram post in response to the boxing debate. “Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman. These people are not ‘protecting women’s sport’, they are enforcing strict gender norms, and anyone who does not fit those norms is targeted and vilified.”
The controversy is rooted in claims from the International Boxing Association that Khelif and Lin failed unspecified and opaque eligibility tests for women’s competitions, which the IOC called “a sudden and arbitrary decision” by a governing body that has banned them from the Olympics since 2019.
While some sports have detailed guidelines on transgender athletes and hormone levels in competition, boxing relies on rules dating back to the 2016 Olympics that say the eligibility threshold is what appears on an athlete’s passport amid a wider divergence between the IBA and the IOC.
“The current aggression against these two athletes is entirely based on this arbitrary decision (by the IBA), which was taken without any proper procedure,” the IOC’s Adams said. “These dangerous, misogynistic and baseless attacks can lead to misinformation.”
Athletes have faced “a few instances of online aggression,” the IOC’s Adams said. He said it was the Olympic body’s responsibility to “look after” athletes and “make sure they are safe”.
While some like Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports, a website that tracks LGBTQ+ participation in the Olympics, say the IOC’s failures to provide clarity ahead of the Games have harmed both female athletes and LGBTQ+ competitors, who have long fought for recognition.
“The issue is not the athlete trying to compete, it’s who is making the politics,” Zeigler said. “The terrible part of this is that the violence of the last two days was directed at these athletes.”
Zeigler said the backlash will likely stifle LGBTQ+ public participation at the Games in the future, despite activists saying the Olympics have made great strides in recent years.
“By trying to bury the problem they knew was coming, transphobic (people) begin to direct the conversation,” Zeigler said. “We can talk about the inclusion of trans athletes. There are thoughtful conversations to be had. It’s the vitriol, the nasty, horrible, graphic, hideous language that is used around this that eats away at me.”
Former athletes such as 33-year-old Belgian Charline Van Snick, a former judo medalist at the 2012 Games, said the tests and comments about Khelif and Hamori’s bodies are undoing years of work by female athletes to combat stigma.
While many say they have seen great progress in recent years, Ilona Maher, a star on the U.S. women’s national rugby team, broke down crying in a social media post before the Olympics after comments alleging she was a man.
“There are some women with more testosterone or different body types,” Van Snick said. “In judo you are fighting and you have to remain a woman, which is accepted as a woman. If you look too much like a man, they say, ‘Oh, she’s a man.’ But I’m a woman” who could beat a man in sports.
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Associated Press video journalist Lujain Jo contributed from Paris.
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