Ring of bias

Imagine being in Imane Khelif’s shoes right now. Imagine growing up in a developing country and still having the will and determination to commit to sports. Imagine being a woman and working your whole life against the invisible barriers that keep women away from sports – particularly a sport like boxing. Imagine working to perfect your craft with all these other obstacles that your more privileged opponents do not have to deal with until you finally make it to the Olympics. Then imagine being subjected to a horrific torrent of misinformed abuse and vitriolic mischaracterizations about who you are based entirely on hearsay, your looks and for doing your job too well. This pretty much describes what has happened to Khelif at the self-proclaimed ‘gender-equal’ Paris Olympics.

Khelif was born a woman, raised as a woman and has become one of the top female athletes in the world. The ongoing Olympics ought to have been her coronation. Instead, they have become a platform for her to be subjected to all sorts of lies and abuse from across the world. Everyone ranging from online-influencer celebrity Logan Paul to JK Rowling and even the Republican candidate for US vice president has accused Khelif of or implied that she is a man or transgender without any evidence to back up the allegation. These allegations surfaced after Khelif’s Italian opponent Angela Carini quit within 46 seconds of their bout and then refused to shake Khelif’s hand, a standard etiquette among competitors at the Olympics. With such prominent personalities accusing her of actually being a man, Khelif was put through the humiliation of being misgendered by a large portion of the global online community. That being said, most of her critics appear to be centred in the West while the Algerian community and her fellow national athletes and the Algerian Olympic Committee are firmly behind her. So is the International Olympic Committee.

Needless to say, the accusations being levelled against Khelif have no basis in reality. The only mark against Khelif is a disqualification in from a gold medal match by the International Boxing Association in 2023 after a test that apparently showed that she had “competitive advantages over other female competitors”. Exactly what the test involved is unclear and we know that it did not involve a testosterone examination. The IBA was subsequently stripped of its recognition as the official boxing body for the Olympics due to corruption and financial issues so its opinion on this matter is not really worth much. It is also important to remember that many, if not most, of the accusations against Khelif did not mention the IBA controversy. They were based entirely, it seems, on her looks and her dominance in the ring.

There are several threads to this baseless controversy. One thing that emerges is the bias and prejudice against women who do not fit the model of what the West expects a typical woman to look like. Under this narrative, those too tall, too muscular, and too tough are basically not women, regardless of the facts, and should not be competing against other women. Nor is this the only instance that women have been discriminated against based on what they look like at these Olympics. French Muslim women are still not allowed to wear the hijab under their government’s distorted version of secularism. The other trend that emerges is the need to nitpick and undermine every victory won by a non-Western nation. The doping allegations currently clouding the victories of Chinese swimmers also fit into this. The fact is that as economic and military power shift away from the West, so too will sporting power. Some will take longer to adjust to this than others.