Straight into an impasse
Alona Ferber at Prospect bashes women who know that men are not women.
She starts with Imane Khelif’s punch to the head of Angela Carini and Carini’s forfeit of the match because she didn’t want to be killed.
The Russian-run International Boxing Association, stripped last year of its recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), claimed that the 25-year-old, who had competed in women’s boxing for years, had been disqualified from the 2023 boxing world championships over a failed gender eligibility test. The IOC rejected this, saying of the bout with Carini, “Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman.”
On X, users speculated whether Khelif—who was born female and has never identified as either trans or intersex—was male or a man or something or other that made her inclusion in the competition unfair, even dangerous.
Khelif was not born female. Ferber simply made that up. What he “identifies as” is irrelevant when it comes to male v female bodies in a boxing ring.
That day, the Algerian boxer found herself hurled straight into an impasse in the discourse over biological sex, the notion of gender and the idea that trans rights compete with those of cisgendered women, a term that refers to someone whose gender identity is the same as their sex at birth.
It’s not a “notion” you condescending sellout creep. When “trans rights” means the right for men to invade women’s spaces and sports and refuges, it’s about a bunch of hard painful facts.
…suggesting that some’s sex at a later time can be different from what it was at birth. Yet another example of wanting it both ways. I’d like to know by what means clinicians or parents can determine a newborn’s gender identity? The concept of sex being capriciously “assigned” at birth is the activists’ way of trying to get around the fact that putative “gender identity” is completely invisible until some guy decides to put on a dress and lipstick. Somehow parents, doctors, midwives, ultrasound technicians etc., are supposed to disregard the evidence of biological sex and suspend judgement until a boy chooses to play with Barbies, and a girl starts taking apart car engines?
If the supposed “identity” is not in proper alignment with the sexed body, it is always the sexed body that is to be tortured into conformity, even though sex is immutable, and even though people can have dangerously mistaken beliefs about themselves and their bodies, as in cases of those with anorexia. We try to correct the mistaken belief, convince those suffering from it that they are not grotesquely obese, and that acting on the belief that they are is injurious to their physical and mental health. Yet the delusion of “being the other sex” or “being born in the wrong body” must be respected, affirmed, and validated through the mutilation of the cursedly incorrect body, which had the nerve to be misaligned with the Holy Gender Essence, for which there is no test or proof.
Methinks they don’t understand what “scientifically” means. Biology is science, not wishful thinking.
“That day, the Algerian boxer found herself hurled straight into…”
First, it is HIMSELF.
Second, I really hate this passive voice saying somebody just “found themself” in a situation that they created and chose to participate in. If I chose to carjack somebody and then fled in the vehicle from the police, would we say that I “found myself” in the middle of a crime and high-speed chase?
Kinda interferes with the “innocent-victim-of-transphobic oppression” narrative if you point out that he’s the one forcing himself into women’s boxing, with the full power of the IOC behind him. He’s chosen to beat up women. The way he was raised is not the fault or concern of the women he’s cheating against. He’s not female. He doesn’t belong in the women’s division. It’s hard to paint him as the underdog in this situation, but they have anyway.
If memory serves, at several press conferences during the Olympics the IOC stated that Khelif was allowed to enter the women’s competition because his passport said he was female. How much more science do you need?