Fighting Words

The case of the Algerian boxer

Photo of women boxing in 1938, taken on the top of the Ball Building, Paramount lot, Hollywood, California, USA (Wikimedia)

Watching the furor that surrounded the Algerian Olympic boxer and newly-minted Gold medalist Imane Khelif, I know I was not alone among transgender women who watched the outpouring of support for Khelif—baselessly indicted by JD Vance, JK Rowling, and other noted gender moralists for being a transgender woman, a “biological male,” or otherwise insufficiently female—with bittersweet dismay. Reporters, pundits, liberals, and others quickly rushed into the furor stoked around Khelif to correct the record and point out Khelif is not transgender as if she had been falsely accused of a serious crime. Not up for debate, it seemed, was the obsessive scrutinizing of a stranger’s body or the rigid categories of womanhood they’re constructing but simply whether this wave of harassment (which has previously targeted transgender girls and women across the country) had simply found the wrong target. When, two years ago, many of these same anti-trans activists and politicians turned their ire against UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas, trans women were largely abandoned by even our allies, some of whom agreed Thomas was simply undeserving of the same dignity and privacy denied to Khelif despite seeking the same level of trust and autonomy over her own identity.

But the story of Khelif could only be a story if the people who claim to be “protecting women” athletes from transgender athletes had no such interest at all. As I’ve written before, all the rhetoric about “fairness” in athletics or "biological sex” tends to collapse the moment it encounters the complicated reality of both fairness and sex. As many transgender student-athletes are discovering in 25 states, this results in either invasive sex testing that attempts to demand order from chaos or mercurial, subjective decisions handed down by faceless commissions. We could say that Khleif as a cisgender woman is merely the mistaken target of anger and bigotry meant for a transgender woman, but I prefer the broader truth—that Khelif and transgender women alike are facing the same misogyny that seeks to narrow the definition of “woman” along racist and sexist lines until it can fit into a corset. The self-identification as a woman being withheld from Khelif by those trying to capture her in their transphobic gaze is the same dignity denied to transgender athletes by the same people and policies, and the only solution is a united front against those people and policies.

To try and “debunk” or “fact check” Khelif’s gender is to help the people rendering her suspect succeed at their own twisted game. There’s a famous quote from Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal 1944 essay “Antisemite & The Jew”:

“Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

Gender itself being an amorphous and fluid concept, paranoia focused on it becomes a neverending source of this delight. Because gender is a socially imposed category, we all have the opportunity to do the imposing—upon ourselves, our children, our peers, or strangers put in front of us on the internet. Each of us is deputized in the policing of boundaries that govern how we dress, how we speak, how we move through the world, and how we are trusted with our own subjectivity. This means trans panic is a perfect excuse for the petty tyrant, the manic paranoiac, or the aspiring online influencer to cast a shadow of doubt over the identity of any given person—they simply have to turn up the heat on a flame we’re all asked to carry.

And because trans people do not look any one way, the appearance of any given person is suspect to the “transvestigator”—so much so they constitute an online subculture of would-be gender detectives pretty sure they’re the only cisgender people left. Analyzing shoulder widths, hip-to-waist ratios, and forehead tilts, these casual phrenologists find their eugenic physical ideal of “man” or “woman” is completely nonexistent, ignoring as they do the fact there is greater physical diversity within those categories than between them. Even on the thinnest of bases, the transphobe will subject any person they choose to their dehumanizing gaze because it is the hunt and categorization of individuals that gives them power. What they’re delighting in is their endless hunt for order amid the uncertainty and fluidity that is inherent to human biology and allowed for in any free society.

To try and find logic in the controversy surrounding Khelif or debate the merits of their claims is a fool’s errand because the controversy is the goal itself. Having delighted in nearly a decade of open transphobia while facing minimal pushback from mainstream or liberal forces, the pundits and politicians spreading lies about Khelif are bloated on their bigotry, fattened by their fanaticism, coddled by their crazy. They love these controversies not because they find them electorally advantageous (they aren’t) or because they care about women, children, or whatever other veil they’ve given their obsession. They do so because it is fun and profitable and nobody is stopping them.

If the lesson learned from the Khelif saga is that the manufactured outrage and international harassment sent her way had simply found the wrong target, then the pitchforks and torches will be left in the hands of those using this outrage to expand their influence. The logic of hatred is hardly logic at all, and to engage it in good faith is to inflate and enrich it.

If this moment is instead understood as an example of the eternal gatekeeping that defines the anti-trans movement—which is not only dedicated to the erasure of the small population that calls itself “trans” but anyone who falls outside of their shifting and subjective expectations and mandates—it could represent the kind of overreach that historically ends witchhunts. I have already watched as transphobia and the lies that serve as its foundation have torn apart communities, ruined lives, and enabled a wave of legal restrictions that have completely altered life for transgender Americans. If there is any justice to be had from the Khleif saga—other than her hopefully getting to seize Rowling’s superyacht as damages—it is as a peak of shame, a rock bottom. A recognition by the bystander and fair weather ally that solidarity with trans people is not only a matter of shared values (freedom and autonomy and self-determination) but shared interests (opposing fascistic weirdos to deny them power and influence).

An adequate response to the gendered harassment faced by Khelif would center truth in contrast to lies but, importantly, wouldn’t be based on the truth alone (which the transphobe routinely burns in effigy to their own delight). It must also name transphobes as not merely liars or fools but also as militants and inquisitors with an endless list of targets acting on behalf of a racist and sexist order in opposition to the possibility of a pluralist, social democracy. It must name as the danger the false assurance of order and certainty and replace it with a proactive faith in freedom. Fear itself is what animated this panic and it is fear itself that must be opposed when it seeks to erase our subjectivity and our self-determination—regardless of who it targets.