Imane Khelif’s Olympic lessons on gender shaming, pride and politics

-Essay-

BEIRUT — Whoever was surprised by what happened to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif at the Paris Olympics has never had a comment made about the fact that she is a girl or a woman with a few hairs on her face. How many women have been ridiculed for being taller than average, or for having broad shoulders — or perhaps for not removing the hair on the back of their hands!

For those who are surprised by what happened to Khelif, do they really know how much stereotypes and criticism women and girls (and even men) face? Haven’t they heard jokes about a man with a soft voice? Or a small body? Or decided to grow his hair long or wear an earring?

Not only did Khelif win the gold medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she also triumphed over old ideas about what women are expected and forced to be. It was a triumph over the manipulation of sports for political purposes.

But even as Khelif’s story inspires joy and pride, it also inspires outrage, because it exposes how much hatred people can suddenly experience simply because they are different. And as we have seen in this Olympic story, it is a hatred that is shared literally around the world.

It seems wrong to think that hatred of the other can disappear completely from a part of the world where extreme right tendencies prevail. These tendencies are mainly focused on hatred of the other and all too often focus on the bodies of women.

Complex story

Khelif’s story is more complex than just stereotypes about women. It is also deeply connected to racism, transphobia and global political conflicts, as well as the violation of human rights through medical gender testing.

Khelif, who comes from a poor village in Algeria, fought tooth and nail to make her dream come true, overcoming logistical and cultural challenges related to being a woman who wanted to play a sport that was considered “only for men,” especially in the Arab world.

Since women began competing in the Olympics in 1928, they have been subjected to skepticism, scrutiny, and invasion of the privacy of their bodies. Japanese runner Kino Hitomi was reportedly pulled aside before a race and “examined” to confirm her femininity after winning a silver medal in the 800 meters in 1964.

It is worth mentioning that some of this skepticism arose after it was discovered that men were dressing up as women and participating in women’s competitions. But the problem lies in the stereotype and suspicion of the gender of any woman with superior physical characteristics that differ from the usual: women should not have strength comparable to that of men.

Men are never expected to show a certain limit to their strength, unlike women who are questioned when they show a higher limit than expected or when they approach the physical capabilities of men.

Really cheating

During the Olympics there were cases of ‘cheating’, such as what happened to Hermann Ratjen, who tied his genitals in a certain way and competed as a woman in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, until the truth was revealed by a journalist in the 1950s. Hermann told his story to the journalist and the story was made into a film and won an award.

The Khelif controversy tells us the following: “If you do not display the socially and culturally accepted feminine characteristics; if you display great physical strength, you will be doubted,” but “if you have feminine characteristics compatible with cultural and social beliefs and great physical strength, you will not be doubted!”

In 1966, before the start of the European Athletics Championships in Budapest, 234 female athletes were asked to stand naked in front of three female gynecologists to prove that they were women. Imagine being forced to stand naked and show your body parts to prove your femininity. It should be considered a violation of human rights.

Modern gender “testing”

But there are real questions: Is there a way to affirm a female athlete’s gender without insulting her dignity and violating her privacy?

Gender aptitude tests have changed over the years. Yes, scientific advances have uncovered many cases of cheating (men masquerading as women) — but they remain inaccurate and demeaning tests for women. According to human rights groups, such tests have led to some female players committing suicide amid the controversy surrounding their “gender.”

In the early years of the Olympics, visual observations and gynecological examinations were performed on a trial basis for two years at some competitions. However, these humiliating procedures were abolished in favor of genetic testing.

Later, analysis of sex chromatin and DNA from male chromosomes (Y) became mandatory in all sports. Since then, it has been shown that gender verification is highly discriminatory, causing trauma and social stigma for many women with intersex issues or “androgen insensitivity syndrome”, who are excluded from competition.

Attempted suicide

After the introduction of sex chromatin analysis in 1968, it was no longer used as a general diagnostic method by geneticists. There were too few laboratories to perform the test routinely. This created a greater problem of interpretation errors by inexperienced researchers, resulting in false positive and false negative results.

Why should a woman have to endure such a humiliating experience?

Scientifically, taller and more physically fit female athletes have a higher percentage of muscle and their lungs and hearts are larger, which means they have a higher chance of winning. Thus, such female athletes are likely to have a more competitive body than others, which can result in incorrect and harmful conclusions.

For example, South African runner Caster Semenya was considered by some observers to be a man because she achieved overwhelming successes that skeptics believed could only be achieved by a man. After winning the women’s 800-meter race at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin, her gender was questioned and she was asked to undergo sex-determination tests. The investigation and testing took a long time, leading to a delay in the announcement of the final race results. The investigation sparked a wide-ranging debate about human rights and discrimination.

In 2010, Semenya was cleared by World Athletics and allowed to compete again.

But the question is: why should a woman have to go through such a humiliating experience and be subjected to accusations and doubts, just because she is physically strong? Isn’t there a way to determine gender that respects the dignity of athletes and doesn’t violate their privacy?

Sports and politics

In his book The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern SportsAmerican researcher Gene Gallup presents a picture of the complex relationship between sports, fascism and non-traditional sexual orientations. He discusses how these factors overlapped in shaping modern sports, as fascist regimes used sports as a tool to achieve their political goals and promote their ideologies.

The book also looks at how societies treat athletes with non-traditional sexual identities, and how this has helped shape the modern sporting environment. Gallup believes that the modern sporting environment is a space that is overflowing with social and political complexities that have transcended the boundaries of purely physical competition, which we believe is the essence of this competition.

It is based on the idea that modern sports are not simply a recreational or physical activity, but rather an arena in which issues of identity, power and gender collide and intertwine as sport is exploited for political purposes.

Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!

Elsewhere in the press • “When will African athletes be feminine enough?” asks Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo for ISS Africa. For the Pretoria-based NGO, the researcher highlights how rules regarding testosterone levels and “femininity tests” at the Olympics have disproportionately affected women from the Global South — particularly Africans — leading to controversial disqualifications. These practices, she argues, are a continuation of European imperialism, using pseudoscientific justifications to perpetuate racist and misogynistic attitudes.

Mbiyozo even goes so far as to draw a parallel between these contemporary sporting practices and the history of exploitation and dehumanization of African bodies by Europe. The author cites the case of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe.

“Sports governing bodies, the media and the public should all reject calls to judge African women’s bodies based on Eurocentric perceptions of femininity,” the researcher advises, highlighting how these practices perpetuate oppression under the guise of fair play. — Bertrand Hauger (read more about the Worldcrunch method here.))

Jesse Owens vs. Adolf Hitler

During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Adolf Hitler used the games as a platform to demonstrate the “superiority” of the Aryan race and promote his racist and fascist ideology.

But Hitler’s plan did not succeed, as African-American star Jesse Owens won four gold medals. But the matter did not end there, as the German media attempted to downplay his success, instead portraying his achievement as evidence of the weakness of American sports policy.

At an individual level, we can better understand how big the stakes are.

At the time, the Nazi regime promoted the idea that the United States was dependent on “non-white” people to achieve victory. Unfortunately, even in the United States, Owens was not honored in a way that matched his achievements, as racial segregation was still widespread. His achievements were downplayed only because he was black.

Nearly 80 years later, Russia took advantage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the 2018 FIFA World Cup to improve its image on the international stage.

Yet it is on an individual level that we can better understand the stakes when sports and politics collide. Khelif’s victory will always be fraught with questions and accusations. Yet her courage and tenacity, and victory, force us to think more about both progress and where we aim our next blow.