EQUAL RIGHTS, EQUAL FIGHTS!

Why I'm rooting for Imane Khelif to Go for Gold!

"I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects. It can destroy people, it can kill people's thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying...

God willing, this crisis will culminate in a gold medal, and that would be the best response."

- Imane Khelif

(CORRECTION: THIS PIECE REFERS TO IMANE KHELIF AS AN INTERSEX ATHLETE, BUT FURTHER RESEARCH LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT THIS IS UNSUPPORTED BY THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE. IT HAS BEEN WIDELY REPORTED THAT KHELIF HAS XY CHROMOSOMES, BUT CHROMOSOME TESTING IS GENERALLY USING PCR. I HAVE ASKED SEVERAL EXPERTS TO WEIGH IN, BUT AS OF THE CURRENT MOMENT I BELIEVE IT IS UNREASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT KHELIF IS IN ANY WAY MALE. STAY TUNED FOR AN UPDATE.)

HEY FOLKS,

I’ve never really written about sports, but I am a sports fan. When I was a kid, I loved the Olympics.

For one thing, I grew up without a TV, but during the Olympics my mom would sometimes borrow one, because she loves watching figure skating.

I remember the 1998 Nagano Olympics, which happened not long after my grandfather died. I remember my Oma, who was normally tough as nails, curled on the couch with a box of Kleenex, watching the Olympics to take her mind off her grief. She suggested to my Mom that she put me in speed-skating, and my parents thought that was a great idea. So I became a speed-skater, and I loved it.

Unfortunately, politics kinda ruined the Olympics for me. Back in 2010, the Vancouver Winter Olympics were used to run cover for a massive development scheme which was a thinly-disguised war on the poor. Vancouver’s never been the same since.

I would never deny that there is a dark side to the Olympics. Take the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, for example. The Mexican state massacred a bunch of students on the eve of the 1968 Summer Olympics, yet they went forward with the Games anyway.

Man, that must have been a fucked-up feeling for those athletes, eh? Can you imagine the feeling of an athlete standing atop that podium?

That’s part of the full context around the famous “Black Power Salute”, by the way. I don’t think it was just for black people. I think it was in solidarity with all oppressed people, including Mexicans.

This year’s Olympics got off to a very disturbing start, as its organizers decided to mark the occasion by proving to the world that Putin spoke advisedly when he called Western elites “openly Satanic”.

The Occult Olympics

It’s a damn shame, really. Athletes all around the world grow up dreaming of the chance to compete at the highest level, and to push human ability to the absolute limit. For all of the negative aspects of the Olympics, let’s not forget the beauty and the glory of sports.

Take this, for example:

I don’t know about you, but I think the fact that a human being can jump 6 metres using only a stick is absolutely amazing. It’s magnificent, it’s incredible, and it makes me proud to be human.

Unfortunately, most of the focus here on Substack has been on a controversy which I think has been totally misconstrued. You know the one I’m talking about - all the hoopla about women’s boxing, mostly coming from people who clearly know sweet fuck all about boxing.

Instead of focusing on the world’s greatest athletes competing at the highest possible level, all anyone seems to be talking about is trans this and trans that. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it. Why do people need to make everything about trans ideologues? If the most interesting thing about someone is that they think that they’re something they’re not, that should tell you all you need to know right there. Why are we giving them so much attention? Why aren’t we celebrating the triumph of the great Novak “NoVaxx” Djokovic? You know he just won the gold medal in men’s tennis, right? The greatest tennis player of all time is a diehard anti-vaxxer, and yet he hasn’t gotten a quarter of the attention that Imane Khelif has.

If case you’ve been tuning it out, here’s what you’ve been missing:

That last one is the best take, if you ask me. I’m guessing that some of you are confused by it, so if you’re feeling lost, you can watch this video to get caught up:

Basically, two intersex people who are arguably technically male prepare to vie for glory in the gold medal bout at the Paris Olympics.

I say “technically” because the situation is actually more nuanced than a lot of people are making it out to be.

The whole internet seems to want to make this about trans ideology, but Imane Khelif IS NOT TRANS. She is an intersex woman, who was born with a vagina and raised a girl. This is not an issue about trans people. It is about intersex people, and I’m certainly not without my sympathy for intersex people, who definitely didn’t ask to be born that way.

Thankfully, some people care enough about facts to tell the truth.

If you’re not a sports fan, you may not be aware that this is by no means the first time that there have been controversies involving intersex people competing in women’s sports. Although the culture wars have poisoned the well, there are indeed some people who are neither entirely nor entirely female.

So, I thought that I might bring a bit of nuance to the debate by directing your attention towards some relevant history.

Here’s a brief list of notable intersex Olympians:

• Stella Walsh (Stanisława Walasiewicz): A Polish-American track and field athlete who won a gold medal in the 100 meters at the 1932 Olympics. After her death, it was discovered that she had ambiguous genitalia, leading to debates about her sex.

• Erik Schinegger: An Austrian skier who competed as a woman named Erika Schinegger and won the women's downhill world championship in 1966. Later, it was discovered that he was intersex, and he transitioned to live as a man.

• Caster Semenya: A South African middle-distance runner who has faced significant scrutiny and controversy regarding her sex characteristics. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800 meters (2012 and 2016) and has been the subject of debates and rulings by athletics governing bodies regarding her eligibility to compete in women's events.

• Dutee Chand: An Indian sprinter who challenged the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) regulations regarding hyperandrogenism, which affected her ability to compete. She won a landmark case in 2015 allowing her to compete without undergoing medical intervention to lower her natural testosterone levels.

I don’t really claim to have the right answer as to who should and who shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports, or who should decide, or what criteria they should use, but my point is that this has been a legitimate question that has been debated for the better part of a century. There is such a thing as intersex people, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

Imane Khelif may be not fully female, but this whole debate is gross, because she isn’t a man either. She really was “assigned female at birth”. She was raised as a girl, and she has lived her whole life as a female. Her passport says she is female, which means she is legally considered female in her native country of Algeria. For almost all intents and purposes, she is a woman.

As far as I can tell, this isn’t actually a story about trans ideology at all. It’s a story about an intersex athlete with ambiguous sexual characteristics. And yet people are cheering at the thought of her getting pummelled by Mike Tyson.

What’s obvious is that most people holding Imane Khelif up as an example of the moral depravity of Western Civilization have never taken a single second to put themselves in her shoes? How would you like to hit puberty and find out that you’re not actually really a girl, despite having no penis? How would you like to live your life being neither male nor female, having no place where you belong? How would you feel if the entire world was talking about your abnormal genitalia? Does that sound like your idea of a good time?

I think we should use this as a teaching moment. Despite all the blabbity-blah about non-binary people in recent years, intersex issues remain poorly understood, because there’s no real intersex political movement to speak of.

For one thing, being intersex is a rare condition. I’ve heard it affects about 1 in 10,000 people, but good estimates are hard to come by.

For another, most intersex people are not out as intersex. You might know people who are intersex and no know that they’re intersex, and they may not care to tell you something that might make you look at them differently forever. It’s not a cause that many people want to take up, and the case of Imane Khelif clearly illustrates why.

If we can have some compassion for intersex people, we can clearly see that they are not responsible for the trans craze or Big Pharma marketing mental illness in order to sell drugs. It’s not intersex people mutilating the genitals of children. Indeed, intersex people are victims of the medical system. Most people don’t know this, but doctors were mutilating the genitals of children long before the trans craze was even a gleam in Beelzebub’s eye.

For instance, have you ever read of the Phall-O-Meter? Apparently if a baby’s dick is too small, doctors will decide that baby has to live as a female and cut it down to what they think is an acceptable size for a clitoris. Isn’t that fucked up?

Let’s keep that in mind when Mike Tyson generously offers to fight Khelif and donate the proceeds to a battered women’s charity, something that lands a little differently if you know that he’s been convicted of multiple violent crimes against women, including rape and battery.

Before you let Mike Tyson portray himself as a defender of women, you might want to watch this video:

All that said, I’ll freely admit that I’m totally opposed to the idea of “trans women” competing in women’s sports, and I’ll concede that it is debatable whether or not Imane Khelif is female. But it’s tricky, because she’s not really male either.

It’s especially tricky because boxing is a combat sport, and some fucked-up dudes have been pretending to be chicks so they can fight women instead of men.

In the case of MMA fight Fallon Fox, who competed against women without letting them know he was born and raised male, it seems like part of his motivation was a desire to beat on women. I have no sympathy for such people, or those who defend them.

But that’s just not what’s going on in the case of Imane Khelif. Not even close. I’ll say it again: Imane Khelif IS NOT TRANS. She is an intersex woman.

That said, I get it. Her testosterone levels are abnormally high. If you’re heard that she’s been barred from competing by the International Boxing Association, that’s because the IBA has stricter rules than the Olympics do.

Which rules are better? I don’t know. Do you?

My point is that people are leaping to judgement without truly considering the evidence, something that is all too common in today’s meme culture.

Speaking of the IBA, you may interested to hear what Wikipedia has to say:

Imane Khelif (Arabic: إيمان خليف, romanized: ʾĪmān Khalīf, Arabic: [ʔiːˈmaːn xaˈliːf]; born 2 May 1999) is an Algerian amateur boxer. She represented Algeria at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Following Khelif's victory over Italy's Angela Carini during the 2024 Olympic Games, disinformation surfaced on social media about her gender. False assertions about her gender were fuelled by Khelif's disqualification from the 2023 Women's World Boxing Championships, organised by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) after allegedly failing unspecified gender eligibility tests.^[2][3] This disqualification happened three days after Khelif defeated a previously unbeaten Russian prospect, thus restoring the Russian boxer's undefeated record.^[4] The IBA's Olympic status was later revoked due to governance issues as well as judging and refereeing corruption. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its Paris Boxing Unit stated Khelif was eligible to compete in the Olympics, and criticized the IBA's previous disqualification as "sudden and arbitrary" and taken "without any due process".^[5] No medical evidence that Khelif has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.^[6] Khelif was born female and identifies as female.^[7]

Speaking of Russia, you realize they were banned from the Olympics, right? Yet Israel was not. You want to talk about the Paris Olympics being unfair? That’s the direction you should be looking in.

I’ll give you this - there’s no question that testosterone is a performance-enhancing drug. There’s a reason why there are no intersex athletes winning gold medals in men’s sports.

Clearly, a higher testosterone level gives an athlete a competitive edge in pretty much all sports. This is especially true in combat sports. So, does her naturally higher testosterone levels give Imane Khelif an unfair advantage?

Well, it gives her an advantage, sure, but is it unfair? Is it fair that Zdeno Chara is 6’9 with fists like wrecking balls? Should he have to take performance-decreasing drugs to make things fairer the rest of the world’s elite male athletes? No? Then why should a freakishly strong woman have to?

That said - life has taught me that practicality takes precedence over principles in real life. If female boxers were at risk of dying by stepping into a ring with Imane, then I wouldn’t support her competing in women’s events. So how big is the difference between Imane Khelif and her competitors? Is it any bigger than the difference between Zdeno Chara and Theo Fleury, who is 5’6?

“Well,” I thought, “only one way to find out!” So I decided to actually watch her fight.

I should mention at this point that I’m both a boxing fan and a boxer. It wasn’t long ago that I was actually living in a boxing gym in Mexico.

I’m by no means qualified to score fights or anything, but I do know a thing or two about boxing, and there are lot of female boxers in Mexico, where boxing is second only to soccer in terms of popularity.

Often enough, the women’s bouts at a Mexican fight night are better than the men’s ones. No, female boxers can’t compete against men, but they’re serious athletes in their right. They deserve more credit than they’re getting in these whole debate. If they were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, they wouldn’t be boxers.

The natural place to start was with Khelif’s fight against an Italian named Carini, who surrender 46 seconds into the first round, later complaining that Khelif punched too hard.

Please watch it before reading on. It’s very short.

What did you think? Not so bad, right?

If you’re a boxing fan, you probably thought “What the hell was that? You call that a fight?”

If this fight would have happened at my boxing gym in Mexico, people wouldn’t have been upset with Khelif. They would have been upset with Carini for being a wuss!

Never in my life have I ever seen a boxer give up as easily as Carini did. Honestly, that was pathetic performance. To describe those hits as vicious might seem appropriate… if you’ve never watched boxing in your life!

If I could say one thing to Carini after watching that piss-poor excuse for a fight, it would be this:

Listen, folks, boxing is a violent sport. It involves getting hit in the head hard, and the higher the level you’re competing at, the harder you’re going to get hit. If you can’t take a punch, you’re not cut out for boxing. And if you can’t take a really fucking hard punch, you’re definitely not cut out for Olympic boxing.

Yeah, Imane Khelif is bigger and taller, but they’re in the same weight class. The size difference by itself does not make this an unfair fight.

Also, it’s not like Imane Khelif is in a league of her own. She competed in Tokyo, and she’s got nine losses on her record, presumably all to “real women”.

The controversy around Khelif’s biological sex seemingly began in 2023, and is worth looking into.

According to Wikipedia:

In March 2023, Khelif competed for the gold medal in the finals at the IBA Women's World Boxing Championships; however, she was disqualified shortly before her gold medal bout against People's Republic of China boxer Yang Liu. The disqualification came amid allegations from the Russian-led International Boxing Association's (IBA) that Khelif had failed unspecified eligibility tests.^[31] This disqualification happened three days after Khelif defeated Azalia Amineva, a previously unbeaten Russian prospect.^[4][31] The disqualification restored the Russian boxer's undefeated record.^[4][31] According to the Algerian Olympic Committee, Khelif was disqualified due to medical reasons; later reports indicated her testosterone levels were too high to compete.^[32][33] Uzbekistani boxer Navbakhor Khamidova was awarded the bronze medal over Khelif.^[34]

In 2023, IBA president Umar Kremlev said that the disqualifications were because DNA tests "proved they had XY chromosomes".^[35][6] The Washington Post stated, "It remains unclear what standards Khelif and Lin Yu Ting failed [in 2023] to lead to the disqualifications",^[6][35] further writing, "There never has been evidence that [...] Khelif [...] had XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone."^[6] The IBA did not reveal the testing methodology, stating the "specifics remain confidential".^[36] At the time, Khelif said the ruling meant having "characteristics that mean I can't box with women", but said she was the victim of a "big conspiracy" regarding the disqualification.^[37] She initially appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but the appeal was terminated since Khelif couldn't pay the procedural costs. After the appeal, Khelif organised her own independent tests in order to clear her name and return to boxing.^[15][38]

On 31 July 2024, regarding their 2023 decision, the IBA alleged that Khelif and others "did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential", and further alleged that they "were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors".^[39] The following day, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released their own statement in response, stating that the IBA's decision was "sudden and arbitrary" and "without any due process".

Huh. You mean a boxing organization might be corrupt? Well, I never! What is the world coming to?

Let’s watch another bout. Here’s Imane Khelif fighting a woman back in 2022:

Well? What did you think?

Good fight, right? Someone please tell me why anyone wandering into that room would have a problem with this fight. Yeah, a woman’s getting hit in the head. It’s fucking boxing. It’s a violent sport.

Also, if you’re one of those people saying “she’s obviously a man! She ain’t got no tits!”, you might want to watch some more women’s boxing matches before being so sure.

For a female Olympic boxer, these are big tits:

Turns out big tits don’t give you an edge in boxing. Whodathunkit?

“Oh, whatever,” I can hear some of you saying. “She’s got Y chromosomes. Quit your quibbly quibbling. She’s a dude!”

Oh, really? You sure about that? How much do you know about chromosomes? Did you do any research into chromosome testing before coming to that conclusion? You might want to!

Let’s ask AI a pertinent question: “How do sporting bodies test for Y chromosomes?”

ChatGPT:

Sporting bodies test for the presence of Y chromosomes through genetic testing methods that analyze an individual's DNA. Here are the key steps typically involved:

1. Sample Collection: A sample is collected, usually through a buccal swab (a swab of the inside of the cheek) or a blood sample. In some cases, hair or other tissues might also be used.

2. DNA Extraction: The DNA is extracted from the cells in the collected sample.

3. PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction): Specific regions of the DNA are amplified using PCR. This process makes millions of copies of particular DNA segments to make them easier to analyze.

4. Y Chromosome-Specific Markers: The DNA is then tested for the presence of Y chromosome-specific markers. These are sequences of DNA that are unique to the Y chromosome and not found on other chromosomes. Common markers include SRY (Sex-determining Region Y) and other Y-linked sequences.

5. Analysis: The presence or absence of these markers is analyzed using various techniques such as gel electrophoresis, sequencing, or other molecular biology methods.

6. Interpretation: If Y chromosome-specific markers are detected, it indicates the presence of a Y chromosome.

This type of testing is used in a variety of contexts within sports, including verifying the sex of athletes for eligibility in gender-specific competitions, especially in sports where there are stringent regulations on the eligibility of female athletes. It's worth noting that these tests can raise ethical, privacy, and fairness concerns, and the policies surrounding their use are often subjects of significant debate.

Yep! You read that right. Fucking PCR testing. Are people honestly acting like PCR testing is legit? Am I the only one who hasn’t been in a fucking coma for the past 5 years?

After COVID, I’m not even sure if I believe in DNA. I mean, I believe that it probably can be used as a kind of fingerprint to link hair or blood to specific individuals, but beyond that, I’m a skeptic.

Now that I know that Karl Popper deemed Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection is unfalsifiable, I think we should all be more skeptical about the claims of scientists. At this point, I’m not even convinced that genes have anything to do with heredity! Dr. Steph Lanka believes genes exist primarily to serve metabolic functions, and he was right about viruses!

But I digress. Let’s get back on track. I think there’s a real ethical question here, which no one seems to have the gonads to ask.

That question is: Under what circumstances is it morally permissible for a man to hit a woman?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. “There is NO reason for a man to hit a woman!” If your wife’s beating you with the frying pan, well, you’d better get used to it. If you don’t like it, you can always leave. If you can’t afford another place to live, or if you don’t feel like leaving your home, or you don’t want to lose custody of your kids, you’d better learn to put up with being hit.

That’s what a “real man” would do. Right?

Now, in case you’re wondering, no I’m not a woman beater. In my entire life, I’ve never once struck a woman in anger. I don’t need to. I’ve got words.

I’ll hit a woman, sure, but only if she’s into it. But I know enough about the world to know that things aren’t nearly so clear-cut in the real world as they are in the minds of certain sheltered people.

You may be surprised to learn that there are punk feminists who don’t subscribe to the notion that a woman should be able to get away with anything.

Amongst street punks, there’s a saying: “EQUAL RIGHTS, EQUAL FIGHTS”.

When I came across people who had that as an ethical framework, I had to run a system upgrade on my brain. I was always raised to believe that you should never hit a woman, under any circumstances. But what if she’s bigger than you? What if she’s hitting you? Isn’t it kind of sexist to think that no female could ever be in a dominant position over a man? That’s really not giving woman enough credit! If you’ve spent enough time with street punks, you know what I mean. And if you’ve ever watched female boxing have at it in Mexico, you definitely know what I mean. Let’s get one thing straight. There are violent women out there, okay?

To be clear, the saying “Equal Rights, Equal Fights” doesn’t mean that it’s A-OK for a big burly dude to wail on his much smaller girlfriend. It just means that a fight between a man and a woman and a fight isn’t necessarily different from a fight between a man and a man. A fight is fair if two people are more or less evenly matched, regardless of their sex. That’s equality. And you’re either for equality or you’re not.

Let’s let Bill Burr break it down:

We can probably all agree that it’s wrong for a juiced-up bodybuilder to beat up an elderly man, or for a rugby player to pick a fight with a guy who’s got Down’s Syndrome, right?

Well, what if that rugby player is female? What if that bodybuilder’s a woman?

That’s what “Equal Rights, Equal Fights” means. It basically boils down to the timeless admonishment of schoolyard bullies: “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” Except it’s not really just about size, but fighting ability.

Lest people think I’m making the classic “takes two to tango” excuse for wife-beating, I’m not. If I had a son, you better believe I’d teach him never ever to hit women. I’d drive that point home and make sure it was deeply embedded in his subconscious mind. Then, when he was old enough, I’d give him the asterisk. I’d tell him that there are exceptions to every rule (including that one). I’d tell him that it would most never never be necessary to use physical force against a woman, but under certain circumstances, it might be called for. If a woman is standing in front of a door screaming in your face and you want to leave the room, you should have the right to move her out of the way, for example. But one should always use appropriate force, which is generally the least amount of force possible.

There’s also the fact that weapons are the great equalizer. If a woman is brandishing a weapon with credible intent to use it, I think it’s fair game to use whatever force is necessary to disarm her. If I have a daughter, I’ll teach her never to pull a weapon unless she’s ready to use it. That’s because once a woman has pulled a weapon, she has forfeited all right to play the victim if things don’t go her way. A woman with a gun is just as potentially deadly as a man with a gun, and should be treated accordingly. That means a female cop is no different from any other cop. That’s some Black Bloc 101 for ya.

But really, that’s not what this is about. This is about an intersex athlete who has trained for years to compete at a high level. There are only two categories in which Olympian athletes can compete - men’s events and women’s events. Do you think that it would be fair for Imane Khelif to go toe-to-toe with Zdeno Chara or Mike Tyson? Yeah, me neither.

Honestly, at this point I’m cheering for Imane Khelif. I hope she wins the gold medal. I don’t care if the International Boxing Association says she’s technically got X chromosomes. She was born with a vagina, she was raised as a girl, and she’s being treated like fucking garbage because she’s intersex.

Imane Khelif is not trans and this story has NOTHING to do with trans ideology.

Like most of you, I oppose the idea of the idea of “trans women” competing in women’s sports. But that’s not what this is about. Can we please stop making everything about the TINY number of (mostly) monolingual Anglo-Americans who like to pretend to be members of the opposite sex?

What’s going on here is an INTERSEX WOMAN is competing within the weight class and category that is most appropriate for her to compete in. Anyone who thinks that it would be poetic justice if Mike Tyson beat the shit out of her needs their head examined.

So, yeah, fuck the haters! Go for gold, Imane! I’m rooting for you!

As for the rest of you, let me ask you this: what would you rather remember from the Paris Olympics?

This:

Or this?

Or how about this?

I rest my case.

(If anyone wants to drop links to their favourite examples of extraordinary athletic achievement from the Paris Olympics into the comments, I’ll add them to the body of the post!)