Algerian boxer Imane Khelif reached the pinnacle of Olympic boxing late on Friday by beating China’s Liu Yang in the -66kg category final. The African boxer successfully completed her journey in Paris 2024, in Games in which she had to overcome constant unjustified attacks that questioned her sexuality.
Khelif, a 25-year-old woman, had already suffered transphobic attacks throughout her career, but these intensified a week ago when the Algerian defeated the Italian Angela Carini in the round of 16 of the Olympic Games. The fight barely lasted 45 seconds because her rival abandoned the fight after receiving a hard blow to the face in the first round. “I have never been hit so hard,” declared Carini at the end of the match, a phrase that was used as a banner by thousands of social media users who began to question Khelif’s sexuality and fueled an anti-trans campaign promoted by the far right.
The attacks came not only from fans or social media users, but also from some of her opponents. Before the quarter-final match, her opponent in that round, Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori, shared on her Instagram account an image posted on another profile in which Khelif was caricatured with a notable exaggeration of features traditionally associated with the masculine.
The scathing criticism that the Algerian boxer received was also based on a hoax, given that Khelif is a woman who, despite showing high levels of testosterone in some tests, has not undergone any type of treatment to change her sexuality, as her detractors claimed.
These high levels of testosterone had already cost her exclusion from some international competitions, such as last year’s world boxing championships, organised by the International Boxing Association. The International Olympic Committee, however, allowed her to participate because Khelif is not trans. Doubts about her condition arose from a test leaked by the International Boxing Association (at odds with the IOC) which indicated that she has XY chromosomes, the male ones, even though we know that she fought to box since she was little and faced her father, who believed that this was not a sport for girls. There are women with XY chromosomes, indeed. Intersex people, who are born with a combination of biological traits, such as genitals, hormones or chromosomes, that are not exclusively male or female. And that could be the case of Khelif, although it is unknown.
The Algerian, who was in tears after her quarter-final bout, has been able to withstand tremendous pressure on her way to gold: she has not lost a round in the four fights that led to the title. “I am a woman like any other,” she said after being crowned Olympic champion.
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