South Park, Kathleen Stock & The Woman-Punching Male Boxer
The Surprising Thing I Resent About the Imane Khelif Case
South Park & Trans
No sooner had photos emerged of male boxer Imane Khelif pummeling his female adversary Angela Carini - who surrendered after 46 seconds - than social media blew up with hot takes. As is customary now, battle lines were drawn. The gender critical, anti-woke side - the closest I have to a tribe - were clear and (almost) unanimous: the pictures of a man - from an Islamic country no less - brutally beating a white European woman for our entertainment was the natural conclusion of dangerous woke ideology.
South Park told us as much (minus the Islam) back in 2019.
In the other corner, woke legacy media figures such as coke-addled disabled-child-mocking former children’s presenter Richard Bacon jumped at the opportunity to grow his morality stock by telling women - including scientists and biologists - that they were wrong about what maketh a woman.
As though peering through a dusty time portal into a 1999 delivery room in Tiaret, Algeria, they stated with certainty that Khelif was born a woman. What happened in the intervening 25 years, then, is something of a miracle, given he’s purported to have XY chromosomes.
If this is the case regarding not only Khelif’s male chromosomes but his reported male-typical testosterone levels, then the Olympic Committee is responsible for overseeing the greatest sporting travesty in history.
Regarding the complex science, I’ll defer to the likes of Emma Hilton, who I hope to interview soon for a greater understanding. To be clear: allowing this man to beat on women for entertainment is unforgivable. And yet, something about the reaction of my own side leaves me cold.
This Is Not Trans
I feel compelled to do something dangerous: pick holes in the way “my side” reacted.
Firstly, this is not a trans issue. Admittedly, few are suggesting that it is. But an ideological line has been drawn between trans rights activists and gender critics over Khelif.
As many progressives rightly pointed out, it was unlikely that Algeria - being a conservative, Muslim country - would deliberately put forward a trans athlete. He’d sooner be chucked off a rooftop than into a ring.
Khelif is - to use an outdated but better understood term - intersex. He’s still male, but apparently presents with unmale - perhaps even, typically female - secondary characteristics (he may have thought he was a girl because he had a vagina). There have been murmurs about certain boxing confederations seeking out these ambiguous biological rarities for their male advantages. If this is true, then the Olympics, again, must take the blame for allowing this.
Khelif’s Upbringing
But what of Khelif himself?
It appears likely that he considered himself a girl from birth and throughout childhood. His condition is rare, and it seems as though he received remarkably little information. It is plausible that from his perspective, he’s the little girl who grew up selling bread on the streets of an impoverished Algerian village, before rising to compete for his country in the Olympics.
He fought adversity throughout childhood, after being told boxing was only for men. He said, unaware of the irony:
Boxing was a sport dedicated only to men.
Quite.
Khelif is also God-fearing, so is less likely to place much stock in chromosomes and gametes - he felt he was a girl, and that was enough for him.
Why My Side Is Angry
None of this changes the fact that this event should never have taken place. It was wrong, sexist and dangerous (and it continues in the next round). But the assumption is that Khelif is a brutish man who enjoys beating women. That may turn out to be true, in which case he deserves our scorn. Sometimes, however, we need to do something that humans find extremely difficult: admit that we don’t have all the facts.
We react emotionally because we’re angry at a world telling us not to believe our own eyes. We’re angry at burly blokes like Lia Thomas, who took advantage of woke, bigoted loopholes to deprive female athletes of promising careers and cause them distress in their changing rooms.
Perhaps because of this, I find my side not only refusing to ask questions but coming down hard on those who do. Even posting my question (below), I resented feeling that I had to be ridiculously careful in its phrasing, lest thousands deliberately misinterpret my words to make themselves feel good by attacking a bogeyman (or strawman).
I Resent This
Before even knowing about the ins and outs, I had to make sure my question didn’t in any way imply that I would ever, even for a moment, take the side of the opposition. This is anathema to free speech. I know that many of you feel the same way about simply asking questions. Often we don’t bother, because we know our motivations will be attacked by the modern incarnation of the Spanish Inquisition.
As the host of a channel called Heretics, I resent being made to feel that way.
This kind of tribalism results in the same purity spiral that I find so cultish in wokeness. My initial post on X simply asked if we had more information. Many people were helpful in providing extensive research explaining exactly why Khelif is a man.
But many others reacted in a hostile manner, reminding me that simply by asking the question, I was treading a dangerous line:
These are just some of the many responses that don’t seek to answer my question, but rather to shame me for even asking it. The biology around Khelif is little known and extremely complex. But an unfortunate quirk in the mindset of the ideologue means that they are incentivised to mock curiosity and inoculate against inquiry. This arises at the cultish end of all ideologies, and is designed to weed out dissent and squash truths that might weaken the cult’s arguments and bonds.
Even after writing this article referring to Khelif as a man and criticising the Olympics for allowing such a travesty, I fear many will willfully misinterpret it, and paint me as a misogynist woman-beater.
Kathleen Stock
And then there’s Kathleen Stock, a true heretic.
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