The anti-transgender hatred directed at Imane Khelif — and the narrow beliefs about femininity being projected onto her — are part of how anti-trans rhetoric fuels violence towards women of color, including cisgender women, experts told The 19th.
Imane Khelif’s treatment at the Paris Olympics brought gender policing to a global stage. It’s not the first instance — or the last.Imane Khelif, a long-time competitor in women’s boxing, had come to Paris to represent Algeria at the Olympics for the second time. Algerianshundreds of miles to support her. Algerian newspapers heralded her as a “heroine.” She beat one opponent after the next, winning gold in the women’s welterweight tournament.
Gender policing, or enforcing traditional gender norms and roles through the punishment of those who don’t conform, ignores cultural variations, spectrums of self-expression, gender fluidity and nonbinary identities, said Toni Newman, director of the coalition for justice and equality across movements at the National Minority AIDS Council. And these variations are not exclusive to transgender people.
“Nobody wants to question if a kid is the gender they say they are. We want to protect children, not hurt them,” Cline wrote on Facebook.Former President Donald Trump, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, billionaire Elon Musk and author J.K. Rowling all fueled the attacks against Khelif by speculating about her identity and using the moment to amplify transphobic ideas around keeping men out of women’s sports. The International Olympic Committee urged for rationality.
To Angel Joy Flores, a transfemme personal trainer and content creator living in Seattle, gender policing would persist even if trans women weren’t brought into the conversation. The issue, she said, is that trans women are an easy scapegoat to amplify an effort to police all women’s bodies. And as anti-trans rhetoric surges and emboldens misogyny, that effort has the potential to move beyond sports.
“I know that some other athletes with conditions similar to mine have been offered this solution. Many are women of color and are from impoverished backgrounds. They see running as their only hope of making a life for themselves and their families. They are intimidated by a system they cannot understand, and they don’t have resources to fight for themselves,” Semenya wrote in a 2023
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