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A Carnival of Bad Sports Opinions
I'm sure by now everyone has seen the 43-second fight between Khelif and Carini. Full 43 seconds here and the money shot in slow-mo here.
What a ludicrous display. The bigoted opinion most supported by this farce of a fight isn't anything about Khelif's genital arrangement or chromosomes, it is that women's boxing shouldn't be in the olympics if this kind of crybaby shit is going down in there and no one is immediately calling it out. I spent some of my teen years being a weak, wimpy boxes (coincidentally at about that height and weight!) and this is just not how a fight goes when you realize that your opponent is much stronger than you and get scared when you realize you don't have a chance. You shell up and avoid leaving yourself open, you get on your bicycle and run away, you throw tentative tight jabs while keeping your hands up to keep them on the outside, if they get inside you immediately clinch to avoid further punishment. I was a teenager bad at boxing and working out with a lot of grown men much better than me, I was frequently in this position. What you don't do is what Carini did. You don't attack, extend yourself, drop your hands, get tagged, and tap out. I'm not an expert on Olympic boxing, but I've never in my life seen any male fighter, from the level of muay thai smokers up to the pros, surrender like that for no apparent reason. If a male fighter tried that, I would assume it was fixed.
Carini may have been outmatched, but she easily could have fought the round out defensively, run away, survived to the bell, and thrown in the towel between rounds. Minimal shame in that. I'd even be a little less judgmental if she truly took a dive and faked a "phantom punch" and just dropped to the ground to take a KO loss. But to give up not even halfway into the round after taking one punch, when she was clearly fully functional and unhurt? It makes a mockery of boxing. The majority of the felt force of that punch wasn't even relative to the strength of the boxer, it was the near perfect angle given by Carini with her hands low and her chin out.
One of Khelif's former opponents Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst has stepped up in her defense. In one of the funnier twitter exchanges I've ever seen, a random user asks Broadhurst how she would feel if she had to fight Khelif; Broadhurst has beaten Khelif in the ring multiple times in international competition. Here's footage of Khelif looking significantly less manly when someone has the guts to stand and bang. The mick keeps her hands up, gets inside, and punishes Khelif, who clearly gets gassed from the punishment taken from the stronger Broadhurst. This presumably settles the old North Jersey debate over whether Irish or Italians are tougher? Watching these fights I probably drop my opinion on women's boxing, Broadhurst is willing to tank a hit and get inside and go to the body hard, and wins the fight handily.
This is, in my mind, one of the great unsung tragedies of the rise of the trans movement. A woman, born female in a country where homosexuality and gender transition are illegal, raised as a woman, but born tall and with a face and body that is undeniably a bit masculine (especially by global and eurocentric standards), is now under constant suspicion of being secretly male. I have no idea what intersex condition Khelif might or might not have been born with, and no public statement has been made that confirms any testosterone testing. The presumption must be, absent testing, that a girl raised as a girl is a girl. There is probably an inappropriate level of testosterone at which a female competitor should be removed from competition or forced to suppress the level, but we still have yet to see evidence that Khelif is in that category. Further, there is a moral hazard created by normalizing edge cases, in that a competitor will accuse their opponent of gender-violations. Some of the more insane red-state laws allowed any parent of a competitor to require testing of any opponent, which I have to imagine would be abused constantly to try to demoralize one's competition by having a weird judge examine your vagina before the big game.
The takes on the "Defend Women's Sport" side of the debate have been degrading in quality, as TERFs like Rowling have risen in prominence. My problem with the pro-trans "there's no difference" side has long been that not one of them has any knowledge of or enthusiasm for sport. I feel like we're seeing more of that from the TERF side here, with the idea that Khelif is just SO MUCH STRONGER that Carini was forced to quit for her own safety being parotted across Twitter without any evidence. I'm embarrassed for my side of the debate, if this is made a serious test-case for trans bans it is going to harm the cause for reasonable restriction in sport.
At the end of the day, I don't really object to transwomen competing in women's sport, I object to them winning. If they lose, then clearly it was no big deal. It's only if they win that it presents a problem, we got the science wrong. Given that binary, it would benefit the trans movement if they avoided trans women in sport altogether. But alas, here we are, in the carnival of bad sports opinions.
ETA:
https://apnews.com/article/angela-carini-imane-khelif-boxing-63e9dbaa30f1e29196d4162c72c2babf
Poor girl. Doesn't deserve some fat asshole from Pennsylvania going off on her for something she says she regrets.
At some point you have to discriminate. I am totally ok with "only people with XX chromosomes and normally developed female reproductive system are allowed to compete in the female olympics" and "only people with XY and normally developed male reproductive system are allowed to compete in the male olympics" and "tough luck if you don't fit"
But yes - I am also pissed off at the ability of people to talk before learning all the facts.
Also my twitter found different angle - Racism. This is because the white girl got beaten. So this why is everyone reacting like that. Not the most hinged take I have seen.
I don't see any reason to forbid people with XX chromosomes from competing in the XY division.
The XY category can be open to anyone. If and when gender transition somehow allows a woman to kick Mike Tyson's ass we can revisit that question.
The XX division can be restricted to only chromosomally and hormonally normal women. There can be a maximum amount of testosterone, which can be established at the same time as the authorities check the participants for performance-enhancing drugs.
This seems like the fairest option, involving the fewest unnecessary changes.
Probably because a lot of dudes will have reservations to hit or body slam a woman when it is not a combat situation? Both sexes are fine with segregation, and being exclusionary is not such a terrible thing and we won't be excluding many people anyway. We may open a third category in which it is anything goes.
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