by Izzy Kalman
[Note: I originally wrote this article in August, 2024 for my Psychology Today column. The editors rejected it because it is a "hotbutton issue." What an admirable policy for a publication dedicated to bringing psychological understanding to its readers.]
A headline in Marca, Spain's daily sports newspaper, says, “Imane Khelif files cyber-bullying complaint: It's the biggest stain on the[Olympic] Games.” This inaccurately worded headline intends to convey that the cyber-bullying of Khelif is the stain. The truth, though, is what the headline actually--but unintentionally--says, that Khelif’s filing of the cyberbullying complaint is the stain. That, and the very fact of Khelif’s participation in the Olympics in the first place.
The debate regarding trans women in sports
A passionate debate has been raging for years regarding the inclusion of biological men who identify as women (trans women) in women’s sports. Rules in sports are extremely strict in order to maximize fairness. That’s why they ban performance enhancing drugs, and have established clearly delineated weight categories for fighters.
However, the biggest advantage of all for athletes is being born with the male gene, XY. That’s why there are separate competitions for males and females.
The rules, though, for separate competitions have changed in recent years, thanks to left wing, “progressive” politics, which have come to dominate academia–especially in psychology, the mainstream media, and government, most recently in the form of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DEI) agenda. While the intention of progressive politics is to lead to a completely fair society, it has been long noted that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The DEI agenda has led to trans women–biological men identifying as women–being included in women’s sports. While DEI advocates consider this a great victory, the biggest losers have been women athletes, who are now routinely being defeated by mediocre male athletes, who steal their hard-earned rankings and trophies.
The women’s boxing competition at the Paris Olympics included two biological men, Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif. Yu-ting transitioned to woman, while Khelif was raised as a girl since birth because a biological deformity kept his male sex organs inside his body. That both of these athletes earned no less than gold medals could be considered a mind-boggingly amazing coincidence, if it weren’t for their glaringly obvious advantage of possessing the XY chromosome.
By the way, both Khelif and Lin Yu-ting were well aware of their physical advantage over women, as they had been recently disqualified from competing as women by the International Boxing Association.
Carini’s double indignity
Khelif, who clearly has a male build, complete with prominent adam’s apple, was matched against an Italian woman, Angela Carini. Breaking out in tears, remarking that she had never been hit so hard, Carini forfeited after 46 seconds because she didn’t want to end up in the hospital or the grave. Hence, indignity number one.
Carini then dared to complain about the unfair match, a complaint that was echoed by other women athletes. However, rather than taking Carini’s complaint seriously, the Olympic Committee chastised her for “bullying” Khelif and pressured her into making a public apology to Khelif, calling on everyone to refrain from engaging in bullying. Thus, indignity number two.
The latest development in this saga is that Khelif is filing a bullying lawsuit against literally everyone in the world who dares to criticize “her,” specifically naming Elon Musk and J.K. Rawling. After victimizing women in the boxing ring, “she” is now using anti-bullying laws to victimize “her” critics.
How did it come about that for the first time in human history, biological males have been allowed to compete as equals with women?
It is because progressive politics have two “fatal flaws,” which I have expounded upon elsewhere.
One flaw is deeming that hurting people’s feelings is as bad as, or even worse than, hurting their bodies. This is expressed by the modern version of the traditional slogan: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can harm me forever/kill me. This, in fact, is the essence of anti-bullying laws: they make it illegal to say or do anything that can make anyone feel bad. These laws, though, are counterproductive. When we criminalize the act of hurting people’s feelings, we end up not only with an increase in hurt feelings, but an increase in hurt bodies.
The other fatal flaw is, replacing might makes right with might makes wrong. In the lawless world of nature, the strongest is the winner. Civilization cannot function by such a rule, and replaces it with justice makes right. In a conflict, sometimes the strong one is right, and sometimes the weak one is right. Each situation must be judged on its merits. In the current progressive view, the weak one is the de facto good one (the oppressed) and the strong one is the de facto bad one (the oppressor). This is the essence of social justice warfare:
We must fight on the side of the weak against the strong.
How does progressivism instruct us to determine who is the weak and who is the strong? It has nothing to do with actual strength. We are to do it by identifying the group affiliations of the individuals involved. A strict hierarchy of evil “oppressors” and virtuous “oppressed” has been developed by the field of “intersectionality.” Within this framework, women are higher in virtue than men, “people of color” are higher than whites, LBGTQ are higher than straights, and Muslims are higher than Christians and Jews. Within LBGTQ, the T (transsexuals, or trans for short) are currently considered the highest of all and therefore take priority over any other group.
And there you have it. In our pre-DEI society, the proper thing would have been for the Olympic Committee to apologize to the women athletes for allowing biological men to compete against them, and in particular to those like Angela Carini whose lives were put in jeopardy in the boxing ring. In our new society, protecting the feelings of a powerful man-who-identifies-as-a-woman is more important than protecting the body of a weaker biological woman, so it is the latter who has to do the apologizing.
Progress sure is wonderful, ain’t it?
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