Member-only story
Women’s sport has always been unfair
Imane Khelif’s involvement at the Paris 2024 women’s boxing has raised a storm of protest because she beat one opponent. Targeted by gender critical voices she has been demonised as a man, a cheat, and an abuser of “real” women. It is telling that all those who speak out against her are speaking without knowing all the facts, making assumptions about her body and eligibility without seeing redacted evidence which has never been publicly shared. Imane is the latest woman to be targeted for having a non-normative female body, treated as the enemy to women’s sports. Champions such a Katie Ledecky and rugby player Ilona Maher have also been transvestigated on the socials simply because their bodies fall outside the norm. This is where gender critical discourse has led us, to the point where any female body that people do not agree with is treated as potentially “male”, then hounded. What these gender critics forget is that women’s sport has always been unfair because women are not clones of each other, each having their unique biology.
This matters because the policing of women’s bodies has been a core part of human civilization for millennia. To be a woman is to become hyper aware that society has a stake in your body, how your body should appear, clothed and gazed upon. Susan Sontag critiqued our obsession with shaping and reshaping women’s figures, highlighting that to be a woman…
