After Italian boxer Angela Carini threw in the town early in a bout with Algeian boxer Imane Khelif, unhinged anti-trans activists generated a media storm hypothesizing that Imane Khelif was really a man, or at least has a y-chromosome, or at least produces too much natural testosterone. There’s no evidence that any of that is true but it did not stop the rampant speculation and accusation.
In my last post, I outlined that what binds together the right-wing Republican political coalition is hierarchy, and that lens of understanding their politics helps explain why they seem so obsessed about invalidating non-binary, intersex, and transgender people; why they’re up in arms about the potential role of testosterone in women’s sports but unconcerned about genetically-conferred advantages in men’s sports; and why they’re so weirdly consumed with the gender expressions and identities of post-pubescent children.
They view transgender expression as a “cheat code” in the game of gender role based hierarchy, especially for female sexed people to embrace transitioning into being men.
Personal autonomy around the body, sex, and reproduction is the linchpin to gender equity; take it away, and all of the dominos of feminism fall backward. Reproductive autonomy is central to female bodied people having careers outside the home; pregnancy limits the work their body is capable of performing and children require considerable time and money to raise. Female bodied people having their own jobs and income is central to financial self-reliance and independence from a man as a provider. Being free to choose at what age to have children is necessary for female bodied people to pursue post-secondary degrees and to experiencing professional success commensurate with their male peers, allowing for that self-reliance.
For millenia, patriarchal leaders have understood how women’s autonomy over their sexuality and reproduction threaten the patriarchal order. A girl’s virginity receives unique focus in this culture, something to be “taken” by men. From birth, it belongs to her father, not her; until the wedding ceremony where the father “gives away” the bride’s virginity for her groom to possess. In America’s Christian dominated culture, her surrender of autonomy is coerced through purity culture, with features such as purity rings, formal purity balls between fathers and daughters, and purity pledges.
For a person assigned female at birth to step into their identity as non-binary or as a man is viewed akin to stealing. They’re unjustly depriving the patriarchal order of their property, and any expression of personal autonomy of one’s own female body threatens that order.
Furthermore, this patriarchal order views masculinity as wholly distinct from and higher in worth than femininity. If a female bodied person can actually be a man, what does that say about masculinity? Either femininity isn’t so removed from masculinity or masculinity isn’t so comparatively superior.
So naturally this paranoia in defense of the patriarchal order and gender role based hierarchy is deeply threatened by all manner of non-conforming gender or sexual expression, even among cisgender people; and naturally it can make no room for intersex and non-binary people who do not fit into this rigid order.
But let’s not pretend it’s well-meaning concerns about the integrity of women’s sports. It’s about controlling the definition of what a woman is or can be.