Rita Panahi: Allowing men to fight women at the Olympics is a travesty

Men beating women are normally considered contemptible, cowardly losers who deserve a stint behind bars. But not at the Olympics, which shows just how insidious the trans movement’s influence is in sport.

Men beating women are normally considered contemptible, cowardly losers who deserve a stint behind bars.

It’s considered a ‘dog act’ for good reason but right now two men, calling themselves women, are about to win applause and possibly Olympic medals for getting in the boxing ring and beating the bejesus out of their unfortunate female opponents.

Yes, we are about to see two male boxers, with XY chromosomes, punch on with real women with XX chromosomes. That the International Olympic Committee is allowing this travesty to take place at the Paris Games tells you just how insidious the trans movement’s influence is in sport. Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting were only last year thrown out of the Women’s World Boxing Championships for failing “gender eligibility tests”.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Taiwan's boxer Lin Yu-Ting.

The pair have XY chromosomes, according to the president of the International Boxing Association, Umar Kremlev. The IBA released a statement this week clarifying why the pair were banned. “This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition,” the statement read. The IBA also clarified that the decision was not due to testosterone testing but rather tests that conclusively showed that both athletes failed to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition.

But, sadly some other sporting organisations have been captured by a radical ideology that is often completely at odds with reality, where feelings trump biological certainties like the fact that men are bigger, faster, stronger and they hit harder. A number of boxers have spoken out about men identifying as women being allowed to compete in the women’s competition including two-time Olympic gold medallist Claressa Shields. “So they got men fighting against women in the Olympics boxing! I wouldn’t have stood for no stuff like that! That is so heartbreaking to the women who have to have their dreams ruined by a man,” Shields posted on X.

No sane person with any sense of fairness and rationality thinks this is a good idea but too many have been cowed into silence or worse have become advocates for a movement that is pushing dangerous, anti-women policies in the name of “tolerance and inclusion”.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist