I wanted to add my two cents (currently 0.018 Euros) to the Olympic controversies that have arisen.

First of all, I did not watch more than twenty minutes of the opening ceremonies, so I did not see the provocative skit that was alleged to be a sacrilegious takeoff on the Last Supper.  I’ve heard both sides of the controversy, but as I did not see it, I cannot personally weigh in on this issue.  What I did see in the opening ceremonies had little relevance to the Olympics as far as I could tell, however.  But then, in what way does a Superbowl halftime show relate to football?

According to Comcast.

Saturday’s blockbuster audience follows Friday’s Opening Ceremony, which was the most watched for a Summer Olympics since 2012, with 28.6 million viewers.

Led by Peacock, 4.7 million viewers streamed Saturday’s coverage across NBC Universal digital platforms.”

That is a huge audience for some talented individual or group with a specific or peculiar agenda to reach in order to promote their message.  There are more possible issues than one can count to fit in an opening ceremony, going back to the alleged genocide of Armenians in 1915 to the alleged genocide of Palestinians in our day.  There are mainstream factions supporting the environment as well as fringe groups which do the same.  Add to that human rights groups, animal rights groups, capitalist and anti-capitalist blocs, anarchists, organizations promoting the rights of noncustodial parents to see their children, the war in Ukraine and so on and the menu becomes endless.

I’m sure someone or some committee with the International Olympics Committee (IOC) vets the applications to decide which entertainment or what message is appropriate and relevant for the ceremonies and to receive their seal of approval.  I would urge them to be as inclusive as possible while staying true to the spirit of the games, which is not exclusively tied to athletics. And it’s probably not a good idea to allow a skit to mock a religion (if indeed that was what happened.)

TRANSGENDER (OR NOT?)

I support the right of gay and lesbian individuals to enjoy the basic human rights common to all, and to live their lives in peace.  This includes transexual individuals.  However, I would not be the first or only person to point out problems when biological males are allowed to compete against biological females in contact sports for the sake of recognition, money or scholarships and so on.  The commonly acceptable definition of a biological male is a person with XY sex chromosomes and a biological woman is one with XX sex chromosomes, regardless of what genitalia may or may not be present.  Give me a human kidney, or a human heart, a sample of human muscle tissue, a femur, a microscope and whatever kit might be used to stain slides and—with proper training—I can tell you if the organ or tissue or bone came from a male or a female.  This is regardless of what hormones or surgeries an adult suffering from dysmorphia or gender identity disorder may have had.  A male may elect to be treated as–or believe they are fundamentally–a woman, but then they still have the superior body strength of a male.  Yesterday:

Italian boxer Angela Carini abruptly withdrew from her Olympic match against Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who was previously disqualified from last year’s World Boxing Championships after the International Boxing Association said she failed a gender eligibility test.”

And actually, Khelif failed twice, once in 2022 and again in 2023.  But the IOC does not recognize that.

Failing a gender eligibility test suggests that Khelif tested XY or had high levels of testosterone or both.  Forty-six seconds into the match, Carini suffered a painful blow to her nose and bowed out of the match, refusing to acknowledge Khelif before breaking down in tears. Carini, with a trace of blood on her trunks, when the bout was called, later explained: “I’ve never been hit with such a powerful punch.”  She was also heard telling her coach “It’s not right, it’s not right!”  Carini has since apologized to Khelif.

Khelif is one of two allegedly trans boxers in Paris who previously failed a gender eligibility tests.  Yet, the IOC does not consider them to be transgender, as it noted in a press release issued Friday:

’The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport. This is not a transgender case,’ the IOC said in a daily press briefing on Friday. ‘There has been some confusion that somehow, it’s a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case, scientifically on that there is consensus. Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman. And I think we need to kind of get that out.’”

Having men pose as women is nothing new for the IOC.  During the days of the Soviet Union, so called “women” from the USSR and/or Eastern Bloc countries would sometime accomplish great feats of strength while insisting they were women and not men.  This is at least one reason why genetic testing was implemented.

It is important to remember that there are only two sexes in nature, and that gender (including all 72 of those genders currently recognized) is an artificial construct, first introduced only in 1955.  Gender deals with issues such as sexual norms and social assumptions of sexual roles and behaviors and so on.  This is an issue peculiar to people and not found elsewhere in nature.

Women competing against trans athletes have been seriously injured in ways and numbers that have rarely happened before.  Consider:

Payton McNabb was 17 when a ball spiked by a trans opponent with force struck her in the face, threw her to the ground and shut off her consciousness. . . Ms McNabb was left with brain damage and paralysis on her right side, which ended her dreams of getting a volleyball college scholarship and has made it difficult to walk without falling.”

And:

. . . a male athlete on a girls’ high school field hockey team injured an opposing player in Massachusetts.

During a game between Swampscott and Dighton-Rehoboth high schools on Thursday, a player lifted the ball into the air while taking a shot on goal. The ball hit a player on the opposing team in the face, prompting the girl to scream out. A video of the injury circulated online, fueling arguments about transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports.”

The injured girl had two teeth knocked out.

There are numerous other instances of physical injury to women from transexuals competing as women.  Many influential people such as author and UN representative on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG),J K Rowling have been warning about this for quite some time now.  If you believe that a male who claims otherwise is competing physically against a woman in a sport and the woman is seriously injured, you can see the concern, regardless of what “legitimacy” an international organization or pressure group confers on that situation.

The situation in the Paris Olympics boxing competition is confusing because on the one side, the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA movement and other groups (including quite a few women athletes, themselves) are crying “foul.” On the other side, those influencers and pressure groups who support equality are trying to discredit any suggestion that the Khelif was ever a man. And while the IOC says Khelif “was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport” is actually beside the point.  Does the fact that her birth certificate which says she is female, that she dressed as a female growing up, entered the world of sports as a female and checked “female” on her passport application makes her a female when there may be scientific evidence to the contrary?  That is not science, and anyone could meet that criteria in that case with a little preplanning.  So, the IOC should plainly address the issue.  If they say she’s XX, and she’s not taking testosterone or steroids, then that settles it.  She’s female, else she is not.  A self-declaration on a passport does not, however, make her female.

This would not be an issue if the individuals in question were musicians, artists, engineers, airline pilots, astronauts, politicians, or surgeons or your neighbor next door.  It does make a difference if one competitor has a “built-in” advantage, however and the context is a contact sport.  The IOC needs to get this straight because the issue is not going away anytime soon.

UPDATE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2024

As expected, Imane Khelif won gold in the “Women’s” Boxing category. An athlete who was accused by a professional boxing association (twice) of not being a women beat–competitively and physically–a string of biological women, and now gets rewarded with a gold medal for this violence. The medal is being awarded by the IOC which in a most sloppy manner never provided the evidence that the boxer was not a male, except to refer to what (s)he declared on his/her passport. The controversy is that many of Khelif’s supporters believe that there is conspiracy to deprive her of her civil liberties and right to participate in the gender category the athlete chooses. She may even feel she is a persecuted minority, Once again, there is speculation concerning the external or internal genitalia that athletes such as Khelif might possess. At some stage in gestation, the two sides of the scrotum are sutured in XY fetuses. If, for some reason, this does not occur, they may appear to be labial folds. I don’t know this for a fact, but I suppose a newborn might in very rare cases have both a penis and a uterus or ovaries at the same time. In cases like this, a determination must be made fairly quickly on how to raise the child, and what future surgeries might be resquired. However, that does not change the fact that children like this are still either XX or XY. If you are XY, then it will take more than surgery and estrogen to make a woman out of you. Unless the IOC wants to see women pummeled and bloodied in the future by someone with a strength, reach and stamina that a woman cannot possibly attain, they need to deal with the issue more scientifically than they have so far, passports be damned.

TO WEAR THE HAJIB TO OR NOT WEAR THE HAJIB (THAT IS THE QUESTION)

France has a unusual history.  It is a perfect example of what can go wrong when the Church gets involved with politics.  During the eighteenth-century French Revolution, there three estates – the Catholic clergy, the nobility and the commoners.  The Church cast its support for the nobility against the mobs in the street, and the nobility—and the Church—lost.  As a result, the French Constitution is far more particular about the separation of Church and State than the U.S. Constitution is.  And the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not mention the words “separation of church and state” is of no more consequence than the fact that the Bible does not mention the word “trinity.”  The prevailing religion in France is Catholicism, though I understand the cathedrals are mostly vacant in recent times except for tourists.

The government of France during this century has been zealous to prevent French men and women who are public servants from wearing any sort of religious jewelry or apparel.  This is how secularism is enforced.  This includes crosses, the habits that nuns wear and, hajibs that Muslim women wear, turbans that Sikhs wear, and so on.  As the U.S. State Department warns visitors to France:

The law prohibits agents of the government, public services, and companies or associations carrying out public services from demonstrating their religion through visible signs of religious affiliation, such as an Islamic headscarf, Jewish skullcap, Sikh turban, or Christian cross.”

Nuns in France try to make the point (with varying degrees of success) that the habit they wear is not religious per se, but rather a “uniform” as opposed to what Muslim women must wear, which is mentioned in the Quran (see here for a guide to women’s dress in Islamic countries.)  We are told that it is a young girl’s choice whether to adopt Muslim dress, and that may be technically true (or not. That is an issue for another day.)  As far as nuns go, overly zealous local French officials sometimes go after nuns for failing to comply with government policy, when in fact the law does not apply to them because they are not public officials. The same is likely true for Muslim women.

In January 2022, the French senate voted to ban the wearing of the hijab and other ‘ostensible religious symbols’ in sports competitions . . .”

according to CNN.  In the Paris Olympics currently underway, Muslim women from other countries may wear customary dress (as opposed to bikinis when competing in beach volleyball for example) but French Muslim women may not. They are forced to wear the same scanty clothing that all other women in that sport are required to wear, which makes you wonder how many men are actually keeping their eye on the ball?

If France is a liberal democracy, then women should be permitted to dress as they choose.  And if Christian nuns may wear their habit, then certainly Muslim women should be able to dress according to the customs and precepts of their religion as well.  I’m sure this will not threaten the stability of the Fifth Republic.