Imane Khelif and the dangerous reality of ‘transvestigations’

Algeria’s Imane Khelif won a women’s boxing match in only 46 seconds after Italy’s Angela Carini decided to stop fighting. She had been punched so hard by Khelif that she was in too much pain to continue, according to Italian coach Emanuele Renzini.
Then, a narrative repeated by JD Vance, J.K. Rowling, former President Donald Trump and more led the public to believe that Khelif was secretly a man. 
The Boston Globe even mistakenly published a headline in print referring to her as a “transgender boxer.” They later issued an apology and a correction. And on Fox News, Clay Travis and David Webb called Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Yu-Ting “biologically men” on air. 
The reality, however, is that Khelif and Yu-Ting are not transgender nor are they secretly men. 
These women are victims of what is called a “transvestigation,” an unfounded conspiracy theory that tries to prove that notable people — typically prominent female figures, especially athletes — are secretly trans. Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, says this trend stems from a combination of “heightened and baseless anti-trans vitriol, social media amplifying disinformation and people’s feelings about what women or men should look and act like.”
Despite the widespread debates over transgender women participating in women’s sports, there are actually no transgender women competing in the Paris Olympics.
Khelif was born female, raised as a woman and has competed in women’s boxing for years with clearance from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC originally noted that she had elevated levels of testosterone, which can occur naturally in women, and she had previously been disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) from the 2023 world championships for failing gender. The IBA is no longer recognized by the international federation of boxing over concerns about its governance and ethics.
Not only does accusing Khelif of being a man put her at risk of disqualification, it also threatens her safety. Algeria prohibits gender-affirming care, according to the database of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, an LGBTQ+ rights organization that has consultative status at the United Nations.
Khelif told UNICEF earlier this year that she was bullied for participating in sports as a girl growing up, and that her father did not approve of her getting into boxing, because she is a girl. “I particularly want to inspire girls and children who are disadvantaged in Algeria,” she said.
Even though claims that Khelif is a man are baseless accusations, it still perpetuates the false idea that trans athletes are stealing victories from cisgender women in female sporting competitions. Just like cisgender athletes, trans athletes vary in athletic ability.
One popular concern among advocates against trans women in women’s sports is that elevated testosterone levels give trans women an unfair advantage. However, research shows many women assigned female at birth also have high testosterone levels. For example, 8 to 18% of reproductive-aged women are affected by polycystic ovarian syndrome, an endocrine condition in which a woman’s ovaries and/or adrenal glands overproduce male sex hormones called androgen. And studies have shown transgender girls on puberty blockers have negligible testosterone levels that would not contribute to any potential athletic advantages.
Lydia X. Z. Brown, a disability rights activist and adjunct lecturer in the Disability Studies Program and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, says “transvestigations” are rooted in transmisogyny and “a values system that centers ableism,” which distinguishes certain bodies and minds as “deviant and dangerous.”
As a result, transgender people, gender-nonconforming people and anyone perceived as transgender are “subjected to invasions of privacy, mockery, degradation and exclusion from public and community life,” Brown says.
Powell says these public attacks not only stem from willful disinformation, but are driven by the belief that being LGBTQ+ or transgender is “somehow wrong or less than.”
“‘Transvestigation’ is a term that implies that to be transgender is something shameful or something horrible, and that’s why a person who is suspected of secretly being transgender will be subject to this kind of scrutiny,” Brown added.
Transvestigations also normalize gender policing and reinforce stereotypes that women are unilaterally weaker than men and in need of protection. “It harms all of us when people police what others look and act like,” Powell says.
Even when attacks regarding transgender people are pointed toward cisgender individuals, the rhetoric still amplifies hate speech and exclusionary beliefs. The broader conversation around banning trans women from women’s sports also has a significant influence on LGBTQ+ youth, as 86% of trans and nonbinary youth report that “recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender people” negatively impact their mental health, according to The Trevor Project.
Negative depictions of transgender people in the media are significantly associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychological distress in transgender adults. In a 2017 study on internalized transphobia, 97% of transgender and gender-nonconforming adults reported that receiving negative or stigmatizing messages about trans people from the media or their community negatively impacted their self-worth, delayed their transition/coming out and created expectations that they “should expect to be discriminated against for being who I am.”
“These attacks are not coming in a vaccum,” according to Brown, who sees a clear parallel between Khelif and Castor Semenya, an intersex, female-identifying South African middle-distance runner, who was similarly scrutinized for “not conforming to cisgender womanhood.”
“It’s not a mistake that in the context of elite athletes, the women targeted most often are cisgender Black women. There is a real clear nexus of anti-Black misogyny and transmisogyny,” they say. “These are not disconnected and unrelated forms of targeting those who fall outside the arbitrarily-defined norms of whiteness and specifically of white able (-bodied) femininity.”
According to Brown, there is a juxtaposition in that people claim that you can “always tell” who is transgender, but “at the same time, they can’t tell, and they demand evidence and proof from people whose gender in called into question.”
In Khelif’s case, her father offered to share childhood photos of her, along with photos of her birth certificate, to prove that she was not transgender.
The Paris Games are the first Olympics to have the same number of women as men competing, out of 10,500 athletes, according to the official Olympics website. And yet, this milestone has been washed out by attacks on female athletes like Khelif and Yu-Ting.
“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has massive effects,” Khelif said in Arabic in an interview with SNTV on Sunday night, according to the Associated Press. “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people.”
“This is a moment where we should be celebrating these women’s accomplishments and building up women’s sports,” Powell says. “Instead, we’re reading this disinformation.”