Have you ever realized you were mistaken about something you were certain of?

Jean-Marie Valheur

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knows a thing or two 1h

Have you ever realized you were mistaken about something you were certain of?

Definitely! Just yesterday, in fact. I did a whole answer about an Algerian boxer named Imane Khelif.

[1]

 She failed a gender test a few years ago, and due to her rather mannish appearance, people simply assumed she must be a dude — even though the Olympic committee did allow her to compete as a woman, and she had been born a woman, too.

Photographs were shared of Khelif as a child. She’s the little girl on the right, in the picture below. The one in pink, looking very much like a girl:

Years of boxing and being punched in the face endlessly in sparring sessions have left tall and gangly Khelif with a rather masculine face and body. And who knows, maybe there is something chromosomally wrong, maybe there’s some intersex-situation going on, something akin to the Caster Semenya situation years ago in another Olympics controversy…

But yeah, I was kind of being a major dick about the whole thing. The whole internet was. We basically just went full-circle and got so caught up in the fear of transgender athletes invading women’s spaces and competitions, that the whole internet just collectively bullied some poor Algerian boxer for not looking “girly” enough.

Footnotes

[1] Jean-Marie Valheur's answer to How do you think the participation of transgender athletes will be handled at the Paris 2024 Olympics?