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trans rights
We Gave ‘Transvestigators’ an Olympic Stage—Here’s How We Take It Back
The attacks against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif show why cis women must join trans women in this fight against having our bodies and gender debated and defined.
Aug 20, 2024
As the 2024 Paris Olympics come to a close, it’s heartbreaking to see that instead of celebrating the unity these games are meant to inspire, we were forced to collectively watch the opposite—a deepening divide among us. The original values of Olympism were to “encourage effort,” “preserve human dignity,” and “develop harmony.” And it seems when presented with those opportunities, we failed on all three of those fronts as a society.
As a trans woman, I am deeply disturbed by the narrative that was allowed to surround Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, whose victory against Italian boxer Angela Carini in the women’s welterweight boxing tournament was overshadowed by baseless accusations and transphobic conspiracy theories. These attacks were given a national stage by conservative figures, who falsely claimed that Khelif is biologically male, feeding into the ugly rise of a conspiracy theory known as “transvestigations.”
These so-called “transvestigations” are a disturbing form of misogyny, and part of another category of transphobia known as transmisogyny, targeting women under the guise of protecting womanhood. Khelif is a cisgender woman, assigned female at birth, and identifies as a woman. Yet, her victory, that should have been internationally lauded, was met with a wave of online harassment and accusations.
When we allow fear and hatred to dictate who counts as a “real woman,” we undermine the very foundation of women’s rights.
This is the chilling reality of the world we live in: Anti-trans and transphobic narratives have seeped into the mainstream, reaching a global stage. Now, it’s not just trans women who are under attack by those with nothing better to do than police gender and spread disinformation, but cis women too—anyone whose womanhood doesn’t fit an impossible standard.
“Transvestigations” didn’t start with Khelif, and unfortunately, they won’t end with her. It’s a new label for an old problem—misogyny rebranded, now weaponized against both cis and trans women. It’s a way to attack women while pretending to defend them. It uses language that claims to protect women’s rights but only protects women who fit a certain mold. Many other Olympic athletes—especially women of color—have been subjected to having their gender analyzed because of their strength, abilities, and looks. And when birth certificates, health records, or hormonal testing aren’t enough to satiate this mob of “transvestigators,” they move the goalpost further, constantly redefining what it is to be a woman.
It concerns me to know that cis women are now being persecuted in the same way myself and my trans sisters have been since the beginning of time. As these persecutions intensify, the barometer and measure of “womanhood” will continue to be pushed and challenged. Are we going to start declaring that women with conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome, or women who undergo IVF, aren’t “real” women? Are we going to label women who choose not to have children as less of a woman? Are we going to question the gender of our mothers, sisters, and aunts who have undergone breast augmentation after cancer? Are we going to no longer consider our grandmothers who receive hormonal therapy during menopause to be women? Are we going to let these harmful, misogynistic, arbitrary definitions of womanhood continue to divide us? If you are a woman or care about women and girls, this should worry you as well.
Khelif won the gold, but at what cost? She defended herself in the ring but entered an even bigger battle having to defend her human dignity. She spoke out after her quarterfinal win, urging spectators to refrain from bullying athletes, highlighting the devastating impact such attacks have on mental health. She said, “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit, and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
If this is the impact on a cis woman, imagine the daily mental toll on trans women who face this scrutiny not just in sports, but in every aspect of their lives. Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization. Forty-three percent of transgender youth have been bullied on school property, compared with 18% of cisgender youth. And now, many human rights organizations are declaring an epidemic of violence against trans people in the United States because of the uptick in attacks, an explosion in violent and hateful rhetoric aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, and the onslaught of discriminatory legislation.
As a trans woman, I know all too well the pain of having my humanity debated, politicized, and threatened. But the harm doesn’t stop with trans women. When we allow these narratives to flourish, when we let public opinion dictate who is “woman enough,” we are all at risk. Consider the growing number of anti-trans bills in the U.S. that seek to police gender in ways that hurt everyone. In states like Idaho, Arizona, and Georgia, these laws are putting young girls at risk, subjecting them to invasive exams to “prove” their gender, such as genital exams, before they can compete in sports.
This is not protection—it’s abuse. It’s a violation of bodily autonomy, and it’s a betrayal of everything women have fought for. The sad truth is that these policies, framed as protecting women, do the exact opposite. They endanger all women and girls, creating an environment where no one is safe from scrutiny.
The reality is that transphobia and transmisogyny don’t just harm the trans community—they harm everyone. When we allow fear and hatred to dictate who counts as a “real woman,” we undermine the very foundation of women’s rights. We allow the patriarchy to pit us against each other. They are creating infighting against an imaginary enemy, saying trans women are the true threat to feminism, distracting us from uniting against the real forces that oppress us all.
Imane Khelif’s story is a powerful reminder of what’s at stake. But this is not just about her—it’s about all of us. It’s about the girls and women who will come after her, who will face the same scrutiny if we don’t stand up now and stand up together. Cis women must join us in this fight against having our bodies and gender debated and defined.
This fight isn’t just for trans women—it’s for all women. It’s for anyone who believes in the right to define our own identities, free from the fear of harassment, discrimination, and violence. I hope that out of this, we will see more allies, more voices speaking out against the dangerous rhetoric of “transvestigations.” I hope that cis women will join us on the frontlines and join us in declaring it is not up to the government or the public to define our womenness, or moreso, our humanness.
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In Milwaukee, the GOP United Around Hate
Most convention speakers called for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.
Jul 20, 2024
The Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee seems very far away from Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.
As one approaches the RNC, inside the heavily guarded, temporary steel wall erected around Milwaukee’s downtown as part of this so-called National Special Security Event, one encounters a side street next to Media Row, filled with food vendors, a stage, t-shirt and souvenir booths, and a slew of organizations touting conservative issues. Also present is a replica of The Little White Schoolhouse, towed into place by the Ripon Chamber of Commerce. It was in the actual schoolhouse, still standing in Ripon some 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, that a group of abolitionists launched their new Republican Party on March 20, 1854.
The abolitionists who met in Ripon in 1854 included many from a nearby socialist community known as Ceresco. They felt the freedom they sought should be enjoyed by all, including the millions of people enslaved in the U.S. Two years after the party formed, an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln joined. In 1858, he ran a failed Senate campaign against a pro-slavery Democrat, Stephen Douglas, then, in 1860, ran for president. Southern states began seceding within months of Lincoln’s election, launching the nation into civil war.
“They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”
Several years earlier, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, giving bounty hunters from the South significant powers to abduct and remove suspected runaway enslaved people from the North to the South. When Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from Missouri living in Wisconsin, was caught and held overnight in the Milwaukee jail in 1854, a crowd of up to 6,000 formed, stormed the jail, freed Glover, and helped him escape to Canada. It was the Glover incident that spurred the Wisconsinites to finally launch their new abolitionist political party.
“Resolved… we will cooperate and be known as Republicans… we cordially invite all persons, whether of native or foreign birth, who are in favor of the objects expressed, to unite with us,” read one of the founding resolutions. The principal “object expressed,” their main goal, was the abolition of slavery in the United States.
One hundred seventy years later, the rhetoric pouring forth from the RNC podium sounds strikingly different. Back in 1854, immigrants were a large part of the population swelling new states like Wisconsin. Now, hostility to immigrants is a central theme of the Trump campaign. Former U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the streamlining of the GOP’s platform from 66 pages of detailed policy prescriptions to a compact, 16-page document.
“We must deport the millions of illegal Migrants who Joe Biden has deliberately encouraged to invade our Country,” it reads, promising to “begin [the] largest deportation program in American history.” Many delegates at the convention were enthusiastically holding signs that read, “Mass Deportation Now!”
On stage at the Fiserv Forum, MAGA Republican loyalists spoke from the podium, heaping praise on their party’s unquestioned leader, Donald Trump, just days after an attempted assassination that left him with a bloodied right ear over which he now wears a white bandage. A number of Republican delegates have been wearing symbolic ear patches in solidarity.
Speakers compared Trump to legendary leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, Civil War General then President Ulysses S. Grant and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In the wake of last Saturday’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, several key Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, are calling for national unity. Unfortunately, most convention speakers are calling for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.
“We are facing an invasion on our southern border—not figuratively, a literal invasion,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said from the podium. “Every day Americans are dying, murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has engineered an armed standoff between Texas National Guardsmen and U.S. federal border agents, and who proudly busses desperate migrants to cities run by Democrats, spoke as well:
“Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists.” In fact, the crime rate in the immigrant population is far less than in the general U.S. population.
Responding on the Democracy Now! news hour in Milwaukee, Jean Guerrero, a senior fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab, said, “They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”
The answer to the current threat to democracy is more democracy. “Knocking on doors and talking to people,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera Action, suggested as the best organizing strategy, speaking on Democracy Now! “You need to get the word out, because every vote counts.”
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US Voters Want Real Economic Solutions, Not Attacks on LGBTQ Rights
As we celebrate Pride month, there are growing signs that Americans are losing patience with the right-wing obsession with ideological culture wars rather than improving the lives of hard-working families.
Jun 28, 2024
Out of touch politicians across the nation have spent years ramping up increasingly divisive rhetoric meant to curry favor with a small but vocal contingent of extremists among their base. But as we celebrate Pride month, there are growing signs that Americans are losing patience with their obsession with ideological culture wars rather than improving the lives of hard-working families.
Nowhere is this more clear than the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ political attacks in recent years.
Politicians have successfully stoked fear to rationalize the introduction of hundreds upon hundreds of extreme and restrictive bills, rolling back LGBTQ people’s civil rights in states across the country. Anti-LGBTQ politicians have promoted misinformation to convince voters that we should be afraid of people who are different from us. This fear has pitted parents against teachers and doctors, business leaders against their employees, and neighbors against neighbors.
But the fringe groups behind this extremist campaign have now overplayed their hand.
This year will be a critical inflection point: Will we continue working to build a more unified nation, where everyone can enjoy basic rights and freedoms, or regress into fear and division?
Poll after poll demonstrates that American voters want their elected officials to prioritize fundamental economic issues, from inflation and the cost of healthcare to quality education and job opportunities.
Millions of Americans have seen firsthand that anti-LGBTQ bills didn’t solve these problems; they only eroded civil rights and freedom.
So although hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills have again been introduced in 2024 legislative sessions, they simply aren’t passing at the breakneck speed we saw last year. Parents, experts, faith leaders, and more are speaking out to defeat attacks on quality education and healthcare. Communities across the South turned out to put a stop to anti-transgender legislation in the same statehouses that these bills sailed through last year, and courts from Texas to Ohio are rejecting government interference in the private lives of transgender people and their families. Even in some of the most historically anti-LGBTQ states like ours, public appetite for anti-LGBTQ attacks is clearly waning.
Rather than heed the writing on the wall and shift focus to the issues their constituents actually care about, some far-right officials have doubled down in a last-ditch effort to retain power. Where they failed to pass attacks through our democratic processes, they’re shamelessly weaponizing state agencies to attack LGBTQ+ people directly.
Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has threatened transgender Floridians with criminal and civil penalties simply for having a driver’s license that matches their gender. Attorneys general in conservative states are working overtime to seize private medical records from clinics supporting families with transgender youth, infringing on their privacy and confidential healthcare decisions. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has even demanded private information about patients in states outside his own, tried to investigate parents of transgender kids, and threatened to remove kids from parents following expert guidance on transgender medical care. And both Florida and Texas have filed lawsuits attempting to defy the U.S. Department of Education’s new rules that protect transgender students from discrimination.
Voters are taking note. Increasingly, communities recognize these power-hungry, mean-spirited politicians are more concerned about making headlines than solving real issues. We need real leaders who bring people together and fight for freedom and prosperity, while leaving the political stunts behind.
Most Americans just want to live their lives without worrying about politicians invading their child’s classrooms, doctors’ appointments, and soccer fields.
This year will be a critical inflection point: Will we continue working to build a more unified nation, where everyone can enjoy basic rights and freedoms, or regress into fear and division?
When politicians preach liberty and freedom, we must take a closer look to decipher whether they truly want these rights for everyone or for only a select few. Only by learning to identify and reject dishonest political tactics can we defeat fear and division. When we vote with knowledge and compassion, instead of fear, we move closer to the society that Americans truly want to see.
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