Imane Khelif wins Olympic gold medal after all the controversy and transphobic hate

After fighting against hate and discrimination at the Summer Olympics, Imane Khelif has won her first Olympic medal: gold.

Khelif is one of the biggest names at the Paris Olympics and fought against two-time world champion Yang Liu of China in a very exciting match for the gold medal. The two fighters were evenly matched in size, technique and power.

Khelif won the gold medal match after winning all three rounds in a unanimous decision, putting up a great defensive fight and landing some impressive punches. Yang Liu was respectful and a great sport in losing.

Khelif is a cisgender boxer from Algeria who was the victim of racist and transphobic attacks when Umar Kremlev, the Russian president of the International Boxing Association, a discredited sports organization that was banned from the Olympics due to corruption and fraud, said that she had failed an unspecified gender suitability test at a tournament in 2023.

This led to TERFs attacking her online, calling her a man, a transgender woman, biologically male, and even a sample.

Figures including JK Rowling, JD Vance and Logan and Jake Paul took to Twitter to attack Khelif, saying her participation in women’s boxing encapsulated “our new men’s rights movement” and was “abhorrent”, “a parody” and “wrong and dangerous”.

The International Olympic Committee has supported Khelif throughout the Games, saying: “The Algerian boxer was born a woman, was registered as a woman, lived her life as a woman, boxed as a woman and has a woman’s passport. This is not a transgender thing. There has been some confusion that somehow this is a man fighting a woman. That is simply not the case, scientifically. There is consensus on that. Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman. I think we need to take that out.”

The IOC also said that Khelifand another boxer, Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan, “were victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA” without any form of due process and that “the current aggression against these two athletes is entirely based on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any form of due process.”

To be clear, Khelif never identified as trans or intersex. Even some of Khelif’s opponents joined in the hate against her, but none of them could defeat her.

Congratulations Khelif, you overcame hatred and brought home gold!