At the 2024 Paris Olympics, a place where both males and females are supposed to be applauded for being the best at their sport, one female in particular was vilified for being exactly that — the best. Her sex was placed under questioning and her livelihood was threatened for rumors of her not being a “real woman” due to her Italian opponent dropping out mere seconds after the match began. People on the internet began mentioning how Khelif had been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships due to her failing the random sex chromosome test that she underwent by having testosterone levels that were too high.

It is important to mention that another boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, was in the same situation that Khelif was in. Both were disqualified from the World Championships but allowed to participate in the Olympics. However, Khelif got infinitely more backlash than her fellow contestant did.

Both athletes were allowed to compete under the International Olympic Committee ruling after the International Boxing Association, which disqualified both boxers, was stripped of their status as governing body for boxing due to the IOC having concerns over their governance and finance.

A Reuters article stated that the IOC considers the IBA a discredited organization due to their “financial opaqueness” and their “compromised ties to the Russian government.” They have also implied that the IBA is not credible and stated that both Khelif and Yu-ting were unfairly punished without due process. The IBA then responded by saying that it was the “death of female boxing” and the “corruption of judges.”

Throughout all of this internal Olympic controversy, the one who was facing all of the consequences was Khelif. Her opponents were posting slanderous social media posts about her. Various other high-profile individuals such as Elon Musk, JK Rowling, and Donald Trump were questioning both her biological sex and her right to participate in the Olympics.

Khelif’s father had to speak up and defend his daughter against these accusations and clearly state that Imane was born a female and to show the world an official document stating that she was assigned female at birth.

While Khelif’s story is the one that is currently being discussed, women of color have been disproportionately discriminated against in sports and have been subjected to defamatory accusations of them either being male or other-gendered. Some examples are Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand, Serena Williams, and Brittney Griner, the only thing tying them together being that they are women of color that excel at their sports.

Sporting competitions are supposed to be the places where meritocracy exists and people are not limited by the colonial and patriarchal standards that are prevalent in our society. They instead have been used as a means of perpetuating Western colonial ideas of femininity and womanhood. Women of color have to do double the work of white women — they have to both excel at their sport while simultaneously proving their femininity to the Western world. They are forced to perform for the public in every facet of their lives, especially considering that their version of “womanhood” is a standard a lot of women cannot achieve.

Women who have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome are known to have higher testosterone levels than women who don’t have the syndrome. Some women also have differences in sex development that also cause an elevation in testosterone levels. Both of these are natural and do not and should not stop somebody from being considered female.

Within sports, most athletes do have natural advantages, which is why they can be the best at their sport. Height for basketball or a swimmer’s long arms are both just that, a natural advantage. Michael Phelps is notorious for having so many biological advantages that he is thought to have “the perfect body for swimming”: very wide wingspan, hyperextended joints, legs that resemble flippers, a longer torso, and shorter legs, and he produces less lactic acid than his competitors. Nobody ever doubts his masculinity or his “human-ness” and whether he was born a fish. Historically, sporting criticism has been exclusively reserved for women of color.

While the race aspect of this conversation does take precedence, it is also interesting to analyze why it is always women getting criticized for their biology. Sports place a natural restriction on women and how much testosterone they can have to still be considered a woman, even if that level stems from completely natural causes. This same standard is not placed on men. Men are not restricted from having too much naturally occurring testosterone, neither are they from having too much estrogen. It appears that males are allowed to participate in sports regardless of how “masculine” or “feminine” they are biologically.

Women have a ceiling of strength and power they can achieve before their biological sex is placed into question, men are not given a limit. Men can exist under such a wide biological spectrum while women have to change themselves to adapt to the boxes that have been placed on them. When men are great they are allowed to be just that — great. When women are great, they are malevolent and nefarious and are placed under a spotlight to be condemned. Women are not allowed to just exist in sports, they have to perform and prove their womanhood first.

While Imane Khelif had to be ruthlessly subjugated to the questioning of her identity, femininity, and athletic ability, she is now an Olympic World Champion in boxing and has filed a cyber-bullying lawsuit in France. This lawsuit named some of the high-profile individuals that participated in the online condemnation of Khelif, alongside directly being filed against X, formerly Twitter.

If Khelif’s story does anything, I hope it will allow women to be the best in sports in the future without being questioned for it, especially by people on the internet who only seem to care about women’s sports when they can use them to start a culture and gender war.