The photograph went around the world: U.S. gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles bow before Brazil's Rebeca Anderson on the gold podium at Paris 2024. It's an image for history, not just Olympic history, but also feminist history, because it's a graphic depiction of what sisterhood looks like: seeing your peers succeed is a source of pride.
At the other end of the spectrum, among the bitter moments left by the sports event that concluded yesterday, is the regrettable episode of discrimination faced by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. "Impossible for a woman to be that strong," "her body isn't feminine, she must be trans," "she made her opponent cry, she must be a man!" are just some of the comments repeated over and over on social media in the hours following her bout against Italy's Angela Carini.
The pressure was so intense that Imane had to justify her body to an audience enraged and blinded by the same prejudices and gender stereotypes that prevented women from competing in the first modern edition of the Olympic Games—Athens 1896—or limited them to tennis and golf at Paris 1900. Or that made Paris 2024 the first gender-equal Games.
Imane was born female, identifies as a cisgender woman, and meets all the International Olympic Committee criteria for the classification of boxers. Interestingly, when she fought in Tokyo 2021 and lost, no one found her appearance "suspicious."
The questioning of Olympic participants' gender is not new. Between 1968 and 1999, various female athletes were subjected to humiliating tests, such as visual examination of their genitals, analysis of their hormone levels, and even chromosomal reviews to prove they were... women. This exhaustive scrutiny repeatedly validated gender norms like submission and sweetness, normalized considering a woman good at sports as "mannish," and thus, for centuries, outstanding female athletes were invalidated. It's an obstacle course that has yet to be fully overcome.
In honor of the lessons from these Olympics, let's provoke the sexists by reworking the famous phrase attributed to Henry of Navarre before converting to Catholicism to reign in France. I say: Paris is well worth not a mass, but a muse... and that muse will be Imane, until strength in women becomes the norm.