Sanctioned Domestic Violence

Watching the Olympics in a body that kept the score

Iwas crying those snotty, messy, heaving sort of tears. I sat on a curb in an Indian grocery store parking lot at 1 or 2 in the morning crying those ugly tears. I paced, I weighed my options, I realized I had no where to go but back. So I turned around and walked back towards the room I had rented at a motel in North St. Louis, a motel I was well acquainted with at the time. I walked past the room where a group of guys who were traveling together for some sort of work overflowed into the parking lot. They asked me what was wrong, offered me a drink, told me I should just come stay with them. My mascara stained face was a mask that betrayed my vulnerability. I said no, walked past the motel kitties who were feral but clearly being well fed by some regular, and skulked back to the room where my heart had been broken earlier, again.

The fight was over drugs, it always was. My mind actually blocks most of it out now so many years later, I don’t remember specifics. I got thrown and pushed and shoved off the bed. Called the names men call women when they are angry. For not giving him my last dollar, for not letting him overdraft my bank account or write another bad check. For not wanting to participate in some sort of theft that particular night. For not pawning the belongings of my family members. For not giving up my share of the drug we both were addicted to. He slammed me on the floor, kicked me. This was one of our bad nights.

When I started seeing the clips of Algeria’s Imane Khelif beating Italy’s Angela Carini in this year’s Olympics rolling in yesterday, this is where my head went. When you see a man assault a woman as a woman who has been assaulted by a man, you have a particularly visceral reaction. The anger that welled up in me to the point of tears was for her and for me and for so many other women. Yes, this was sports and yes, this was TV, not a domestic dispute. And yet, my body immediately reacted as such.

Image from here

Can a male punching a woman be called any other name though? Certainly this is not “sport”. Sports require adherence to rules and regulations and good conduct. Good sportsmanship, if you will (can you tell this isn’t my area?). I don’t know if it is just me, but I seem to see many of these things being neglected. If the rules are bent (and they certainly were) and sportsmanship is out the window- then what are we watching? Simply, this is assault as entertainment. Not so simply, this is yet another accomplished woman being used as an example in the gender anarchy games, bolstered by none other than the International Olympic Committee.

This is nothing more than sanctioned domestic violence, functioning as a reminder that the world’s high and mighty have a plan for the rest of us. This is the highest level of athletics, and this is the most violent of sports. Olympic boxing is not a setting in which a male and a female can have any sort of level playing field between themselves. XYs don’t belong in the ring with XXs. We all know this and yet, no one stopped the show.

I do want to note here that a coalition of independent women’s organizations, called Our Bodies Our Sports did put out a formal letter to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee on the matter, as follows:

There has been a lot of back and forth over whether these athletes (the other athlete in question is named Lin-Yu Ting, of Taiwan) truly have XY chromosomes or if it is heresy, as the results of the testing referenced in these letters was never formally published. It has been assumed both individuals have a Difference of Sexual Development, or a DSD. This term is sort of an umbrella for all of the conditions that would fall under what people have traditionally called “intersex”. That particular word has created confusion in that it suggests one can be split down the middle, half male and half female, when in fact these conditions afflict individuals who are either male or female. For example, one can have XY chromosomes and have genitalia that appear feminine. One would still be male, but male with a DSD.

The Guardian reported the following: “Last year both fighters were disqualified from the world championships, with the International Boxing Association (IBA) president, Umar Kremlev, saying that DNA tests had ‘proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded’.

Also: “The IOC issued a statement that confirmed that both boxers had ‘complied with its entry regulations. ‘As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport,’ it added.”

Is a passport good enough? Is paperwork truly all that is needed? In a world where in increasingly more countries people can have their sex legally changed on their documents based on their feelings, is this sufficient? This leaves a dangerous door open to any male who wants to cheat or to hit women and be cheered for it, trans or not.

To clarify-I know these athletes are not necessarily trans, and that their documentation is probably a result of whatever a doctor chose to put on their birth certificate based on certain physical characteristics. I do think, however, that there are two major issues here.

One, I think these individuals, with all of the testing they have gone through (in addition to common sense), know the physical advantage they have over the women they are competing against and have a disregard for those women’s safety and well being. Two, I think trans ideology has created the environment for this sort of situation to exist in.

For those interested in hashing out the specifics any further, the below thread explains the situation concisely:

unaffiliatedfemale

A post shared by @unaffiliatedfemale

I also recommend reading

REDUXX

’s article on the situation as well as listening to

Meghan Murphy

,

Mary Lou Singleton

, and

Genevieve Gluck

discuss the Olympics on their podcast “Where Are All the Women?”, found below (also, for a rec, this podcast is my favorite thing to listen to every Saturday morning during my drive into the city for work).

Freakolympics

While I understand it is important to get the facts here, I also think this situation is a perfect example of how the media is attempting to train us into not trusting our own eyes. When I look at these fighters, my female brain immediately codes them as male. I see their stature, their posture, their muscle mass, their mannerisms, and their facial features. I can say without question that if I was placed in a ring with them, I would sense the danger-the sort of sense of danger specific to a female trapped with a violent male. I’m not hysterical and I’m not bigoted. I’m simply a female soul in a female body that is encoded with this simple human bodily knowledge: it just isn’t safe for women to fight men.

The funny thing is, if you look at the discussion of this situation, you will see countless women defending these men. Questioning the specifics, wanting papers and the like. Do they not have eyes? Have their senses failed? Is the messaging working? Also, why so hellbent on defending these suspicious figures and not the women they are stealing titles from?

We all have eyes. And as we all have eyes, we all possess instincts. The entire purpose of instinct is to protect. Protection of the self, of children, of innocence, of tradition, of heritage seems to increasingly be frowned upon. It is seen as fussy, as old fashioned, as over-the-top at best, and any version of the taboo “ists” (racist, sexist etc) at worst. We must ask ourselves why this is.

We all should be absolutely aghast watching a person with obviously male characteristics punch a woman in the face on television. We should all be stunned that it was allowed to happen in the first place. We should all be offended at how our innate intelligence is being diminished and underestimated right before our eyes in an international spectacle.

Mattei Athena at the Louvre.

To borrow from the lore of the origins of the Olympics themselves, I think we can look to an OG Olympian, Athena, for some guidance in this matter. Goddess of warfare, wisdom and handicrafts, and Πρόμαχος "she who fights in front". Athena is prudent. Some may say the Olympics needs Jesus after that opening ceremony, I say maybe they need Athena.

From the link above:

“Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigned the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derived in part from the fact that she represented the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represented mere blood lust.”

The blood lust belongs to the powers that be. Those that allow the Olympic boxing ring to become the domicile for sanctioned domestic violence, that allow the fighters to become the metaphorical male-female couple, that allow the cheering on of this disgrace. This is an unintelligent and reckless effort to normalize what has never been normalized in all of humanity’s existence. This is the work of the unskilled, the bull headed, and the bull has its blinders on.

Skill and justice matter. A moralistic approach in how decisions are made as to who is allowed to fight who would be helpful and is truly necessary. Fairness and safety are the minimum requirements women should be afforded in this realm, and they are being woefully failed-and this is a moral failing. I’m sure Carini does not feel a sense of justice. I sure didn’t when I was laid out in the floor after being hit by a man.

Is there a difference? Between this accomplished and trained Olympic female fighter and myself, a former heroin addict with an abusive ex? Of course there is. The similarities matter just as much, if not more, than the differences though. When any woman is physically harmed by a man, her deepest instinctual rage and sorrow is brought to the surface by the unbearable and intense unfairness of it all. And what did Carini say, after being hit by Khelif?

“It’s not fair, it’s not fair”.