The Imane Khelif boxing controversy is not what it seems.

“And just so you know, I enjoyed [breaking her jaw]. See, I love smacking up TERFS in the cage who talk transphobic nonsense. It’s bliss!” ~ 'transgender' boxer Fallon Fox

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who beat Italian boxer Angela Carini in 48 seconds

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I have to weigh in on this Imane Khelif controversy.

I get it that people are angry about the topic of men competing in women’s sports. My first reaction to this story was to feel the same, until I delved in deeper and started thinking, wait a minute, something’s not right about this.

First of all, many of you already know but for those of you who don’t, I have a few qualifications to speak on this topic. I am a dedicated fighter and also a trainer. I have fought full contact as a boxer and kick boxer. I also trained in other styles, such as Eskrima (Filipino stick and knife fighting) and Kyokushin. I have put on samurai gear (it’s very heavy) and fought men full contact in Eskrima. I have great memories of training in the summers with a bunch of Kyokushin guys who would come to LA from London. Kyokushin is an extremely hard, full contact karate style. I was the only woman allowed to train with these men.

Most importantly, in the early 2000s, I was training at Benny the Jet Urquidez’s gym and was invited to train to fight professionally as a boxer. This was after I was tested by having to fight five different fighters, one after the other, male and female. I passed the test. In the end, however, I had to make the tough decision to bow out. As a single mother and the president of a creative writing program for incarcerated youth that I had just started, I simply didn’t have the time to devote the many hours needed to succeed professionally as a boxer.

So, I can appreciate from personal experience what it means to hit and be hit. Hard. I have had black eyes and a lot of bruises. Never any broken bones, except a baby toe. I sprained my ankle twice and cracked my ribs twice. I’ve inflicted the same and worse on my opponents. I have broken someone’s nose. I know this isn’t normal for women; I have explained why I fight in Way of the Warrior.

Now, back to this Imane Khelif controversy. I’m going to do an awkward thing of calling Khelif “he/she” because I honestly don’t know what else to do.

We don’t know everything, but we do know that Khalif was “disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association’s World Boxing Championships after failing to meet eligibility requirements for the women’s competition, the IBA said in a statement, noting she was not subject to a testosterone exam and was instead put through a separate test that found she had competitive advantages over other women athletes. The IBA, which is not recognized by the international Olympic Committee, has said the specifics of the test are confidential—though IBA president Umar Kremlev alleged to Russian news agency TASS last year Khelif had XY chromosomes—a pair of chromosomes typically possessed by men.”

I agree that those with XY chromosomes should not box in the female category. This should be obvious. It is my understanding that both Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan were deemed to have male chromosomes in the same 2023 Women’s World Championships and were disqualified as a result.

However, when it came to this year’s Olympics, the IOC determined that “both fighters - who were determined to be born female and do not identify as trans or intersex - could compete under gender eligibility rules that were applied during the Tokyo Games in 2021”.

The whole thing gets more interesting when you discover that Lin, (who does not look as threatening as Khelif—which is probably why he/she has not been featured in any sensational photos) ...

Yu-ting of Taiwan

…could be set to fight Tina Rahimi, Australia's first ever Muslim women's boxer to compete at the Olympic Games. Rahimi doesn’t seem to mind she might be fighting a biological male.

Tina Rahimi

“No one should be excluded. Discrimination is not welcome in sport, specifically in the Olympics and what it stands for,” says Rahimi, parroting the propaganda that she has been fed. (Update:  Rahimi, lost to Poland's Julia Szeremeta on Friday)

No one? Sounds nice and inclusive. I guess that means she wouldn’t mind fighting Fallon Fox, the first MMA fighter to come out as transgender, who fractured the skull of Tamika Brents in 2014. Below, if you can believe it, is Fallon Fox in 1994 as opposed to what she turned into by 2014:

The madness should have been stopped then, but it wasn’t.

Instead, Fallon was awarded “Bravest Athlete” in 2020 by some LGBTQ+ folks. When criticized that a male shouldn’t be celebrated for breaking the skulls of women, Fallon responded in a now deleted tweet:

“And just so you know, I enjoyed it. See, I love smacking up TERFS in the cage who talk transphobic nonsense. It’s bliss!”

FYI, TERF stands for the ridiculous term: trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

And since nobody batted an eyelash, we now find ourselves in this mix-up at the Olympics. The controversy exploded into the limelight when Khelif destroyed Italian boxer Angela Carini in just 46 seconds, leaving her in tears and nursing a “broken nose”.

Now, I will get back to the tears and the nose in a minute. But first, this story just keeps on snowballing. Everyone started hating on Khalif. He’s trans, they said. Except he/she isn’t. And it doesn’t matter. Even if people had proof in front of their faces that he/she wasn’t trans, people would still insist that he was. They have invested too much emotion into their false opinion, the algorithms have fed them too many videos and photos and phrases, over and over again until the message has solidified in their minds.

In all fairness to Imane Khelif, we know nothing about who he/she is as a person, and this bashing doesn’t sit well with me. So, let’s find out more. He/she is an UNICEF ambassador.

At 16 he/she exceled in football in his/her rural village in Tiaret, but boys didn’t like it and picked fights with her/him. Khelif’s father disapproved of a girl boxing, so to raise money Khelif sold scrap metal for recycling and her mother sold couscous. Eventually, her father came around.

“I started with nothing and now I have everything,” says Imane Khelif. “Both my parents come to support me. They are my biggest fans.”

From what I understand, Khelif might have the XY chromosomes (typically seen in males), but the external genitals are female. She was assigned female at birth. From what I’ve read, often these types of people don’t know they are different until they hit puberty. This makes sense since in Islamic Algeria being ‘trans’ can get you killed and being gay will get you a prison sentence. Khelif grew up as a girl. That’s what it says on his/her birth certificate.

I'm adding some photos of Khelif as a child. Having lived in Egypt, an Islamic state like Algeria, I can tell you, no one dresses up their boy as a girl, especially not in villages.

It must have been hard for Khelif growing up like this, once he/she found out he/she was different from other girls. I would be interested to find out about Khelif’s life and the challenges of growing up. She/he must have overcome extreme adversity to become a boxer in a Muslim country.

Far from being invincible, Khelif has lost nine bouts. Amy Broadhurst is a champion boxer. Check out this conversation:

Priceless conclusion to that conversation.

At the risk of making people angry (since when did that ever bother me) why did Khelif’s opponent, Angela Carini, stop the fight after 46 seconds and start sobbing. I have never seen a female boxer react like that, even after serious injury, but I saw no visible injury on her. And again, remember that I speak from personal experience.

You can watch the fight and judge for yourself here. And I have to add that no, I do not think Khelif intentionally “hit” Carini’s breast. This is so blown out of proportion.

Then, you can contrast Carini’s apparent injuries (although I see none) with Australian champion “Blond Bomber” Ebanie Bridges after she was beaten by Japanese underdog, Miyo Yoshida (a female), in 2023. When I first saw Bridges post of these two photos below and what she wrote, I thought she had been beaten up by a ‘trans’ fighter because that’s what it implies:

All the information in her post is wrong.

Khalif is not trans, and Bridges wasn’t beaten up by a trans boxer. It is disingenuous of her to make it appear that way. Yes, Bridges is correct that a biological man can “break skulls”, but that’s not what happened to Bridges and it’s not what happened to Carini. It’s what happened to Tamika Brent at the hands of ‘transgender’ Fallon Fox.

Here’s what the Blond Bomber’s fight looked like, and it was brutal—because female boxing matches can be brutal, it’s that kind of sport:

And guess what, just like Fallon has changed over the years, Bridges has too, by enhancing a couple of her female body parts. Here’s what Bridges looked like when she first started boxing, fresh-faced and natural, the all-American girl:

Here’s what she looks like now, after a couple of “enhancements” that certainly helped her earning power on her “OnlyFans” account:

All I’m trying to say is, what we are told in the media, even if it’s from the side we agree with, can be an outright lie, or it can be twisted or only half-true. We are continually being manipulated to react emotionally rather than intellectually. Even when the facts come out later, proving what we were first told is a lie, the manipulation has often been so successful that we simply refuse to accept it. And if anyone tries to tell us otherwise, we become angry and double down on the delusion.

Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting should not compete in women’s boxing if they truly are biological males. But they aren’t the same as Fallon Fox or, let’s say, Lia Thomas, both of whom “transitioned” from male to female and literally invaded women’s sports.

In fact, Riley Gaines has said that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is so well-endowed that she had to “refrain from looking” at Thomas in the locker room they shared during a meet. That could never be said of Imane Khalif. And somehow, I don’t get the feeling that Khelif has that same arrogant attitude of Lia Thomas or the flat-out hatred of Fallon Fox.

Khelif has been caught up in a controversy I don’t think he/she is in any way to blame for. It must be horrible for Khelif’s parents, too.

Riley Gaines, a strong voice against men in women’s spots, has accused Olympic officials of "glorifying male violence against women".

One thing is certain. The rules need to be changed since the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport and both Imane and Lin have passports stating they are women. There should not be this confusion. (Please find all applicable rules here.)

It’s time for female athletes to follow the example of brave women like Rhiley Gaines and legend Martina Navratilova, who strongly condemned the Olympic officials in their decision to allow Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting to compete by saying:

"Deplorable. This will not end well for the people in power who allowed this to happen."

And I clarify that we should stand with Gaines and Navratilova not because we know Khelif and Yu-ting are male. As of this writing, we don’t know that. We should stand with them because they have been fighting for fairness in women’s sports for a long time and Olympic officials and others like them should have never allowed this confusion to happen in the first place.

I really do wish that instead of fighting for 46 seconds and then stopping and crying about it, Carini had refused to fight in the first place. I wish Tina Rahimi would refuse. But she is hoping for her moment of glory and that’s hard to give up.

Until women unite and say no, nothing will ever change.

It all goes back to that first MMA fight and Fallon Fox, and nobody stopped it. Women’s sports should be kept for women. If not, how far will this madness go?