The 'Trans Boxer' story isn't what you think

Gender wars, Russian influence ops, and our addiction to rage bait

A Scandal in the Ring

This week, controversy exploded across social media about a trans athlete at the Olympics. We’re going to run through the main highlights, but they won’t surprise you. Trans stuff! Fight fight fight! Bigots! Wokeness! Everyone gets big mad, if you’ve spent any time online you know the routine.

But there are several angles to this story that aren’t being widely reported, several unexpected twists, and they’re what make it truly fascinating. Hang with me here, and you might learn something about how online controversies grow.

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Imane Khelif is a female boxer from Algeria currently competing at the Olympics. After she beat up Italian competitor Angela Carini so badly that she quit after 46 seconds, the Italian boxer complained of ‘unfairness’ and that ‘something wasn’t right’. Khelif then came under fire from online conservatives furious that a trans female was beating up biological women.

Algeria’s Imane Khelif

As mentioned, this followed predictable lines. Full time anti-trans cultural warrior and part-time author JK Rowling repeatedly called Khelif a smirking man. Elon’s parade of VC buddies and newly famous clowns with names like ‘End Wokeness’ and ‘Libs of TikTok’ all chimed in with anti-trans, anti-wokeness takes. It became a massive topic of conversation that dominated right-leaning Twitter. Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting also got caught up in this, but most of the ire has focused on Khelif. Men competing against women! Even worse, in combat sports - men punching women!

There’s just one problem: Imane Khelif isn’t trans.

Imane Khelif was born a woman and raised a woman according to every piece of evidence that exists. She has always thought of herself as a woman and always been considered a woman by everyone who knew her. She grew up a Muslim from rural Algeria. That is not exactly a woke environment friendly to LGBT folks.

Instead, what online conservatives found out was that the International Boxing Association (IBA) had disqualified Khelif from the 2023 World Championships under mysterious circumstances. It was first reported that Khelif was disqualified for high testosterone. IBA president Umar Kremlev later clarified that a gender test “proved they had XY chromosomes”, and thus Imane was removed from competition. But the Olympics’ governing body (the IOC) didn’t abide by the IBA’s decision and allowed Khelif to compete.

You might think this was the twist - someone born a woman, who due to a rare gender disorder actually has a Y chromosome, now competing at the Olympics and causing controversy. This is certainly where most people stop with the story. They pick a side, either believing that Imane is a born woman who deserves to compete or that she’s a secret man taking advantage of woke systems to abuse women.

I’m going to take you deeper. We’re going to go to the next logical stop: corrupt Russian functionaries and Russian influence campaigns.

Nobody expects the Russian Inquisition

“What on earth does Russia have to do with this? Isn’t Russian disinformation a conspiracy theory?” Buckle up baby, it’s about to get wild.

Let’s talk about the IBA president quoted above. Umar Kremlev is a Russian citizen who has been the president of the IBA since 2020. Kremlev’s tenure as the IBA president has been controversial, to put it mildly. Kremlev has close ties to Vladimir Putin. He moved the IBA offices from Switzerland to Russia. Under his leadership the IBA has begun relying on a single source for funding - Russian oil company Gazprom. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian athletes were barred from almost every major international competition (including the Olympics). Kremlev fought to reinstate Russian boxers only months after the invasion. He’s opposed common sense reforms like the independent assignment of judges and referees for fights. His tenure has been surrounded by controversy and criticism from all sides, which is likely why he had the IBA declare the only opposing candidate for president ineligible in 2022. He then had the IBA vote internally to suspend the 2022 leadership election and remained as IBA president.

The IBA is considered so corrupt under Kremlev’s rule that the IOC formally stripped the IBA of its status as the governing body of the sport of boxing. That hasn’t happened to any sport that I can remember in living memory. Boxing’s future as an Olympic sport is actually up in the air - the IOC is running the boxing competition in Paris by itself, and it remains to be seen if boxing will be featured at all in the 2028 Los Angeles games. For those unfamiliar with international sports - the IOC itself is a hotbed of corruption. When you are too corrupt for even the IOC itself, you are seriously and impressively fucked up.

Why does any of this matter? Umar Kremlev is the only source we have regarding Imane Khelif’s failed gender test. The IBA hasn’t released anything. They haven’t told us which labs completed the tests, they haven’t released the results, they haven’t even said exactly which tests were performed. Reportedly, they haven’t even released the test results to Khelif herself. There is literally no evidence other than Umar Kremlev’s word. And Kremlev, as we have seen, is one of the most corrupt sports officials on the planet and has the IBA under dictatorial control.

It’s also curious that Khelif has competed in IBA sanctioned events for years without incident. She competed in the 2018 and 2019 World Championships and the 2021 Tokyo Olympics¹. She competed in the 2022 World Championships - with the same IBA testing - and won a silver medal! All this happened without any controversies, speculation, or demands for testing. She was tested in 2022, won a medal, and was invited back to compete in 2023. Why the sudden scrutiny at the 2023 championships?

Would you believe that the IBA’s disqualification of Khelif came mere days after she defeated a Russian boxer?

Would you believe that the IBA’s decision was made solely by president Kremlev, and only later ratified by the IBA’s board?

I don’t know whether Imane Khelif actually has a Y chromosome or not. It’s possible she does. It’s possible that the IBA actually did test her and find this chromosomal abnormality in an otherwise normal woman. Intersex conditions like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or XY gonadal dysgenesis are rare, but they do exist. Such conditions can lead to individuals who have XY chromosomes but present as female and develop women’s anatomy.

But it’s also possible the whole thing is a fabrication, because the only evidence we have is the word of Umar Kremlev.

Russian Influence Campaigns

A few months back, I wrote a short piece on this blog about how modern Russian influence campaigns work.

Weekly Scroll: How Russian Disinfo Works

That article was about a PR battle between Signal and Telegram. Signal is undoubtedly the more secure platform, whereas Telegram is based in Russia, less secure, and has likely been technically compromised by the Kremlin. Despite this, conservative influencers were bashing Signal for being ‘woke’ and hyping Telegram as a replacement. I wrote:

Here’s how this all adds up. We know for certain that Russia and China target the MAGA/online right political spheres with their propaganda, and that they push the most divisive culture war topics to sow discord. It’s almost guaranteed that Telegram has been compromised by Russia’s state security. And we have the very odd coincidence that at the same time as Telegram is pushing anti-Signal disinformation, a bunch of conservative culture warriors also decide that Signal Is Woke and thus can’t be trusted. Funny how that timing works.

(…) It’s not that hard to push certain cultural talking points that will make right wingers behave in predictable ways. The easy solution is for Kremlin assets to start spreading FUD about how Signal is unreliable because of Cultural Marxism or whatever, and let it filter up to useful idiots who will uncritically parrot those talking points.

This is what modern disinformation campaigns look like. There’s no smoking gun here, and no clear story of how any particular guy is a traitor. But there’s a lot of low-level conspiracy theories that can be reliably spread through conservative culture war circles, and that somehow always seem to point in the same direction that’s friendly to certain authoritarian governments.

There’s always some level of deniability here, and it’s never a direct link. But once you look, it’s eerie how often right-leaning culture war topics seem to be linked to Russia.

We know that Russia has been humiliated by the decision to ban all Russian athletes from competing at the Olympics, and that Putin is petty enough to ruin the Olympics any way he can. We know that the IBA has been humiliated by the Olympics and faces going defunct as an organization thanks to the IOC stripping their status.

We know that Russia targets the American right with the intention to sow discord. We know they have an extensive history of running bot farms to target conservative influencers. We know the controversy around Imane Khelif is tied back to a single corrupt Russian official.

And just by coincidence, every conservative commentator is now in a rage about Imane Khelif as a massive culture war topic. It’s dominating Olympic news. The IBA has eagerly stoked the flames here - president Kremlev has announced that the IBA is giving the Italian competitor that Khelif defeated a cash prize equivalent to what an Olympic champion would receive. There’s no smoking gun, of course. But this is how modern Russian influence ops work.

The Toxoplasma of Rage

There are some voices trying to calm things down. The IOC has stood firmly behind Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. Angela Carini, the Italian boxer, has apologized for her initial outburst and said she would embrace Khelif if they met again. But there are a lot more people who want to get you mad than who want to chill things out.

I’m not here to tell you how to think about this situation. But I do want to try to impart some wisdom about the nature of these controversies and why they grab hold of us so easily.

One of the best descriptions ever written of toxic social media dynamics is Scott Alexander’s The Toxoplasma of Rage. The essay is long but worth reading in full. It essentially says that the cleanest versions of things don’t get discussed much, because they’re uncontroversial and there’s nothing to discuss. If the guy below said “I identify as a woman now” and tried to compete as a woman, there wouldn’t be a controversy because the vast majority of people would agree it was dumb and he wouldn’t be allowed to compete.

But the unclear instances are where controversy thrives. These are the ambiguous situations where two sides can form and both camps can latch on to certain facts or arguments to prove they’re right.

The most controversial versions of things get discussed ad nauseum precisely because they are so controversial and give rise to so many arguments, takes, counter-takes, cancellations and fights. It’s why everyone can give an example of PETA being ridiculous, but nobody’s ever heard of the nice and boring Vegan Outreach. It’s why despite the fact that only around 2-8% of rape claims are false claims, some of the most prominent stories about rape have been false reports. You don’t hear much about the true reports, because there’s nothing to argue about. Everyone agrees they’re bad. You only hear about the sensationalized ones, the ones that end up being wildly controversial and discussed for months.

Our case with Imane fits this pattern exactly. She doesn’t look typically feminine, and she’s failed a gender test! She’s a man! But she was born a woman and has always lived as a woman! But she has a Y chromosome! But the only source for that claim is an incredibly corrupt individual with a motive to sow discord! This story was designed in a lab to be the most controversial and confusing gender-wars-related story of the year. Everybody can find something to grab onto, and the whole situation is messy enough that nobody ever has to admit they were wrong and can keep fighting forever.

Controversy causes discourse. And this effect is absolutely turbo-charged online - it may be a small factor in IRL conversations or traditional media coverage, but it’s the dominant factor for what gets discussed online. Controversy sells. Controversy causes more interactions, more angry replies, more calls to arms. Controversy begets virality.

This is a major part of why the world always seems to be so negative - algorithms aren’t trained to serve you the nice, pleasant stories. You don’t engage with those as much as you engage with the controversial stuff, with the stories that are ambiguous enough to become bitter culture war struggles. Algorithms serve us rage bait, and we’ve become addicted.

The important thing is that you can train yourself to notice this. You can’t change the design of social media systems, and you can’t change human nature. People will continue to spread the most controversial and divisive stories while ignoring the majority of situations that are more straightforward.

I don’t want to tell you how to feel about Imane Khelif. She may be an actual edge case, a person with a rare condition that defies easy categorization.² But I do want to tell you that our social media systems are specifically designed to make you angry about topics that don’t actually matter that much in the end. But you have a choice, and you can notice when it happens and pull yourself out of the cycle.

1. If you’re curious, Khelif lost her opening matches in 2018 and 2019 for low ranked finishes. In 2021 she reached the Olympic quarterfinals before losing.

2. Although I will say this - intersex conditions are rare. But if you tested every elite female athlete I bet you’d find more than you’d realize, including some you’d never suspect. Be careful if you want to open that can of worms.