They are women, hear them roar

Female athletes have deservedly earned praise at the Paris Olympics. They don't deserve to be thrown into a cesspool of social media rumor-mongering if they're not tiny and waiflike.

The Paris Summer Olympics were heralded as the first gender-equitable Games, a celebration of the talent, spirit, and perseverance of female athletes during an often painful rise to equal numerical footing on the world sports stage.

Forget, for a moment, that the International Olympic Committee created some of those obstacles by not holding women’s individual or team competitions in many sports until relatively recently. The semi-evolved IOC belatedly realized that female sports fans have money to spend on products made by official IOC sponsors and they might be inclined to watch other women compete. Women’s money is just as good as men’s. So gender equity is the catchphrase and the theme—except, in the most powerful positions within the IOC itself.

Every woman competing in Paris should be respected for simply getting that far, from Katie Ledecky and her staggering dominance in the pool, to gymnast Simone Biles’ stunning comeback from the emotional ruins of her Tokyo Olympics misfortune to win four medals in Paris, and through the women who didn’t make it past preliminary rounds or bouts. And there have been many joyous moments that highlight the Olympics’ ability to inspire athletes and fans alike. One of the most touching was the memorable close to the gymnastics competition, when Biles and Jordan Chiles stood on the lower rungs of the medal platform and bowed down to Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade, who had topped them to win gold Monday in the floor exercise final. It was a classy gesture, sportsmanship and sisterhood in sparkly leotards.

But a notably ugly undercurrent has run through these Games in the form of persistent criticism of the appearance of female athletes, which has spilled over to debates over their gender. Female athletes have been placed into a defensive mode at a time they should be able to focus on their accomplishments and their potential. They’re being given an equal chance to compete at the Olympic level, but they’re not being allowed to enjoy their hard-won gains.

According to the legions of mindless mud-flingers on social media, any woman with defined muscles must be a man. Or transgender. Or guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs.

They can’t believe that a muscular build can come from lifting weights, that a woman’s strong physique can result from genetic blessings and hours spent in the gym. No, successful female athletes have to be doing something “wrong.” If they’re not dainty or slim-shouldered, they must be cheating.

Serena Williams heard those whispers often during her legendary tennis career. Ilona Maher, a member of the bronze medal-winning U.S. women’s rugby sevens team in Paris, spoke passionately about the gossip and sexism she has had to put up with because she’s not willowy and doesn’t fit traditional stereotypes of athletic slenderness.

This kind of garbage is exhausting and maddening. Women come in all shapes and sizes: tall and short, muscular and lithe, graceful and powerful. So do men. Why not accept those differences instead of insisting that women aren’t really women unless they fit a contrived and narrow standard? Are strong, self-assured women who have learned discipline and leadership skills through sports so threatening that they must be demeaned for stepping outside an archaic box?

Female athletes don’t have to be thin to be successful. One of the joys of the women’s gymnastics competition in Paris was that the athletes appeared to be healthy and happy and strong. None appeared to be dangerously thin. In past Games, some of the young women seemed fragile enough to suffer broken bones if that their bones if someone hugged them too tightly. They didn’t need chalk: they needed a sandwich.

Sowing doubts about gender, appearance, or identity is bullying, and that’s psychologically destructive. Body image is a tough and confidence-rattling issue for many women, especially young girls. Imagine the pressure they feel while competing in front of global audiences knowing cameras are mercilessly focused on their face and body and someone on a social media platform is proclaiming them to be fat or too muscled to be a “real” woman.

While we’re calling out people for unkind behavior, enough with the snarky criticism of Biles’ hair. When she tumbles and runs and soars, her hair slips out of place. So what? Let’s talk about her excellence and her courage, not her hair. The same restraint should apply to media representatives who have repeatedly asked soccer player Trinity Rodman about her father, former NBA star Dennis Rodman. She has consistently said that he has had minimal impact on her life. It’s time to identify her as an accomplished athlete in her own right and not define her solely in the context of who her father is.

All of this leads, as you might have expected, to the controversy that erupted when Algerian light welterweight boxer Imane Khelif won a match against Italian opponent Angela Carini in a mere 46 seconds and was accused of being a man and having an unfair competitive advantage..

Carini refused to shake Khelif’s hand afterward, which was widely interpreted as a personal protest against Khelif’s participation in the Olympics after having been suspended last year by the International Boxing Association. Reporter Greg Beacham, a respected and longtime boxing writer for the Associated Press, offered an excellent explanation of the issues that made the IBA’s suspension of Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting less than trustworthy and absolutely suspicious, and why the IOC allowed both boxers to compete in Paris.

Imagine that: a Russian-run sports federation that had been banned by the IOC because of its history of corruption and mismanagement ruled Khelif and Lin ineligible to compete. The IBA high testosterone levels were found in unspecified gender identity tests performed on both boxers, but it was a little too convenient that suspending them just happened to benefit Russian athletes. No other drug testing agency has seen those test results.

Khelif was born female. Had always fought as a female. Was accepted by her competitors and by the IOC as a female. Her father showed reporters for the Reuters news agency a document that listed her date of birth and her gender as female.

(Beacham, incidentally, was unfairly blasted on social media afterthe Boston Globe published his unbiased story on the bout in print and online with a headline describing Khelif as transgender. AP writers don’t compose the headlines that appear in hundreds of publications and websites; newspapers and other media outlets subscribe to AP’s reports and write their own headlines based on how they display each story in print or online. Beacham did not describe Khelif as being transgender. This grievous mistake was the Globe’s fault, as it eventually acknowledged).

Not long after that bout, Carini apologized to Khelif and said she held no ill will toward her opponent. Yet, that didn’t stop the sewer streams of condemnation from the mouths and keyboards of newly minted experts on biology and gender identity, people who can’t or won’t understand the facts or simply chose to promote their own agendas at Khelif’s expense.

Khelif asked for an end to the bullying toward her and toward other female athletes. Her words are worth your attention. The IOC may hold up the number of male and female participants in Paris as an example of equity and fairness, but that’s not the reality for female athletes who stand beyond archaic physical stereotypes.