Comedian Andy Richter said “treacherous nonsense” was behind the right-wing outrage over an Olympic boxer from Algeria who was born a woman and defeated a woman in Paris this week.
Richter, once Conan O’Brien’s talk-show sidekick, seized the spotlight to mock conservatives such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) who accused Imane Khelif of being a man without proof.
Khelif faced an unspecified gender-test issue at the last world championships and was disqualified. There is no evidence that she is trans, and the International Olympic Committee said she was fully qualified to compete in Paris. “This is not a transgender issue,” the committee emphasized.
Richter had enough of the bellicose blathering that seems to have sprung from transphobia ― a lynchpin of Republican messaging as the likely showdown looms between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Spending yr youth training & sacrificing & working while masquerading as the opp. sex in order to succeed, devoting yourself to an absurdly complicated yrs-long charade just to win – all of that has to make sense to you in order to believe it’s true and get so worked up about it,” Richter wrote Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
“Your brain has to be able to think ‘yeah, years of faking being a woman is a feasible and logical plan to ensure winning, I can understand that,’ and good lord, what other kinds of treacherous nonsense are floating around in your soul?” he continued.
“And even more improbably, you would have to do this all in Algeria, not that anyone who’s yelling about it even knows what continent it’s in.”
The International Olympic Committee called the disqualification-causing test “sudden and arbitrary” and “without any due process.”
The International Boxing Association, which oversees the world championships, said Khelif and another disqualified fighter “did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.” The president of the organization told a Russian outlet last year that DNA testing showed XY chromosomes in disqualified boxers. Women typically have two X chromosomes.
It should be noted that both competed at the Tokyo Olympics and did not medal. (The IOC prohibited the IBA from overseeing the Tokyo competition over apparent trust issues, USA Today reported.) Khelif has registered five knockouts while compiling a 37-9 amateur record. That means she has lost nine times to women.
Richter also included a funny exchange between Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst, who has defended Khelif, and someone who asked her how she would have felt if she had to fight Khelif.
Another user then casually wrote that Broadhurst did fight Khelif ― and beat her. “Tee hee hee,” Richter wrote.
