It was highly offensive and inappropriate that the Paris Olympics opened with a drag show. Gender controversies overshadowed the games from start to finish.
Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper, the most famous painting in the world which recalls the sacred meal Jesus shared with his disciples, was replaced with an indulgent, cross-dressing extravaganza. Why?
The ceremonies director Thomas Jolly claimed that he just wanted “everyone to feel represented” is not credible because representation could have been accomplished in less offensive ways.
A credibly suggested reason comes from psychologist Karalyn Borysenko on her Substack Actively Unwoke: Jolly, a self-described “queer,” was doing what queers do.
“‘Queer’ is not about making people feel included. It’s not even about being gay or trans, because you do not need to be gay or trans …to be queer,” Borysenko explains.
Although “queer” is synonymous with “not straight” to many people, Borysenko explains queer, in reality, “is a far-left political ideology” that emerged in the late 1980’s within anarcho-communist circles. The goal is to “destabilize normativity” and abolish the gender binary, the nuclear family, and capitalism.
“A high-profile event like the Olympics offers an opportunity to insert messaging that is purposefully designed to make people feel uncomfortable as a way of destabilizing cultural norms,” she explains.
The bearded Jesus figure in the ceremonies was French DJ Barbara Butch, who received a 2023 Attitude Pride Award as a “love activist” of the Pride movement. “I’m a fat, Jewish, queer lesbian, and I’m really proud of all my identities,” she said, to The JC.
If the goal was to cause division in the traditional West, the queer ceremonies were a massive success. People who did not believe the Last Supper was in view argued against those who did. The strife followed for days, only to get a sequel in female boxing.
First, some background. In 2022 and 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) disqualified Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan at the World Boxing Championships for failing the gender eligibility test. Athletes with XY (male) chromosomes and elevated testosterone levels aren’t allowed to compete in IBA women’s events.
Mexican boxer Brianda Tamara boxed Khelif at the 2023 event before the latter’s disqualification.
“When I fought with her I felt very out of my depth,” Tamara recalled on X. “Her blows hurt me a lot, I don’t think I had ever felt like that in my 13 years as a boxer, nor in my sparring with men. Thank God that day I got out of the ring safely, and it’s good that they finally realized.”
An IBA press conference at the Paris games clarified that Khelif failed a karyotype test, which means she had male chromosomes.
The birth certificate of Khelif says female, but that is apparently because the signatory was assigned the wrong gender based on appearances. In cases where genitals are malformed, internal testes still produce testosterone, allowing the person to develop the bone density and muscle mass of a typical male.
Unlike the IBA, IOC rules allow athletes to continue in female sports with “gender diversity” and “differences of sexual development.”
Following the 2023 disqualification, the IOC stripped the IBA of authority over the sport, and left it up to national boards to regulate their athletes. Of course, Algeria and Taiwan were more than happy to call their respective athletes female, given their chances of winning medals.
What’s more, Khelif is a two-time Algerian athlete of the year and is currently a United Nations Children’s Fund ambassador.
In Paris, Italian boxer Angela Carini had her own Brianda Tamara experience fighting Khelif. Carini bowed out just 46 seconds into the match after receiving a hard punch to the face. The scene of Carini on her knees in tears was a defining moment of the Paris Olympics, and not one to celebrate.
Those outraged on behalf of Carini and those defending Khelif fought each other far longer than the athletes themselves, the contention itself causing the kind of western demoralization the West loves. Neither Khelif’s urge for people to stop “bullying athletes,” nor the athlete’s gold medal bout, did anything to quell the controversy.
The presence of transgender athletes on women’s sports teams also soured the games for some. Even though athletes take measures to lower their testosterone levels, they keep the developmental advantages they gained in previous years. No, athletics were split into the sexes for good reasons irrelevant to, and not precluded by, an athlete’s inner sense of identity.
If gender and sex are different, as the gender advocates suggest, why not let biological sex be the determinant in competition and let the politics play out somewhere else? Unfortunately, diversity advocates want their politics to override considerations everywhere, whether it’s commerce, education, or athletics.
A proper acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion is DIE because it inflicts death on merit, which may ultimately compromise Western society. When the Paris Olympics are but a memory, this problem will remain.
Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
