Craig Young takes a closer look at Winston Peters new-found fascination with women’s sports and transgender communities.
When it comes to substantive issues relating to trans communities, Winston Peters seems to have limited that to the erasure of the Relationships and Sexuality Curriculum being taught in schools. Beyond that, Peters has chosen more symbolic issues, like toilet access and trans women’s participation in women’s sports. Apart from Family First, Destiny Church and the Women’s Rights Party microparty, no other political parties seem concerned about these observations.
In his Facebook post, on Friday 2 August 2024, Peters referred to his coalition agreement with the National party, including an agreement on imposed ‘gender rules’ on women’s sporting participation. Where the trouble begins is when Peters refers to Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif as ‘failing’ a gender test and concludes that Khelif is, therefore, a ‘biological man’. In a later post he has since castigated Louisa Wall for a Newsroom article defending Khelif.
Over the last fortnight, a manufactured moral panic has centred on the participation of two female boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting, at the Paris Olympics. These women had earlier been disqualified by the International Boxing Association due to an unspecified ‘gender applicability test’. Coincidentally or not, these gender applicability tests took place straight after both women had won competitions against Russian female boxers. Furthermore, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting were the only women subjected to these unspecified ‘gender applicability tests” in this context.
In April 2024, the International Olympic Committee itself suspended the IBA from adjudication over its boxing participants due to a lack of financial transparency, lack of official integrity and other failures. Thus, the disqualified female boxers were reinstated. The IBA has links to the Russian energy corporate Gazprom, which has strong connections to the Putin regime. Its chair, Umar Kremlev, is a known associate of the Russian despot. He was also head of a far-right Russian militia group, the “Night Wolves”, known for its Kremlin connections. The IBA and the International Olympic Committee have clashed repeatedly since Kremlev’s appointment and the deterioration of the IBA over the last four years.
At a highly dubious media conference called to try to clarify this situation, the International Boxing Association only found itself deeper in its own quagmire. At the conference, it failed to answer questions about the ‘scientific basis’ of its gender applicability tests. Its former medical director, Ioannas Philippatos, said Khelif and Ting had been tested after ‘complaints’ by other teams. (Which teams, exactly? The Russian one?) Furthermore, the test did not apparently concentrate on testosterone levels within the two women’s bodies but was a ‘separate and general test’, still of unspecified provenance. Kremlev blustered at the International Olympic Committee, which has responded that the disorganised response to questions about the testing reinforces the need to exclude the IBA from any further adjudication in the context of the Olympics.
Meanwhile, Italian female boxer Angela Carlini, who broke down after Khelif defeated her, has been criticised in her home country for her closeness to far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who herself has conservative Catholic views about gender identity, leading to suspicions about connivance in her performance before the press. One Arab media outlet voiced suspicions about the weaponisation of the ‘Disorders of Sexual Development’ diagnostic category against women of colour, noting that it only ever seems to be invoked against women from specific ethnic and cultural backgrounds, never white female competitors.
In blindly accepting the trustworthiness of the International Boxing Association, Peters joins the ignominious company of J.K.Rowling, Elon Musk, Piers Morgan, Donald Trump and far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, none of who are known for their expertise in endocrinology.
Exactly why did Peters think this was worth commenting on, given his evidently shallow knowledge of the situation and its background? It seems to have been little more than symbolic pump priming, reminding conservative Christians he still pays attention to them, otherwise why bother? What does it have to do with his crusade against trans women’s participation in women’s sports when Imane Khelif (and Lin Yu Ting) are not New Zealand citizens and his remarks cannot possibly affect the outcome of these two women’s boxers in their respective bouts?
Thus far, Peters has not responded to this, but nor have other media outlets called him on his unfactual social media posts. Imane Khelif meanwhile will compete for an Olympic gold medal later this week.
