United States rugby forward Ilona Maher has been a star of the Olympics, but that hasn't stopped the haters from labeling her. | Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

So far, I am loving what we’re seeing in Paris! Hot times in a “slow” pool. Leon Marchand. Simone Biles and the “Golden Girls” making it look effortless. That wild rugby finish for Team USA that now has the phones ringing off the hook at rugby clubs across America.

“Hello? My daughter wants to be like that Ilona Maher! When does your fall season start?”

The same girls who look up to one of the breakout stars of these Games also saw a viral video of the rugby forward/lipstick aficionado that was serious. Maher, who has formidable TikTok presence, expressed her hurt about certain cretins calling her a “man” because she is strong and fierce on the field of play and has the stiff arm that even got Baltimore Ravens running back Derrick Henry’s attention.

Maher is the latest target of what became a nasty erroneous trend even as “everybody watches women’s sports.” A few months ago, I saw on social media how some are putting forth the idea that Katie Ledecky and Caitlin Clark are “actually men” or “one of those transgenders.” This bus is never late.

As a transgender woman, I am left with a mix of incredulous angst and white-hot anger at cisgender Columbos trying to find “just one more thing” in these ridiculous “transvestigations” towards the best athletes in the world. It’s just another example of transphobes’ belief that transgender women are not women and cisgender women are inept in sports.

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Maher’s tears struck a special chord with me. We each play collision sports, Maher in rugby and myself in tackle football. We both fly around with abandon on the field and we take pride in it. We both also take pride in being fly, fierce and feminine off the field and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

We are who we are as athletes and people, but some seem to have an issue with it and they feel the need to spew it out regardless of who they hurt.

This hysteria extends to the discussion of two cisgender women in the Olympic boxing draw. Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu‑ting are both competing in these Olympics a year after the International Boxing Assn. disqualified them from last year’s world championships. According to a report from the Russian news agency TASS, IBA officials said they and other fighters “tried to deceive their colleagues and pretended to be women.”

Both fighters have been described by reporters as “transgender” or “intersex” although neither identifies as trans nor has any medical testing or data revealed an intersex condition publicly if one exists. The IBA claims the fighters underwent sex testing last year. IOC stopped doing such testing in 1999.

The IBA’s jurisdiction as a world governing body was stripped by the IOC last year and the Olympic boxing event is regulated by an IOC-appointed group. The rules follow the IOC Framework On Fairness guidelines implemented since 2022. The main thrust of those guidelines maintains that there should be no presumption of advantage without hard data and study.

The professional transphobes, much like governing bodies in cycling, track and field and swimming, are ignoring those guidelines. People who think similarly to J.K. Rowling, Sharron Davies or Riley Gaines figure since they don’t have a Laurel Hubbard to kick around in Paris, they’ll create a new one even if their target is a cis person.

Khelif’s opening bout Thursday against Italy’s Angela Carini complicates the situation more. A sharp Khelif right hand led the Italian to throw in the towel. She wasn’t knocked out, but did report a sharp pain in her nose which led her to abandon the bout.

The Algerian boxer has a formidable record in the sport. Khelif reached the quarterfinals in Tokyo, was a silver medalist at worlds in 2022 and won gold at the last Arab Games.

According to the Associated Press, Italy head boxing coach Emanuele Renzini “discussed” the match with Carini prior to the bout. I doubt the IOC’s principles shown below were on his mind when he had that discussion with his fighter.

The media coverage seems to follow a similar line. That same AP article quoted Khelif’s next opponent, Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori. “I don’t care about the press story and social media,” Hamori stated. “If she or he is a man, it will be a bigger victory for me if I win.”

Not a surprising response given that Hamori is from the most anti-LGBTQ country in NATO whose head of state, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, never passes a chance to say something homophobic or transphobic. The response begs the question in my mind of how the question was framed by the reporter.

I fear the “monster movie mentality” will follow Khelif as far as she goes in this draw and beyond it. It’s demeaning to her, and unfair.

From my view, I feel this pain because I’ve lived it, too. I’ve gotten some nastiness, mean tweets, being told in open, and sometimes vulgar terms, that I am a “troon”, or worse a “man”, or even worse “a cheater”.

Khelif and Lin are starting to receive the levels of scrutiny Caster Semenya received. Photo Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

In Khelif’s case, it’s compounded by being from the “Global South” and being judged by Western standards that will immediately question her womanhood. It was no different in the case Caster Semenya or Dutee Chand, and for Khelif there is no proof of her status outside of a test carried by a governing body seen in ill repute.

Those who would seek to disqualify Khelif would be wise to remember Spanish hurdler María José Martínez Patiño. She was subject to retesting prior to the 1985 World University Games because she forgot the documents for a previous test prior to competition that proved her status. She was held out of the event and later found to have XY chromosomes commonly found in men and boys.

There were attempts to force her to retire and go away quietly but she refused and fought for her right to compete. She won her case in 1988, but at the cost of her privacy and three years of a promising competitive career.

Patiño’s case was among a group that led to the ending of such testing by the IOC. Some want such methods to return, or even more draconian measures like the “naked parades” of the 1960s, where women had to show their naked bodies and genitals to officials to confirm they were women.

Such times should never return to competitive athletics. Hysteria driven by transphobia and misogyny fueled by our constant media cycle could easily take us back there.

Now is the time for governing bodies and sports officials to stand up and speak up. To the credit of the IOC, they did on Thursday by explaining the situation regarding the framework of the sport leading into Paris, and on protecting the athletes involved.

“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure — especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the IOC statement read.

It’s also time for us as media and fans to stand up by not feeding into nonsense regardless of who the athlete is, where the athlete is from, or how they identify.

We know better, so do better. Stop transvestigating the athletes and enjoy the show.