Olympic Committee Responds To Transphobic Attack Demanding Caitlyn Jenner Be Stripped Of Gold Medal

The International Olympic Committee delivered a rare response to transphobes calling for Caitlyn Jenner to be stripped of her Olympic gold medal. 

The International Olympic Committee is not known to be especially responsive to the general public. In the year leading up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, the LGBT community and allies around the world demanded the IOC ensure LGBT people participating in and visiting the Games in Russia would be safe, in light of Vladimir Putin‘s anti-gay campaign and laws criminalizing public acknowledgment of homosexuality. The IOC stayed silent until public pressure was overwhelming.

But in a rare event, the IOC has responded to an ugly and transphobic petition at Change.org calling for the Olympic Committee to strip Jenner of her 1976 Montreal Olympics gold medal.

“It has recently come to light that gold medalist Bruce Jenner is in fact transgender, and therefore, identifies as a woman,” the petition, nearing 15,000 signatures, reads. It claims, “this creates somewhat of a problem as Ms. Jenner (as talented as she is) claims that she has always believed herself to be truly female, and therefore, was in violation of committee rules regarding women competing in men’s sports and vice versa.”

The IOC issued a response denying the call to strip Jenner of her gold medal.

“Bruce Jenner won his gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games and there is no issue for the IOC,” the Communications Director for the IOC, Mark Adams, told Yahoo News.

The Washington Post offers some backstory on the petition’s creator, too.

The petition was created by a user named Jennifer Bradford from Fort Worth, Tex., though there have been some reports that the petition is actually a hoax concocted by users on 4chan, the Reddit-like anonymous forum notorious for releasing stolen nude photos of celebrities last year. That theory is based on a message reportedly posted on the site’s /b/ forum, the locus of most of 4chan’s racist, graphic and otherwise problematic material, proposing a fake petition to “f— with feminists” and transgender people (they used a more derogatory term).

The petition cannot be a “hoax,” as it is a real petition on the Change.org site. It might be a “joke” or an attempt to create outrage, and if so, it was successful. But in the end, it would seem the petition creator and her transphobic attack were exposed, and rejected. Unfortunately, Change.org has seen fit to maintain the petition, refusing calls for it to be pulled.

 

Image, top, via Wikimedia