We’re in the thick of the Paris Olympics, and while there have been some flies in the ointment, including the sacrilegious opening ceremony, the athletes have not disappointed. One athlete in particular — Team USA’s amazing women’s rugby player Ilona Maher — has garnered an even bigger following for her sport.

Maher is a muscular woman and has used her physicality perfectly in a sport in which being sturdily built is a plus. Aside from being an Olympian, she also has a relatable and funny social media personality. She actually became well known for her short-form videos that encourage girls of all shapes and sizes to love themselves and their bodies. When one takes into consideration the very toxic world of Instagram and TikTok, many of whose influencers lead young women astray, Maher is a happy spot and a very positive role model. Here is an example of her content:

It’s healthy body positivity, not the toxic kind that glorifies obesity.

Maher also makes content goofily documenting her search for love. Unfortunately for her, some videos found their way to X, where the commentary ranged from the rude to the horrid. The Daily Wire’s Brett Cooper relayed some of the commentary. Men asked if Ilona was a dude. Frankly, all of the commentary was along that same vein. Sadly, many of these rude commenters listed being conservative on their bios.

Ilona Maher is muscular and has a strong jaw line but in all other respects is a womanly woman. It’s shameful that these trolls on X went after her in this way. This type of criticism attacks a group that is most vulnerable to the transgender ideology — namely, the tomboys.

Tomboys are girls who are athletic and/or more muscular, are not necessarily traditionally beautiful, and otherwise don’t fit in to the stereotypical feminine box. How many of them were told that they looked like a man or that they were too strong to really be a girl? Cooper stated the situation perfectly when she chided the conservative trolls: “Out of one side of your mouth, you sit here and you tweet and you complain about transgenderism and transing the kids, then you add to the very rhetoric that fuels it.”

The gender activists and these hateful commenters have the same problem vis-à-vis their definition of a woman. Maher’s “conservative” X responders define femininity and womanliness in terms of subjective beauty standards or conforming to certain behavioral characteristics. Gender ideologues also base being a women on a stereotype and a caricature of what they believe womanhood is. To them, being a woman is a vibe or a feeling.

Being a woman is more than a feeling and more than our appearance. At a bare minimum, being a woman means you have XX chromosomes. Yet even this standard is too restrictive for the gender activists and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

In one of the worst stories of the Olympics, a competitor from Algeria with XY (male) chromosomes is being permitted to compete against female boxers. In 2023, Imane Khelif, the boxer in question, had failed a testosterone-level check and was excluded from the International Boxing World Championships. But last week at the Olympics, Khelif boxed against Italy’s Angela Carini, who lasted 46 seconds and suffered one really hard hit. Other women could face a similar fate.

Khelif, while not transgender, allegedly does have a medical condition that caused a malformation or lack of formation of genitalia. Khelif isn’t a woman and shouldn’t have been permitted to box against women. Besides the fact that it’s abhorrent for the IOC to think it’s okay to have an athlete with male chromosomes beat up females, it was terrible for the IOC to set Khelif up for such scrutiny in the first place. Algeria isn’t exactly a friendly nation to the idea of transgenderism considering that country’s official religion is Islam.

Khelif isn’t the only athlete with male chromosomes whom the IOC is allowing to pummel women. There is also a competitor from Taiwan, Lin Yu-ting, who also doesn’t identify as transgender.

So before conservatives (particularly men) go after women like Ilona Maher because she isn’t their type and brutally call her a man, perhaps their venom would be better directed toward the IOC. Maher deserves better.