The Mirror on the Wall: In Defense of Human Dignity

The Olympic Games are about more than the win, the medals, or the record-setting performances. At their core, the Games are about the Olympic values of excellence, friendship, and respect. They are about fair play and human spirit. – IOC

One doesn’t need to look very far to realize that we might be living in an alternate universe—referring to the upside-down flag at the Olympic opening ceremony recently. Although this event was held last month, there were injustices at the event which due to their nature transcend time.

They went beyond mere unfair play or disrespectful lapse in protocol for some participants. The opening ceremony mocking Christianity and da Vinci’s The Last Supper notwithstanding, this 19-day period eclipsed other Olympic failures by the sheer indignity that was judged appropriate against one contestant in particular. And it occurred in France—home of the Enlightenment, the Sorbonne, and the genius of St. Thomas Aquinas.

It takes courage to make a stand publicly about one’s private opinion. Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling, and Elon Musk embody this. All weighed in on the controversy surrounding the boxing match between Olympians Imane Khelif of Algeria and Angela Carini of Italy. The bout lasted only 46 seconds after the Algerian landed a blow to the face of the Italian. The latter, in apparent severe pain, threw down her helmet and cried out: “this is unjust.”

Under normal circumstances that should have been the end of it. But we are all still talking about it today.

The Algerian boxer was born male; the Italian female. That is where the controversy began and remains. The three notables mentioned above claim an injustice has been committed by the Paris-IOC on the person of Angela Carini, the Italian competitor. And while the IOC is claiming innocence, our three celebs are suggesting more testing is needed (DNA, testosterone etc.) to ensure fairness in competition, and this just to determine who is and who is not female—tests may not be the answer, but genetics is.

Our three notables just mentioned have offered more than a few comments, often laced with “colorful metaphors.” While I will forego mentioning any of them specifically, I will say in the spirit in which they were delivered, I couldn’t agree with them more. A man hits a woman, and the Paris-IOC thinks it was right; I don’t—and neither do they. 

Unfortunately, the consequences for the Olympian Angela Carini are devastating. The blow received to her face was not intersubjective but brought into specific relief the injustice of the event, notwithstanding its discernible effects. Although the Italian Olympian was concerned about a broken nose, the damage is immortalized by the breach of trust the IOC committed by fostering the injury upon her—allowing a greater body mass to offend the lesser—a blatant disregard by the institution for her physical safety.

The punchline (pun intended) and the force behind it is a simple matter of physics (Force = Mass x Acceleration). In this instance, the force was greater because the muscle mass was greater—about 43% for males and 35% for females—not to mention males having twice the number of muscle cells by the onset of puberty. The above is a function of genetics not culture. 

Today, a “male” needs only to be mutilated as a female to be one. However, without a public to condone and applaud his theatrics, privately, the only one fooled is his own reflection in the mirror on the wall. This writer asserts that the actor represented himself as a female instead of a male to prevail in this demanding discipline with the full knowledge of his own physical strength. The boxer did not train arduously only to restrain the force of his punch in competition. That answers the question as to why he chose pugilistics. Sadly, there was no restraint for Angela—the blow to the face caused physical pain and trauma.

But the issues involved with the Paris debacle far exceed genetics and gender. The fundamental principle is the inherent worth of a human being.

Since the origins of Christianity, human dignity has existed as a supreme value in societies influenced by this religious orientation. Catholicism offers something that was unheard of in the pre-Christian world, something unique—an appreciation of the inherent worth of an individual.

Unfortunately, Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general are declining in the West, especially Europe, Britain, and America. Given this decline, will the dignity and worth of an individual suffer a similar decline?

From the vantage point of Catholicism, the worth of an individual is not based on what one human deems appropriate to bestow upon another. Modern liberalism’s idea that freedom and rights come from the state is based on truth being relative to what one human is willing to grant to another.

The Catholic view of human worth is radically otherwise. It is founded upon objective truth—the premise that all human beings are made free through natural law—rooted in what Thomas Aquinas called the eternal law of God.

The worth of an individual is not predicated upon the dictates of the state, or any other institution created by man. It is intrinsic to being human—it is inherent. The peril is this: once the worth of any individual loses its status as being inherent (under natural law) by just being human, the freedom and rights which flow from it will also dissipate. And a society which does not accord inherent worth to its members will deteriorate from within and be destroyed from without.

This is what occurred in Paris. Members of the IOC are the ultimate transgressors against Ms. Carini; they have no excuse—they allowed the assault to occur. But what they allowed was an assault upon her human dignity. At that point, it wasn’t just about transgender issues, who is and is not female or male or even the “punch” that damaged Ms. Carini’s face. The blow was to her dignity and sense of self-worth as a human—and the IOC with its claims of “innocence” capitulated its own integrity as an institution whose purpose (stated at the opening of this essay) was to protect not offend the integrity of participants—to maintain their dignity as human beings.

A political pandemic is festering—omnipresent, more invidious and more lethal than any virus. Instead of wearing masks, a cultural gag order suppresses individualism creating an atmosphere of dis-ease. Unfortunately, it took a “cry of pain” to distinguish a young woman’s aria to hopefully change the status quo.

After the massive energy spent on listening to the myriads of voices and their atrophied visions of the future—in the secrecy of one’s conscience—let us not forsake this soloist. Let us hum along and rally toward a much-needed tangible leadership; otherwise, the critical mass will continue to serve those solely invested in the corporate self and its interests, imposing upon us its own agenda without any thought of the inherent worth of a human being.

As for the French, they should remember the words of the Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of Laws: “An injustice committed against anyone is a threat against everyone.”

Photo by Savannah B. on Unsplash