On June 14, UFC fighter Josh Hokit used a post-fight interview on White House grounds to repeat a remark that has followed former first lady Michelle Obama for years.
“Michelle Obama is a man, am I right, America?” Hokit said during an interview with right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan at UFC Freedom 250, the first professional sporting event held at the White House.
For some, the comment may seem easy to dismiss as crude, ignorant or attention-seeking. Others treated it as a joke. But the remark deserves a deeper examination — not because it was new, but because it was familiar.
Obama has spent years being subjected to racist and sexist attacks questioning her appearance, femininity and womanhood. Long before social media amplified these attacks, Black women have been forced to navigate a society that often denies them the grace, softness and humanity routinely afforded to white women.
Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Joke assumes that being trans is humiliating
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
What happened at the White House was not simply an attack on Obama. It was a reminder of how racism, misogyny and anti-trans rhetoric often work together — and how the harm of that rhetoric extends far beyond transgender people.
The attack only works if people believe being perceived as transgender is something shameful — reducing the lives of transgender people to a harmful punchline.
The joke relies on the assumption that being mistaken for a trans woman is inherently humiliating. That assumption is not incidental to the attack. It is the attack.
This kind of thinking is part of a growing phenomenon often referred to as “transvestigation,” or the conspiracy theory that public figures, particularly women, are secretly transgender. These accusations are rooted in the same logic that fuels anti-trans panic: the belief that strangers have the authority to inspect, evaluate and determine who is “really” a woman.
The National Black Justice Collective has noted that women of color are disproportionately accused of being transgender or intersex because of racist assumptions about their bodies and rigid demands for gender conformity.
Across the country, women have reported being harassed in public restrooms because someone decided they looked too masculine. Female athletes have had their bodies scrutinized and their identities questioned. Women whose appearance falls outside narrow, Eurocentric beauty standards are routinely subjected to invasive speculation about their bodies and identities.
Serena Williams, Brittney Griner faced same scrutiny
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Misogynoir, the intersection of anti-Black racism and sexism, has long denied Black women full recognition of their femininity.
Black women have been stereotyped as aggressive, masculine, hypersexual, physically imposing and fundamentally different from the ideal of womanhood that American culture has historically reserved for white women. Black women, such as Serena Williams and Brittney Griner, have faced public attacks questioning their femininity and womanhood.
The message becomes clear. That if a woman does not fit a narrow standard of femininity, her womanhood becomes open for debate.
And that same logic sits at the heart of anti-trans rhetoric.
Transgender women often bear the brunt of this system — facing disproportionate levels of harassment, discrimination and violence. But once society normalizes the idea that womanhood can be questioned based on appearance, there is no logical stopping point. The scrutiny inevitably expands to anyone who fails to conform to society’s expectations.
Credit: Ashlee Rezin /Pool Chicago Sun-T
Credit: Ashlee Rezin /Pool Chicago Sun-T
This is why anti-trans rhetoric is not solely a transgender issue. It is a cultural, racial justice and women’s issue.
When a public figure can stand on White House grounds and casually repeat racist and transphobic rhetoric about a former first lady, it signals how normalized this is in our culture. It tells us that questioning a woman’s identity has become acceptable entertainment.
There is nothing harmless about rhetoric that encourages strangers to investigate and challenge another person’s identity. And there is certainly nothing protective about a movement that claims to defend women while simultaneously creating an environment where women are constantly forced to prove themselves.
The lesson from this moment is not that Michelle Obama deserves better because she is Michelle Obama.
It is that all women deserve better.
We should not have to meet a particular standard of beauty, softness, race, size or presentation to be treated with dignity. We should not have to perform femininity for strangers. And we should not have to fear that our identities will be questioned simply because someone believes we do not look the way a woman is supposed to look.
The answer is not deciding who counts as a woman.
It is recognizing the humanity of all women and rejecting the systems that encourage us to treat their identities as public property.
Because the moment we grant people permission to decide who is “really” a woman, we create a world where every woman is subject to judgment — and none of us are truly safe from it.
Tymia “Ty” Ballard is a storyteller, organizer, creative and catalyst for cultural change. She is a junior associate of community and media at GLAAD, and a digital organizer at the Yellowhammer Fund. Her work amplifies LGBTQ+ communities, reproductive justice, HIV advocacy and other issues impacting marginalized communities. Follow her on Instagram @tymia.db.
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