Recently, Chelsea Wolfe, a trans woman, said that she was going to burn an American flag if she won her alternate MBX freestyle races at the Olympics as a way of expressing her rage towards the mistreatment of young trans people in the U.S. The message was written last year and has been since deleted. It was a Facebook message from March 25, 2020. Chelsea wrote the post because she was angry about the Trump administration’s announcement that trans girls should be treated as ‘biologically male.’ Chelsea was particularly angry that this was happening during a pandemic. She wrote that her goal is to win the Olympics so “I can burn a US flag on the podium. This is what they focus on during a pandemic. Hurting trans children.”
Wolfe has since qualified to go to the Olympics since she is an alternate for the U.S. BMX freestyle team, so it will depend on different factors. Chelsea may or may not compete depending on what happens. The athlete went on to say, this past June that “I searched for so long trying to find out if there had ever been a professional trans BMX rider to show me that who I am would be OK, and unfortunately found no one. “ The Olympian went on to say that they started to meet others who helped and that it was significant that the Olympic committee allowed transgender athletes to compete after meeting strict requirements. This included requiring transgender women to have testosterone levels below a certain amount.
Later, Wolfe tried to defend the post saying that they still love America. Chelsea went on to say that this is the reason for the decision to compete for the US in the first place. The athlete wanted to show that “this country has morals and values,” and that the US isn’t all of the bad things it’s becoming known for. Chelsea wrote that “I take a stand against fascism,” and further, that they are going to not let the country fall into the hands of fascism. Wolfe wrote that their decision to plan on burning the flag if they won was a symbol of how much they hate fascism and that it was actually a statement of love for their country since they wanted to preserve the US from being fascistic in how they treat the trans people of the country. Regardless of what happens in the BMX competition, Chelsea’s statements about flag burning are already causing serious waves to move throughout the Olympic community and even throughout the International community itself, especially as the Olympic games begin to finish up and the world enters one of the last phases for the play in the games.
