"Harry Potter" author Rowling has been absent from social media for several days, after erroneously calling female Olympic boxer Khelif a "man."

Author J.K. Rowling has fallen silent on her usually busy X (formerly Twitter) feed, after Olympic gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif filed a legal complaint in France for alleged cyber harassment over statements regarding her gender.

On August 9, lawyers for Khelif filed a lawsuit with a special unit of the public prosecutor’s office in Paris, stemming from false statements that spread online about her gender after the Algerian boxer defeated Italy’s Angela Carini in her first fight of the 2024 Olympic Games. Carini pulled out 46 seconds into the bout and told reporters afterwards that she had “never felt a punch like this.”

  • @[email protected]
    77•4 months ago

    Transgender people in competitive sports that are already segregated by biological sex is relatively uncharted, and should be carefully navigated. There are ways, and appropriate settings, to bring this topic up respectfully. Twitter is not the place, and these people are not qualified to offer their opinion. JK (and others) aren’t fighting some good cause, they’re just being assholes.

    • tb_
      75•4 months ago

      On top of invalidating the lived experience of a cis-woman because this Olympic boxer with more muscle than most men looks kinda masculine in some pictures.

      So much for the “we can always tell”.

      It’s a double whammy of bigotry.

      • Makhno
        -51•4 months ago

        this Olympic boxer with more muscle than most men

        Just a false statement that furthers the bigoted narrative we’re discussing in this thread lol

    • @[email protected]
      -1•4 months ago

      This is right. This requires a discussion a bit wider than 420 letters, even more when they come from Rowling