"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.”

  • @iAvicenna
    2•26 days ago

    So are you claiming that there is no historical bias towards downplaying women’s successes in general or that in history there was but now as a whole Earth has progressed so far that we have left all those behind? Or is it just that it doesn’t happen in sports but happens in other areas? Or women have been downplayed but never because of success but always for other reasons?

    This to me is basic common sense: if a thesis works only on a handful of examples

    What you call a handful of examples is taking a magnifying glass and only looking at this particular event. If %10 of successful women have ever been downplayed because of their gender (due to unconscious biases for example) vs %1 of successful men, then this is still a handful of examples which nevertheless points to a significant bias.

    • @[email protected]
      1•26 days ago

      None of those, really. Just that downplaying successful women doesn’t happen as much in sport, and when it does it’s not by stating they are men.

      If %10 of successful women have ever been downplayed because of their gender (due to unconscious biases for example) vs %1 of successful men, then this is still a handful of examples which nevertheless points to a significant bias.

      1. Ok, but where is the data?
      2. Sure, it point to the fact that women’s success are downplayed. Not that when women are successful they are called men.