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.”
Oh no, consequences.
Only because she attacked a cis woman. No consequences from the years doing everything in her power to targetedly harass individual trans peolle, the community as a whole or publishing books about trans serial killers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see her go quite, I hope she stays that way. But I’m bitter it wasn’t a realization that her crusade was mysgonstic hatred, only that she was a zealot who accidently friendly fired.
only that she was a zealot who accidently friendly fired.
Bigotry is illogical, and will always ‘friendly fire’. No one is ever safe. People have transvestigated Joanne Koanne Roanne and Andrew Tate. No one is ever safe.
It’s the start, the lawsuit has more chance to win that way, and can pave a path for trans people to win cyberbullying lawsuits too
Anyone with basic critical thinking skills would have known this whole scandal was bullshit in the first place. Did it not occur to any of these TERFs and transphobes that Algeria (a Muslim nation known for persecuting the LGBTQ community as a whole) is one of the least-likely nations to field a trans candidate?
Yes, it did not occur to them. They simply don’t care. Facts and reason can’t matter to the misogynistic anti-trans crowd. Their whole approach is built on hate and bullshit, and they know it.
Yeah, I’ve had a sad laugh about all this stupid alt-right knee-jerk reaction. Algeria, bastion of “wokeness”.
How out of touch are these people?
They are just so desperate for an Olympic level “gotcha” in their cultural crusade that they just singled out a woman boxer for being “too butch” and just ran with their assumptions.
Then every try-hard wannabe right wing influencer type just gloms onto it hoping to be chosen by the algorithm for ten hot seconds of vainglorious right wing attention/validation.
You assume they even heard of Algeria before this. Or even during it. The country she represented was not part of the bigotry, just her looks/build.
The TEFRs notably did not choose a white woman to attack here.
Joanne has a full university education and has traveled the world. There is absolutely no way she doesn’t know Algeria is a Muslim country and that a Muslim country would in no way approve an openly queer athlete to be on their Olympics team.
She’s just a bigot.
On the other hand, Algeria is a country unlikely to formally recognize an intersex person.
Are they more likely to be intersex than just doping with testosterone?
Doping with testosterone would certainly have been tested for (amongst other PEDs).
Does it come up different in the body than just normal testosterone?
Sorry, not a doping expert. Reports of cheating seem to focus on quantity of testosterone, not quality.
But in this case the discussion is moot. Imane Khelif didn’t have abnormal levels of testosterone.
This reminds me of moon landing deniers. Like, y’all don’t think that America’s greatest enemy of the time, the Soviet Union, with all of their resources, wouldn’t have been denying the US’s claim to having landed on the moon if there were any credible evidence that it hadn’t actually happened?
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It’s about fucking time someone shut her up
She’s a bully. It’s time she actually faced consequences for her actions.
she thought she was Hermione. turns out she was just Malfoy.
I’m honestly confused how she could write a story where Harry Potter triumphs over he who must not be named, when he who must not be named was her hero.
It must have been really tough for her.
It’s less that and more the system of prejudice itself is her hero, because she never truly challenges it, and the final state of peace at the end of the books does not require fixing its problems. Voldemort was a bad apple, nothing more (according to her I’d imagine)
Yeah the way she kind of bullies Hermione with the whole ‘SPEW’ thing was so off. First, Hermione had style and was a genius. I think she would know that ‘SPEW’ is a bad acronym.
Also, making everyone turn away from her and no one supporting her - she didn’t need to really make it like that at all. Why couldnt the org have a cute name and Hermione and like Lavender Brown etc all get together to try to coordinate better working conditions for the elves. This then would later help with the plot involving the DA. It’s literally a fantasy and Harry gets magical hero results all the time. It’s just such a weird part of the books and negative when it really didn’t serve any purpose to be negative. Except to be shitty to lady activists.
yep.
She’s a Stan Shunpike- radicalized offscreen, leaving everyone else confused
She’s not Malfoy, she’s Umbridge.
She doesn’t have quite enough of a backpfeifengesicht to be Umbridge. She’s Umbridge from Wish
TemUmbridge
Heaven forbid she lose money. Literally the only thing that could make her
stopbriefly pause harassing people on the internet.She has billions. No matter how much she loses she’ll still be obscenely rich.
Maybe they can sue for billions. Gawker got sued out of existence, I hope she gets some good US attorneys and files in a jurisdiction that has unlimited damages. Maybe we can all use the new “K” platform after she owns “X”.
Peter Thiel is the reason they were sued out of existence.
Yep. Because they outed him. And he couldn’t sue them for that, so he waited around until he found something he could use to sink his teeth into them.
People were cheering when Gawker lost and got shut down because Gawker sucked. Not me. I saw a billionaire using the justice system successfully for a personal vendetta and was horrified.
Is anyone suing Peter Thiel out of existence?
Don’t think the UK has the potential for redicolously high damages that exists in some US states.
the only thing
I mean, there are other ways, but…
And here I thought that she would happily go to jail over her bigotry: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jk-rowling-willing-jail-misgendering_n_65314d65e4b00565b6234d11
I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that a fantasy author has a lot of silly fantasies about herself.
Did anything come of the rumors that she plagiarized at least the first book, and premise of the entire series?
Are you referring to The Legend of Rah and the Muggles? That was found to be bullshit the second people read the book. It’s an extremely weird story about nuclear fallout, talking animals, and a shit ton of meandering filler. The only similarity was use of the word “muggle”, which doesn’t even mean the same thing in both stories. JK may be a TERF now, but she is not a plagiarist.
She’s not a plagiarist per se, but the idea of an elite school for wizards is not exactly original to her. There’s The Worst Witch series of books. The first one was published in 1974. They were a huge hit, especially in the UK, leading eventually to a TV movie with a very impressive cast list in the 1980s, which, you will note, was decades before Rowling wrote any Harry Potter book.
There’s absolutely no way she was not aware of those books. In fact, considering she was nine years old when the first one came out- the exact age for those books- she almost certainly read it and treasured it and it almost certainly inspired her to write Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
On top of that, there was Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea novels, the first of which takes place in large part at a boarding school for wizards where a poor boy who is from a non-magical family is sent after showing that he has magical powers and ends up being the most powerful wizard in the world, fighting the ultimate magical evil.
That was published in 1968 and I would be very surprised if Rowling hadn’t read it before she wrote her books, because that is just too similar.
Maybe? I just remembered some thread from ages ago where people were saying that some guy had written a book that wasn’t popular, and she reworked it. This may have been pre-reddit, it was that long ago.
Hence why I said rumors. I didn’t remember anything that was a smoking gun, or a conclusion to that rumor.
Almost none of the ideas in any of those books are original, they’re all cribbed from somewhere else, but that’s always the way art is created whether the creator knows it or not. The premise of a kid discovering he’s special and entering a secret world of other special people is not something new to childrens’ literature
when a man breaks a record he is a super human, when a woman breaks a record she is a man.
Did she break any record? Also AFAIK the same didn’t happen to previous medalists or generally the strongest female boxers. It also didn’t happen with other monsters who broke tons of records (e.g. Katie Ledecky) just during this Olympics.
This makes me think that it’s not what you are saying but there are probably other reasons in play. Probably the IBA and the media making a case after the first boxer withdrew are responsible.
In combat sports there’s a lot of derision for women who look too strong. Instead of complementing their training regiment and dedicated they get called ugly and a man all the damn time.
On the other end usually those same trolls will call women who train and still look feminine to be gold diggers training with so many men, that’s for posting pictures of themselves training, making weight etc. And send them dm’s offering money to be choked out.
I am sure that’s the case, but I think this has not to do with “breaking records” I.e. having success in sport. It might have to do with general gender stereotypes related to body types, for example, or with other stuff.
So either way the comment I was answering to seems counterfactual and sensationalistic.
obviously stereotypes make people’s story more believable and easier to go viral and that is why people choose the stories they choose. doesn’t change the fact that there are people who would rather explain an unexpected level of success shown by a woman by saying she is probably not a woman. the story they choose is irrelevant really. They could have claimed she has cybernetic extensions in her muscles and it would be the same thing. And all you are saying is “but there are other very successful women who have not been treated that way”. Sure, did not say every single very successful woman is deterministically being treated unfairly. I am saying it is a tendency.
there are people who would rather explain
There are people who are transphobic to the degree of investigating born women, time and again. (Are you aware of the lesbians “bathroom problem”? It predates the current antitrans moral panic by a decade.) It seems their hatred is so rotten that eventually they are the ones unable to define what a woman is. Now even a vagina at birth is not cutting it. Just not beat around the bush, this is about transphobia, and Khelif naming Rowling, Musk, and Trump in her suit (all of them billionaire transphobes with a platform) is no coincidence.
Ah and don’t forget that trans women are not men either. Too many let that slip in this debate because Khelif is cisgender, but let’s not forget that when nazis say “men are stronger than women” they mean trans women as men. They aren’t. Nazi punks fuck off.
but there are other very successful women who have not been treated that way
What I am actually saying is that the vast majority of successful women athletes didn’t suffer from this at this time at all. If this argument works only for Imane Khelif (not even the Taiwanese boxer, who has been mostly ignored), out of the hundreds of women who just won medals, maybe it is not an argument that can be generalized to “women of success”, and other causes have to be searched.
This to me is basic common sense: if a thesis works only on a handful of examples and there are hundreds of counter examples, maybe the thesis is wrong. A tendency would require also more examples.
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.
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.
- Ok, but where is the data?
- Sure, it point to the fact that women’s success are downplayed. Not that when women are successful they are called men.
It has to do with the fact that testosterone is a performance enhancement drug and men are categorically stronger than females, and a man punching a female is strictly unsafe.
An breakdown of your wannabe argument would be:
A: “Testosterone enhances performance” B: “Men are in most cases stronger than women” C: “A man punching a woman is unsafe”
This vaudeville of ideas have no apparent link between them, the real product of a scattered mind. Scientists are still out about A.
B is a statistical truism at this point irrelevant to the topic, since Khelif is a cisgender woman, and there is no evidence (for the time being) that she is intersex.
C is also immaterial to the discussion. Perhaps you are trying to say that high-testosterone women are “comparable” to men in combat sports, because they pose a greater threat to cisgender women but this is quite the leap, since she is no man.
Testosterone levels vary between individuals. Taking part in combat sports entails a risk of serious injury. The weight categories are in place to make things comparable between opponents, testosterone levels are not. Scientists have questioned whether testosterone level correlate that much to performance outcomes as people think.
The ersatz argument makes no sense.
Scientists are still out about A
Are they?
I think so, yes.
Quoting from Transgender Woman Athletes and Elite Sport
The biomedical perspective views the physiology of trans women’s bodies as the source of perceived unfairness, with medicalized interventions (such as estrogen supplementation and testosterone suppression) as the resolution. More specifically, this perspective holds that sexual dimorphism between those assigned male at birth (AMAB) and those assigned female at birth (AFAB) is the reason for athletic differences. Testosterone measures and boundaries are typically chosen as defining characteristics of manhood and womanhood in the context of sport and are used as the predominant marker to predict and level sex-related athletic advantage and the means for inclusion criteria. The research findings in the biomedical area are inconclusive. Studies which make conclusions on pre- and post-hormone replacement therapy (HRT) advantage held by trans women athletes have used either cis men or sedentary trans women as proxies for elite trans women athletes. These group references are not only inappropriate for the context but produce conclusions that cannot be applied to elite trans women athletes. Further, there is little scientific understanding about the attributes or properties of HRT, namely testosterone suppression and estrogen supplementation, on the physiology and athletic ability of trans women athletes. This ignores the potential for estrogen supplementation to reduce Lean Body Mass (LBM), and for testosterone suppression to produce holistic health disadvantages.
Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.
Quoting Scientific American Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams my emphasis
The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.
Quoting from UK-transphobe-funded Strength, Power, and Aerobic Capacity of Transgender Athletes my emphasis
Results: In this cohort of athletes, TW had similar testosterone concentration (TW 0.7±0.5 nmol/L, CW 0.9±0.4 nmol/), higher oestrogen (TW 742.4±801.9 pmol/L, CW 336.0±266.3 pmol/L, p=0.045), higher absolute handgrip strength (TW 40.7±6.8 kg, CW 34.2±3.7 kg, p=0.01), lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s:forced vital capacity ratio (TW 0.83±0.07, CW 0.88±0.04, p=0.04), lower relative jump height (TW 0.7±0.2 cm/kg; CW 1.0±0.2 cm/kg, p<0.001) and lower relative V̇O2max (TW 45.1±13.3 mL/kg/min/, CW 54.1±6.0 mL/kg/min, p<0.001) compared with CW athletes. TM had similar testosterone concentration (TM 20.5±5.8 nmol/L, CM 24.8±12.3 nmol/L), lower absolute hand grip strength (TM 38.8±7.5 kg, CM 45.7±6.9 kg, p=0.03) and lower absolute V̇O2max (TM 3635±644 mL/min, CM 4467±641 mL/min p=0.002) than CM.
Conclusion: While longitudinal transitioning studies of transgender athletes are urgently needed, these results should caution against precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions that are not based on sport-specific (or sport-relevant) research.
So even those highly motivated to prove trans women are disproportionately advantaged have difficulty tapping it. As for combat sports, don’t forget Joe Rogan as well female MMA athletes ended up apologizing to Fallon Fox for all the transphobic BS they had spewed at the time.
What was your point again?
At the moment we don’t have any concrete data, so in case it is based on a suspicion at most.
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The IBA is notoriously corrupt and in the pockets of Russia. The whole stuff against Khelif was likely made up, because she did not adhere to planned match fixing by the IBA.
Add to that the fact that she is from an African Muslim country and on top of that the country that kicked the French colonisers out. She was made the perfect targeted for all levels of racism and white supremacism, from the very blatant, to the more or less concealed “Liberals”.
To be honest I don’t consider something being Russian as automatically 100% false. This case from the IBA seems likely made up, or at least it is until they provide further proof, which they didn’t so far.
That said, this is irrelevant in this particular conversation. Real or not, that precedent is in my opinion partly responsible for why people decided to attack this particular athletes. I agree with you on the next country also playing a role.
Basically my whole argument is that there are multiple factors that made this a case. The fact that she “broke records” or “had success” is generally very low in the list, imho.
breaking record not in the formal sense but performing exceptionally well, such as beating your opponent in 46 seconds in the last 16
I doubt that fight can be counted as “exceptionally good performance”, but anyway why the same didn’t happen for those that both performed exceptionally well and actually set records?
There are so many examples of that not happening that makes me seriously doubt it identifies the right cause(s).
What you think are the right causes are not the causes, they are the tools (stereotypical biases etc) that these people use to make their stories believable.
And counting is not the correct methodological approach to this question it is the incident rate (historically of women whose success has been deliberately downplayed because she does not fit the stereotypical women in their head vs men who suffered from the same).
Those look nothing like “tools” to me.
I will make it simpler: In this very thread a person talked about “high testosterone”. Why they didn’t say the same about the 99% of the women who won competitions? Probably because of a combination of factors:
- The masculine aspect of this particular boxer, that doesn’t fit the image that many people have of women
- The media reporting the immediately pushed to a polarization of opinions -> you had to take a side
- The previous IBA debacle that planted the seed of the doubt
To me the combination of the above is a much better explanation of the causes for which people attacked this particular boxer, and not the many other women of success, including black and including masculine (e.g., Simone Biles, or Grace Bullen).
historically of women whose success has been deliberately downplayed because she does not fit the stereotypical women in their head vs men who suffered from the same
I really don’t see how this measurement can lead to any conclusion. How can you not measure the amount of women who don’t fit the stereotypical woman aspect and yet whose success has not been downplayed due to their aspect (i.e., people called them men)?
Why they didn’t say the same about the 99% of the women who won competitions?
It makes up for a more believable story in this context (boxing which is accepted as a masculine sport) and therefore becomes a more efficient tool. It fits in more easily with people’s biases making it much easier to spread. Simon Biles is a gymnast so that does not fit into the context here. Grace Bullen does. But you can not simply say “it did not happen to other women in plausible scenerios, therefore it is not real”. It is like saying belts are useless in %90 of the cases, it is a useless statistic that does not take into account the expected effect.
I really don’t see how this measurement can lead to any conclusion.
What do you mean? Comparing the rate at which women are subject to such effects vs men is a worse statistic than saying “but many successful women are not subject to such effects”? If there is a systematic bias towards women’s success being downplayed, you cannot call this an isolated incident of stereotypical bias.
You can take any other boxer, I specifically chose black and “masculine” athletes as examples to show that even race/body type alone was not the determining factor. In these Olympic games you have just Imane’s example: how can you call this a trend or make general statements with one case (not even the Taiwanese boxer got attention)?
What do you mean? Comparing the rate at which women are subject to such effects vs men is a worse statistic than saying “but many successful women are not subject to such effects”? If there is a systematic bias towards women’s success being downplayed, you cannot call this an isolated incident of stereotypical bias.
Men don’t have a category to which they are wrongfully assigned when they win sports. This is also because men are the higher category in most sports (i.e., higher performers), so it is a parallel that simply doesn’t make sense. So yes. It is a worse statistics because men who are victim of gender stereotypes are generally not the ones who excel at sports (men who are called women in general break the masculine stereotype of the muscular and competitive guy - and these unsurprisingly are not characteristics common in elite athletes).
If there is a systematic bias towards women’s success being downplayed
But this was not your claim either. Your claim is that downplaying is done by specifically saying those women are men. The whole point here is on the cause, not the existence of the phenomenon in general.
It also didn’t happen with other monsters who broke tons of records (e.g. Katie Ledecky) just during this Olympics.
Katie Ledecky faces regular accusations that’s she’s trans and/or intersex…
I had to search, and I did find a few articles talking about a rumor.
I don’t think the two events are of same scope and magnitude. The Khelif’s case has been a worldwide media case, what I found for was very US-specific and limited to some niche deranged corner of the internet (https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/07/27/katie-ledecky-trans-rumors/ listed Facebook and Twitter posts from individuals and 2 articles).
Possibly I shouldn’t have used US athletes as example. Given how the topic is so controversial there, I am quite sure you can find a few idiots who would make this claim about any athlete.
Rowling is one of those idiots this time. That’s the difference
And Musk, and the Hungarian boxer, and many more around the World. This has been a worldwide case, not just a private US shitshow.
And thus, by the transitive property, a super human.
“Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better?” the writer asked. “The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”
This fucking smug cunt.
Some people need a punch to the head to stop being so smug
throw Rowling into the ring
Damn is that actually what she said?
According to the article, yeah.
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.
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.
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
What about this statement is false?
Huh?
She’s has more muscle than me.
This is right. This requires a discussion a bit wider than 420 letters, even more when they come from Rowling
The irony of Rowling getting sued for calling a biological woman trans
It’s so weird of Rowling to call her a man, considering they have a similar face structure.
I was just noticing that, facial features are very alike
Her post facelift face anyway.
[aliens meme]
projecting
“Just Kidding” Rowling
And let this be a lesson to all internet people, I know y’all hear about the first amendment a lot, but it only applies in America. You have to actually follow the laws of the country you’re in
Also, the first amendment only applies to free speech against the US government. You can’t chat shit about any private individual without them having the option to sue you.
There’s a whole lot here that’s just slightly off the mark. I’ll give you the general sentiment, but the details need work.
Ok, sorry. I’m British, I couldn’t really give a fuck about the first amendment.
That apparently doesn’t stop you from talking like you’re an authority on it
This is the internet, where we’re all an authority on all things American because Americans won’t shut the fuck up talking about themselves.
Have you tried steering the conversation towards the magna carta or the code of Hammurabi?
Except that’s bullshit, you can get sued for libel and slander in the USA.
The first amendment does not give every US citizen carte blanche to say whatever they want. This is often misunderstood, even amongst a lot of the US population.
You can, however, call The POTUS whatever names you want, just don’t even imply any sort of harm may come to them.
JK knows exactly how England treats speech, because she’s abused the courts to silence critics for years. Fuck her sideways. The miserable bigot.
Is Rowling even subject to French legal proceedings?
The harassment lawsuit alleges “aggravated cyber-harassment” against Khelif, according to a statement from the boxer’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, who was quoted by The Associated Press. Variety reported that the complaint was filed against X, which means under French law that it was filed against unknown persons. Investigators at the Paris prosecutor’s office will determine who could be at fault in Khelif’s complaint.
If she ends up being found liable in an EU country, I bet she won’t be able to travel to any EU country without facing that liability. X is an international platform, and she’s broadcasting her words internationally, so yes, she can be held accountable in countries where this carries civil or criminal liability.
Also any EU royalty payments could be garnished until her debt from her liability is paid in full.
With the sales numbers of Harry Potter stuff, i doubt there will be a problem of securing the money.
I imagine that her Harry Potter stuff is owned by a corporation. That is probably all separate legally from her.
So her Harry Potter stuff is probably fine as she is getting sued not the Harry Potter corporation.
It will mainly affect her ability to travel around Europe.
She’s also one of the richest women in the world, so she won’t really suffer any major loss unfortunately.
That’s not how legal jurisdiction works in the EU. Member states are still sovereign; if you’re liable for something in France and you get off a plane in Germany then France still needs to ask Germany nicely, and sans an extraditable conviction nothing is likely to come of it.
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Well at the very least it could block her from going to France? Which as a rich British middle-aged woman I’m sure she would hate not being able to do.
