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.”
That user is basing their position on a Daily Mail article citing LePoint, a french right-wing magazine, that quotes one of her trainers, who said (with context) “There was a problem with her hormones and chromosomes, but she’s a woman. That’s all that mattered to us.”
Nowhere does that even suggest she has XY chromosomes, and, to state the obvious, he’s not a doctor. He’s responding to an unsubstantiated allegation, and probably giving it too much credit. He even says that she underwent a testosterone test that came back within female norms.
It really is simple. The burden of proof is on people making these claims, and we’re not taking the word of a blatantly corrupt organization, that had a vested interest in disqualifying Khelif, who would not say what test was administered or what the results were. If they had more specific information, they wouldn’t shut up about it, because won’t even shut up now with less to go on.