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.”
Rowling has been silent on X since August 7, when she shared a post from researcher Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job after making anti-trans statements.
(my emphases)
I don’t know where Newsweek takes its facts from but this is another lie pushed by the TERF propaganda machine. Forstater was a tax expert whose contract was not renewed after she was horrible to her trans and non-binary colleagues. (Yes the ‘researcher’ wording is put there on purpose, to amplify the perception that her freedom of speech was violated, or as Rowling likes to put it ‘her livelihood was threatened for disagreeing with the trans lobby’.)
She then went to a labor tribunal court or sth, to claim that her belief in the “immutability and reality of sex” is a protected belief, and made a fuss about being fired for her beliefs, when in reality she was merely discontinued for being a dick to the people she worked with. Her Twitter feed was full of conflating trans people with rapists and pedophiles.
The first judge took into account her definition that requires working plumbing to name someone a woman, and consulted a biological expert, impartial to gender identity, that precluded any scientific basis to Forstater’s childish views on biological sex. The judge deemed her belief is “unworthy of respect in a democratic society”, but later, an appeal court said she has a right to believe that but she still cannot misgender people.
Critical legal theorists suggested that the appeal court held a very low bar as for what opinions “worthy of respect” should be, and that its ruling should be better interpreted as “marginally better than an outright nazi”.
It is a red flag for both the author and the outlet that they lead with a snippet of propaganda which is as false as unsubstantiated claims that Khelif’s trans or DSD. So should we conclude both toxic narratives are pushed by the same epicenters?
You gender warriors are nuts,
I don’t make having opinions on gender and pronouns a cornerstone of my income like JK does. The loudness of the pro-trans community is entirely a response to the opposition trans people face. Want trans people to “get over it”? Get over it yourself first.
I wonder if people like you also wanted the Irish to “get over it” back in the day. Don’t hear too much about Irish Pride these days, do you? Did they quite down when hating the Irish left the vogue or did their pride just get normalized? Probably a bit of both, but do you get wound up around St. Patrick Day? Well, you’re from a uk instance, so maybe you do.
By “this woman,” do you mean Rowling? Are you sure she’s a woman? Has she taken a gender test?
I get where you’re coming from. But she has popped a crotch goblin out in the past, which is a pretty good indication of womanhood. (Side note: I’m not saying if a woman can’t or won’t have kids they aren’t a woman, because they clearly still are. But if a woman does give birth to a child it’s usually a strong sign of that gender.)
ETA: If this prospective lawsuit can shut Rowling up long-term that would be fantastic. Like many others, I’m tired of her spewing hateful shit out.
I know men who’ve given birth, and women who haven’t, so I’m not sure it means what you think it means…
I’ve started referring to JK as “Jacob Rowling”.
I know that they’re completely unaware of it, but I get some smug satisfaction out of misgendering them.
Look, not to be “that guy” but the importance of using someone’s preferred pronouns doesn’t fly out the window when you don’t like them. That just makes you hypocritical.
Bash them for being a piece of shit all you like, but the moment you’re choosing to misgender them intentionally you’re signaling that pronoun choice only matters when you like the person being referred to.
Its always X (formerly twitter) and i bet elon hates that.
I hope she pays dearly for her racism and bigotry.
all of this started when the (Russian controlled) IBA suddenly disqualified Khelif (who had been boxing for many years without issue) after beating a Russian. Since then IOC banned the IBA due to ties with organized crime, fixing fights, and financial instability, so now IBA has no influence on olympic boxing whatsoever.
fast forward a couple years to the bigger stage of the olympics, twitter warriors pick up on the story again based on nothing more than “looks like a man” which happens disproportionately more to women of color. So yes, this kind of thing often does have racial undertones.
Yes, she is Algerian (North African) and that was a major reason if not the reason why she was targeted.
She was targeted because it was spread falsely she had XY chromosomes and had high testosterone, not that she was North African. Rowling has had plenty of hate for white trans people.
