The media and JK Rowling still not done harassing Imane Khelif after cyberbullying lawsuit

After she was reportedly named in Imane Khelif’s cyberbullying case, JK Rowling went unusually quiet on Twitter. She has since broken her silence, and unsurprisingly, her very first Tweet was once again directed at Khelif.

Algerian boxer Khelif qualified to compete in the 2024 Olympics in Paris for women’s boxing, and went on to win a gold medal for her country. Unfortunately, her incredible achievements were overshadowed when transphobes on the internet began spreading vicious lies about her. Transphobic bigotry went where we all predicted it would go: attacking and attempting to destroy the lives of cisgender women who do not fit society’s stereotypical image of a woman. There is no evidence that Khelif is not a cisgender woman, and the entire issue is based on vague claims about gender testing by the International Boxing Association, a group that even the International Olympic Committee believes is too corrupt to trust. However, transphobes wanted another chance to complain about transgender women competing in women’s sports, so they accused Khelif of being “a man.”

Rowling and Elon Musk posted public tweets falsely claiming that Khelif was a man. Musk reposted tweets stating, “Men have no place in women’s sports,” while Rowling posted a series of tweets repeatedly referring to Khelif with he/him pronouns and attempted to incite conflict by claiming that the Olympics promoted “male violence against women.” After being relentlessly mocked, falsely labeled as male, called an imposter, and subjected to horrific, invasive speculation about her identity and biology, Khelif hit back with a cyberbullying complaint naming Rowling and Musk. Still, it wasn’t enough to deter even the most vicious transphobes from harassing the boxer.

JK Rowling breaks silence by attacking Imane Khelif

Shortly after being named in Khelif’s lawsuit, Rowling went suspiciously quiet on X, despite being one of the platform’s most vocal and active transphobic trolls. As of August 7, she went silent for over two weeks, and many hoped it would stay that way. However, she returned on August 23, confirming that the lawsuit had not stopped her from spreading hate online. Her first tweet back contained a link to an article attacking Khelif. The article was titled “Imane Khelif launches hyper-feminizing PR campaign as a distraction.”