Olympic Boxer’s Cyberbullying Lawsuit Names JK Rowling and Elon Musk

A criminal complaint filed by Olympic golden medalist boxer Imane Khelif has named Elon Musk and JK Rowling. Khelif’s lawyer filed the ailment successful a French tribunal and has alleged the brace were portion of “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” owing to lies the billionaires told astir the boxer online.

The absorption of the suit is broad. “On Aug. 13, (The National Center for the Fight Against Online Hatred) contacted the OCLCH (Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes) to behaviour an probe into the counts of cyber harassment owed to gender, nationalist insult due to the fact that of gender, nationalist incitement to favoritism and nationalist insult due to the fact that of origin,” the French authorities told Variety.

Khelif is an Algerian boxer who took location the golden portion facing a swarm of online harassment. In an aboriginal match, Khelif bested Italian boxer Angela Carini who ended the lucifer aboriginal and successful tears. At the time, Carini said she’d “never been deed truthful hard” successful her life. After it was revealed that a disgraced enactment disqualified Khelif from a boxing lucifer successful 2023 for having “XY chromosomes,” dozens of quality outlets and posters online uncritically shared the prevarication that Khelif is simply a man.

Khelif is simply a woman. She was assigned that sex astatine birth. The root of the rumor that she’s a antheral comes from the Kremlin-backed and long-disgraced International Boxing Association, which disqualified Khelif from a boxing lucifer it ran successful 2023. She had antecedently competed successful the 2020 Olympics, wherever she mislaid to an Irish boxer, with nary problems.

Logan Paul, Elon Musk, Tim Pool, and countless different credulous posters repeated the assertion astir Khelif successful the hours aft her lucifer with Carini. But Rowling, who has made posting astir sex online halfway to her identity, has doubled and tripled down connected the prevarication successful the look of the upland of grounds to the contrary.

“Explain wherefore you’re OK with a antheral beating a pistillate successful nationalist for your entertainment. This isn’t sport,” she said successful a station connected X. “From the bullying cheat successful reddish each the mode up to the organizers who allowed this to happen, this is men reveling successful their powerfulness implicit women.” She posted and retweeted astir the boxing lucifer 32 times since that archetypal station connected August 1st.

In the aftermath of the prevarication astir Khelif spreading crossed the planet, Carini—the boxer who kicked the full happening off—apologized. “It wasn’t thing I intended to do. Actually, I privation to apologize to her and everyone else. I was aggravated due to the fact that my Olympics had gone up successful smoke,” she said.

Rowling has not apologized for lying astir Khelif online. She has acquisition with forced apologies astir posts. Earlier this twelvemonth “J.K. Rowling is simply a holocaust denier” trended connected X aft she disputed that Nazis had targeted trans people. In the aftermath, Rowling utilized her sizeable resources and the U.K.’s generous libel laws to spell aft radical who had called her a Holocaust denier.

Journalist Rivkah Brown posted a nationalist apology to Rowling. Brown later told Forward that the nationalist apology had been forced retired of her by Rowling’s ineligible team. She said she doesn’t person “the fiscal resources to prosecute successful a ineligible conflict with Rowling.”

Nabil Boudi, Khelif’s lawyer successful Paris, told Variety that apologies don’t alteration anything. “The suit is filed and the facts remain.”

And the facts are that Rowling and others dispersed a prevarication astir an Olympic golden medalist’s gender, turning what should person been 1 of the proudest moments of her beingness into a nightmare.