The media and J. K. Rowling still aren’t done harassing Imane Khelif after cyberbullying suit

After she was reportedly named in Imane Khelif’s cyberbullying lawsuit, J. K. Rowling fell into unusual silence radio silence on Twitter. However, she has now broken her silence, and unsurprisingly, her very first Tweet back once again targeted Khelif.

Algerian boxer Khelif qualified to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics women’s boxing and eventually earned her country a gold medal. Sadly, her incredible achievements were overshadowed when transphobes began spreading vicious lies about her on the internet. Transphobic bigotry went where we all predicted it would go—attacking and attempting to destroy the lives of cisgender women who don’t meet society’s stereotypical idea of a woman. There’s no evidence Khelif is not a cisgender woman, with the entire issue based on vague gender test claims from the International Boxing Association, a group even the International Olympic Committee believes is too corrupt to trust. However, transphobes wanted another opportunity to complain about transgender women participating in women’s sports, so they accused Khelif of being “a man.”

Rowling and Elon Musk made public tweets in which they falsely claimed that Khelif was a man. Musk reposted tweets that stated, “Men don’t belong in women’s sports,” while Rowling published a whole slate of tweets repeatedly referring to Khelif with he/him pronouns and trying to raise conflict by claiming the Olympics were promoting “male violence against women.” After being relentlessly mocked, falsely labeled a man, called a cheater, and suffering horrific, invasive speculation about her identity and biology, Khelif struck back with a cyberbullying suit naming Rowling and Musk. However, it still wasn’t enough to stop the worst of the transphobes from harassing the boxer.

J.K. Rowling breaks silence by attacking Imane Khelif

Shortly after being named in Khelif’s suit, Rowling fell suspiciously quiet on X despite being one of the platform’s most vocal and active transphobic trolls. Beginning on August 7, she went over two weeks without posting anything, and many hoped it would remain that way. However, she returned on August 23 and confirmed the suit hasn’t stopped her from spreading hatred online. Her first Tweet back included sharing a link to an article attacking Khelif. The article was titled “Imane Khelif Launches Hyper-Feminizing PR Campaign as a Distraction.”

Rowling quotes part of the article, which states that Khelif should make her DNA results public instead of launching her alleged “PR campaign.” The article is written by Colin Wright from The Reality Stand, who argues that Khelif is no longer a victim because photos of what she looks like when she’s not in the boxing ring have surfaced. It demands that Khelif share her DNA results with the entire world, even though most people are hesitant about so much as submitting ancestry DNA tests for privacy concerns. Wright also openly calls Khelif a cheater, refers to her with he/him pronouns, and claims that she has differences in sex development (DSD). The widely repeated DSD claims are unsubstantiated, but that hasn’t stopped numerous individuals from falsely stating them as facts.

The whole point of Rowling and Wright’s article and post was to claim that Khelif wearing makeup is proof that she is gaslighting and manipulating the world. These people simply refuse to allow this woman to live her life. First, she’s not allowed to compete against fellow women in women’s boxing by the IBA. Now, she’s not allowed to wear makeup or put her hair down without it sparking elaborate conspiracy theories from the media and Rowling. It’s genuinely unfathomable how people are still harassing Khelif even though it has been confirmed dozens of times that the controversy was just transphobic misinformation, and even after she sought legal action to combat the lies.

It already never should’ve gotten to the point that Khelif had to take legal action because of how horrifically people were attacking her. Based on Rowling and the media’s behavior, though, we’re now looking at an even darker reality where legal action isn’t enough to stop women from being attacked and lied about and where transphobes announce that they’ll only stop if they successfully force a woman to publicly release private, sensitive information about herself.