I'm Sure Throwing J.K. Rowling In Jail Over Her Tweets Will Calm Everything Down

Think this through, people

Imane Khelif, who I wrote about a couple weeks ago, is an Algerian boxer who competed in the women’s category in the Olympics despite what appear to be legitimate questions about her biological sex. Khelif had been previously disqualified from competition by the International Boxing Association on the basis of (somewhat vaguely described) testing that suggested she should not be eligible to compete in the female category.

The IBA is a genuinely corrupt and scandal-ridden organization, which has caused some people to downplay the possibility something is actually amiss here. But Alan Abrahamson, a respected, longtime American journalist, reported that he has seen the tests and a letter the IBA sent the IOC outlining its concerns a year ago, long before the Olympics started and blew this up into an international controversy. Khelif’s own trainer also acknowledged an issue with her chromosomes and testosterone levels in an interview with a French publication. At this juncture, the most likely theory is that she has an unusual but well-known intersex condition that generally manifests at puberty and grants her male athletic advantages. Or at least it would be very hard to otherwise explain away all this evidence and the IOC’s lack of any sort of substantive response — instead the IOC has fought back with a mix of high moral dudgeon and irrelevant claims about, for instance, the letter on Khelif’s passport.

Since my last post, Khelif won a gold medal, which has done little to quell the controversy. And to get to the actual subject of today’s post, she also filed a complaint against some of her online detractors. 

As The Washington Post reported: 

Gold medal-winning Olympic boxer Imane Khelif has filed a legal complaint in France for alleged cyber harassment.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed in an email Wednesday that it received the case that Khelif filed with its special unit for combating online hate speech. Investigators are looking into charges including gender-based cyber harassment and public insult.

This comes after a flurry of online attacks spreading false claims about her gender. Former president Donald Trump, author J.K. Rowling and billionaire Elon Musk were among those who referred to Khelif as a man or reposted such claims.