"Harry Potter" author Rowling has been absent from social media for several days, after erroneously calling female Olympic boxer Khelif a "man."
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."
According to anti-trans people like her, there are only men and women. At birth Khleif was medically determined to be a woman and always lived as a woman. End of story, particularly for people like JKR who think this is a simple issue.
I haven't seen any reporting confirming that she's got XY chromosomes. But if you have an article, please correct me if I'm wrong. What I've been able to find is this:
Why does she have to? Why would she have a copy of a test allegedly done by a 3rd party that, based on news reports, was just using it as an excuse to eliminate her for beating a Russian opponent?
Do you know she doesn't have the test results?
When I get medical tests done I usually do receive the test results.
There are news reports saying she's a man if you care so much about news reports.
It's funny how it works both ways. She doesn't have to release the results. And they don't have to release them so you can verify it either. Playing your own stupid game. Why do they have to release the results?
You seem to be misunderstanding, intentionally I would guess. They claimed they did a test to "confirm" she was not a woman, I'm saying that's a steaming hot load of bullshit and they were just looking for an excuse and they have no results to release.
Please cite your sources saying there are news reports that she's a man.
Anyways they should just test the chromosomes of their fighters at the very least. It's a simple blood sample nothing too invasive at all. I don't really care to watch an XY beat on an XX personally I don't see how it's an equal fight. Watch whatever you want though.
Apparently that is not true. There was a report of test taken and result was xy, but the report was never shown to the public and the lab that took the test has been banned.
That doesn't make her not female, or trans. From the Snopes article about this:
There are genetic conditions, termed differences of sexual development, in which biological females are born with XY chromosomes but possess female anatomy, or that affect how a biological female regulates and reacts to testosterone, causing levels typically associated with males. Though there is no independent confirmation that Khelif has these conditions, people born this way would legally be considered female or intersex.
Debates over these issues in the context of women's sports have nothing to do with a purported "woke" or "trans agenda," because such instances involve women who were born as women, identify as women and have not undergone any sex reassignment surgery or procedure to change this fact. That is what IOC spokesperson Mark Adams meant when he clarified to the press "this is not a transgender issue."
Gender-reassignment procedures require significant financial and medical resources. The notion that a woman from a rural western Algerian village who sold scrap metal to support her boxing career would have had the ability to undergo such a procedure in a deeply conservative Muslim country that prohibits the practice is extremely unlikely, at best.
There is zero evidence that Khelif has XY chromosomes. The IBA President Kremlev said
the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.
after Kremleve said
We got the test results that they allowed us to take themselves and these tests show they have a high level of testosterone like a man
So which is it?
The IOC spokesman Mark Adams said
I can't tell you if [the test results] were credible or not credible because the source from which they came is not credible, and the basis for the question is not credible, and the test was not credible.
Adams also said
The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport.
Sure there is. That mouth breather is refusing to use a woman's feminine pronouns over an unsubstantiated rumour about a minor medical abnormality. They're being ten times as rude as I am.
I didn't say they were misgendering her, I said they refused to use her preferred pronouns. Surely you can agree with the factual accuracy of that statement.
I am a woman, like any other woman. I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I compete as a woman. There is no doubt about that.
Imane is a Muslim from a country where being trans is illegal. I think she's said enough words to the effect of preferring she/her despite the language barrier. If you expect her to be familiar enough with English to describe her preferences with regard to the specific grammatical rules of it, I find your demand xenophobic and racist. Her preferences can easily be inferred from the translations of what she says in her own language, in the context of her own country's and religion's social norms.
again, gender-neutral wording like they/them don't say anything about gender or her own identity. 'They' does not refer to a third gender. I'm not demanding anything from her. You're the one who brought up using the correct pronouns. So I expect you to be familiar with English grammar.
I think your language-policing is ridiculous. You can't expect someone unfamiliar with a situation to be up-to-date with how to affirm someone's gender correctly. Gender-neutral language functions as a safe fall-back in such situations.
You can rightfully expect people to not misgender people. You cannot be rightfully offended at people using gender-neutral language. The only person I'm making demands of currently is you, because you're making this discussion unnecessarily hostile.
The bullshit about XY chromosomes is pretty stupid, which is why the other replier provided an article and a few key points in refutation.
The OP's comment didn't read to me as particularly incendiary, but thanks for labelling them as transphobic and mouth breathing with no precedent! Really appreciate good contributions to discourse like yours.
EDIT: not sure what the downvotes are for. XY chromosomes are not exactly valid for determining sex, much less gender. Women might have Y chromosomes, or even three copies of X. Gender has nothing to do with this at all, in fact.
Using XY as an argument is therefore bullshit.
Even if it's bullshit, there's no need to call someone a mouth breather unprovoked. The other thread seems to be a shitshow anyway, so I'm glad the replier is being called out.