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.”

    • AngryishHumanoid@reddthat.com
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • TwinTusks@bitforged.space
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      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.

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          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.

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                1 month ago

                I’m sorry but no. Using gender-neutral language does not describe gender; using ‘they’ isn’t to misgender, it just leaves the gender unspecified.

                You can correctly use ‘they’ for anyone. If they’d said ‘he’, now that would’ve been different…

                (Edit: typo)

                • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  Yeah, it’s so minor. I think that commenter is only looking for a reason to be upset on behalf of someone else and use that as an excuse to blow up.

                • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                  1 month ago

                  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.

                  • SLfgb@feddit.nl
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                    1 month ago

                    Also, how do you even know her preferred pronouns in English? Did you ask her?

                  • SLfgb@feddit.nl
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                    1 month ago

                    yea, nah.

                    Edit: Using a word is not the same as refusing to use another word in its place.

      • minyakcurry@monyet.cc
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        1 month ago

        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.

    • darki@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Dude don’t stress about thiss… Lemmy is pretty much center-to-far-left , i.e. don’t bother bringing up facts to the argument 😆