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Boxer Imane Khelif is suing JK Rowling & Elon Musk — the internet is ROASTING them and it's GLORIOUS
The internet is CACKLING over the possibility that the Olympic gold medal winner could take down Musk and Rowling!
Update: Today, Imane’s Khelif’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, posted a press release to X announcing that the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office has officially opened a preliminary investigation into the online hate the boxer received. The investigation includes looking into charges of “aggravated harassment based on gender, public insult because of gender, public insult because of gender,” and “public insult because of origin.”
Winning a medal at the Olympics is the pinnacle of athletic achievement, but what should have been a triumphant moment for Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after she won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics was soured by bad-faith barbs from famous billionaires claiming that she was secretly a man or transgender.
But in an effort to fight back against the overwhelming tide of transphobia, Khelif has filed a legal complaint against infamous TERFs J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk, who led the charge in spreading the rumor that the cisgender female boxer was born a man.
You play stupid games; you win stupid prizes!
Last Friday, both Musk and Rowling — who are known for being vocal anti-trans bigots — were named in a criminal complaint filed with a special unit in the Paris Prosecutor's Office that specializes in stopping online hate speech over alleged "acts of aggravated cyber harassment" against the newly crowned boxing champ, Variety reported.
While they were the most vocal, other celebrities and political figures also jumped on the hate-filled bandwagon, including former President Donald Trump, YouTuber-turned-wrestler Logan Paul, and Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The lawsuit was filed against Musk's social media company X (formerly Twitter), meaning that under French law it was technically filed against unknown persons, giving the protection "latitude to be able to investigate against all people," Khelif's lawyer Nabil Boudi said.
However, the complaint still names Musk, and Rowling and Boudi told Variety that Trump's hateful posts about Khelif would likely be part of the investigation as well. "Trump tweeted, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution," he said.
Watching Trump be named in yet another criminal prosecution would truly make our year!
Despite the hate she received, the non-bigoted side of the internet has been in Khelif's corner, jumping for joy at the thought that billionaires who have made it their life's mission to attack trans people may finally have to pay for their hate.
"Please make her sell Harry Potter to WB over this. I just want her to crawl back into her mold hole and never come out,"one person wrote in a post on X referencing Rowling, while another person posted, "Logan Paul was reportedly named in Imane Khelif's cyberbullying lawsuit alongside Elon Musk and JK Rowling. By the end of this I hope she owns part of PRIME, Tesla, and Harry Potter."
Khelif faced a maelstrom of online hate and ridicule after the International Boxing Association—a now-banned governing body that has claimed boxers failed unspecified eligibility tests that the International Olympic Committee calls "so flawed that it's impossible to engage with it"—said she didn't meet the eligibility criteria to compete in women's boxing.
"The whole process is flawed," International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams told the AP News. "From the conception of the test, to how the test was shared with us, to how the tests have become public, is so flawed that it's impossible to engage with it."
This seems to be part of a growing trend where anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives are so lost in the sauce that not only are they slinging hate at the transgender community who doesn't deserve it but are also lashing out at cisgender people by claiming they're trans if they don't meet their very narrow definition of gender.
Wealthy celebrities and politicians have been able to spew hate online for far too long; maybe an Olympian coming after their pocketbooks will finally teach them a lesson.
Keep scrolling for the most hilarious reactions to Imane Khelif suing Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling!
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
