The normally boisterous author JK Rowling has gone silent on X after being named in a cyberbullying lawsuit by Algerian boxer and Olympic champion Imane Khelif.
As revealed by Variety earlier this month, the “Harry Potter” writer is one of several high-profile figures singled out in a case against X, one of several platforms where Khelif faced non-stop accusations she was man.
“If the case does nothing else, Imane Khelif gave us the first week of absolute silence from JK Rowling in about five years and that alone is worth another gold medal,” one user wrote last week.
Rowling, named alongside others such as X owner Elon Musk, posted a picture of Khelif’s fight against Italian boxer Angela Carini and claimed that the Olympian enjoyed “the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.”
“Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better?” Rowling asked on Aug 1. “The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”
Now, critics of Rowling, who stirred controversy over the past several years for her views towards transgender people, note that the author is finally quiet.
“Are you ok babe? You’ve barely touched your Twitter account since you were named in a legal complaint over your transphobic cyberbullying,” joked a Threads user.
Rowling last posted to her X account on August 7.
“JK Rowling has stopped tweeting since Imane Khelif filed her lawsuit,” another added. “Excited to see someone fighting back, & to potentially have it laid bare in court: Rowling doesn’t care about women. The protecting ‘real women’ was always a lie, an excuse for hating trans women.”
“She’s scared, she’s scrambling, and good,” said another.
While Khelif has not commented frequently in recent days, the athete did say during the Olympics that the remarks regarding her gender “hurt me a lot.”
“This affected me. I’m not lying to you, it affected me a lot,” she said. “It hurt a lot. I can’t describe the fear I had but thank God I was able to overcome it. Thank God, all the people of Algeria and the Arab world knew Imane Khelif with her femininity, her courage, her will.”
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