Imane Khelif plans to continue fighting after the Paris Olympics.
A lawyer representing the Algerian boxer confirmed to Variety that Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling, two of her most prominent critics on social media during her gold medal-winning campaign in Paris, would be named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged "acts of aggravated cyber harassment."
The complaint was reportedly posted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday. Musk and Rowling might only be the start of the targets for Khelif, as the structure of the lawsuit gives prosecutors freedom to investigate anyone for harassing her, including former president Donald Trump.
Via Variety:
The lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means that it was filed against unknown persons. That "ensure[s] that the 'prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people," including those who may have written hateful messages under pseudonyms, said Boudi. The complaint nevertheless mentions famously controversial figures.
"J. K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others," he said, adding that Donald Trump would be part of the investigation. "Trump tweeted, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution."
Khelif officially filed the complaint Saturday, one day after she won gold in the women's 66kg division. Her presence at the Olympics was one of the most controversial stories of the Games, with misinformation around her gender identity pervading nearly every corner of the internet.
What did Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling say about Imane Khelif?
Rowling, who has become one of the most vocal anti-transgender voices on social media, tweeted repeatedly about Khelif once she entered the public consciousness, with a total of 36 posts, re-posts and reply posts over the course of 10 days about the boxer and the circumstances around her.
In one such post, Rowling accused Khelif of being a man "enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head, and whose life's ambition he's just shattered."
Musk was comparatively more reticent, but did quote tweet a post reading "Men don't belong in women's sports" with the comment "absolutely." Both of those examples, came in the immediate wake of Khelif's quick defeat of Italy's Angela Karini, who retired 46 seconds into the fight after taking a punch to the face.
The facts about Imane Khelif's gender debate
Adding to the furor around Khelif is the ongoing controversy over transgender participation in women's sports (of which there are very few actual examples).
Khelif, however, is not transgender, by basically any definition of the word. She was identified female at birth, raised as a girl and competed as a woman for six years before the Paris Olympics.
The question around Khelif instead centers around whether she possesses XY chromosomes, which can occur in people who have identified and been identified as women their entire lives. The matter was introduced by the entity known as the International Boxing Association.
The IBA first conducted gender tests on Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting in 2022, but didn't suspend them from competition until 2023. The IBA never officially identified those tests, but IBA president Umar Kremlev later claimed Khelif had been shown to have XY chromosomes.
It is vitally important to note that all of this is occurring in the context of a public war between the IBA and IOC, which stripped the organization of its control over Olympic boxing in 2019 after years of rampant corruption and incompetence. The IOC opted to allow Khelif and Yu-ting to both compete in Paris — citing a standard of being identified as female on their passports — which led to the IBA re-inserting itself back into the conversation.
That effort culminated in a news conference in which the IBA severely damaged its credibility in the international press, as the two sides continued to debate over the validity of those tests in 2022 and 2023. Even by the considerable standards of international sports organizations, the IBA is considered a complete mess.
So the questions around Khelif are basically whether the IBA can be trusted and, if their claims are true, whether the presence of an XY chromosome should disqualify a person from female competition as an unfair advantage. The serious conversation around Khelif differs greatly from what was being yelled on social media, and now Khelif appears to be targeting the latter's loudest voices.
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