Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif wants Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, Donald Trump, and a host of others to pay.
Khelif spent the majority of her time in Paris at the center of an unpleasant dispute about her gender eligibility that reverberated around the world. Despite being born female and never identifying as transgender or intersex, Khelif faced a litany of accusations and abuse over her gender. Even as the International Olympic Committee stepped in to assure her accusers that “scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman,” the attacks continued.
According to a report from Variety, Khelif’s Paris-based attorney Nabil Boudi said they have filed a criminal complaint over alleged “acts of cyber-harassment” to the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday.
“On Aug. 13, (The National Center for the Fight Against Online Hatred) contacted the OCLCH (Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes) to conduct an investigation into the counts of cyber harassment due to gender, public insult because of gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insult because of origin.”
A majority of the online attacks originated on X (formerly Twitter) which has devolved into the Wild West of social media after Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk purchased the company and stripped it of safeguards protecting users from hate speech and harassment in the name of free speech. That allowed multiple prominent names to share misinformation regarding Khelif’s gender, further escalating the vitriol.
Among them was J.K. Rowling, the famed author of the Harry Potter series who posted a picture from Khelif’s fight with Italian boxer Angela Carini and accused the former of being a man who was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.” Rowling has more than 14 million followers on X.
Musk also chimed in adding that “men don’t belong in women’s sports” while Trump posted a message with a picture from the Carini fight accompanied by the message: “I will keep men out of women’s sports!”
The legal action was filed against X, which under French law means it was filed against unknown persons which “ensures 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, Boudi said.
“J. K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others,” he added, 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.”
WWE Superstar Logan Paul was also named in the suit after he wrote on X that Khelif’s win over Carini was the “purest form of evil.”
Imane Khelif dubs her detractors the ‘enemies of success’
Khelif faced backlash after a report revealed that she and one other fighter, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, had been barred from competing at the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi after failing a gender eligibility test conducted by the International Boxing Association.
The IOC has disputed this test, and before the Paris events stripped the IBA of recognition as boxing’s governing body and expelled it from the Olympics over issues including corruption, financial transparency, and governance.
Following her gold medal-winning performance against China’s Yang Liu on Saturday, Khelif said:
“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition. I’m a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I have lived as a woman, I competed as a woman, there’s no doubt about that. [The detractors] are enemies of success, that is what I call them. And that also gives my success a special taste because of these attacks.”
