Who is the real bully?
Variety exults:
Bullying is it? But it’s not bullying for Imane Khelif to punch women? Why is that exactly?
Khelif — who on Saturday won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 66 kilogram boxing competition — spent much of the 2024 Olympics in Paris at the center of a noisy and unpleasant dispute about her gender eligibility that reverberated around the world.
Unpleasant was it? Imagine how unpleasant it was for women to be punched by Khelif, and to lose to Khelif.
This is good, right? Rowling and Musk (however I otherwise feel about him) definitely have the money to go to court on sheer principle, and Khelif will have to produce evidence that he is factually a woman.
I’m with musubk. His team must hate him, to choose those two as opponents. He can’t win without proving he’s a woman; and he can’t do that, or he’d have done it before.
Discovery should be fun.
I’m not convinced he has to prove he is a woman in order to win this case. I don’t think “cyberbullying” implies spreading of malicious untrue information. I do not think Khelif was subjected to cyberbullying, either, mind you.
I think of “cyberbullying” and I think of, say, emailing all your friends and co-workers pictures of something you did decades ago that could be embarrassing, or organizing a boycott of your employer to try to get them to fire you. Malicious lies could be part of it, but it is the relentless direct abuse, rather than simple criticism or disagreement. One online resource says cyberbullying is “the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person”. Maybe the commentary was embarrassing, but I don’t see any of the rest of it. Of course I could be missing something.
By the way, to be clear, the suit is not solely against Rowling and Musk.
Bluntly it’s attention seeking. Life as a competitive boxer is short. Make a name for yourself and you can potentially leverage a lucrative career post boxing. Also, you never know. Someone might even make a token settlement to make you go away – free money!
It seems as if the opinions expressed about the question of Khalif’s biological sex, along with how women’s categories are defined, made little difference — Khalif was not deprived of being awarded an Olympic gold medal. How will they show where the injustice is? In people’s thoughts and expressions? Now *if* the rules were fair (which is the real question here), and *if* Khalif was found to be a biological woman, and subsequently not allowed to compete in a women only competition, then they might have a case. And by they, I mean the people who stand to profit from such a pursuit. What do they hope to achieve, an apology? I don’t think so.
I agree with Rob @6, they are looking for a payday, and more attention, not less. Prime everyone for that eventual book deal or whatever ‘merch’ they can hock.
It’s the only payday Khelif could get – he can’t box with women anymore. It’s lawsuits or advertising.
Just as they have weight divisions in boxing; heavyweight, medium, etc, for both males and females, so they could have divisions (for both sexes) based on penis length.
Just a thought, mind, but it could sort things out.