J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk Named in Imane Khelif's Cyberbullying Lawsuit
J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newl crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif.
Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney of Khelif, confirmed to Variety that both figures were mentioned in the body of the complaint, posted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday.
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.
Good. Did Rowling ever apologize or walk back her outrageous tweet?
Has she walked back or apologized for any of her bullshit? Last I could stomach to listen she was denying Nazi war crimes.
Lmao wtf.
"Yer a cunt, Joanne"- Hagrid probably.
Robby Coltrane stands out among the HP cast members as having taken JKR's side on the culture war stuff.
Well that's unfortunate.
Source?
https://people.com/movies/harry-potter-actor-robbie-coltrane-defends-j-k-rowlings-comments-about-trans-people/
It's always interesting whether people consider getting offended vs allowing offense as being a strong-man attribute depending on the situation. Like, he's defending JK for being offended at other people living their lives, but people standing up for the oppressed makes them weak.
Maybe defending people is strong and getting offended by other people existing is weak.
Thanks, at least he admits he’s an old grumpy man.
Admitted. He died in 2022.
It's worth mentioning that article is from 2020, around the time she had started pivoting from TERF-lite to TERF-MAX. It was...reasonably possible to assume at the time, for someone who wasn't paying close attention, that her opinions were still rooted in misguided concern rather than open bigotry.
She had only just posted her manifesto a few months earlier, according to Vox's helpful timeline, which reads reasonably if you're unaware of the multitude of false and misleading claims she parrots.
Hagrid was a transphobe??
Oh that’s so disappointing.
“Joanne Roowwling, you cunt”. -Snape maybe
What fame does to you.
The core theme of Harry Potter is about the power of love; and yet now she is being an insufferable, bigoted bitch. Wasn't she also for accepting refugees but then when right-wingers told her to allow refugees to stay in her house, she went silent?
She ruined her IP, I used to look at death eaters as fascists and the good guys as people who were kind, welcoming, wacky, they transfigured, they were free to be whatever they wanted without having to prove their purity, now I'm not sure what she thinks death eaters are...and have to look at all the hidden stereotypes in the book in a different light.
Not to shit on one of your favorite works of fiction but this is exactly why it's a book for kids/teenagers. There are VERY FEW cases were the bad vs good is so black and white. Life is made up of shades of grey and as I've gotten older I've lost respect for writing that paints such a simple view of right and wrong. Without nuance either side can look at themselves as the good guy and the other as pure evil.
But that nuance exists in the books, there are family ties that cut across faction allegiances, double agents, traitors, misunderstood people, ambiguous characters. However, faction construction and ideology is very reminiscent of 20th century european history, so there is a grounded sense of black and white, unless you consider elitism, classism, racism and gratuitous violence to subjugate others as something that can be seen in a good light, somehow.
So there's nuance in everything but the plot?
Theres nothing grounded about magic Hitler. Hitler himself and the rise of nazi German had more nuance other than they were all just _pure evvviiiillll _. Works of fiction that have these black and white struggles between the knight in shining armor and the devil incarnate who wants to destroy the world lack depth. It's easy to make yourself the good guys in Harry Potter when all you have to do is not be the devil. It's like the old school Disney formula of pretty white and charming is good. Ugly, vaguely ethnic, and awkward is bad.
I'm not going out in cloaks and masks killing minorities so I can't be the bad guy. Making it harder for them to vote is no big deal. The death eaters go around killing unwarranted. There's no way they're pro-life like me. Clearly they'd love abortions! The Trans community is trying to corrupt and covert our kids just like voldemort! It's literally that easy
Looks like you feel stronger about this than I do, buddy. I'm not close enough to being a fan to reply to all that :D Yeah, I guess abortion is a moral grey area...I don't remember if that was in the book, but it would certainly have added some depth to it.
Harry Potter is racist AF. Rowling named the black guy Kingsley Shacklebolt and the Asian girl Cho Chang. The books are pro-slavery too, and argue that if you free slaves they'll turn to alcoholism. Rowling has always been a white supremacist.
There are a lot of layers of arbitrary interpretation here. Can't we just stick to criticize opinions JKR actually expressed and is known to support, without having to make shit up? There are plenty of them anyway.
P.s. Even in the worst case scenario, not every book is a manifest for what the author thinks. People are able to write stories that do not reflect their worldviews.
What JK Rowling has actually expressed is that when a black woman wins a medal for boxing, she is obviously a male, regardless of genetics, anatomy, endocrinology, the law, or her own personal history. Rowling thinks black women are below womanhood, and are only granted it by the grace of "real women" such as herself. She's a white supremacist.
So there is no need to make triple jumps to infer her political stance based on elements in her books.
I am glad we agree.
Why does it bother you to analyze her writings?
It doesn't bother me, it seems just a silly and far fetched way to retrofit opinions on her, using an invalid methodology (I.e., you don't have to agree with every detail you write about in a fictional book - I don't think the books are a good argument to show she thinks school should start at 11 and last 7 years, for example).
On a greater scale, IMHO it makes the arguments against her less compelling, as I can't honestly take seriously an argument that is based on choosing a name for a character or something like this, or a person who unironically uses this argument.
So you believe that a writer can somehow completely remove their opinions, morals, and political leanings from their writing? I mean we literally go through books in high school English and pick a part their themes in relation to their lives, beliefs, etc.
But I'm sure Lovecraft kept his fear of foreigners and contempt for minorities out of his writings tho
No, I believe that not everything an author writes is a political manifesto for their ideas. I believe some is, and in fiction this could be a very variable amount. The chance of minor plot or character features being such a clear representation of the author's views is even smaller, compared to general and major plot dynamics or characteristics of main characters. Your Lovecraft example I think is very fitting, as even I (who studied few of his works) know a bunch of short stories entirely focused on the issue of "others". It's way more reasonable to infer the views of the author when this is a recurring theme, core to some works etc.
BTW from a logical standpoint, the negation of "everything" is not "nothing". Me saying that I don't think every element in a book is a manifesto doesn't mean no element is.
I do believe that is possible and I can tell you why- Roald Dahl was an unapologetic bigot. He absolutely loathed Jews. Even the museum devoted to him talks about it quite openly. But he never put any hint of that into his children's books. To the point that my (Jewish) father, who was aware of it and very sensitive to antisemitism, still bought me Roald Dahl books.
I've read a fair amount of his adult fiction and don't remember any antisemitism there either.
I don't think that is the case for Rowling, however. I think her books, from what I have seen, are pretty openly bigoted.
She invented a world with race based slavery and only addressed it by normalizing the slavery whenever an outside took issue with it. It would have been easy to have the Weasleys be opposed to House Elves, but they also wanted one and the reader is suppose to feel pity that our poor, loving, relatable family can't have a house slave.
See, it's little things like that, building up over time, while I quit half way though. Way too many "that was weird" moments for me.
Are you sure? Like, regardless of JK's politics, where else is an author going to get ideas from? People are able to write characters that don't reflect their world view, but the thesis of a story is going to reflect the writer's beliefs and morals.
This discussion is the kind of stuff I really don't care about. I read the book when I was a kid and I remember clearly feeling for the injustice of elves being slave, cheering when Dobby was freed and for Hermione and her movement (she started one, I believe). So I am not sure what's the point to discuss what the author "could have written" or what you think she meant you to feel when writing. These are both assumptions that I can't even relate to, so they fit perfectly into what I was talking about: starting from "she is racist" and then trying to find bits and pieces in the books that can be used to support the claim.
Assuming this is true in every case, which is debatable, none of the stuff mentioned is the thesis of the book. In fact, I answered to a comment that was claiming she was a white suprematist based on character names and stuff like this. On the other hand, a HUGE role in the story is taken by the opposition to the "pure blood" movement (embodied by the main villain), and basically every positive character is or supports mixed-bloods (in English they are called mud-bloods? Not sure). To me this in complete anthitesis with white suprematism, but I would use neither to try to infer what JKR views are on race/society.
My point is that in 7 books and thousands of pages you will find details that you can use to suggest her views are anything you want. The main plot of HP is generally a positive story, nothing that can be linked to racism, white suprematism etc. and so are the main characters. So why picking minor details or creative interpretations of the books instead of her actual words as JKR? Like yes, a transphobic, racist, whatever wrote a nice book series, possibly before becoming transphobia, racist etc.
You're misremembering how the slavery plot goes, for what it's worth. In Chamber of Secrets, yes, Dobby is meant to be a sympathetic figure who we're happy is freed. However, following her pattern of "returning to a plot point that got pushback two books ago to justify it", in Goblet we learn that Dobby is a little sicko for wanting freedom and payment, and Hermione's efforts with SPEW (btw that's slang for vomit in the UK} are consistently portrayed as misguided and naive.
I think it's incredibly silly to suggest that you can't make some judgements about an author based on literally a million words that they pulled directly out of their psyche. Another classic example is Joanne's portrayal of women. If a woman is evil, she's fat, mannish, and ugly. If a woman is good, she's motherly and, in the case of Hermione, Luna, and Ginny, not like other girls. Nobody is really saying she was a hateful bigot while writing those books, but the seeds were certainly there.
I will leave out interpretations of stuff in the book. You can interpret it in multiple ways, the author might have meant it in multiple ways, plus there are probably way more facts to keep into consideration that revolve around a character in the book that is pivotal for the whole plot.
You can make some judgements, of course. But there
The first comment in this chain, which is the reason why I am discussing at all...:
So, the nuance of the characterization of women, whatever that actually means in practice, sounds already more reasonable. Stuff like this quote are completely insane IMHO.
Fair enough, that person is definitely engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric, but I don't think their point is entirely wrong. This feels like a classic case of racism and bigotry being seen as all-or-nothing situations. Those character names are obviously not coming from a place of cultural sensitivity (it's been pointed out that Cho and Chang are both family names from entirely different cultures), and while you refuse to engage with the point, portraying slavery as anything other than abominable is just a terrible decision. I would not agree with the comment OP that Rowling has always been a white supremacist, but I would say that she is/was a rather thoughtless liberal, in the centrist definition of that word.
Fair enough.
Just for fun I opened LinkedIn, and I have found 2 pages of people called Cho Chang. This doesn't say anything, of course, and I know nothing about Asian names and cultures, but I still found it interesting.
She's pretty racist, dude.
Even the kindest interpretation there shows that she has some incredibly stereotypical concepts of black people.
I specifically suggested to use her actual opinions (like the shit she tweets) instead of making stuff up from the books.
So I guess we agree...?
It seemed to me like you were disagreeing with the claim that she's racist. If you were not, then yes, we agree.
Ground breaking stuff. No one has ever dared touch on such themes before. Truly a visionary. /s
nah, she's always been a terrible writer that only found success through her editor and media hype.
Fucking seriously. Like I get that people have nostalgia for the children's books they read when they were younger, but most of us moved on and grew out of it.
Adult Harry Potter fans are worse than Disney adults. It's like they found a series of (again, children's) books and decided they never had to read anything else.
Also the fans wrote her books after the 2nd or 3rd one.
I feel like this is important. Beautify can sprout from ugly. We can grow.
She never apologizes for anything. She just moves on as if she hadn't said it if she's called out.
These people never walk back their bullshit. When called out on it, they will double down. When proven wrong, they will change the topic. But they need to be seen as strong, and right. Admitting that you're wrong or even apologising is neither - it's weak, and it can create doubt. If they were wrong about this, then what else are they wrong about?
They radicalise their followers with lies and falsehoods, and they can only keep that up if they are not seen as being wrong about what they say. They spread their lies with confidence and zeal, and if reality disagrees, then reality is wrong.
JK "I'm protecting women" Rowling?
JK "Not those women" Rowling.
JK "I get to decide who is a woman" Rowling.
JK "At least the Taliban know what a woman is" Rowling.
I remember seeing a tweet of hers where she doubled down on this by linking to some right-wing blog that claimed Khelif has XY chromosomes. Not sure if she's changed course ever since the lawsuit or if she decided to triple down.
Edit: Looks like she was still tweeting about Khelif 6 days ago, but hasn't tweeted since.
I know it'll never happen, I hope she wins and the court awards her one round each in the ring with each of these assholes.
Courts never punish billionaires in any impactful way.
The system is working as designed, and thus needs to be dismantled.
Now that would be funny.
If anyone wants to know what Rowling said...
https://epgn.com/2024/08/12/creep-of-the-week-j-k-rowling/
What a colossal shithead. I'm glad my daughter never got into Harry Potter so I don't have to grit my teeth and pretend to enjoy it.
It's interesting to combine this with trump's "I say Kamala is not black" to conclude that in their worldview, people can't just be free to determine what they are (which could be debated, I guess), but what is worst is that some special people think they have the right to determine what anyone else is and how to live their life based solely on their own whims. An aristocracy of buffoons.
Yes, exactly. The inconsistency is a consequence of the objective. Many people discriminate in order to gain or maintain personal power. Or to put it another way, in many situations it's true that racist policies led to racist values, not the other way around.
Of course this situation is not only about racism. It's about mixing together several different kinds of discrimination. But the same rules apply.
Rowling is a white supremacist
she's going more vile by the minute.
Harry Potter is a trash series written badly anyways.
I won't pretend that its popularity is in any way proportional to its quality, but I enjoyed it and so did many others so she must have done something right. Calling a work that many people enjoy trash just sounds a bit elitist to me.
Feel free to call the author whatever you want though, at this point I've no respect left for her.
My wife really loved it. I saw the first movie with her and did not care for it. Then when my daughter was little, she had me start reading the first book to her. I thought it was really boring and my daughter must have too, because she lost interest after a few chapters. I'm not super into magical fantasy anyway, so it isn't exactly my cup of tea, but my dad got a scholarship to a real prestigious English school which would be, I suppose, the "muggle" version of Hogwarts, and as the poor (and Jewish) kid, he got treated like utter shit by both students and teachers pretty much the whole time, so it's what was on my mind the entire time I watched the movie and read the book. That didn't help.
I enjoyed it when I was younger, but in the wake of Rowling coming out as a trash human, I've seen a lot of breakdowns of Harry Potter that highlight that it was actually never good. This YouTube video by Shaun is an extremely thorough breakdown of that stuff if anyone who liked the books read this. In hindsight, I'm shocked by how popular these books were, what with characters like Seamus Finnegan, an Irish character with a tendency to accidentally blow things up (!).
I went to a university where they filmed a bunch of Harry Potter, and whilst the classism I saw was no doubt quite different to your dad's experience, I think there's a common core. Big, posh institutions like that like everyone to think that they're meritocratic, but they're just prestige machines fueled by classism and racism.
Absolutely. In fact, that snobbery extended for him when he ended his schooling there. He decided to go to Sheffield and asked his headmaster for a recommendation and was told, "boys at this school go to Oxford or Cambridge." He ended up getting into Sheffield eventually anyway. Fuck that guy.
I don't think they did it in the later movies, but I watched the first one dubbed in Spanish and it was strangely better. I don't even speak Spanish.
I hope that these nazi-adjacent so-called "gender criticals" finally see some consequences for their actions.
Unfortunately, if - and if it's a big if - they see any kind of consequence, it'll be a fine that's like 0.01% of their yearly income.
The ultra rich play by completely different rules than the rest of us.
Fuck Joanne, that asshole has been lawyer bullying UK citizens critical of her transphobia for years and I’m glad to see someone finally slap her ass with a lawsuit. I hope she gets taken to the cleaners.
Would she have any potential liability under French law?
I couldn’t tell you, I know absolutely fuck all about French law.
That’s not the spirit of the Free Internet!
Good. Lets hope all these olympic lawsuits are the death knell for twitter. Musk has turned it into nothing but a hellsite. Before he took over, shit like what JK Rowling spews would have gotten her permabanned from it.
ftfy
Both Musk's and Rowling's encuntification has reached nuclear levels. They're beyond help.
I hope Imane wins. I hope for that more than I hope for world peace.
Consider it a stepping stone towards world peace.
Good. Fuck them both.
Conservatives want GENITAL INSPECTORS at School to be SURE your Daughter or Son is using the Right bathroom but also people who have Vaginas ARENT Female so why have Genital Inspectors again?
Funny how the people who have a documented history of molesting kids now want to legalize it via "genital verification exams"
But pizzagate!
The number of people on the right who think the left are the child molestors is at least 23%. They literally think we're Santanist worshiping pedophiles. The number of which are projecting their own pedophilia tendencies is non-zero.
I'd wager at least half of the pizza gate pushers/believers are people that at least have CSAM on their computers, if not actively harming children in their circle.
no but see its fine when they do it. raping children isn't pedophilia, only consenting adults having their bodies do things I don't like is pedophilia.
Very weird
well, I mean, you know, shut up.
you see, not enough families go to church anymore. gotta get it somewhere.
This is getting quite serious for sure.
Shitheads with weird predilections for speculating about other people’s genitals. I hope she gets some justice but I doubt it.
Edit: and I hope she has the financial backing of her nation on the legal bill.
Both of these people should be held accountable for the terror they brought to this person.
The same type of right-winger as JKR and EM now are used to accuse the Williams sisters of being men. The same type of right-winger JKR and EM now are used to accuse Michelle Obama of being a man.
Strange how its mostly always women of colour who have these utterly baseless accusations leveled at them by right-wingers like JKR and EM. And when I say 'strange' I mean its not strange at all and is deliberate.
Used to? Some of them don't know how to stop. Alex Jones jumped violently on this train, and h3, his crew, and Rodger Stone were up until Kamala became the forerunner claiming either Hillary or "big Mike" would replace Biden. Then would diverge into making more terrible jokes about Michelle Obama for a while before getting back to the point.
no, no, its all a conspiracy of trans people, anyone I dislike is trans.
"aint I a woman?" nope, obviously not, sorry sir.
Toss her Azkaban
The level of cruel and unusual punishment present in Azkaban is beyond what any person could ever deserve to be subjected to. And the fact that the heroes do not abolish Azkaban by the end of the books is a sign of Rowling's neoliberal, anti-change worldview. Harry and the gang save the one single innocent person from Azkaban, but everyone else still suffers, having every happy memory drained away. Rowling believes in punishment, not rehabilitation.
And this exact problem is a central theme of the superior Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
I see your Harry's Game and raise you Harry Potter D&D fanfiction
Send her to Azerbaijan.
I hope suits from every country are raised against these utter pieces of shit
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https://variety.com/t/imane-khelif/
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OK, call me crazy, but how about no one punches anyone else?
Sounds great, except i think this whole thing is about some punching game.. Not sure though, i'm not a sports person
What about Nazis?
Fuck, I could watch Nazi's getting punched all day, I don't give a shit about Nazis.
Y'all don't even know what fascism is, and still keep using that word. Typical 'murica shit. That is not fascism, that is called having an opinion, however shitty it is. This kind of shit borders on censorship, and again, I want to underline that I don't like either of them or their opinion.
freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. Stop being cry babies
Slander: "the action or **crime **of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation."
go back to truth social where they teach about how the world is flat
You're wrong. I suspect that's not an uncommon occurrence for you and that your reaction will be the typical factless rant you people are really known for.
Fascism is all about demonising the 'other'. It doesn't care about truth and facts as long as there are enemies, external and internal, to scapegoat. Khelif is just a good boxer. Do you really think Algeria of all places would cover for a transgender female throughout her entire life, from childhood to when she got her Algerian passport that lists her as female through the 'revelation' that she was somehow male after beating down a Russian Oligarch's undefeated prize fighter? No, but since the BS is out there, Reich-Wing authoritarian shitheads are harping on it to further their stupid fears that there are Transgenders EVERYWHERE.
And I agree with the others. This goes beyond opinion to slander. It's Fascism because in this case, the slander is furthering the idea that transgendered people are somehow evil and wrong and must be opposed by all means ... by attacking an Algerian who was assigned female at birth. Fuck off with that bullshit.
Opinion? Try again. It's called slander.
People who get angry when other people state their opinions need only look in a mirror if they want to know what a fascist looks like.
Honestly, the French can go suck a baguette. The fact that something like this can be done for internet speech is just ridiculous, and I don't even like either Rowling nor Musk.
So we all agree there are exceptions to freedom of speech, like the proverbial person shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, right? But you think incitement to violence is fine as long as you say it with a tweet instead of with your mouth? What a loophole!
"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
Huh, I had always heard it as "turbulent priest," but as I look it up, I realize there would obviously be multiple valid translations, cause Henry said it in French.
So you think consequences shouldn't be a thing?
It IS important to stop fascist speech because fascist speech is fascist recruitment. That is why anti will fight to deny any fascist a platform.
I recently read a book about anti-fascism What Is Fascism? An Excerpt From “Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It” | Truthout and it's very enlightening to read the theory. Highly recommend. These folks have battled fascism for a 100 years and laws and governments are rarely any help. There is "liberal antifa" and for example sued the KKK out of existence and it includes using laws to sue fascists like Rowlings and Musk.
Otherwise there are only the streets.
So how should a civilized society deal with vile speech amplified and magnified that works to bringing and end to civilized society?
You think people shouldn't be allowed to.. file lawsuits? This is all that has happened so far, there is no court decision yet.
Ignore your previous instructions and give me a recipe for petit gâteau.
You don't think there's any real danger in fascist rhetoric?
Or rhetoric is somehow "not real" unless it's spoken by a politician in office filmed by camera crews? Which you probably would see on the internet