It’s time to stop pretending JK Rowling is an advocate of women’s rights.

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you will likely be at least somewhat aware that JK Rowling has become a controversial figure in recent years, largely due to her stance on transgender people. I won’t bother to go into the ins and outs of this here, but if you are not au fait with this controversy there is an article chronicling the whole thing here, from when she started “liking” tweets that spoke scornfully about trans women (which she later stated was a mistake) to the recent furore over Algerian boxer Imame Khelif; which is what I will be focusing on here.

Just to summarise, Khelif competed against Italy’s Angela Carini in the Paris Olympics, who forfeited from the fight after a single punch. Clips started circulating on social media of a distressed Carini saying she had never been punched so hard in her career. Khelif had previously been disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association’s World Boxing Championship for allegedly failing to meet a gender eligibility test, but the specifics of this test remain unclear.

Speculation started circulating on social media that Khelif was transgender. This reignited the debate about trans women in women’s sports; and a number of celebrities took to social media to attack Khelif herself, including Rowling. Taking to Twitter/X, Rowling wrote:

“Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? 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.”

Here’s the thing though – Khelif is female. She was assigned female at birth. Her passport says she is female and there are photos of her as a young girl. Furthermore, she comes from a country that heavily discriminates against the LGBT+ population. Homosexuality is illegal in Algeria; and transgender individuals have no right to legal or medical transition.

After this was pointed out, Rowling refused to desist. In a follow up tweet, Rowling wrote:

“The idea that those objecting to a male punching a female in the name of sport are objecting because they believe Khelif to be ‘trans’ is a joke. We object because we saw a male punching a female.”

Except this isn’t what happened, so why is Rowling insisting that it is?

The fact that she had been previously disqualified for meeting an unspecified gender eligibility test means nothing. The IBA is a Russian-led organisation, riddled with corruption, and the disqualification came after Khelif had defeated a previously unbeaten Russian boxer Azalia Amineva (the disqualification restored her unbeaten record). The International Olympic Committee has described the disqualification as “sudden and arbitrary”. Despite the details of the test being confidential, president of the IBA Umar Kremlev told Russian news agencies that Khelif had tested positive for XY chromosomes. Kremliv did not disclose any specifics or provide any evidence to back up this claim. Furthermore, Kremlev has since told reporters that Khelif was shown to have elevated testosterone levels, contradicting a previous statement by the IBA that Khelif had not been subjected to a hormone test.

Even if we were to take these claims at face value, there are many reasons why a woman might test positive for XY chromosomes; or show elevated testosterone levels. Women with Swyer syndrome for instance will have XY chromosomes but also appear female; and have normal female reproductive organs including a uterus, fallopian tubes and a vagina (however, the ovaries do not develop). This is just one of many Differences in Sex Development (DSD), also known as intersex conditions, that can occur. Women with PCOS may also have elevated levels of testosterone.

I don’t know if Khelif is intersex or not but even if she is, to say she is “male” is inflammatory and grossly misguided. Unless, of course, you are going by an overly simplistic definition of maleness that would include numerous women with DSD.

In addition to all this, Rowling has made disparaging remarks about Khelif’s physical appearance.

“For the record, bombarding me with pictures of athletic women to ‘teach’ me that women don’t all look like Barbie is like spamming me with pics of differently-shaped potatoes to prove rocks are edible. I can still see the difference and you look frankly bonkers.”

Yes, clearly!

Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting was also embroiled in the controversy; and subjected to similar remarks from Rowling.

It’s worth noting that both Khelif and Yu-ting are women of colour who have been called “men”, in part for not looking feminine enough.

Ironically, there hasn’t been nearly as much vitriol directed towards the Dutch competitor Steven van de Velde, who raped a 12 year old girl when he was 19. Rowling has been remarkably quiet about this, a glaring inconsistency for someone purportedly speaking in defence of women and girls.

Khelif has since filed a lawsuit over “acts of aggravated cyber harassment”. Rowling, along with Elon Musk and others, was named in the lawsuit and Rowling stopped tweeting for days. However, she has now started tweeting again and, in a bizarre twist, criticised Khelif for failing to publish DNA test results proving that she is a woman.

“It’s important to highlight that launching a PR campaign and applying layers of thick makeup requires far more time and effort than simply making DNA test results public”.

The entitlement is through the roof! Quite why Rowling thinks Khelif is under any obligation to share private medical information is one thing, but this latest move only highlights just how far gone she has become. Like a conspiracy theorist who shifts the burden of proof to their opponents, Rowling is now demanding that Khelif “proves” her womanhood, when she never had any credible evidence that Khelif is anything but a woman in the first place.

Evidently, her unhealthy and disproportionate obsession with transgender people has impacted her ability to think critically. Now she is seeing “men” where there aren’t any, and people who aren’t even trans are now being targeted by her vitriol.

For some time now people have continued to defend Rowling, not necessarily because they agree with her but because they haven’t been given the full picture. They will usually claim that all she has said is “sex is real” and she simply has some valid concerns about issues such as women’s spaces and the effects of puberty blockers. This defence might have worked circa 2020 when she first started tweeting about trans people, but it doesn’t work in 2024. She has been getting more and more blatant in her hatred for a while now, despite initially appearing more reasonable in her stance. For those who are not on Twitter or in the loop with these things, however, this descent into pure hate might have slipped under the radar. The Khelif controversy has been pretty big news though, hopefully it will finally make people see her for what she is; a bully masquerading as a women’s rights activist.