The Unwritten Rule Is Broken: Simone Biles’s Posthumous Rebuke of Charlie Kirk Ignites a Moral Civil War

There are unwritten rules in every society—silent codes we are expected to follow even when no one says them out loud. Chief among them is the expectation of respectful silence after someone dies. No matter how controversial a figure may have been, tradition demands that the living hold their tongues, at least for a while. But Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast the world has ever seen, has just broken that sacred code. And in doing so, she has thrown the internet, the sports world, and an entire culture into a moral civil war.

Her choice wasn’t a soft whisper or a carefully packaged statement from a press agent. It was a thunderclap. A personal, emotionally raw blog post, published without warning, in which she finally described the deep scars left by one man’s words. That man was Charlie Kirk—the conservative commentator who, during the darkest moment of her career, had labeled her in language so cutting that it echoed for years.

The timing was shocking. Kirk had only just passed away. His supporters were still holding vigils, his family still grieving. That was the very moment Biles chose to speak. And her words landed like a hammer on the cultural floorboards of America. For some, it was the bravest act of reclamation ever seen in sports. For others, it was a cruel violation of the very rules of grace that hold human decency together.

To understand why the post exploded like it did, you have to travel back four years, to Tokyo in the summer of 2021. The Olympics were supposed to be Simone Biles’s crowning moment. She had already been called the GOAT, the greatest of all time. Advertisers lined up behind her. Fans waited for another cascade of gold medals. Instead, the world saw something no one expected.

She faltered.

Not because her body failed her, but because her mind had reached a breaking point. She was hit with what gymnasts dread the most: the “twisties,” a dangerous mental block that causes the athlete to lose all sense of orientation in mid-air. In a sport where being off by even a fraction can mean broken bones or worse, she stepped back. She withdrew from multiple events. She chose safety over spectacle, health over hardware. And she told the world, openly and bravely, that her mental health mattered.

Half of the world applauded. They praised her courage. They said she had redefined greatness, not by winning medals but by surviving with her spirit intact. But the other half, a loud half, erupted in fury. They called her selfish. Weak. Un-American. And no voice was louder than Charlie Kirk’s.

From his platform, with cameras rolling, he unleashed a tirade that even today is hard to read without wincing.

“She’s a sociopath. A coward. A shame of the nation.”

Those words weren’t just criticism of an athlete’s choice. They were character assassination, delivered to millions. Overnight, Biles became more than an athlete under pressure—she became the center of a cultural war about values, patriotism, and the very meaning of strength.

For years afterward, Simone Biles said little about Kirk. She focused on her recovery, her advocacy for athlete wellness, and eventually her triumphant return to the sport she loved. She collected more medals. She stood on podiums again. She smiled for cameras. To the world, it looked as though she had moved on. But silence does not always mean peace. Sometimes it means a wound is still bleeding under the bandages.

And then, last week, the news broke. Charlie Kirk had died. Tributes poured in. Even those who disagreed with him politically fell back on the unwritten rule: speak kindly of the dead, or not at all.

For two days, Simone Biles said nothing. Then came the blog.

It wasn’t promoted. No press release announced it. She simply posted it, as though she could no longer carry the weight of holding it inside. Readers who clicked expecting a gentle reflection were met with fire.

The post was not about politics. It was not about ideology. It was about pain. She wrote of sleepless nights when his words replayed in her head. She wrote of the flood of online hatred that his remarks had fueled, hate that poured into her family’s inboxes, her social media, even her private phone. She wrote of sitting alone in a hotel room in Tokyo, shaking, wondering if the country she thought she represented now saw her as its enemy.

“I wasn’t just fighting the twisties. I was fighting the idea that I had betrayed millions of people. And that idea was planted by his words.”

Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, she dismantled the mythology of “tough love” and “harsh commentary.” She made it clear: what had been passed off as opinion was, to her, a form of cruelty that left marks no medal could erase.

The reaction was instant. Within minutes, the internet fractured into two hostile armies.

On one side, millions hailed her courage. They said she had waited too long, carried too much, and had every right to finally speak now that the world could not look away. They argued that she had faced years of humiliation in silence, and that by speaking at this exact moment—when Kirk could no longer shout back—she had guaranteed that her truth would be heard in full. For them, this was not vengeance. It was justice.

On the other side came a wave of outrage. They called it tasteless. Heartless. They said she had spit on the basic decency of letting the dead rest. They accused her of exploiting a man’s death to settle a score.

“Kicking dirt on a fresh grave,” one furious commenter wrote.

That phrase ricocheted across feeds, turning into a rallying cry for her critics.

And so the debate grew, larger than the feud itself. This wasn’t just about Simone Biles versus Charlie Kirk anymore. It was about the rules of grief and memory in the digital age. Do victims have the right to speak their truth whenever they choose, even if it means speaking against the dead? Or does society still demand silence, even when silence means erasing the pain that was once inflicted?

The irony is almost unbearable: in 2021, Biles was mocked for stepping back in order to protect her mind. In 2025, she is mocked for stepping forward in order to protect her truth.

Meanwhile, her blog post continues to be dissected like a cultural autopsy. Some call it a manifesto of empowerment. Others call it a hit job, a final act of revenge. But what cannot be denied is the precision with which she wrote it. It reads less like a rant and more like controlled demolition—tearing down, piece by piece, the walls of a narrative that had imprisoned her for years.

“I want people to understand what it feels like,” she wrote. “To be told you’ve betrayed your country, when all you were doing was trying to survive.”

The passage spread everywhere, quoted on news shows, posted on Instagram stories, shared by athletes across disciplines. In locker rooms and late-night talk shows, the question was the same: courageous or cruel?

Some former Olympians defended her fiercely. They said no athlete should ever have to carry that kind of abuse without answering. Others shook their heads, saying that whatever the history, she should have taken the high road.

The conversation has outgrown her, as cultural conversations often do. It has become a referendum on the boundaries of public discourse. Is the unwritten rule of silence after death outdated in a world where digital words live forever? Does the permanence of the internet mean that wounds can never heal unless victims speak, no matter the timing? Or is there still such a thing as respect that outweighs the right to respond?

Simone Biles may not have intended to start a firestorm, but she has. And in doing so, she has ensured that the debate Charlie Kirk ignited in 2021 did not die with him. Instead, it has been reborn, fiercer than ever, with Biles herself now holding the torch.

Whether you see her words as brave or brutal, one fact remains: she has forced us all to look again, not through the lens of politics or performance, but through the tear-stained eyes of a human being who once stood alone on the world’s stage.

And so the question lingers, echoing across comment sections, dinner tables, and newsrooms alike: Was Simone Biles’s posthumous rebuke the final act of courage we needed, or the final act of cruelty we never deserved?

Only time—and the fractured voices of a divided public—will answer.