JK Rowling has challenged Scotland’s new hate crime law in a series of social media posts - inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.
The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.
She said “freedom of speech and belief” was at an end if accurate description of biological sex was outlawed.
Earlier, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf said the new law would deal with a “rising tide of hatred”.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.
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Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.
It’s not a crime to be an insufferable piece of shit. Usually. If they make an exception for her, okay then.
No, but it seems like “stirring up hate” is a crime. And, as a public figure who is publicly hateful, she potentially fits that description
Yep, there really needs to be the distinction between private remarks and public instigation in free speech law.
Otherwise you’re not protecting anything except the right of the loudest to monopolize the airwaves via intimidation of dissent and “the other”
It’s not freedom of speech unless everyone feels safe using it, be it from fear of retaliation by the state, or by the tyranny of cousins.
It’s a delicate balancing act, but there is a sliding scale of speech acts, from the harmless, to bigoted, to hate speech, to incitement of violence.
There’s not universal agreement on where to place the line between protected speech and public instigation, but her public comments have been drifting ever closer to that line, especially with her most recent bout of denying Nazi crimes.
Not chilling protected speech is important, but so is enforcement against those who have crossed the line. Countries with stricter laws are generally those who have learned this the hard way.
denying Nazi crimes.
Jfc, when did she start doing that?
Someone else posted the link, but a few weeks ago she described the idea that Nazis targeted research and healthcare information on Trans patients as “a fever dream”, despite the Nazi raids on Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute are a well-documented part of their crimes.
She claimed she was describing something other than the screenshot she quoted after people repeatedly pointed out how wrong she was, but it’s still a troubling escalation in her rhetoric.
No, but it seems like “stirring up hate” is a crime. And, as a public figure who is publicly hateful, she potentially fits that description
According to the article the law doesn’t apply in a general sense.
It appears its written (along with another law) to only apply to an aggressor’s interaction with a specific person. So the law wouldn’t apply to Rowling’s comments from twitter about the group in general. No specifically named person is targeted.
Also, something I just learned from this about Rowling’s Transphobia that was strange to me. She doesn’t appear to have any problem with FtM, but only problems with MtF. I have never run across someone who has such specific bigotry in this case.
I have never run across someone who has such specific bigotry in this case.
I’m surprised that you’ve never noticed this before since 99.9% of the entire hullabaloo about Trans revolves around MtF. The only exception I can readily think of is minors, specifically young people seeking have biological breast tissue removed. Everything else, whether it’s sports, bathrooms, or puberty blockers is about MtF.
IRL and in the Social Media spaces, like X / FaceBook / YouTube the ones who believe and act like JK are the overwhelming majority of people.
People, and most especially women who identify as feminists, REALLY do not like the idea of Men being Women but most of them don’t care at all about Women who want to be Men.
Because Conservativism is about maintaining hierarchies. Men are (naturally) higher than women, so it’s only natural for women to aspire to be men. However, it’s against the proper order for a man to want to debase himself and lower himself on the hierarchy to become a woman. Therefore, it’s anathema.
(Oh, and also some either deep-rooted repressed homosexuality, or homophobia from fear of hitting on an attractive woman only to find out she’s a trans woman.)
@partial_accumen I would suspect that a lot of transphobes are more hostile to MtF than FtM, if you could get inside their heads.
Note that the nightmare scenario most commonly invoked to promote laws concerning bathrooms is men in women’s bathrooms, rarely the opposite.
Also, modern fashion has given women a lot of freedom to wear men’s-style clothing, but men don’t get the same. People seem to expect men to look like men and some get very set off when they don’t.
I would suspect that a lot of transphobes are more hostile to MtF than FtM
There’s no need to “suspect”, it’s plain as day. Almost the entire fight about Trans is in regards to MtF.
People, and most especially women who identify as feminists, REALLY do not like the idea of Men being Women but most of them don’t care at all about Women who want to be Men.
This whole thing is an attempt to control men.
Nah, she’s said some awful stuff about trans men too, more paternalistic and insulting than actively hostile though. I’m not going to go looking for what she said though because I’d like to continue having a nice day.
It truly makes me think most “martyrs” in history must have been insufferable pieces of shit, as well.
Because it’s only these people who want to make a “martyr” of themselves, endlessly playing the fucking victim while having enough money to make Solomon blush.
I look forward to the pending arrest video, where she is suddenly all apologetic and saying sorry, and not understanding why they won’t let her go because she just said sorry to them.
I’m sorry, I thought this was America.
I’m sorry, I thought this was
AmericaScotland
I love that episode.
Some people here really breaking their backs with the freeze peach of haring trans.
I have never and will never give her a dime. My kid is banned. We will never stream 1 second or flip 1 page.
Tbh, it’s a badly thought out “law” that seems to be just a case of letting the police decide whether to act on it or not, letting them deal with things based on their own prejudices (e.g. weed is illegal in the UK, but if you were a racist copper you could arrest some black youths for smoking it and not some white kids). It’s cowardly politics, and avoids actually defining anything or drawing any lines in the sand.
Also, it’s not a crime to be a moron on Twitter. One might argue it’s where they belong.
People who use biology as an excuse to hate on people have no grasp on how biology even works. You should know that gender disphoria, gender transitions and other genders as well come in fact with small noticeable differences, such as the way the brain is wired and even the many mechanisms inside your body. Unfortunately, such differences are not noticeable right off the bat. But they exist. Also FFS, she could have just enjoyed her harry potter money, maybe she could go silent after the first tweet but come on! There’se no reason to go any further, no reason. She now dwells with the likes of her conservative friends - She’s no victim. There’s more money there than many of us could see in a lifetime. She actually has too much -
“Am I being detained!?!?!?”
–JK Rowling
“Do it”-
everyone with a sense of justice or humor
Both things this asshole could never understand, if her writing is anything to go by.
I’m always confused by people that are willing to tank their body of work and public image in order to yell on a soapbox for culture war bullshit.
I personally respect people that value their values above money.
She obviously thinks having a safe space for women is more important than having more money and she is willing to stand up for her views.
It’s respectable that she is willing to waste money for her views, not the opposite.
Also I do think freedom of speech is exceptionally important. Possibly more important than anything.
Tank? Harry Potter games are still selling incredibly well. The Fantastic Beasts movies have grossed $1.8 billion dollars. The Wizarding World at Universal Orlando continues to be a major attraction.
She could have, and should have, fucked off to her own private tropical island after that but no she had nothing better to do than be an insufferable asshole to trans people.
Tom from MySpace is the only rich person I know of that did the smart thing
Actually Fantastic Beasts had the be shelved because no one likes the ones after the first one… Grindelwald’s Crime that made him “Literally worse than Voldemort!” was… Wanting to stand up to the Nazis… That one was especially problematic
And given that JK Rowling is officioally recognized by the German Government as a holocaust denier, we can go ahead and assume the worst, that she’s one of those “Our grandparents fought on the wrong side!” nutters
She has all the “fuck you” money one could have.
This is mental illness by now! Seriously wtf? Why is this so important for her that she can’t stop talking about it? If I had some irrational hate for trans woman, I would not go on about it in public all the time.
Don’t we have more important problems then to bash people that are so unhappy with their body that they are willing to take hormones and let people operate on their genitals?
This is such a simple thought, everybody should be able to think it, right? But on the other hand, she is not the only one hating transgender women or men. I mean it is not right to hate people for that. But if I would hate trans people then I would just not invite them for dinner and would stop talking about them all the time.
It must be some form of mental illness I have no other explanation.
I have another one.
After enough time has passed since the initial conflict, it becomes less about the subject of the conflict and more about the conflict in itself. The reason becomes secondary and instead the goal becomes winning against the other side or at least making it hurt.
Yes I think you are right. And I think this is borderline a mental illness if you can’t stop lashing out. As I understand it, she somehow thinks by bashing trans women she is doing something good for women. Trans women are somehow taking away her womanhood or something like that. I have read something like this several times from Rowling but I have no clue how trans woman could do that. But Rowling is obsessed with that, for what ever reason.
Following this train of thought, what I gathered from other comments is that she had a bad experience with a man in the past, her targeted social media experience likely concentrated the bad news in that direction and her view is now that the trans movement is just evil men looking to invade women’s personal spaces in order to abuse them.
If you look at her as someone bombarded with Fox News type of content, then perhaps that kind of paranoia and fear is what makes her so vocal in her opposition.
Yeah. And it’s important to understand that the pipeline she followed does a swap. Once she became convinced trans women were the problem she began associating with men who are misogynists and support the harm to cis women that she fears. By the time she’s standing with Matt Walsh and funding groups that also oppose abortion access protecting cis women is no longer her primary concern, it may be what she thinks is her primary concern but if so she believes that trans women are a larger threat than those who oppose the right to choose to stop being pregnant or men who want to relegate cis women back to traditional gender roles.
“Strange bedfellows” comes to mind in this regard.
Repressed self hatred.
The whole projecting thing that people like this do.
Nah its the female equivalent of white knight syndrome. They think they’re saving womanhood from impostors.
Why not both, M’lud?
No its straight up fascist misogyny bullshit.
They genuinely believe women are worse than men. So they invent a magical mystical quality to womanness that let’s them keep believing that, and live like they’re roughly equal with men at the same time
Trans people fuck all that shit up by forcing us to actually look at gender, putting all that shit in contact woth reality amd forcing us to really look at it, which invalidates their magical mystical shit they invented to call themselves feminists while still being archaic repressive misogynist pieces of shit who passionately hate women.
Flattening the territory until its as featureless as the map they drew.
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have bigger problems than someone else getting bodily autonomy.
Except her problem doesn’t seem to be with people having bodily autonomy, her problem seems to be with trans women in what should be safe spaces for women.
I’m not saying I agree with her views, but it seems all nuance has been lost from public debate.
her problem seems to be with trans women in what should be safe spaces for women.
She claims that that is her problem, but her solution isn’t “let’s make sure that we harshly prosecute those who abuse the goodwill of other’s trusting in your own self identification to invade and attack women”, is “all trans women are really perverts trying to invade women spaces to attack women”
So, really, her problem seems to be with trans people existing at all…
Trans women are women. This is not complicated.
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She is so lost in her own transphobia, that she now hangs out and financially support people who are not only transphobic but openly homophobic, conservative, misogynistic and fascist, things i still believe she is against. But she is so blinded by hate that she is willing to ignore all those things to support transphobia
If you are interested in a (in my opinion) nuanced look at it I would like to point you towards the YouTube Channel Contrapoints Video on the matter, in case you haven’t seen it.
Hitler’s problem with Jews seemed to be was what should be done about them destroying the German economy.
I’m not saying I agree with his views, but it seems all nuance has been lost from public debate.
Ah, at last. Godwin’s Law.
Believe it or not, “Godwin’s Law” doesn’t mean “no one should ever mention Hitler during a discussion.”
https://gizmodo.com/godwin-of-godwins-law-by-all-means-compare-these-shi-1797807646
Also, Rowling is a holocaust denier. https://www.salon.com/2024/03/15/jk-rowling-trans-nazis-holocaust-denial/
Should Hitler not be brought up when people defend a holocaust denier?
I know what it means. And, by all means, people can and should talk about Hitler and the Nazis in their historical context. WW2 was the defining conflict of the 20th century, after all. But you used it in the reductio ad Hitlerum sense. It’s just so boring to constantly see every Lemmy thread devolve into calling people Nazis or comparing them to Nazis, which is just the former with an extra step. It becomes meaningless after a while. So, when we are faced with an actual proto-fascist like Trump, the comparison has been exhausted and has little impact.
Not a reduction at all. The beginning of the Holocaust was when the Nazis destroyed the Institute for Sexual Research and burned all the books. I used Jews as an example rather than that because people were making the same “he’s keeping Germany safe” argument about Hitler persecuting the Jews that the person above is making about “they’re keeping women safe.” And I would not be at all surprised if they made the “they’re keeping women safe” argument about persecuting trans people then too.
It is encouraging genocide while defending someone who denied the Holocaust.
Why you think that is a reduction, I don’t know. It seems like a pretty close 1:1 comparison with Germany in 1933 to me.
Hitler didn’t start the death camps the second he came to power. You know that, right?
f I had some irrational hate for trans woman, I would not go on about it in public all the time.
Even when I was a homophobic theist shithead I knew better than to say anything.
Or at least to say something else on occasion!
How does this cunt order soup!? Uses the t word like Morse code?
Operative word in your post is “irrational.” If she were being rational, she would probably shut up about it. She’s not either, unfortunately.
I’m glad that Harry Potter wasn’t my favourite series growing up, knowing how bad of a person she is. With that said, it’s still possible to separate the art from the artist, so it’s okay either way but personally I just feel better knowing it wasn’t my number one favourite series growing up.
If I had her money, I wouldn’t spend my time bullying people and starting fights with the police. She’s clearly insane in the most fundamental way.
… so arrest her?
Hate is the keyword here, stating something factual is fine but as we all know someone somewhere will misuse this act if they are butthurt enough
I’m utterly befuddled by this woman; somehow she hates the idea of trans women so much that she’s now closely allied with Posie Parker, a woman who hates women, hates suffrage, has advocated for the removal of women’s rights for years, and shares closely held opinions from just right of Goebbels.
Somehow Jo has become so utterly single-minded, she’s paired with the antithesis of all the other things she believes in (and still claims to believe as justification of her anti-trans nonsense).
Ironic: She tried to insert herself as Hermoine/McGonagall, but she really was Umbridge all along.
