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.

Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.

  • niva@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 months ago

    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.

      • havocpants@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        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.

          • kinsnik@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            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

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          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.

              • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                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.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  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?

                  • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Well, comparing JK Rowling to Hitler and her fear of tran women to the Holocaust might be just a wee bit of exaggeration, eh? The purpose of citing Godwin’s Law is to remind people to step back and ask whether the person being discussed is actually similar in magnitude to Hitler and the Nazis.

        • kinsnik@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          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…

    • lath@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • niva@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • lath@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          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.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            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.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Or at least to say something else on occasion!

        How does this cunt order soup!? Uses the t word like Morse code?

    • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Operative word in your post is “irrational.” If she were being rational, she would probably shut up about it. She’s not either, unfortunately.