The Harry Potter author described several transgender women as men in a series of social media posts.

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.

  • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
    1·
    3 months ago

    That exactly what I personally think is problematic, because I would fundamentally disagree that this is “directly”

    I find Rowling opinion on trans people rather disgusting and genuinely damaging. But the law seems to me rather excessive. But maybe I’m missing something.

    I think it makes a lot more sense if you look at this bill while thinking about communities and interactions in modern times - ANYBODY can have a twitter, youtube, tiktok, etc account and immediately have access to a platform where they can potentially speak to thousands of people, and some of them are pretty impressionable (thinking andrew tate) - so as a community leader you should have some awareness that people are going to act on your ideas because they look up to you. I think this bill is trying to limit cases like that, and also cases of bullying where people have been harassed to the point of suicide simply for their identity

    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
      1·
      3 months ago

      ANYBODY can have a twitter, youtube, tiktok, etc account and immediately have access to a platform where they can potentially speak to thousands of people,

      That is a bit trivializing. Not everybody is able to build a following, you need to bring something to the table for people to watch you. Given it can be just being somehow entertaining like tate. But it’s not like every bigot gets automatically Rowling’s reach, she had to write a rather popular children book for it.

      and some of them are pretty impressionable

      That is the core question to what degree is someone responsible for actions others created by their words. There are obvious clear cases but I think the law gets rather unclear with “or where it is a likely consequence that hatred will be stirred up against such a group.” (Part 2, Section 3. 32). That’s rather broad and unclear in my opinion.

      • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
        2·
        3 months ago

        Yeah there’s a lot of ambiguity in the law, they try to define it but they use “what a reasonable person would believe” a bunch, which leaves a LOT of room for interpretation. If a bigot is in power, none of it is unreasonable to him.

        I’m not sure how i would fix it though, theyre trying to address a serious flaw in the modern world, Because intentional or not some of these personalities inspire actions that get people hurt or killed… its a bit of a double edged sword

        • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
          1·
          3 months ago

          Governments have a bad track record (in my opinion) when it comes to vaguely defined laws.

          I would absolutely agree that we have a gigantic problem with modern forms of mass communication. For me it’s beyond just bigots spewing hate but also foreign governments influencing people. For example in Germany a lot of far right AFD talking points has obvious roots in russian media propaganda. And I will not pretend that I have any kind of answer but I feel like it has to go deeper than trying to regulate specific cases of speech.