The “Harry Potter” author slammed a newly enacted hate-crime law in Scotland in a series of posts on X in which she referred to transgender women as men.
J.K. Rowling shared a social media thread on Monday, the day a new Scottish hate-crime law took effect, that misgendered several transgender women and appeared to imply trans women have a penchant for sexual predation. On Tuesday, Scottish police announced they would not be investigating the “Harry Potter” author’s remarks as a crime, as some of Rowling’s critics had called for.
“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”
Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity.
Denying somes’s personhood is more than speech. It’s dangerous, and can cause actual harm, especially for someone with such a huge platform, with special influence over children
While I want to agree with the sentiment behind what you said I find it really hard to get behind government legally telling people what they can and can’t say. I personally feel like it’s every skinhead assole’s right to say racist awful shit. I also feel like if you’re going to exercise that right with reckless abandon, you’re gonna get fucked up by some people who don’t take kindly. As detrimental as their regressive views may be, I believe we simply cannot have legal punishments for saying something the government doesn’t agree with. It’s a very slippery slope.
I’m tired of having to do this work and it never ending. Get a law passed and start enforcing. People are being harmed and it shouldn’t be this much work to defend them. Perhaps absolute free speech regulated by individuals was scalable when not every deplorable pos had a worldwide megaphone.
Is that what happened in 1930s Germany or the 1950s U.S. South?
Racism is an implicit call to violence. Suggesting that it can also be solved by violence is not borne out by history.
So you’re saying we should form a mob and fuck her up then, that’s your preferred solution to this problem?
While this specific case may even be somewhat justified, where does it end? What constitutes an insult so grievous that the government should punish you for it?
Misgendering, alright. Attacking someone’s honor? Probably. Putting together an angry, slur-filled rant? Perhaps. Insulting someone’s parents? Hmm.
And so forth. This is an incredibly slippery slope, one that virtually all democracies currently existing have avoided to go down because it inevitably leads to oppression.
This “slippery slope” of yours has not been a problem in the many countries that have adopted it.
Not even in Brazil under Bolsonaro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
I am German. We have restrictions on free speech in place, primarily around Nazism and Israel.
Our government is literally curbing anything critical of israel with those restrictions at this very moment.
Sounds like a reason to make the law better, not throw it out.
I don’t think that’s the lesson here. More that even the most well intentioned restrictions can and will be abused by the government once they have that power. If our far right gets into the government I cant imagine what kind of dystopian crap they will try to do with it.
I am similarly very sceptical of the constant debate for more surveillance and online control in the name of ”protecting the children”. Another very worthy, and very emotionally charged cause where most people will instinctively agree before even thinking about the consequences.
Again- that did not happen when Bolsonaro took power in Brazil.
So maybe the problem is your laws, not hate speech laws in general.
You’re acting like Germany is the only country in the world that has these laws.
And you are acting as if because there is one struggling democracy somewhere on the world who has yet to abuse it, all other incidents and examples throughout history for the inevitable abuse of such power are not valid.
You’ve given me one single example of abuse. The one in your country.
Again, that sounds like a problem with your country’s laws in specific.