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.
Have you actually read the law? Because i’m getting the feeling this is all talk straight from your ass. The entire bill is mostly a consolidation of existing hate crime laws with sex and gender added to the protected classes. Section 4 is probably the one most of you read about on twitter and are basing your entire argument on, it defines that you’re not allowed to say things considered harassment or to incite hatred. You cannot just pester one person for just being gay. YOU can’t just post about how bad you think gay people are and ask others to agree, because you’re inspiring new people to harass others.
Section 9 goes on to expand on this, and very explicitly states that freedom of expression takes precedence and you cannot simply be arrested for criticizing a protected class. Meaning, you saying “i don’t agree with transgender people, a man should be called a man” is acceptable. You cannot say “transgender people don’t deserve rights” because you are harassing them directly.
The rest of the bill is mostly defining what classes are, and indicates that a lot of the provisions are meant to be used with other laws, it says “offense” a lot, which seems to be getting interpreted as “i am offended” when they’re actually defining it as a crime that has been committed. They specify an example that the bill does not apply if you simply assault a police officer, but if you shout something at him about his religion or asexual identity, the bill applies as this is a hate crime.
Here’s a link to a document that lays the bill out in layman’s terms:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/pdfs/aspen_20210014_en.pdf
So again, please explain your issue with the bill? You’re upset you can’t go out and harass gay people all day?
Glad that someone else actually read the law.
That exactly what I personally think is problematic, because I would fundamentally disagree that this is “directly” - but you are right that this is exactly that will be an offence under that law. The same goes for possession of inflammatory material (Part 3, Section 5, 47). Especially with digital media that seems rather murky.
Again 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
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.
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.
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
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.