J.K. Rowling challenges Scottish police over law on gendered language
J.K. Rowling challenges Scottish hate crime law by sharing controversial views on gender identity, risking arrest according to the legislation’s terms. This move sparks debate and draws support from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak while facing criticism from activists and fellow celebrities for her stance on transgender issues and women’s rights. J.K. Rowling defies Scottish hate crime law with her views on gender identity, potentially risking arrest. Her actions spark debates, earn praise from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and attract criticism from activists and celebrities over her stance on transgender issues and women’s rights.
The famed author of the Harry Potter series dared Scottish authorities to arrest her after a new vague “hate crime” law went into effect on Monday.
In a lengthy post on X, J.K. Rowling published a series of stories about biological men who identify as women engaged in sexual criminal activity or holding female roles at lead institutions and female sports leagues.
“In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls,” Rowling wrote.
But most women aren’t axe-toters or sex offenders, so let’s talk role models! Guilia Valentino (in red) wanted to play on the women’s team ‘because of sisterhood, validation and political visibility’. Naturally, she was given some boring cis girl’s place. Yay for inclusion! 6/11 pic.twitter.com/zl5i41RqBG
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 1, 2024
The new law, enacted in 2021 and implemented Monday, criminalizes acts “stirring up hatred.” Perpetrators under the law can be convicted if found to behave “in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting.” Local police are given broad discretion to enforce the law, with apparent victims given deference to press charges. Those convicted may face a fine and up to 7 years in prison. Rowling taunted authorities to enforce the law as written Monday with her online posts routinely condemned by leftists as “hate speech.”
Two years ago, for example, the U.K. Parliament rejected a petition to make “deliberately misgendering” someone a “hate crime” on the basis that “The act of deliberately mis-gendering someone is already a hate crime.”
Rowling warned the new Scottish hate crime law is ripe for abuse:
The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.
Rowling said she is “currently out of the country” but added, “If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is backing Rowling’s stand.
“We should not be criminalising people saying common sense things about biological sex, clearly that isn’t right,” Sunak said, according to the BBC.
Far-left activists have attacked Rowling for years over the author’s public condemnations of the transgender movement erasing women’s spaces, particularly in sports.
“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” she wrote in 2020. “I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”
For this, Rowling was criticized by Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, two stars of the Harry Potter film series.
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
[LISTEN:[LISTEN:Why We Must Separate Artists’ Professional And Personal Expression]
Rowling, however, refused to capitulate under the cancellation campaign and has remained defiant against death threats.
“To be fair, when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go,” Rowling wrote in 2021.
Yes, but now hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me I’ve realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/qb1RrCFqy0
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 19, 2021
Now, Rowling is at the center of a standoff for free speech by challenging Scottish authorities to enforce the dystopian new hate crime law.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
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