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.
so you suggest completely deregulating hate speech, then? how about direct incitement of violence? how about slander and defamation?
there are many restrictions on “freedom of speech” already, and it’s not like anyone is complaining that people calling in bomb threats shouldn’t get arrested. there NEED to be restrictions on speech. imagine if advertisers could just lie with no repercussions, or if you could state your intent to kill someone and it would be illegal to arrest you until you actually do it.
calling a policeman a pig is not hate speech. it is hateful, but there’s a big difference between calling a cop a pig and misgendering or using slurs against trans people.
minority groups are especially vulnerable to hate speech and there are already laws in place to protect them from certain kinds of speech. this is especially true with trans people, as we have seen their suicide rate linked very clearly with the presence of hate and absence of support.
we can say “the repercussions must only be social” but that leaves it up to the people to enforce it. what about minorities living surrounded by people who don’t support them? are they supposed to just grin and bear it? for a trans person, this could easily and quickly drive them to suicide.
I will never advocate that simple (especially accidental) misgendering should be grounds for arresting somebody. but these acts, when done intentionally, actively spread hate, misinformation, and tangible harm which touches the lives of trans people. this is why we must choose which is more important: the lives and safety of these trans people, or the comfort and “freedom” of people who want to see them eradicated. your freedom ends where it would violate another person’s freedom or basic rights.
this choice has been made on many other matters, which I touched on before. we have repeatedly found that certain kinds of speech are harmful enough to warrant legal repercussions. refusing to regulate this kind of hate speech just takes the side of the oppressor; it means trans people have no recourse and it becomes easy to spread massive misinformation campaigns (as Republicans are currently doing) which directly leads to people dying (dozens of anti trans laws have been passed in dozens of states, and those states have extremely high trans suicide rates).
why do we need to respect the opinion of someone whose opinion is “trans people should die or go to jail”?