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.

Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.

  • Flying Squid
    link
    08 months ago

    Got it. You’re incredibly lazy. Here you go. I bolded the most relevant parts in case reading an entire paragraph plus a couple of other sentences is just too much effort:

    On the social media platform X, the author responded to post that challenged her: “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?” The author wrote, “How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?”

    Rowling replied to the tweet saying, “Neither of your articles support the contention that trans people were the first victims of the Nazis or that all research on trans healthcare was burned in 1930s Germany. You are engaging in lying, Alejandra.

    Holocaust denial is not “criticism.”