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@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’m glad you’re backing it up, but honestly, the answer to this whole “biological science” bullshit is simper- it’s none of their fucking business how someone else identifies. I don’t care what “science” says is a man or a woman. If someone says they’re a woman, it’s not my fucking business to tell them they aren’t.

    • kescusay@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Absolutely agreed. I only bring it up because the bigots like to claim science is on their side (while usually rejecting science to back up some kind of religious nonsense). So it’s nice to be able to throw actual science in their faces.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’m glad to now have it for myself, so thank you for that, but I don’t know that showing them real science will work because they are not coming at this from a rational position. All they see is “man = penis, woman = vagina” and no amount of science will change their mind. Even bringing up basic things like people born with both sets of genitalia doesn’t phase them. “Well that’s just the exception to the rule,” as if that’s a thing in science. So when they say that they have science on their side, what they mean is that they’ve found some scientific studies that agreed with their preconceived, unscientific notions.

        As they say- you shouldn’t play chess with pigeons.

        • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          What I’ve heard a lot of people do is not make a whole show to convince the other person but to convince people who may be on the fence or uneducated on the subject. Any third party observer who might just be learning about stuff.

          Would you rather trust a random screeching about people birth genitals or someone who is posting scientific evidence to back up their claim and being calm and knowledgeable about the subject.

          I get it though, fuck em.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The issue at stake is people’s own fragile identities

      Let me clarify: JK Rowling’s childhood learning of “boys have penises and girls have vaginas” runs so deep into her understanding of how she understands being a human that giving it up is scary and threatening.

      • xkforce@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Tbh I think her hate comes down to two things: she was raped by a man and is paranoid because she never dealt with that trauma in a healthy way and she recognized the right wing as a crop to be harvested. She’s an ideological predator.

        • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Sad that she was raped but immediately declaring all trans people rapists just makes her an asshole. It’s a shame that people actually listen to her crap too.

    • root_beer@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      Exactly, none of this has any bearing on their lives and odds are enormously in favor of the likelihood that these people will never even meet a trans person—and if they did it would make zero difference to them—so the real solution is to let it the fuck go.

      All this talk about living rent-free in people’s minds and all that, yet here we are, you know?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        They may very well have met multiple trans people and never even known it. Their hatred for trans people is really just for the ones who can’t “pass.” They don’t think about the others. They think of “a man in a dress.” If you showed them a picture of Valentina Sampaio without saying who she was, they’d say she was a woman. And it would be fun to see their reaction when you told them she was trans because at least some of them would see her and be aroused.

        • root_beer@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          Yes, and that’s where the “it would make zero difference” part comes in. Leaving people well enough alone is so easy, it’s crazy how socially inept these ghouls can be.

    • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Except it is important in competition where lines must be drawn if we are to enact protected classes. If we don’t need to then that is a different discussion, but for now there are many segregated competitions of all types that exist, which means you’re wrong.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        By “competition,” do you mean sports? A form of entertainment?

        Why should I even care? Sports are not important to the way the world functions.