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.

  • iLoveFishing@lemmy.today
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    7 months ago

    Again, do you have any quotes from her that count as hate speech? Not looking for editorialized or sensationalized headlines

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If only that article quoted her in it more than once…

      I don’t really have to hold your hand and copy and paste the quotes from the article, do I? It’s not a very long article.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I do. I gave you a link with direct quotes from her. Again, do I really need to copy and paste them here? Are you really unable to just read a short article that they’re in? I mean, I’ll paste them if you are actually that lazy. Are you really that lazy?

          • iLoveFishing@lemmy.today
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            7 months ago

            Give me her worst quote that counts as hate speech to you. At this point I think you’re proving my point here, you are classifying criticism as hate speech and using it to go after political opponents.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 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.”