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.

  • root_beer@midwest.social
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    9 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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      9 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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        9 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.