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.

  • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
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    7 months ago

    I swear every single person arguing against this bill hasn’t read it.

    The gist of it is consolidating existing hate crime laws, adding sexual orientation and gender to the protected classes, repealing the law of blasphemy, and then the main one people are on about, outlawing “inciting hate” and spending several entire pages defining exactly what that means and how its still covered by freedom of expression.

    As you said, you can use the slurs. You can be a shit person.

    What this seems to be addressing is the fact that ANYBODY can have a platform nowadays and some of those people use their platform to harm other people, whether indirectly or not.