JK Rowling challenges Scottish hate crime laws on the same day they take effect

The rule that came into effect this Monday makes it a crime to incite hatred against protected characteristics, including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.

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Williams Perdomo

1 de abril, 2024

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JK Rowling

J.K. Rowling insists on challenging woke laws. The renowned writer of the "Harry Potter" saga once again criticized transgender people and maintained that biological males are not women. Rowling published a thread on X in which she talked about several transgender people. In addition, she maintained that she is outside Scotland, but that "if what I have written here is considered a crime under the terms of the new law, I expect to be arrested when I return."

Rowling's comments came on the day the new Hate Crime and Public Order Act comes into force in Scotland. The law makes it a crime to incite hatred against certain characteristics, including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the Scottish newspaper The National.

"It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal," Rowling added in her messages.

Already last month, Rajan Barot, a lawyer and former fraud prosecutor, had warned the writer about the new law regarding her anti-LGBT rhetoric. However, Rowling made it clear that she has no intention of censoring or retracting her past comments. "You are best advised to delete the posts about [India Willoughby] as they will most likely contravene the new law. Start deleting!" Barot wrote on X.

Rowling replied: "If you genuinely imagine I'd delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools' jokes."

J.K. Rowling has had a very clear position regarding transgender people. She has insisted that it is a danger to allow biological men to participate in spaces that should be strictly for women. Last year, the author said on "The Witch Trails of JK Rowling" podcast that she had tried to understand the transgender community but, finally, came to the conclusion that there was something "dangerous" behind the movement:

Time will tell whether I've got this wrong. I can only say that I've thought about it deeply and hard and long and I've listened, I promise, to the other side. And I believe absolutely that there is something dangerous about this movement and it must be challenged. But at the same time, I have to tell you, a ton of "Potter" fans were still with me. And in fact, a ton of "Potter" fans were grateful that I'd said what I said.

The author also dedicated a few words to people who say that she herself had "betrayed" what she wrote in the "Harry Potter" saga. According to her, she never betrayed her books, but rather the readers did not understand them, since she has at all times defended the same position she maintained at the beginning:

I’m constantly told that I have betrayed my own books, but my position is that I’m absolutely upholding the positions that I took in "Potter." My position is that this activist movement in the form that it’s currently taking, echoes the very thing that I was warning against in "Harry Potter." ... I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious misogynistic movement that I think has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society. I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless.

2019, when JK Rowling was canceled

Rowling has not been afraid to express herself even though she knows that her position generates controversy. In fact, in 2019, she even warned her representatives not to force her to change her mind just before publishing the tweets that sparked the controversy:

I was thoughtful enough to call my rep team and tell them they couldn't argue with me to change my mind. And I read aloud what I was going to say because I felt they needed a warning.

J.K. Rowling's comments had reactions. For example, she was canceled for responding to an opinion article in which women were referred to as "people who menstruating":

"People who menstruate." I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

For this comment, a simple tweet, she received labels like "b*tch" and "feminazi." However, Rowling had the support of several personalities, such as two of the actors who belonged to the cast of the "Harry Potter" film saga, Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter.