JK Rowling in ‘arrest me’ challenge over Scottish hate crime law

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.

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.

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?

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.

You are misunderstanding. They are saying that biological sex is not the same as gender and it's clear that a trans woman's brain is much closer to their identified gender than the one assigned to them at birth.

Bill Gates started a charity.

Steve Jobs killed himself because he thought he knew better than his doctors. Well, that's wacked out too, but at least it's not being a Nazi...

I think a factor with some of them, probably both the ones you mentioned, is that they can't handle criticism. So when they get any push back they double down. Then they get drawn into conservative nonsense that reinforces their beliefs. Then it's a downward spiral as they get radicalized far beyond their original positions.

You can add Markus Persson to that sample group

No, not even a little bit. There is a difference between being an asshole and committing a hate crime. Hate crime laws, when properly crafted and enforced, are an important component of a functional society. They can act as a deterrent, but they are also a way for those materially harmed by a hate crime to get justice. Free speech is never a universal right, anywhere in the world. There are always legitimate restrictions to ensure the public's overall health and safety.

You know it doesn’t work that way but spout nonsense anyway.

That's already the law. Look at Florida.

Are you seriously arguing against hate crime laws??

Part of it is that having a large captive audience hanging on to your every word really starts to amplify toxic characteristics in those with the predisposition for shittiness. Like Musk or Trump, their descend only came when they became active on social media.

Twitter is a horrible thing.

I really dont think Rowling started off this shitty. From what I've heard it sounds like she has baggage regarding men she hasnt dealt with and its led her down this incredibly shitty path

Yeah Rowling has been a notorious TERF for many years now.

If I remember correctly, it all started when she retweeted something that was a bit ignorant and was called out for it on Twitter, but then she kept doubling down until it got to this point, when she could have just stopped talking about it.

It's not that Twitter suddenly turned her into a bad person, but it definitely brought out the worst in her.

I see your point but there are about a hundred or so thoughts I have a day that I am way way cowardly to record. The position she is in with a large fanbase, lots of money, and interacting with pixels probably contributed to her lack of filter.

So right she might have been intrinsically not a very good person prior but all this stuff hasn't helped her keep a lid on it.

Jill Murphy

The worst witch right?

I see the movie has Tim curry in it. I'm sold. Appreciate the recommendation

I mean tbf, the books were written for children. If you don't like them, then maybe it's because they're not for you anymore. Or are you referring to something else?

My first time reading them, at the age of like, 10? 11? I was so excited for Order of the Phoenix because it was coming out soon and I'd loved the first one that I got as a birthday gift. I slammed through 2 and 3, then 4 just kept going and felt so bad that by the end I wasn't excited for Order anymore and didn't finish the series until Order was releasing as a film. They weren't even that good as a kid if you read anything else

The cause and effect may be reversed there.

There were always questionable elements from the books, like the depictions of goblins and elves. But knowing what we know now, these elements cannot be brushed off any more.

I’m very torn on this issue, like I 100% agree on Polanski and Allen(especially Woody not that Polanski isn’t incredibly shitty too but most of his work isn’t about sexualizing minors, whereas the primary and ultimate love interest for Woodys stand in character in Manhattan is a child). I might, and big emphasis on might watch Chinatown or the Ninth Gate again after he’s dead and in the cold cold ground, but I damn sure won’t pay for any of them if I decide to make that call.

And I only say this because there have been so many shitty people in Hollywood and the movie making business in general I think it’s impossible to watch most without supporting someone awful. Weinstein produced a ton of great films, Brando anally raped Maria Schneider in Last Tango and the scene we see is the one and only take if memory serves(I don’t watch that film anymore but I still watch the Godfather every few years), Kevin Spacey and Brian Singer are predators but I’m sure I’ll watch the Usual Suspects again at some point in my life.

I obviously don’t besmirch anyone that simply can’t bring themselves to engage in art by people we know to be bastards. But I kinda look at it the same way as buying a pair of Nikes, there is certainly a lot of profit from suffering that produced those shoes but I don’t necessarily think anyone is a bad person for wanting some new Jordans

Yeah honestly if history remembering who Edison and Dahl were didn't sink GE and Wonka, Harry Potter will be fine... but fuck, she did suicide her own legacy

Yeah, like, I don't know what Frank Herbert or J.R.R.Tolkein's stances on trans rights would have been either, and it doesn't impact me reading their work at all.

On the other hand, I do not want to give this person any money, so there's that. I won't be spending money on her stuff.

I miss when my biggest problem with JK Rowling was her desire to keep writing new material for Harry Potter, but instead of ya know... making spinoff books, maybe do a TV Show, maybe get in touch with Archie at some point for an expanded universe comic: I mean God knows they need the money after Sonic went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back... oh right Warner Bros. owns the franchise... so I guess DC could have done the Expanded Universe comic?

No instead of doing any of that she just randomly dripped out plotpoints from the internet, and always stuff that made no fucking sense... like

"Dumbledore was gay the whole time, despite the fact that I NEVER HINTED AT THIS! Also Wizards don't have toilets! They shit themselves and magic away the poop! By the way, Hermonie was always black despite the fact I always described her as being pale skinned!"

The "Dumbledore was gay" was especially infuriating because she wrote the "Fantastic Breasts" movies, and instead of expanding upon the Dumbledore's gay thing at all, they just use the "They're just really good friends!" cover, ya know, the one that's an amazing progressive way to imply that without running afoul of the "Moral Majority".... in 1992....

But the medal ultimately goes to "Hermonie is black!", because the only reason she came up with it was to try to better canonize the "Cursed Child" play.. which wound up having a black actress play Hermonie.

Instead of doing the adult thing and admitting that most writers accepted by the mainstream are white, and therefore an overwhelming majority of characters in fiction are white, and that's... kind of not good as it shows the bias we've given in favor of one specific group over all others, and that maybe in the future we'll have more racially diverse character casts.. but until then, because we have more white characters than white actors, sometimes white characters are going to be played by non-white actors, and even if that's not how we typically envision the character... Get over it.

No instead of doing that, she just felt the need to make another fucking retcon and claimed she intended to have Hermonie be black the whole fucking time! I hope they fired the moron who cast Emma Watson for the role in the movie then.... that talentless hack who knew nothing of the books.. checks notes Joanne Kathleen Rowling

I'm sorry but it takes a special kind of narcissim to attempt to retcon, not just a fictional work, but reality itself!

Fuck that shit. She doesn't make any such distinction in her hate tirades. It's very easy to find many tweets and similar quotes of her speaking about transsexual people as a whole. So yeah, she very much has spoken about OP as well. And she's a freaking author, she doesn't get any excuses for not knowing how to write more specifically. She knows very well what she says and who it will affect when she generalises all transsexual people. And it for damn sure isn't some imaginary group or predators willing to go through all the hassle of being trans to prey on women but the trans community as a whole.

Yeah it is understandable that you would understand it that way. Unfortunately, that's not really what her whole stance is. She goes beyond that and tells the people that protections for all trans people (trans women in particular) should be rolled back. Take, for instance, her stance on trans women in prisons. She says all trans women should be put in mens' prisons. However, many trans women who are put in mens' prisons are often sexually abused (source will come if I remember)

All in all, she is a raging transphobe and is buddies with even homophobic figures. I personally find this list of her transphobia quite damning.

ahh yes trans people, a historically privileged class that millions of people are pretending to be to get :checks notes: hormone treatment

Absolutely nobody is doing that. Grow the fuck up, it's so obviously a completely invented problem they use to demonize people trying to be themselves.

And if any person ends up being a sexual criminal, then they will be dealt with according to the law.

Sounds to me they were admitting to being human and thought about it, but dont really want to give in to a harmful base impulse like that...

Edit: Removed some redundancy

Yes I think you are right. And I think this is borderline a mental illness if you can't stop lashing out. As I understand it, she somehow thinks by bashing trans women she is doing something good for women. Trans women are somehow taking away her womanhood or something like that. I have read something like this several times from Rowling but I have no clue how trans woman could do that. But Rowling is obsessed with that, for what ever reason.

Or at least to say something else on occasion!

How does this cunt order soup!? Uses the t word like Morse code?

Nah its the female equivalent of white knight syndrome. They think they're saving womanhood from impostors.

Yep, there really needs to be the distinction between private remarks and public instigation in free speech law.

Otherwise you're not protecting anything except the right of the loudest to monopolize the airwaves via intimidation of dissent and "the other"

It's not freedom of speech unless everyone feels safe using it, be it from fear of retaliation by the state, or by the tyranny of cousins.

No, but it seems like “stirring up hate” is a crime. And, as a public figure who is publicly hateful, she potentially fits that description

According to the article the law doesn't apply in a general sense.

It appears its written (along with another law) to only apply to an aggressor's interaction with a specific person. So the law wouldn't apply to Rowling's comments from twitter about the group in general. No specifically named person is targeted.

Also, something I just learned from this about Rowling's Transphobia that was strange to me. She doesn't appear to have any problem with FtM, but only problems with MtF. I have never run across someone who has such specific bigotry in this case.

Even if you did (like you won the big lottery or something). Being rich turns people into assholes too. Your ego inflates massively.

Well...nothing, lol.

Pirate her works?

There is, of course, homo superior, but I don’t foresee Professor X swooping in to settle this argument, what with the whole “saving the world” shtick.

Although, to be honest, the world could use a bit of saving right now.

PS: I hope you’re doing well, and getting through Sophie‘s Choice. I’ve heard it’s a tough read, especially after surviving a game of Presidential Election Scrabble…💋💋💋

Hoarding is usually considered a mental illness, unless it's money. Maybe we should consider that a problem too.

I’ve become convinced that power, including wealth, causes brain damage.

Why would anyone want a high drama life?

Money.

I'm in Canada. The number of people who think we have free speech laws similar to our neighbours (and what they think they can get away with) is staggering.

It's a "freedom to" vs "freedom from" issue. The US is much more on the "freedom to" side. For example, freedom to own firearms overrules freedom from gun violence. In this case, it's freedom to say nasty shit overrules freedom from hearing nasty shit. This is also why libertarianism is so popular here (they're all about having the "freedom to," even when it's at others' expense). This isn't always the case of course (our strict zoning laws and development codes are a great example of "freedom from" overruling "freedom to").

The will never come to US because it would become a modern day witch hunt used for political purposes of whoever is in power at that time.

And just for the record, this is not a theory. People HAVE been murdered.

Okay, it's nth time I see the undercover pervs/rapists about trans folk. The hell happened?

So who is deciding what opinions are puting people in danger. US government for example thinks that whistleblowers Manning and journalist like Assange are puting people in danger.

The question is where the line is drawn and how to make sure the state is not abusing those powers to suppress opinions that it sees dangerous. A good example are cases when protecting the children is used as argument for more surveillance. This seems foelr me to go along the same lines.

That's cryptic.

Is there a crime for nebulous comments?

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.

You should maybe read the law.

Part 2 Section 3, 32: [...] It provides that it is an offence for a person to behave in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner, or communicate threatening, abusive or insulting material to another person, with either the intention to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins, or where it is a likely consequence that hatred will be stirred up against such a group.

It's talking about likely consequence not after a crime has been committed. Also:

Part 2 Section 5, 47: Section 5(1) creates an offence of possession of racially inflammatory material. It provides that it is an offence for a person to have in their possession threatening, abusive or insulting material with a view to communicating the material to another person, with either the intention to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins, or where it is likely that, if the material were communicated, hatred will be stirred up against such a group.

Which makes possession of inflammatory material an offence. Which is rather murky on it's own, but even more so in digital age.

Later it quite literally defines on which terms it's permissive to discuss sexual orientation or religion.

To be fair, maybe I missed something so feel free to correct me:

https://www.parliament.scot/-/media/files/legislation/bills/s5-bills/hate-crime-and-public-order-scotland-bill/introduced/explanatory-notes-hate-crime-and-public-order-scotland-bill.pdf

I, for one, get angry at big gubment limiting my free spech to call people slurs at home depot just like how I get angry at big government for limiting my god given right to come and go as I please when I break into people's houses and watch them sleep.

Can you explain to me then, what exactly is freedom of speech? Yelling fire in a crowded theater isn't using speech then, it's assault on other persons by threatening harm. Criticize the government? That's not freedom of speech, that's just unlicensed protest. Sing a song protesting a war? You go to jail for treason.

Freedom of speech absolutely means being free from the government imposing consequences for speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater comes from Schenck v United States which found that speech must pose a clear and present danger to be able to be held criminally liable for it. And Brandenburg v Ohio narrowed the definition even further, that speech must be "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".

Despite our views on JK's abhorrent rhetoric, you cannot say that mis-gendering trans people is inciting imminent lawlessness.

Your comment demonstrates a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of free speech.

Speech is a marvelous thing that should be protected, but freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of using speech to commit other crimes.

This is peak Reddit, now peak lemmy

If speech has a price, it's not free

Agreed. It just becomes problematic when speech itself is redefined as crime, that is what I'm arguing against. And the the line with the consequences is not that clear either. Someone could read a book and go an kill someone. I personally think it's a hard thing to really understand consequences of words.

Also, remember, not every country is the USA where breaking the law = going to jail.

If you're poor and black, sure.

Notice how many times Trump has flagrantly broken the law.

I'm from Germany, the only way insulting someone is going to be a criminal case is if you insult police. Otherwise it gets almost always dropped.

So you want the government to decide which ideas are ok and which should be banned? How could this ever go wrong.

Where you draw the line? And who is drawing it? Will you be equally happy when conservatives will use the same tools against opinions they see as dangerous?

I disagree with her on pretty much everything, except on the freedom of speech part - even for speech I might personally find disgusting.

What she’s saying here probably doesn’t rise to the level of criminality under their law. She’s just doing performative nonsense while proving yet again that she doesn’t understand the difference between sex and gender.

It's like "there's only 3 states of matter, that's basic science!"

Sigh. Yeah. Thought so. 😭