The once-beloved children’s author is working herself up over Scotland’s new bias law.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has jumped to defend J.K. Rowling, who is once again using her one wild and precious life to post obsessively about transgender women instead of doing literally anything else with her hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Harry Potter author took to X, formerly Twitter, on April 1 to share her thoughts on Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act, which went into effect the same day. The law criminalizes “stirring up hatred” related to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, trans identity, or being intersex, as the BBC reported. “Stirring up hatred” is further defined as communicating or behaving in a way “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive” against a protected group. The offense is punishable by imprisonment of up to seven years, a fine, or both.
In response to the legislation, Rowling posted a long thread naming several prominent trans women in the U.K., including Mridul Wadhwa, the CEO of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, and activist Munroe Bergdorf. Since it was April Fool’s day, Rowling decided to commemorate it by sarcastically affirming the womanhood of all the people she named in her thread. In the same breath that she said that a convicted child predator was “rightly sent to a women’s prison,” she also called out a number of trans women making anodyne comments about inclusion, seemingly implying that trans identity is inherently predatory.
read more: https://www.them.us/story/jk-rowling-rishi-sunak-social-media-trans
That law sounds terrible.
Because you don’t like how it’s being implemented or because you just straight up like hatred?
Because it sounds like it can be applied to any political view or person. It is just plain censorship. At the end of the day democracy depends on everyone having a voice, even if you find what they have to say hateful.
I don’t support hate speech but trying to ban it is very problematic
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
This man trained his girlfriend’s dog to give a Nazi salute to some offensive phrases as a joke. Shared it with a few friends on social media.
It was then leaked and the offensive joke that went viral and got 3 million views on YouTube.
Then because of the criminal case for hate speech the EDL (English Defence League) were able to bandwagon on the news cycle and spread some real hate.
So the law meant to prevent hate speech instead platformed a hate group and spread the original joke further to the point where it probably did cause offence. Because if you don’t know the person making the joke, you don’t know what they intend.
All because a Scottish judge was allowed and chose to ignore all context around the actual content.
It is a bad law.
I’m not one of the “can’t say anything these days” crowd, and in general I think there can be limitations on speech that have a positive affect on society.
But the law in Scotland specifically is absolutely trash in stating absolutes about speech when speech is always subjective and always surrounded by context.
That case is bullshit, yes. But still, if you had Rowling’s wealth and influence and wanted to enact policy change, would this be your approach?
If I had her wealth no one would ever see or hear from me again.
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Not everything I disagree with has to be illegal.
Especially when there are already consequences.
Rowling will face social consequences for her speech. It doesn’t have to be illegal.
Problems with the law usually affect those who do things people or governments don’t like. Not with conforming behaviour.
Clamping down on one freedom to protect another is ultimately harmful.
Usually it’s “to protect the children” which has obviously had a negative effect on the trans community in several countries.
In this case it’s “to protect minorities” and the actual law will punish jokes at the expense of bigots as much as bigotry.
It’s unlikely to be prosecuted but quoting Rowling’s hate speech to draw attention to it in a negative light is just as illegal as saying it in the first place. The law is once again only helping to turn her hate into a news story where she gets cast as the victim rather than the perpetrator.
That case is ridiculous, but that’s what the law was like before this new bill. The new bill makes it even less well defined
There’s a difference between saying what you think and being “threatening or abusive”. Note that nothing JK has done so far actually qualifies.
If she directed her audience to harass the ones she mocked that would be different. At a certain point that shouldn’t be allowed, no?
Won’t someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?
It is illegal already, she can’t make comments to her weirdly large base that have the same effect of causing violence or panic or fear thereof.
Hilarious that a chick who made her money off witchcraft and mildly pedophilic children’s stories takes issues with morality of all things.
Hate to ask, but I don’t want to google it, can you elaborate on that last bit?
Think about the plot of the books and get back to me on that one.
An abused boy becomes magical jesus and constantly fights magical hitler while attending magic school… I’m not getting the pedophilic bits unless you think children merely existing equates to pedophilia
If that’s how you read it.
There’s a teacher in the book who can see through clothes at a children’s school and its held in the book by administration as a good thing to have around… Think about that.
Ed: not enough?
A ghost woman who is canonically age 37 lives in the boys restroom of a children’s school and again canonically watches potter and others bathe… Its so well accepted its in the movies and no one thinks twice about it.
Polymorph potion, be anyone or anything of any age… I didn’t really need to explain that.
Luck potion canonically a psuedodate rape drug.
Love potion a literal and unabashed date rape drug.
What you said offends me. You should got to jail for spreading hate speech
You know how people sometimes talk about not interacting in good faith?
I upvoted you, as the other guy was not reading your post, but disagree with the general stance. What is “reasonable” is still somewhat defined by the current political climate, even if it’s not defined by a single person.
The UK government is currently very pro-Israel, and could easily use this to prosecute pro-Palestine/ceasefire protesters (assuming the existing anti-protest laws don’t get them).
It massively limits the rights of minority political opinions.
People can’t be trusted to not be assholes with their freedom.
Then go live in China or Russia
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This is no way to legislate. What is a reasonable person?
It is actually a very specific legal standard. If you like podcasts, one of the early episodes of More Perfect has a good segment on the reasonableness standard. The case is one about police violence and it is fairly emotional, so just keep that in mind for if you want to listen.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/episodes/mr-graham-and-reasonable-man
Especially since just asking genuine and reasonable questions gets you labeled as a bigot these days.
I have not once had this experience. Could you share some examples of such questions? I’m curious,
https://lemmy.world/comment/6049113
There are several instances just in that sub-thread of that post.
If I had come accross that thread then I would have tried to answer in a friendlier tone. Sure your question was kind of based on a false premise, but did you know that at the time? Probably not. I would have assumed ignorance based on subconscious biases, rather than malice. But there are always going to be some reactionaries on all sides calling people shit. It’s the internet.
You sound like a reasonable person then, and an ally to progress and education. That’s just the most immediate example I could think of that I was readily able to access to share with you. This is a common reaction that I’ve seen becoming more common over the last few years, across a number of social issues that a lot of people require more information to fully understand. But they’re not asking questions to get the information because when they do, they get shouted down and accused of bigotry. I’ve seen the same thing when it comes to people trying to understand trans issues. Trying to understand gender pronouns. Trying to understand new attitudes towards racism or social equality. The people who think they’re helping through some sort of twisted interpretation of “silence is violence” are very much hurting these movements by being so loose and free with their accusations of bigotry. They’re pushing people away, and making enemies of potential allies.
I make my best effort to be, thank you. Maybe we need a community somewhere for those questions then. Maybe create it? I’d subscribe and do it my best to answer questions. I understand everyone comes from completely different worlds. So many factors in my life made understanding these issues easier. I can understand how someone else could struggle with some of it.
I think it would be plagued with the same problem that probably led to the hostility from the person in the comment I linked to, bad actors. I recognize that there are a lot of bad actors that enter these conversations and pose “questions” that are really just preludes to attacks, or often intentionally engineered to stoke hostility. I think the solution might be simple, give people the benefit of the doubt until they show they don’t deserve it. But our different perspectives are becoming so tribalistic that opposing views, or even just ignorance of a specific view is viewed as an outright enemy. That has led to people being dismissive of everyone that doesn’t immediately identify themselves as part of the in-group.
I don’t really see how we will ever build a world that is beneficial for everyone if we’re all committed to an “us vs them” perspective. Even without that perspective, IDK how to build that world because it seems now that different groups have drastically different ideas of how things should be. It used to feel like we all kind of wanted the same things, but just disagreed on how to get there. Now it feels like there are groups who want dramatically different outcomes. How does one resolve that type of scenario? Anyways, now I’m getting pretty far off topic. I’ll just stop there.
Maybe a community like you proposed would be a great bridge between groups. It would be so cool if that worked. I know I don’t have the time or patience to run such a group though. Everything online is such a challenge to moderate these days with State level psychological cyber warfare as prevalent as it is now.
Patience and education?
I’m not sure I’d be up for creating that community either which is too bad because the people who probably could effectively are the ones who probably wouldn’t. If any ever dies try though I’ll participate
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=JAQing off
Or for that matter having a different belief than the status quo
Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean you get to censor and arrest them
Right? This could definitely be the first step towards State sanctioned group-think, and the loss of freedom of speech. I’m just as opposed to hate speech as any other progressive individual, but I do not trust these types of laws in the hands of governments that are moving rapidly towards fascism.