JK Rowling in ‘arrest me’ challenge over Scottish hate crime law
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.
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Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.
I did not find any source about her being banned from Germany, I only saw some controversy about some tweets that some people call holocaust denial.
"Some people" being anyone who isn't a fucking bigot.
This is what she denied happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_Nazi_Germany#Ransacking_of_the_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
That is holocaust denial.
Don't give me that "some people" bullshit. Any decent person would agree that denying that happened is holocaust denial.
I mean, I didn't know this stuff even happened, I literally skimmed search results and what I found is a few articles calling something she said holocaust denial. Hence "some" people. I did not express any judgment on the merit of her claims, I am personally not interested.
No need to be aggressive.
Expressing judgment on the merits of the claims of a Holocaust denier is something you should be doing and something you should be interested in.
Apathy is not much better than direct support.
Sorry, you don't get to say what I should or should not be interested in. I am not interested in what a celebrity says in a tweet, otherwise I would spend most of my time doing pointless arguments there.
I'm afraid I do I get to say what anyone short or should not be interested in, which is why I said it and was not stopped from doing so or had my comment deleted.
Maybe you don't agree that you should be interested in someone fomenting genocide and denying a previous genocide, but I still get to say you should.
Not agreeing, however, would suggest that you're not especially interested in doing anything about an ongoing genocide. So I hope that's okay with you.
Ok, this is purely a rhetorical linguistic argument, not particularly interesting either, ironically. Sure, you can say whatever you want, but you have no moral or any other authority to actually dictate what other people should be interested in. You can say whatever you want about what the penalty should be in a trial, but you don't get to sentence anybody, to make an analogy. Thankfully, I add.
It is OK with me. There are many problems in the world, and it's necessary to establish a hierarchy among them given our will power and mental energy is finite. Also, I disagree with your premises and therefore my characterization of the problem makes it hierarchically less important than other problems, such as the war in Ukraine or the environmental disaster.
Guilt tripping people is also not a great strategy to involve them in a cause, but if you want we can start digging to draft a very long list of atrocities that are happening in the world right now and that you (nor I) don't care about.
I don't know that I would call telling someone that caring about genocide is something everyone should do is guilt tripping, but okay...
I'm certainly not sure why anyone would think doing something about genocide should be a low priority. Should doing something about Israel's genocide also be a low priority? If not, why do Palestinian lives matter more than trans lives?
This is what I call guilt tripping.
Because Palestinians have been killed in the tens of thousands in a few months, by a single entity (Israel) which is showing precise intent to wipe them from their land. Are you seriously comparing this with things like banning gender affirming care or drag shows (I am using one of your sources) in the States (which I disagree with, but I am not a US citizen)?
Fun how you used one source but not the others. Like the Wikipedia source that explicitly defines why it's genocide.
By the way, since you're not in the states, you might want to know precisely what is happening:
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-extremists-at-cpac-laid-bare-hatred-at-root-of-vile-legislation-targeting-trans-people
Looks like a precise intent to wipe them out to me.
I guess that's okay since they're "those" people.
I took one random source from a comment you posted, if you disagree with it, why posting it? There was no wikipedia source, the only wikipedia source you quoted is this, which talks about Nazi Germany, not the ongoing genocide.
If I take https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_genocide as a source, I can clearly read different opinions, including plenty who critique the (ab)use of this term in this particular context. So yes, while all lives matter the same, the current Palestinian genocide is, according to my own personal sensitivity, order of magnitudes more relevant and more worthy of my attention compared to the trans discrimination in US. This means that I decide to devote my finite amount of energy to the former, together with the Ukrainian war and the environmental cause.
So you are actually comparing bigot statements with tens of thousands of people actually blown to bits and starved to death? This to me is almost offensive.
This is a useless straw-man. I explained specifically why I think this problem is hierarchically less important (to me) than other problems. You are again resorting to bad faith/guilt/pity.
You're right. There's no leap from saying "we should eradicate transgender people" at the official conservative conference and a genocide of transgender people. It's not like people announce who they're going to murder and then murder them or anything.
It was a huge surprise when Israel started killing off Palestinians, wasn't it? No one expected it to happen!
We'll just have to wait until a lot of trans people get murdered, then we can try to do something about it. Who ever heard of preventing something before it gets to mass murder?
Again, the amount of caring and fighting I can afford is limited. There are probably tens of active conflicts, persecutions, etc. going on in the world, in places I have barely heard, and I can't afford to simply "care" about everything. Exactly like you, I simply decide what matters more to me and fight/care/inform myself about that.
So yes, I believe that if today I have to choose between Palestinians actually being killed and conservative people making hateful statements in US, that might tomorrow result in violence against trans people, I choose the former because I think it has bigger scale, it has bigger impact on the geopolitical balance and it is more urgent. I hope this makes my motivations clear as to why I care about something and not something else.
Not only some people. The German law book is very clear about what constitutes holocaust denying and what now. Diminishing parts of the holocausts, such as claiming one group wasn't targeted or wasn't targeted as much is holocaust denial under that law.
Thanks for the specification. That said, what's wrong with "some people"? It's the second comment that jumps on that word as if it diminishes the argument. "Some" is purely a quantifier which I used because clearly not everyone is calling her like that, and this was - in fact - a niche news that a few articles spoke about.
Does the German law even applies here? Is there some formal recognition that can be used instead of relying on people's opinion? I didn't find anything, but if that were the case then she would be recognized by the German court/state as such.
For me a German law about the Holocaust just is more important than what some people say. It's just so very vague. It reminds me a bit off Trump when he spouts some utter bullshit "some people" have said to him. That of course doesn't mean that I think you said it in such an intention.
And no, the German law of course only applies to people in Germany. Now what would happen if Rowling would set foot in Germany would be interesting, but I don't think even then much would happen. Nevertheless I think the German legal view on such speech IMHO is a good indication of it's intention. After all Germany is one of the few countries who put in a serious effort in critically reflect on a very dark spot in their past. That's something a lot of other countries could learn quite a bit.
And again, I really don't think your choice of words were wrong in any way, my comment aimed to further elaborate on the topic and not criticise. I'm sorry if it came over in a different way.
I fully agree with this, especially in the US, going through the school system and then the post education system, every "bad" action of the country was either skipped or downplayed significantly.
For example, they barely touched on the Vietnam war, and what little they did never mentioned anything that was controversial or inhumane such as the My Lai massacre, it was always what the "other side" did looking in.
What little I did learn about more nefarious acts were from my grandfather who was a history teacher, they just don't bring it up anymore.
I get that shameful acts like that make the country look bad but not teaching the bad side and only showing the good side is counterproductive to setting up a healthy Viewpoint of the rest of the world. Not to mention disrespectful to anyone who is involved in the conflicts.