J.K. Rowling will not be arrested for comments about transgender women, police say
The "Harry Potter" author slammed a newly enacted hate-crime law in Scotland in a series of posts on X in which she referred to transgender women as men.
J.K. Rowling shared a social media thread on Monday, the day a new Scottish hate-crime law took effect, that misgendered several transgender women and appeared to imply trans women have a penchant for sexual predation. On Tuesday, Scottish police announced they would not be investigating the “Harry Potter” author’s remarks as a crime, as some of Rowling’s critics had called for.
“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”
Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity.
Denying somes's personhood is more than speech. It's dangerous, and can cause actual harm, especially for someone with such a huge platform, with special influence over children
While I want to agree with the sentiment behind what you said I find it really hard to get behind government legally telling people what they can and can't say. I personally feel like it's every skinhead assole's right to say racist awful shit. I also feel like if you're going to exercise that right with reckless abandon, you're gonna get fucked up by some people who don't take kindly. As detrimental as their regressive views may be, I believe we simply cannot have legal punishments for saying something the government doesn't agree with. It's a very slippery slope.
I'm tired of having to do this work and it never ending. Get a law passed and start enforcing. People are being harmed and it shouldn't be this much work to defend them. Perhaps absolute free speech regulated by individuals was scalable when not every deplorable pos had a worldwide megaphone.
Is that what happened in 1930s Germany or the 1950s U.S. South?
Racism is an implicit call to violence. Suggesting that it can also be solved by violence is not borne out by history.
Racism isn't an implicit call to violence. Violence is one of the ways it can manifest if it's deranged enough, but most racism is just sorta quiet and often unconscious.
It's not a good idea for the government tell you what you're allowed to say - that change has to come naturally from the bottom up, not artificially from the top down
Cool, when is that change going to happen? Because from what I've seen, there's still a vast amount of racism in this world.
Why do you trust powerful governments so much?
You didn't answer my question.
You said change has to come naturally from the bottom up in order to stop bigoted attacks. Bigotry has been around for a very long time.
So... when is that natural change going to happen? Are we talking centuries?
You're asking me to predict the future, maybe it doesn't happen. Maybe 1 lifetime? Maybe 2?
Who knows, but all we can do in the meantime is continue to actually talk with people caught in the storm.
If the government tries to force speech, what do you think that will do? Do you think everyone will say "oh ok", and just quietly live out their lives at home in resentment or in prison for this never to return?
It's a bandaid to a problem where we're just supposed to trust that governments will always use this power correctly
So rather than prosecuting people for fomenting violence with racist hate speech right now, everyone should just wait a couple of generations for it to sort itself out unlike it has for thousands of years.
That seems both likely and reasonable and such a concept could definitely could only come from someone who has been the victim of severe racist attacks.
You're forgetting that we have technology that connects most of the world now, even across languages. This definitely changes things.
But it sounds like you'd prefer to live under a government like the CCP. That way you don't have to worry anymore because they'll take care of everything for you
It certainly does change things.
It's enabled bigots all over the world to get in touch with each other and become even more vicious and violent because they can coordinate.
But I'm sure if we pray hard enough to Jesus, no black person or queer person or Jewish person or any other minority will ever be threatened again.
Because it's either that or Soviet Russia. There's nothing in between.
It's also enabled everyone to see cultures and ways of life they would never be able to before. People can share their differences and traditions more openly too. Knowing more about cultures, practices and different people is what opens doors to not being racist
Can you actually demonstrate this to be the case so far?
Because this sure doesn't seem to agree with you- https://div46amplifier.com/2022/12/14/online-racism-has-the-internet-caused-more-harm-than-good/
You can ignore progess all you want, that doesn’t erase it’s existence.
So you're saying we should form a mob and fuck her up then, that's your preferred solution to this problem?
While this specific case may even be somewhat justified, where does it end? What constitutes an insult so grievous that the government should punish you for it?
Misgendering, alright. Attacking someone's honor? Probably. Putting together an angry, slur-filled rant? Perhaps. Insulting someone's parents? Hmm.
And so forth. This is an incredibly slippery slope, one that virtually all democracies currently existing have avoided to go down because it inevitably leads to oppression.
This "slippery slope" of yours has not been a problem in the many countries that have adopted it.
Not even in Brazil under Bolsonaro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
I am German. We have restrictions on free speech in place, primarily around Nazism and Israel.
Our government is literally curbing anything critical of israel with those restrictions at this very moment.
Sounds like a reason to make the law better, not throw it out.
I don't think that's the lesson here. More that even the most well intentioned restrictions can and will be abused by the government once they have that power. If our far right gets into the government I cant imagine what kind of dystopian crap they will try to do with it.
I am similarly very sceptical of the constant debate for more surveillance and online control in the name of ”protecting the children”. Another very worthy, and very emotionally charged cause where most people will instinctively agree before even thinking about the consequences.
Again- that did not happen when Bolsonaro took power in Brazil.
So maybe the problem is your laws, not hate speech laws in general.
You're acting like Germany is the only country in the world that has these laws.
And you are acting as if because there is one struggling democracy somewhere on the world who has yet to abuse it, all other incidents and examples throughout history for the inevitable abuse of such power are not valid.
You've given me one single example of abuse. The one in your country.
Again, that sounds like a problem with your country's laws in specific.
Do you really want me to list the dozens of instances throughout history where the right to restrict people’s expression has inadvertently caused or helped authoritarians consolidate power? I would think you largely know about those already.
A quite recent example is ironically related to the same topic, namely conservatives and religious zealots wanting to police speech the other way by banning inclusionary language. The other side of the exact same coin. I'm sure you are familiar with that issue since it most prominently happens in america, though plenty of European right wingers are looking to do similar things.
I want you to list the dozens of instances throughout history where, specifically, hate speech laws have done so.
And if your example is one where Rowling was not arrested, it's not a very good one.
Why are you moving the goalpost now? That's pretty lame.
I am arguing that the right to free speech is a central element of a free and pluralistic society, and that allowing the government to interfere with it beyond the direct prevention of harm, such as incitement of violence, will inevitably help erode those values, as it has done countless times before. And curtailing them, even with the best intentions, is the start of doing just that.
How am I moving the goalposts? My argument this entire time is that hate speech laws are a good idea. You have given me one single example where they didn't work properly, which I still contend is about the way the laws were written, not the law itself.
Again, the fact that Bolsonaro did not abuse Brazil's hate speech laws suggests that autocrats can't do so if the laws are robust. Your lack of addressing that uncomfortable fact does not make it less of a fact.
The fact that Rowling was not arrested after trying very hard to get arrested (same with Jordan Peterson in Canada) also suggests that this is not the horrific problem you imply.