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 am so fucking sick of these bigots pretending the science of "biological sex" is on their side.
In recent years, multiple studies of the brains of trans people have revealed areas of differentiation from those of cisgender people. And unless these bigots are prepared to argue that brains are not part of biology, they only have two choices: Deny the science somehow or accept that they're just bigots who want to hate, regardless of the science.
And because unlike bigots, I like to back my shit up:
On top of that, there's some indications of oligogenic causes resulting in various allele differences that wouldn't necessarily show up on a brain scan.
In conclusion: Fuck bigots and their attempts to co-opt science in order to support their bigotry.
I'm glad you're backing it up, but honestly, the answer to this whole "biological science" bullshit is simper- it's none of their fucking business how someone else identifies. I don't care what "science" says is a man or a woman. If someone says they're a woman, it's not my fucking business to tell them they aren't.
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.
I'm glad to now have it for myself, so thank you for that, but I don't know that showing them real science will work because they are not coming at this from a rational position. All they see is "man = penis, woman = vagina" and no amount of science will change their mind. Even bringing up basic things like people born with both sets of genitalia doesn't phase them. "Well that's just the exception to the rule," as if that's a thing in science. So when they say that they have science on their side, what they mean is that they've found some scientific studies that agreed with their preconceived, unscientific notions.
As they say- you shouldn't play chess with pigeons.
What I've heard a lot of people do is not make a whole show to convince the other person but to convince people who may be on the fence or uneducated on the subject. Any third party observer who might just be learning about stuff.
Would you rather trust a random screeching about people birth genitals or someone who is posting scientific evidence to back up their claim and being calm and knowledgeable about the subject.
I get it though, fuck em.
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.
Everything new to a conservative is scary and threatening.
Tbh I think her hate comes down to two things: she was raped by a man and is paranoid because she never dealt with that trauma in a healthy way and she recognized the right wing as a crop to be harvested. She's an ideological predator.
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?
They may very well have met multiple trans people and never even known it. Their hatred for trans people is really just for the ones who can't "pass." They don't think about the others. They think of "a man in a dress." If you showed them a picture of Valentina Sampaio without saying who she was, they'd say she was a woman. And it would be fun to see their reaction when you told them she was trans because at least some of them would see her and be aroused.
Yes, and that’s where the “it would make zero difference” part comes in. Leaving people well enough alone is so easy, it’s crazy how socially inept these ghouls can be.
Sure thing Bob, let me just stack that in-between "Evolution" and "climate change" on my shelf of "Things that don't fit my bigoted, hateful, and selfish worldview, so I just conveniently ignore them."
OR, and hear me out, you could just not be a total asshole? Maybe have a baseline of tolerance and respect for the people who made you a billionaire? No? Then fuck right off and accept the consequences of your hatred.
It seems billionaires have really wacked out midlife crises. Instead of buying expensive cars and cheating on their partners, they come out as terfy nazis, build hate platforms, and crash companies. I mean to be fair, at this point the sample size is only two, JKKK Rowling and Musk, but it's still surprising that it'd happen twice.
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...
These guys need to get on John McAfee's level
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee
John McCracked
McAfee is not worth cracking
That dude's videos are extraordinary.
Bill gates didn’t start the charity as a midlife crisis.
It’s a tax dodge and a lot of other ways of protecting his money while also doing a little reputation washing/ morality banking
Wasn't he 45 when he started the charity? That sounds like a perfect candidate to be a midlife crisis, haha
Just because it was midlife doesn’t mean it’s a crisis.
He started the charity as a shelter for his obscene wealth. That is all.
I'm not obscenely wealthy, so I don't have the experience...but it seems plausible that a billionaire midlife crisis could be "Where am I going to put this ridiculous amount of money that I've earned through less-than-ethical means?"
It’s plausible that a man who made his billions fucking everyone over who was even remotely near him….
… developed a conscience?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ultra-wealthy-americans-use-philanthropy-to-avoid-taxation-2021-10
https://apnews.com/article/business-philanthropy-b8acb10f529ac2dbaff7631021d823c9
I mean, the main motivator for the endowment was always Malinda Gates. I'm sure it functions as a tax shelter, but I doubt that was really the main motivator. He's already given over several times what his tax burden would have been, and if we compare it to other NGOs whose sole purpose is truly preserving or raising money, they really aren't comparable.
I'm in agreement that no one should have hundreds of millions of dollars, let alone billions. We can discuss the validity of NGO as a concept, but as far as NGO go, the gates foundation has done more actual aid work for 3rd world countries than most governments.
Have you ever worked with the Gates foundation? Because calling it a "tax dodge" like that is completely baseless, they're a really reallyngood charity, like honestly one of the best in the world, and also that's very ignorant of how taxes work.
You don't understand how taxes work.
Steve Jobs was always a piece of shit, and he had that diet well before he got cancer. But yeah the fact he continued to double down in the face of death shows how much of a narcissist he was.
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.
To be fair, you just described my mother to a tee. She’s a narcissist and has managed to alienate everyone from her life.
You can add Markus Persson to that sample group
It's becoming harder and harder to be a Harry Potter fan nowaday.
I don't really understand what it is about X Formerly Known as Twitter that turns previously respectable people into, well, this.
Everybody should take a break from social media once in a while, it's better for your health.
It doesn't turn these people, they were shitty all the time, they just get a platform on X so it becomes visible
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.
Trump thought the day the Twin Towers fell was a good time to mention his property was closer to the tallest building in New York. That very evening, on the news, in 2001. Here's a link.
Honestly he did so many "Career Suicides" for Politicians that it broke the system, I get that's why he won, but... still how the shit did he not get sunk by his 9/11 response, I mean, yeah he said stupid shit ages ago.. but the dude straight up got 9/11 and 7/11 mixed up.
The fuck did we go from "A weird yell will disqualify you!" to this!?!?
Because the journalists didn't do their job. They should have been blasting the "tallest building" and his weird infatuation with his daughter, but he was profitable, so they let it slide.
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
The books have some really problematic themes that add up over time. If HP ended with the first book, they would be a curiosity, but they add up and JK had a really crooked world view when she wrote them. It's likely her editor soften them in the beginning, but they had less control as they got more popular.
They were always awful. They just needed a platform where they could blossom into the terrible people they always were.
Yeah Rowling has been a notorious TERF for many years now.
Oh yeah it was definitely Twitter that made her a bigot. She was an upstanding and progressive citizen before a website made her bad! /s
That's like saying "I don't really understand what it is about alcohol that makes people racist"
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.
No it just revealed her beliefs to a wider audience. Twitter like all social media doesn’t bring out anything - it’s just a lens that gives the viewer a perspective they might never have seen and these view are then amplified by others who share them. Rowling was always this person, social media just allowed her to share and amplify her views.
sorry to join the little dogpile, but its not X, those are her beliefs.
There are a LOT better books out there then childrens books about wizard school, which she absolutely lifted from Jill Murphy.
The worst witch right?
I see the movie has Tim curry in it. I'm sold. Appreciate the recommendation
Dude.... my friend's and I get together (video conference) to watch the film every year in late October. It also features Charolette Rae (the matriarch on Facts of Life) Dianna Rigg (Queen of Thorns on Game of Thrones) and Fariuza Balk (The Craft, Waterboy etc.)
The Worst Witch was a series of books though that Rowling absolutely read before "coming up with" a boarding school for magic using students, but get this: In Rowling's imagination its BOYS instead of girls who are the main focus, and the protoganist is the messiah instead of a girl screw-up with a heart of gold. Its not in the film but there are houses with colorful characteristics, the protoganist is from a non-magical family and the scary, raven haired potion teacher seems to hate the protoganist while the kind, grey haired headmaster is patient and understanding. She has two friends in the invisible (to non magic users) castlesque boardings school thats surrounded by a forbidden forest where she hangs out with two friends, one who's straight laced and academically sharp and the other who's a bit goofy.
Anyway Tim Curry does a musical number
I think the mistake we make is thinking that people are better than they are. I probably have some hidden bigotry that I am unaware of right now but given a space to be exposed to it someone would notice and point it out. If you only know of someone from one thing they did you can form an opinion of them based on very limited information. Get to know them better and you find that hidden awful. Twitter is a tool of constant broad interaction and it preserves bad takes long enough to see them. Add a culture of never admiting to being wrong and filtering by who you agree with and you have a cycle of awful that turns perfectly boringly not great but OK people into monsters defending genocide. Maybe we shouldn't know anything about the author, replace their name with a serial number or pseudonym and let the art stand on it's own. Though the racist jewish, wait no goblin, bankers was fairly intense tbh.
Have you read the books as an adult? If that wont kill your fandom, I don't think anything will.
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?
As a kid in the target age range, I bailed after the second or third time Harry gained and lost a positive father figure. There were mounting little issues and the longer the books got, the less rewarding the payoff got. But even I assumed that setting up normalized slavery in your world would lead into a story line that denounces it. Instead, JK didn't address it in a positive manner and we ended up with HP Adults writing essays defending House Elf Slavery.
Fair enough. Probably also doesn’t help that the civil rights organization that Hermione founded, or rather attempted to found, was called SPEW. As in, synonym for “vomit”
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
Here's an excellent analysis of how and why the Harry Potter hype of the late 90s was very intentionally manufactured and sold to kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI
if you ever have a couple hours to spare, i think shaun made a really great video on this topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs
he talks about JK rowling and harry potter, and how many of JK rowlings beliefs/worldviews are embedded into harry potter. he’s very thorough.
While I am not defending Twitter by any means. I feel like what actually breaks people's brains is becoming a billionaire. You lose all empathy for other humans.
The cause and effect may be reversed there.
I mean, it is for most billionaires. But Rowling isn't a businesswoman who got parents money to invest in a company to rob the proletariat.
She just wrote a book that happened to be a gigaseller.
But either way, billionaires have broken brains.
I don't like Harry Potter to begin with, but I don't really have a huge problem separating the artist from the art if the only thing they did was be hateful.
Roald Dahl was a major antisemite, but I still think he wrote great children's books and suspense/horror stories. H. P. Lovecraft was bigoted about pretty much anyone who wasn't a white man. Again, a really good writer.
Where is becomes hard to separate them is when they actually do something about their disgusting ideas. Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are pedophiles. I will never watch either of their movies. And I think both have made very good movies. I feel that I was wrong to watch the ones I did.
So yeah, Rowling is an utterly contemptible piece of shit, but if you like Harry Potter, it's okay.
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.
The Elves were directly based off of "Brownies"
It's also highly unusual that elves were depicted this way, considering most fantasy stories hold them in high regard as being magical beings seeing themselves above humanity for reasons that are normally geniunely sound (Better moral compass, natural magical talents... Whereas in Harry Potter it's the exact opposite, humanity seems to be the highest creature and Elves feel like to squabble before them..
There's no way the "Brownie" similarity is unintentional
So what's a Brownie? Well it was a way of explaining slaves to young children back in those days, to brush off the casual cruelty by lying to kids. Essentially the myth of the "Brownie" was to re contextualize the suffering of the black slave as a magical event, a beautiful mysterious thing to be observed not with horror, but with wonder. A big part of the myth claimed that you can't give a Brownie anything nice like proper clothing, or else this "breaks the contract between Man and Fae" and they run back into the woods never to be seen again.
"No it's okay children, they're magical forest people called Brownies! And they LIKE doing that work for us! Oh and we can't give them anything nice, or they'll disappear forever! And you wouldn't want that to happen! No no, really, they're faeries, and they like being whipped like that!"
Feeling disgusted? Good, that sickness in your stomach is proof that you're a better person than JK Rowling.
tl;dr Harry Potter elves are a resurrection of Pro-Slavery Propaganda used to indoctrinate children into thinking it's okay to treat people like shit. They had to GASLIGHT LITERAL CHILDREN into thinking that black people were magical elves, in order to stop them from feeling bad about slavery.. and JK decided to bring that back for her kid's book.
As much fun as Hogwarts Legacy is, I hope she rots in hell and then is reborn as a transgender woman to learn basic empathy.
Oh sweet summer child... You better not know about elves in folklore...
And even if we only look at Tolkin's Elves, who basically are the base of the whole modern conception of them, they certainly aren't better as a general rule. Some of them are really shitty fucks.
I'm guessing they watched the LOTR movies and said, "yep. That's what people thought elves were."
Have you never heard of Santa's elves? Or Elves in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'?
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
Honestly learning everyone in Hollywood is a fucking creep explains a lot about how genuinely disturbing the actions of male leads in "Romantic Comedies" tend to be
Try half the shot in a "Romance" movie in real life and even at the time most of them originally came out, you'd go to jail and no one would feel sorry for you.
My bigger issue with Polanski is that he should have been extradited decades ago.
100% agree, he should be locked up
Edit: the following isn’t what I think about him, but I do think he’d have been more likely to suffer the proper consequences had the Manson family not murdered Sharon Tate, it in no way should give him any sympathy or protection and it’s pretty fucking gross that it does, but I don’t think it’s a non factor
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
I don't think you can ethically separate art from artist when the artist is still alive, profiting from their work, and using those profits to further causes that you abhor. JKR doesn't limit herself to expressing her views on social media.
Even there, I think it's a grey area. I was already in middle school when Roald Dahl died and I'm Jewish, but my dad (who was remarkably sensitive to antisemitism in almost every other case) still read me his children's books. He did profit off of them and he shouldn't, but it's hard to deny that books like James and the Giant Peach or The BFG aren't amazingly good children's books which don't themselves have any bigotry issues (Willy Wonka not so much re the original Oompa Loompas) and it would be hard to say that children shouldn't have been reading books that good just because the guy who wrote them was horrible.
I just don't know how to feel about such things. At what point is a work so good that it transcends how horrible the person who made it is? I don't have an answer there.
As I said, I've never been a fan of Harry Potter, so this particular issue does not apply to me in this case and I honestly do not know what I would do about it if I did.
I don't know the extent of Dahl's antisemitism, and am not currently inclined to research it. I also enjoyed his stories growing up, as well as Lovecraft's, and lots of other authors who held views that I strongly disagree with. I don't think all art created by deeply flawed people is worthless, by any means.
However, I strongly disagree with the notion that a piece of high-quality art is some kind of ethical trump card; it's a bald-faced cop-out. Providing material support to someone who habitually crusades against an oppressed minority isn't a gray area because you(rhetorically—I don't mean you, personally) like their stories. Art is everywhere. There's really no dearth of excellent stories written by people that are either dead, or don't spend their time stirring up hate.
I don't mean to suggest that the work somehow justifies the abhorrent views of the author, just that sometimes art transcends the artist. It's in no way a universal thing and maybe it doesn't and/or shouldn't apply to Rowling's works. I only read part of the first book and I didn't enjoy it, so I personally don't think so.
But my post was more about not beating yourself up about liking something made by a terrible person.
Yeah, I feel like we're mostly talking past each other. Cheers!
And I agree, that would be silly.
I possess the books and movies, and never interact with the fandom or the author. There is zero need to. Let the art exist in isolation.
NEXT POINT: the stories have their own issues regarding certain portrayals but that is aside from the context of "new developments" a la the author's modern opinions on things outside the plot of the books.
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.
There are nautical ways
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!
She's been this way long before X became a thing.
Rowling quote from the article:
It's difficult to accept that someone I used to respect could say such hateful things about people like me. I'm not gonna lie, it hurts to read. What the fuck, Joanne? Is that all I am to you... just a man "performing" my idea of femaleness? Well, fuck you, then. Should I wish for you to feel the same pain you've inflicted on others? To be honest, judging by your "performance" in the media the past several years, I don't think you're resilient enough to survive it.
It sucks when your heros let you down. There was a guy I really admired and I worked with. When his wife was in the hospital he cheated on her. Couldn't see him the same way again.
Sorry she sucks so very hard and is not only a disappointment actively hostile.
This is mental illness by now! Seriously wtf? Why is this so important for her that she can't stop talking about it? If I had some irrational hate for trans woman, I would not go on about it in public all the time.
Don't we have more important problems then to bash people that are so unhappy with their body that they are willing to take hormones and let people operate on their genitals?
This is such a simple thought, everybody should be able to think it, right? But on the other hand, she is not the only one hating transgender women or men. I mean it is not right to hate people for that. But if I would hate trans people then I would just not invite them for dinner and would stop talking about them all the time.
It must be some form of mental illness I have no other explanation.
I have another one.
After enough time has passed since the initial conflict, it becomes less about the subject of the conflict and more about the conflict in itself. The reason becomes secondary and instead the goal becomes winning against the other side or at least making it hurt.
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.
Following this train of thought, what I gathered from other comments is that she had a bad experience with a man in the past, her targeted social media experience likely concentrated the bad news in that direction and her view is now that the trans movement is just evil men looking to invade women's personal spaces in order to abuse them.
If you look at her as someone bombarded with Fox News type of content, then perhaps that kind of paranoia and fear is what makes her so vocal in her opposition.
Yeah. And it’s important to understand that the pipeline she followed does a swap. Once she became convinced trans women were the problem she began associating with men who are misogynists and support the harm to cis women that she fears. By the time she’s standing with Matt Walsh and funding groups that also oppose abortion access protecting cis women is no longer her primary concern, it may be what she thinks is her primary concern but if so she believes that trans women are a larger threat than those who oppose the right to choose to stop being pregnant or men who want to relegate cis women back to traditional gender roles.
Repressed self hatred.
The whole projecting thing that people like this do.
Nah its the female equivalent of white knight syndrome. They think they're saving womanhood from impostors.
Even when I was a homophobic theist shithead I knew better than to say anything.
Operative word in your post is "irrational." If she were being rational, she would probably shut up about it. She's not either, unfortunately.
It’s not a crime to be an insufferable piece of shit. Usually. If they make an exception for her, okay then.
It truly makes me think most "martyrs" in history must have been insufferable pieces of shit, as well.
Because it's only these people who want to make a "martyr" of themselves, endlessly playing the fucking victim while having enough money to make Solomon blush.
Why are some people so determined to be pieces of shit?
You don't get rich being nice.
Even if you did (like you won the big lottery or something). Being rich turns people into assholes too. Your ego inflates massively.
Theres actually a body of research here, abd its so much fucking worse. Researcher I remember is named piff, look some up; its fucking wild.
She likes the attention. She had it once. But she blew her load and now there's no more creativity. So she gets it in other ways.
If I had her money, I wouldn't spend my time bullying people and starting fights with the police. She's clearly insane in the most fundamental way.
The more I know about rich people, the less inclined I am to think that they're usually well adjusted.
Hoarding is usually considered a mental illness, unless it's money. Maybe we should consider that a problem too.
When you have ten billion dollars, you aren't really trying to make more money because you can really imagine a feasible way of spending it all on your own well-being. What's even the point then?
That's exactly my point.
I’ve become convinced that power, including wealth, causes brain damage.
Why not start fights with police/government?
Friendly reminder that Scotland's freedom of speech laws are different from those in the US.
The freedom of one person ends where it starts limiting the freedom of another person
Unlimited freedom of speech just means that it's possible to verbally deny a group of people a place in society either by lying about them or by just ignoring their existence - and both are limiting that person's freedom - not just their freedom of speech.
I really don't understand how Americans don't seem to understand that one person's freedom should end when it limits the freedom of another person - and if it doesn't then it's just the stronger/more forceful one pushing the weaker/more defensive one into a corner.
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").
Trans people exist and deserve, like anyone, to be treated with dignity and respect. Get the fuck over it.
Ugh.
If only they would get over it and agree that trans people have the right to exist or believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to have an issue with there being (at least) two classes of homo sapiens, one lesser than the other and thus not deserving of any dignity or respect.
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…💋💋💋
I'm surviving somehow. I could tell you some crazy mother stories, but I don't want to write a novel.
you totally wanna write a novel about your mom
Not unusual. Most men have a Freudian streak.
I'm glad you didn't say Oedipal, because right now, all I want to do is murder her.
We had this conversation not too long ago-
“I thought the Mayo Clinic was going to be like the ER, where a whole team of doctors works on you at once.”
“Mom, I’ve been in the ER four times in the last year. They don’t do that there.”
“Yes they do, I’ve seen the shows!”
I have epilepsy. A special type of epilepsy. A type of epilepsy they didn’t know existed when I was “diagnosed” with it.
For the doctors - teams of neurologists and neuropsychologists - to treat me, the best option in 1991, after my drowning accident and subsequent TBI was a new study at Boston Children’s Hospital. For months, almost a year since the “accident”, doctors had run me through a course of medications meant to control my seizures, but none worked. I was desperate. My parents were desperate. We were willing to try anything.
For two weeks in March, during spring break, in 1992 and 1993, I went to the long-term monitoring unit at Boston Children’s Hospital and participated in a study where I had over 100 EEG leads glued to my head and they tested various different drugs on us to determine which ones would - or even could - control our seizures.
They discovered that, quite logically, that when someone has damage to a particular part of the brain (in my case, the frontal temporal lobe), seizures can be managed by giving the patient medication made to treat problems endemic to that region of the brain— in my case, either mood stabilizers or meds for migraines/cluster headaches.
I learned a long time ago that my time in a hospital, around doctors, going through a lot of uncomfortable and even scary procedures can really pay off in the end— and can even help countless others for the effort.
So don’t fret, buddy. You’re in good hands. I know the strain and pressure of being in a tough place with medical issues. Just be glad it’s 2024 and no time before.
Best wishes!
Thanks! I'm glad I didn't go through something like that as a kid. It must have been super rough. I can handle it a lot better in my mid-40s I'm sure.
Her opinion on trans folks is shit, but people should not go to jail for shit opinions. Broken clock and stuff.
It's more complicated than that. Like saying there is a fire in a theatre when there is none, saying transgender are undercover perverts and a danger to society when it's not supported by evidence will get people killed. Freedom of speech is great and all but when your lie and put people in danger there should be consequences.
And just for the record, this is not a theory. People HAVE been murdered.
Have as many opinions as you want, but if you spread shit like "we should exterminate the lesser races" and "trans people are rapists" you earn a vacation at the greybar hotel for abusing your right of free speech to infringe on other people's rights.
And she won't. This is the same performative bullshit Jordan Peterson pulled in Canada.
People shouldn't go to jail for shit opinions, I agree. That changes when their opinions become more than opinions.
She grossly misinterprets what the law is meant to achieve. It's not for somebody who dead names a trans person or calls a trans woman he or him. It's when someone Tweets out "Who will rid me of this troublesome trans person?" and then their one or more of their followers goes out and beats or murders that person.
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.
It's talking about likely consequence not after a crime has been committed. Also:
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 was using hyperbole but the intention is the same. If you use a public platform to intentionally cause harm to another person by way of their race, nationality, sexual identity, or other specificity then you have committed a crime.
What you clearly missed was the point of the law. Hate speech isn't about saying what you want about another person, it's about using your speech to directly or indirectly harm another person or group of people.
Lots of people just don't know what freedom is speech actually means. Speech isn't a crime, but crimes can be committed by speaking.
If you kill someone with a hammer, you aren't charged with possession of hammer - you're charged with murder. If you hire a hitman to do the killing instead, you aren't charged with "using speech."
When that theoretical person is arrested for "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" they aren't actually being arrested for their speech or their words, but for a separate crime that uses speech as a mechanism.
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.
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.
You quoted cases that literally demonstrate my point.
It's not the word "fire" that is the crime. It's speech as a mechanism by which lawlessness or panic is incited.
Hate-speech is more nuanced, but can follow a similar pattern.
Take the sentance: "It's time to cut down the tall trees." The words themselves are fairly innocuous. But that was the trigger phrase for the Rwandan Genocide. Saying those words on the air was a call to murder all the Tutsi people. Speaking those words on the radio was not an act of free expression by the Interhamwe, but the start of a barbaric hate crime that killed nearly a million people.
You can weaponize an opinion, that is what is getting punished.
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 think the line is being drawn at "don't sympathize with
terrorist groupsan opressive theocratic government" (publicly stating "at least the taliban know what a woman is") and "don't directly fund hate groups".(Edited, see comment below)
Who draws it? The government?!
Slippery slope fallacy "You're okay with the government saying certain ingredients can't go in food? Where does that stop? Will you be equally happy when a government you disagree with uses the same tools to dictate everything that goes in your food?"
"You're okay with the government saying certain areas are off limits to the general public? Where do you draw the line? Will you be equally happy when a different government uses the same tools to forbid you from leaving your home?"
Is this specific step reasonable? Then it's okay. When they try to take an unreasonable step then it is appropriate to do something about it.
Hateful ideas can be dangerous things. This is why insulting people in Germany can turn into a criminal offense. They know where that goes if left unchecked.
Also, remember, not every country is the USA where breaking the law = going to jail. It can just be a fine the first few times and jail only when you show no intent on ceasing what you're doing.
JKR is being hyperbolic with this "arrest me" thing. She's playing the victim for her TERF followers.
If you're poor and black, sure.
Notice how many times Trump has flagrantly broken the law.
People who use biology as an excuse to hate on people have no grasp on how biology even works. You should know that gender disphoria, gender transitions and other genders as well come in fact with small noticeable differences, such as the way the brain is wired and even the many mechanisms inside your body. Unfortunately, such differences are not noticeable right off the bat. But they exist. Also FFS, she could have just enjoyed her harry potter money, maybe she could go silent after the first tweet but come on! There'se no reason to go any further, no reason. She now dwells with the likes of her conservative friends - She's no victim. There's more money there than many of us could see in a lifetime. She actually has too much -
Absolutely agree with you!
"There's only two sexes, that's biology 101", yes, it's literally 101, it's what you get taught before you learn the specifics, the exceptions to the rules and the finer details of the multi-dimensional spectrum that is the impact of our biology on sex and gender.
It's like "there's only 3 states of matter, that's basic science!"
Can we just hold one big public figure accountable to the law? Please?
No.
Sigh. Yeah. Thought so. 😭
Chances are they don't want to try this on someone with money for the good lawyers. Authorities never try the more questionable laws that way.
To be honest, justice sometimes DOES happen, but I think it tends to happen to B. Cosby & K. Spacey more than H. Weinstein
Miss Not A Straight White Guy here thinks she won’t be made an example, & she probably won’t ever. But she will never be part of the truly protected class.
Not even if she transitioned 🫠
That's a particularly odd way for the BBC to characterize her behavior.
Because the BBC is also a "critic of some trans activism". They actually have a Mastodon instance that immediately got defederated by a few other instances due to their transphobia.
The British media in general seem to be fillled with TERFs, like the UK Guardian (the Australian paper doesn't seem to have the issue that I've noticed).
I live in Canada where we have hate crime laws, they don't affect 99% of us in any way, because 99% of us aren't walking around calling for the death of groups of people, based on race, gender, etc. Hate crime laws only affect the people who are truly beyond hateful. Nobody is gonna arrest you for being an anti trans asshole, but that will if you start inciting violence or calling for blood
I learned this one the hard way while being the victim of hate. but it wasn't until my harasser slipped and threatened physical harm that the police finally did something.
She won't get arrested and she knows it.
Yeah, I've seen people criticize Germany's freedom of speech laws because we are not allowed to show the Hitler salute or wave the Nazi flag. Like why would I care?
Scotland was literally willing to leave the UK over this. I wouldn’t be putting money on Joanne to come out on top here.
She probably has more surplus cash for lawyers than the Scottish Government.
Ironic: She tried to insert herself as Hermoine/McGonagall, but she really was Umbridge all along.
I'm glad that Harry Potter wasn't my favourite series growing up, knowing how bad of a person she is. With that said, it's still possible to separate the art from the artist, so it's okay either way but personally I just feel better knowing it wasn't my number one favourite series growing up.
I think the general argument against separating the art from the artist is that shes still alive and when we buy HP products, she gets that money and uses it to harm trans people.
Hp lovecraft iirc is known as a racist, but we can still purchase his books without funding him cause he's dead.
Buy your HP merch secondhand, i guess?
I personally completely disassociate my harry potter experience from her, I'm not gonna let her ruin my happy childhood memories. But I also don't go out of my way to spend money that goes to the franchise either, didn't get the game, don't buy goodies etc. We might visit the UK park some day if the chance arises just because my wife loves these kinds of parks and I'd rather that than Disney.
I’m always confused by people that are willing to tank their body of work and public image in order to yell on a soapbox for culture war bullshit.
She has all the "fuck you" money one could have.
Tank? Harry Potter games are still selling incredibly well. The Fantastic Beasts movies have grossed $1.8 billion dollars. The Wizarding World at Universal Orlando continues to be a major attraction.
She could have, and should have, fucked off to her own private tropical island after that but no she had nothing better to do than be an insufferable asshole to trans people.
Tom from MySpace is the only rich person I know of that did the smart thing
Actually Fantastic Beasts had the be shelved because no one likes the ones after the first one.. Grindelwald's Crime that made him "Literally worse than Voldemort!" was.... Wanting to stand up to the Nazis... That one was especially problematic
And given that JK Rowling is officioally recognized by the German Government as a holocaust denier, we can go ahead and assume the worst, that she's one of those "Our grandparents fought on the wrong side!" nutters
–JK Rowling
"Do it"-
everyone with a sense of justice or humor
I look forward to the pending arrest video, where she is suddenly all apologetic and saying sorry, and not understanding why they won't let her go because she just said sorry to them.
I’m sorry, I thought this was America.
Who knewa serial plagiarist would be a shit person
Can you point me at where to learn about this? Not being snarky, I'm out of the loop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_disputes_over_the_Harry_Potter_series
There's a lot of gray area in the whole Young Adult Fantasy Wizard space. Case in point:
Is it possible that Rowling (or one of her ghostwriters) lifted passages from another Wizard Adventure novel with a similar theme of deadly puzzle games? Certainly. Is it possible that there's simply some overlap in how a couple of authors with relatively limited creativity can compose a cliche of the genre? Also certainly.
There's not any material evidence to suggest Rowling straight copypasta'd text from a prior copywritten work. But that would be devilishly hard to come by. As it stands, I'm open to the theory that Rowling's writing team cut corners by pulling a bunch of low-circulation published works and mining them for ideas. But I have relatively little confidence in their ability to prove any of it.
Also Gaiman's Books of Magic was a huge "influence" on her work.
Well, sure. But if we're going to chase after every author who was influenced by Neil Gaiman, we're burning down half the modern fantasy fiction produced in the last 30 years. If we rope in Anne Rice, I think we'll get the other half.
I predict that when she doesn't get arrested, she will continue to whine about it. Much like Jordan Peterson and the bill in Canada.
I forsee her not being arrested
Do it though. Do arrest her.
You know what's baffling to me?
She was poor at some point. She lived in poverty off of government welfare. Chances are there are a good amount of children who grew up with her works that transitioned later on. They are part of the same fanbase that lifted her from poverty.
How can you genuinely turn out that unsympathetic for your fellow human beings like that?
I know one trans person who's a big Harry Potter Adult. They just also happen to be dumb and selfish, just like JK. Being Trans or being Poor doesn't automatically make someone empathetic.
Please do. She may see herself as some kind of martyr, but everyone else just sees her as an idiot.
I don't know whether their law against "stirring up hatred" is any good or not, but either way it takes a very special kind of person to respond to it by playing the game of stirring up as much hatred as possible without getting arrested.
Hate is the keyword here, stating something factual is fine but as we all know someone somewhere will misuse this act if they are butthurt enough
All black people are born on earth
The same law that prohibits hatred towards
transgenderstransgender people also prohibits it towards age discriination. (“stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability etc).Does this mean you can't call me a boomer any longer?
Ok boomer
-Hello Police? I want to report a crime!
euro siren noises
FYI, you shouldn't use the term "transgenders". Transgender is an adjective, so you would say "transgender people". Using that word makes you sound similar to a grandpa who refers to his black neighbors as "coloreds".
Thank you. I must admit that I don't always get this right, but this is entirely due to English not being my main language. That said, I did think about using it in the same way as people with disabilities, but thought that sexuality(gender?) is more defining than what disability one may have and would not be perceived negatively. Actually, thinking about it, why is it any different than calling someone a man or a woman? I will note this for the future though, because although it does not necessarily make sense to me, it doesn't hurt me to use it the way it is prefered. Thank you again.
"Man" and "Woman" are nouns. "Transgender" is an adjective. When you refer to a person as an adjective, it dehumanizes and stereotypes them. Here's some sentences that show how awkward and off-putting it sounds:
Was I supposed to start calling you a boomer at some point?
Right after they labeled themselves as boomers
Hasn't she literally been banned from Germany for publicly denying the holocaust?
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.
Tbh, it's a badly thought out "law" that seems to be just a case of letting the police decide whether to act on it or not, letting them deal with things based on their own prejudices (e.g. weed is illegal in the UK, but if you were a racist copper you could arrest some black youths for smoking it and not some white kids). It's cowardly politics, and avoids actually defining anything or drawing any lines in the sand.
Also, it's not a crime to be a moron on Twitter. One might argue it's where they belong.
Yes. Now if you expand this thought process you'll find that the majority of laws are exactly this. Pretty much everything you do is both legal and illegal according to different laws. Which means you can be arrested, detained, etc for basically any reason at any time. It's all down to if "they" (the cop you interact with, the DA, the judge, the high ranking official who just doesn't like you, the media rallying against you, etc) want something to happen.
It's a hallmark of fear based authoritarian governments.
So…. They’re going to arrest her, right?
.... so arrest her?
I’m utterly befuddled by this woman; somehow she hates the idea of trans women so much that she’s now closely allied with Posie Parker, a woman who hates women, hates suffrage, has advocated for the removal of women’s rights for years, and shares closely held opinions from just right of Goebbels.
Somehow Jo has become so utterly single-minded, she’s paired with the antithesis of all the other things she believes in (and still claims to believe as justification of her anti-trans nonsense).