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

59 points

What a sad life this woman leads. All the money in the world and she can’t find a semblance of purpose.

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4 points

She and Musk should go on a trip together. To Mars.

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47 points

Hopefully the cops oblige her, but I’m pretty sure she’s too rich to actually experience any consequences.

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40 points

They’ve already said it doesn’t meet the criminal threshold and they will not be arresting her.

Bitter old troll still got her 15 minutes of fame I guess.

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3 points

Just because they refuse to even prosecute Rowling, it doesn’t mean she hasn’t broken the law.

The wording of the actual law is so loose and woolly that I would absolutely include Rowling under it. She’s definitely been abusive/threatening to trans-people, and definitely been stirring up hatred. I think a reasonable person would agree. She should at least be prosecuted.

The problem is that the law doesn’t explicitly specify a severity threshold of said abuse, and the real reason they won’t arrest Rowling is that it would cause way too much hassle for the government and expose how shit the law is, as she actually has enough money and lawyers to fight it.

Imagine a few years down the line when a properly fascist government gets hold of this. The Tories are already looking for a way to arrest pro-Palestine protesters.

This article has more info and what the law actually says https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68703684

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2 points

Thanks!

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2 points

She got more than enough fame already.

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1 point

Ah, figures. Thanks for the source!

Hopefully it’s only a matter of time she does something that’ll cross the threshold.

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0 points

Pull a switcharoo and arrest her for wasting police time.

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32 points

Woulda cost her nothing to just not say anything.

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27 points

Do it.

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23 points

Nah, wait till she decides she is properly untouchable and definitely crosses the line and the case is a slam dunk.

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-7 points

Do you really want to live in a police state where they do this?

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20 points

Prevent hate speech? Yes, desperately

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-8 points

Wait you think arresting her is proportionate?

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15 points

Scotland should really leave the shithole that is U.K. It would be better off in every way having its own policies.

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2 points

Scotland is worse for this kind of shit than the rest of the UK. They arrested and convicted a guy over a skit where his pug did a ‘nazi salute’ to the audio of a Hitler speech

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4 points
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Good. People who make jokes about shit have been proven time and time again to secretly believe it themselves. Nazi down.

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0 points
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…the joke was the ridiculousness of the concept of a pug getting radicalised in a ‘whats the worst he’s gonna do?’ way. It wasn’t any sort of commentary on Nazis other than the fact that they’re extremist.

You can make jokes about Nazis without supporting them. Many people do. Nazis are an effective short-hand for extremism and many comedy skits, including the ‘nazi pug’, use it as such so they don’t have to over explain shit.

If they used, for example, the British National Party instead, the joke wouldn’t work as well because no one outside of the UK even know who the fuck the BNP are.

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1 point

Do you agree with this new UK law at least? Scotland should be independent if they desire as I support any nation or group who decides this is right for them by vote, but surely they would include laws to protect all citizens too. This law is not oppressive like some that benefit one side. It is a reasonable and fair law as all members of society should be protected.

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3 points

The law mentioned is specifically a Scottish law. The UK allows Scotland and Northern Ireland to implement certain different laws (until it doesn’t).

Wales is a bit different because it doesn’t really exist, it’s part of England officially (OK they renamed it “England and Wales”) so its national assembly has to ask for laws in the “England and Wales” jurisdiction that say “In Wales they can have a little coal as a treat”.

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