JK Rowling in ‘arrest me’ challenge over Scottish hate crime law
JK Rowling in ‘arrest me’ challenge over Scottish hate crime law
The Harry Potter author described several transgender women as men in a series of social media posts.
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.
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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").
And the US laws should be more like Scotland's. Hate speech is implicitly violent and should be treated as such.