‘Arrest me’, says feminist Rowling
LONDON: Harry Potter author JK Rowling has challenged Scottish police to arrest her under new hate crime laws after stating that high-profile trans women are men.
“Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” the outspoken author, who lives in Edinburgh, wrote.
“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
She posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people on the social media platform and challenged their claims to be women, including Isla Bryson, who was sent to a women’s prison after being convicted of two rapes as a man.
By passing the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, Rowling said, members of the Scottish parliament had “placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness … than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls”.
“The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.”
The law, which came into force on Monday, creates a criminal offence of “stirring up of hatred”, and is an extension on a similar offence based on racist abuse. The new legislation covers hatred based on age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity.