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.
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
Thanks!