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JK Rowling Made an April Fools Joke. Will It Land Her in Jail?

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8 months ago

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Today a new law went into effect in Scotland. It’s called the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act and the law appears to make it a crime to insult someone from a protected group. Here’s what the law actually says:

Offences of stirring up hatred

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) the person—

(i) behaves in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting, or

(ii) communicates to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting, and

(b) either—

(i) in doing so, the person intends to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins, or

(ii) a reasonable person would consider the behaviour or the communication of the material to be likely to result in hatred being stirred up against such a group.

(2) A person commits an offence if—

(a) the person—

(i) behaves in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive, or

(ii) communicates to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive, and

(b) in doing so, the person intends to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to a characteristic mentioned in subsection (3).

(3) The characteristics are—

(a) age,

(b) disability,

(c) religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation,

(d) sexual orientation,

(e) transgender identity,

(f) variations in sex characteristics.

I read through it a couple of times and it appears to me (as a non-attorney) that section one makes an insult that is judged to stir up hatred against race, color, ethnicity, etc. a crime. But in section two, it’s a crime to send threatening or abusive communication against any of six characteristics listed in section three. In other words, you can be charged for insulting someone’s race but you have to be deemed abusive to be charged for insulting their age, disability, orientation or transgender identity.

In any case, JK Rowling posted an April Fools joke on X this morning which is clearly meant to test the boundaries of the new law.

And here’s the punchline:

The full tweet reads:

Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.

In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, 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.

For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of ‘woman’ to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women’s and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.

It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.

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.

If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it.

#ArrestMe #AprilFools #HateCrimeActScotland

She’s literally begging the government to arrest her when she returns home to Scotland. Will they do it? I read through the quote tweets expecting to see a lot of angry trans activists. there are a few but the overwhelming reaction has been praise for Rowling’s courage.

Rowling also doubled down on the demand she be arrested in response to some unsolicited advice from a lawyer in London.

I really don’t know what happens next but my guess is the police and the politicians who passed this new law don’t want to take on someone who has lots of money and their own international soap box. I think they chicken out and Rowling gets a pass. The Telegraph seems optimistic that this is the start of repealing the new law.

Faced with the possibility of prosecution under an Act that carries a maximum seven-year jail sentence, the best-selling author didn’t for a second cast caution to the wind. Instead, she sailed straight into a calculated attack against Humza Yousaf’s determination to bring in a raft of new offences which threaten to end freedom of expression over the “trans” issue but which fail to protect women

The resolute defence of her right to speak out about the dangers posed by the new legislation may now spark a campaign to repeal the Act as soon as possible, even before it gains a foothold in public opinion…

Support for a repeal campaign is coming already from Jim Sillars, a former Labour MP who’s also a one-time deputy leader of the SNP. He said that there was no legislation that could “make men become women or vice versa, or convert them into a third variety”. He urged Scots to “campaign for its repeal” and continue to speak out on any subject they wish.

As for the possibility that his comments might lead to his prosecution, he said: “I’ve deliberately put my views out there. Let’s see what happens.”

Then again, the police could announce some kind of face-saving investigation. Some people really don’t want free speech to exist in the world. Scotland is now at the forefront of that ongoing battle.



Read the full article here

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