Author and outspoken feminist J.K. Rowling has dared police in Scotland to arrest her for criticising transgender ideology as the country’s controversial hate crime legislation came into effect on Monday.
Rowling, who resides in Scotland, has warned that the leftist-separatist Scottish National Party government’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act will have a stifling effect on freedom of speech and vowed to continue espousing her belief that men cannot become women.
“Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she wrote on social media.
“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.”
The Harry Potter author argued that in passing the hate crime legislation, the local Scottish parliament put a “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.”
Rowling, once a darling of the left for her liberal politics and success as a female writer before riling the woke mob over her criticisms of transgenderism, went on to post a series of biological males whom she mocked for claiming to be women.
These included Adam Graham, a convicted double rapist who claimed to be a transgender woman named Isla Bryson after being charged with sex crimes and who was initially placed in a female prison. The move to place an accused rapist sparked an international scandal, which many attributed as a cause for the downfall of former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon after she was unable to say whether Graham was a woman or not.
The Harry Potter author also shared transgender television personality India Willoughby as an example of someone who is “not a woman at all”. Rowling previously faced attempts by activists to have her arrested after she publicly declared Willoughby a male.
Concluding the series of prominent biological males claiming to be women, Rowling urged her supporters to share the post with the hashtag “#ArrestMe”.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force on Monday after years of debate. The new law criminalises “stirring up hatred” based on age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity. Notably, the law did not cover biological sex, meaning that biological women were not included as a protected class.
Far-left First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, has claimed that the bill does not infringe upon freedom of speech and that there will be protections against it being weaponised for political purposes. However, critics have pointed to the vague language of the bill — which includes “insulting” behaviour — as being prone to abuse. Prosecutors also do not need to prove that a statement was intended to stir up hatred but merely that it was a “likely” result.
Those found guilty of violating the new speech code face up to seven years in prison.