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.

Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.

  • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I know what it means. And, by all means, people can and should talk about Hitler and the Nazis in their historical context. WW2 was the defining conflict of the 20th century, after all. But you used it in the reductio ad Hitlerum sense. It’s just so boring to constantly see every Lemmy thread devolve into calling people Nazis or comparing them to Nazis, which is just the former with an extra step. It becomes meaningless after a while. So, when we are faced with an actual proto-fascist like Trump, the comparison has been exhausted and has little impact.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Not a reduction at all. The beginning of the Holocaust was when the Nazis destroyed the Institute for Sexual Research and burned all the books. I used Jews as an example rather than that because people were making the same “he’s keeping Germany safe” argument about Hitler persecuting the Jews that the person above is making about “they’re keeping women safe.” And I would not be at all surprised if they made the “they’re keeping women safe” argument about persecuting trans people then too.

      It is encouraging genocide while defending someone who denied the Holocaust.

      Why you think that is a reduction, I don’t know. It seems like a pretty close 1:1 comparison with Germany in 1933 to me.

      Hitler didn’t start the death camps the second he came to power. You know that, right?

      • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Well, comparing JK Rowling to Hitler and her fear of tran women to the Holocaust might be just a wee bit of exaggeration, eh? The purpose of citing Godwin’s Law is to remind people to step back and ask whether the person being discussed is actually similar in magnitude to Hitler and the Nazis.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I was comparing the excuse of her bigotry to the same excuses given to Nazis and it led to horrors. Horrors that are happening again and which she is fomenting.

          I compared her to the Nazi ideology she supports and her supporters to the appeasers that excused the Nazis in the 1930s.

          I will not apologize for calling a Nazi a Nazi. If you think you have to subscribe to every single thing the Nazis believed in to be called a Nazi, you’re wrong.

          Is she Hitler? No, because she’s not a world leader. Would she do the same things he did to trans people, especially women, if she were? Of that I have little doubt.

          Think like a Nazi, I’m going to call you a Nazi. Excuse a Nazi and I’m going to point it out.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              She subscribes to Nazi ideology. Specifically the classifying of trans people as sub humans and demonizing them as a danger to public safety.

              It quacks like a duck. You seem to think Nazi = killing people. It doesn’t. She supports a genocide. That’s all it takes.

              Again, Hitler didn’t open the camps on day one to anyone but political opponents.

              This seems more about you liking Rowling and not wanting to admit what she’s doing.

              Once again, a transgender genocide is going on right now. She is supporting it. If you deny that genocide is happening, or worse, claiming she has a point like the person I responded to, you’re supporting Nazi ideology too.

              Maybe the issue is that you agree with her that trans people are a danger to society?

              • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                She subscribes to Nazi ideology. Specifically the classifying of trans people as sub humans

                • Hyperbole

                It quacks like a duck. You seem to think Nazi = killing people. It doesn’t.

                • Straw man argument

                She supports a genocide. That’s all it takes.

                • Does she actually support a genocide? Who knew the bar was so low?

                Again, Hitler didn’t open the camps on day one to anyone but political opponents.

                • Slippery slope argument

                This seems more about you liking Rowling and not wanting to admit what she’s doing.

                • Ad hominem attack

                Once again, a transgender genocide is going on right now.

                • Hyperbole

                She is supporting it. If you deny that genocide is happening, or worse, claiming she has a point like the person I responded to, you’re supporting Nazi ideology too.

                • Ad hominem attack, again

                Maybe the issue is that you agree with her that trans people are a danger to society?

                • Ad hominem attack again.

                Do you ever make valid arguments, or is your mouth just a fire hose of irrationality?

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Ah, so you deny there’s a transgender genocide going on right now despite my showing you very clearly that it is, in fact, happening right now.

                  Guess I know why you’re also denying that a Nazi is a Nazi.

                  You would have saved a lot of time if you had just started this by telling me that you agree with Rowling.

                  • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    I don’t agree with Rowling’s concerns about transgender people. They are no threat to me or the larger society. I also don’t think there is a transgender genocide going on. Again, reductio ad absurdum. Does that make me a Nazi? Again, who knew the bar was so low on Nazism?

                    It’s hard to take you seriously when your argument is just a long string of logical fallacies, as I pointed out in detail.