JK Rowling and chamber of the new Scottish Laws

[ChedderGorgeous]

Rowling has immediately made statements supporting freedom of speech and despite complaints, Scottish police have said there is nil to prosecute. AIBU that the new Scottish Law will have little material impact ?

Thank you for this timely warning @FairCat . As a shrill, frenzied, silly little woman, I simply didn't realise that I was being used by the American Right. I honestly thought that I had arrived at my anti-transgender-cult position after a great deal of reading, research and critical thinking. Now, thanks to your wise words, I know better. Thank you.

"If you fight for women's right to have a word for themselves and their own single sex spaces and sports, you will only have yourselves to blame if you lose your right to an abortion" is quite the hot take, isn't it?

It really is the sort of puissant wisdom which could only come from the larger cerebellum and more advance foresight of a Man. I am humbled by my own ignorance, and shall now retire immediately back to the kitchen.

😂

I usually respond to that argument by saying that I don't believe it is a coincidence that women's abortion rights are under threat in a country where the people who believe abortions should be legal and easily accessible don't believe we need a word for the class of people who might need one.

If you refuse to even name the people in Group A for fear of upsetting Group B, you are not the best person to advocate for the rights of Group A in the face of oppression by Group B.

Dammit, Red, any one of those points could be a thread in itself.

But this one stood out initially

1. *there remains a danger that this law will be used in ways which aren't good for public debate in the future because the power still lies with interpretation and censors. If language shifts over the next twenty years we still could see issues.

It feels like we are living through history, in the same way that people were who objected to the gender recognition act.

Pointing out the flaws, how it could be exploited, and what the unintended consequences could be, but it going through, unamended, anyway.

And we have made headway with J. K. Rowling establishing that misgendering is not a crime.

But down the line, who knows how this law will be used.

The lobbyists who pushed this through are congratulating each other and can bide their time. Let the fuss die down and get ready for the next powerplay.

This is how it has worked all the way through.

We haven't actually been able to amend any of the laws. Just forced the original interpretation to be adhered to. And even that is in the balance, with whether or not sex in the equality act means biological sex or legal sex.

It's not enough that it sounds unenforceable and that it will be up to the police to decide!

The police, too many of whom who have been identified as racist, sexist, abusing rapists. Those police?

my worry is that these reports lead to NCHI and we will never be able to follow the trail of reports -> police actions.

I hope that there are statistics being kept of how many reports, in which categories (eg. which part of the law - religion, race etc as well as the "platform" eg Social media, my own living room, at a football match, etc) and which are treated as crimes and what the outcome is, and which are treated as NCHI and what the results of that are. And then which ones are dismissed for being nothing of any consequence.

That is what i want to come out of this. Accurate statistics.

Or we could just point and laugh at how naive you are for swallowing this US centric bollocks.

i have been impressed that he has criticised the criteria for not including sex. he is still no friend to women, but he appears to at least be thinking about some things.

Sex was never included in the hate crime law for a start so not sure why you think anything has changed in that regard.

It didn't need "demonstrating", because there was never any ambiguity in the first place. This was an entirely confected problem.

There was ambiguity. Siobhan Brown of the SNP suggested live on air that the police may investigate misgendering.

i would love the American-right to assume I'm on their side on anything and for them to read my twitter feed, just because i have liked or shared some pro-women stuff. I am not anti-trans but i will use correct sex-pronouns most of the time, etc. The 80% if my timeline that is about football/soccer, books, German food, my commute is very much anti-abortion, anti-NRA, pro-taxing the rich properly.

I'd like to see the shock on their faces.

"If you fight for women's right to have a word for themselves and their own single sex spaces and sports, you will only have yourselves to blame if you lose your right to an abortion" is quite the hot take, isn't it?

🎯

Ask the question about WHY it wasn't included.

It's a fascinating discussion in its own right...

And the fact that the defence that 'in the public interest' still stands and is a crucial bit of british law.

If you can say there is a legitimate aim to saying something others deem offensive because it exposes harm or abuses of power other laws are not necessarily still binding.

This is where the point about 'if you can't see sex, you can't see sexism' is highly relevant from everything from data collection to the design of every day products to the rights of women to privacy and dignity (as set out in the Human Rights Act and ECHR).

What will or might happen if I for example link trans to lifestyle or fashion? Suppose someone said that a TRA was in CosPlay costume to emphasize that it could be temporary?

Why are you pretending to not understand?

For every cause except transgenderism, JKR is loudly liberal, including matters of race, illegal immigration, and sexuality. She was always on the official "correct" side. Which is fine but she was always very strident and judgmental about it. At times, she was hypocritical.

She has only been loud and proud about free speech and hate speech, now that she is in the position of finding her own thoughts on the wrong side of the law.

It would be interesting to see if she is as vehement about this law for opinions she doesn't agree with. I don't think so. And if she did, it would be filled with condemnatory disclaimers.

I get the impression he hadn't actually thought about this issue much at all, yet assumed he was an expert and that the pro-LGBTXYZ side was automatically morally correct.

His support of paedophilia is appalling but I will give him credit that other than being swayed by his own perversions, he tends to be independently minded and not one to follow the crowd.

This is pure speculation.

Yes, she has been loudly and stridently pro EU, anti Scottish independence, pro Labour, anti Tory etc. I've never seen her suggesting that her political opponents should not be entitled to hold, or express, their own points of view.

She doesn't even say that about her political opponents on the trans issue. In fact, I think she relishes it when they express their point of view because it gives her an opportunity to publicly debate and wipe the floor with them.

yeah, i'd want to see evidence of her behaving in the way the TRAs do whenever someone correctly sexes a trans woman in a tweet. Thanks.

What, you mean freespeech might mean men can issue death and rape threats to women online with no consequences? That pricks like Andrew Tate can preach their hatred of women and nothing is done about it? Gosh, I can’t imagine how awful that would be…🤨

Just imagine if aggressive male protesters were allowed to protest against women's rights, holding placards saying "decapitate TERFs" in the presence of both elected politicians and the police, with zero consequences.

Imagine! I guess that would also be down to extreme right wing Americans too then, or do you think we’d be told that’s different after all?!

I’m not pretending. You quoted me and added a complete non sequitur.

Some of us have opinions that don’t fall into the neat silos that others think they should.

Having said that, JKR’s position on women’s rights are entirely consistent with her other avowed beliefs. And demonstrably not, as you falsely claim, “on the wrong side of the law”.

No I think it would be different because the aggressive male protesters inciting violence against "TERFs" would be identifying as a vulnerable and oppressed minority fighting valiantly for their own rights.

I beg to differ about the 'wrong side of the law'.

The law is fundamentally on her side and always has been. The problem has been the undermining of existing law and the removal of rights which protect as well as incoherent poorly written law which is requiring women to go to court to demonstrate they are on the right side of the law.

Her argument on this has always been that this new law was unworkable and incompatible with existing law. And that if it was ever taken to court on this specific points it would either totally fall apart or undermine the very tennants of liberalism which protect us all - including those who are trans.

If you undermine those principles you ultimately put the rights of everyone at risk from the state and abuses of power in the long run.

It's like libel law: the argument is that the only people who really have protection from libel laws are those who are super rich and have the ability to fund a libel case. The situation here was increasingly putting the burden on individuals - particularly women - against the state or a large and powerful organisation.

This is what the ECHR was ultimately about - prevention of the exploitation of vulnerable individuals by the state.

Or in short it is the essence of liberalism against authoritarianism.

If you don't understand the point that the law is on the side of women and it's the misrepresentation by the likes of Stonewall which is undermining women's existing rights and their plan to THEN fix this in law against women, then youve never understood what JKR has said and you have bought into the propaganda against her.

The whole façade to present JKR as 'anti-trans' is part of this. She never has been. She's always been about upholding the rights of women against a system which means anyone without power and money is unable to stand up and challenge unlawful behaviour on the part of companies and organisations.

It's a total smear.

JKR is totally consistent with liberal values in believing in free speech. Free speech is about the ability to speak the truth to power. Free speech does not allow for the harassment of others or threats to others. That's actually covered by existing laws too. Free speech is about the right to challenge ideas and sometimes to voice inconvenient truths. Sometimes people say things they believe to be true which aren't but that's the point - free speech stops those people taking control and becoming the censors themselves.

Censorship is a power. We shouldn't just hand it over because who makes the decisions? The Scottish government have handed this to the Scottish police. They have said it's not a crime but under some pressure not to cause a ridiculous show trial they know wouldn't play out well in terms of public interest. But if things gift in 20 years that power is now with the police - who is to say we won't head towards a police state. It's unlikely but it's not a given unless you protect the tennants and principles of a liberal democracy.

Democracies have fallen in the past and they will again in the future. The US is very much at risk of this right now.