The “Harry Potter” author slammed a newly enacted hate-crime law in Scotland in a series of posts on X in which she referred to transgender women as men.
J.K. Rowling shared a social media thread on Monday, the day a new Scottish hate-crime law took effect, that misgendered several transgender women and appeared to imply trans women have a penchant for sexual predation. On Tuesday, Scottish police announced they would not be investigating the “Harry Potter” author’s remarks as a crime, as some of Rowling’s critics had called for.
“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”
Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity.
I am truly sorry for what happened to you growing up. That’s really fucked and no one deserves that.
I would caution that you are using this experience to shape the definition of all transgender people in your mind. There’s all types of people, good and bad, this is the same with transgender people. This is assuming the person you described is even transgender, which they may not be.
I’d point out that all of the struggles that you face as a biologically born woman, aren’t erased because somebody else has joined your gender. There are plenty of cis women who don’t experience childbirth, periods, ovarian cysts, fibroids, etc… they’re still women. Your struggles in these areas don’t gatekeep other people from experiencing womanhood. If a country achieves true gender equality, are the cis female population of that country no longer able to call themselves women because they didn’t experience discrimination growing up?
All the things you’ve mentioned aren’t things that define womanhood. They define individual women’s struggles. Just because there are members of the gender that have never experienced this, does nothing to undermine these struggles. Feminism exists to help ameliorate the various struggles that affect women disproportionately. That’s not being threatened here. If anything it’s bringing more attention to it.
A person rejecting the identity of their biology and often their whole social life to be identified as another gender is not done as a mockery. Maybe this did happen in your case. But I assure you that the majority of transgender people want to celebrate the best parts of the gender they are transitioning into and be another person to stand up for them and fight for their equality.
The struggles women are subjected to are brutal. Don’t reject an ally who wants to join you.