JK Rowling is daring police in her native Scotland to arrest her for misgendering transgender people after a new woke hate crime law took effect Monday.
“Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she wrote on X.
“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offense under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
Scotland’s community safety minister Siobhian Brown told the Telegraph on Monday that Rowling’s remarks could be reported to police and investigated.
“Whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland for that,” she said.
Scotland’s hate crime law went into effect on Monday. It bans hatred on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. Critics have said the law is overly broad and could curtail free speech.
By passing the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, Rowling said politicians “placed 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.
