JK Rowling, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are fuming over Scotland’s hate crime law
JK Rowling, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are fuming over Scotland’s hate crime law
A legal shake-up aimed at protecting minorities angers high-profile opponents on freedom of speech grounds.
It was no April Fool’s joke.
Harry Potter author-turned culture warrior J.K. Rowling kicked off the month with an 11-tweet social media thread in which she argued 10 transgender women were men — and dared Scottish police to arrest her.
Rowling’s intervention came as a controversial new Scottish government law, aimed at protecting minority groups from hate crimes, took effect. And it landed amid a fierce debate over both the legal status of transgender people in Scotland and over what actually constitutes a hate crime.
Already the law has generated far more international buzz than is normal for legislation passed by a small nation’s devolved parliament.
If the only thing I knew about a given law is that those three complained about it I would immediately and wholeheartedly support and endorse that law. It's probably awesome and badly needed.
However, in this particular, case the law is wildly criticized and these 3 are just part of the crowd. And even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.
In fact, do you know who should make you mad? Politico.eu. This “news story”/“opinion piece” uses those names just to generate views and bring money. The subject is not being handled in any meaningful way. Your time is just wasted and you’re being used as a product to be sold to their advertisers. And you should be mad at yourself for continually falling in this trap of forming opinions on baseless information.
Casual reminder that Politico is owned by Axel Springer SE, the german Fox News
That's how Trump people work.
The problem with your attitude is that, by definition, free speech is only a useful right when it protects unpopular speech. The law at hand here isn't a surprise (the UK hasn't got free speech as an enshrined right), but it is certainly a particularly glaring red flag that there is absolutely nothing stopping them from e.g. passing a nearly-identical law copying Thailand about the royal family and putting in prison anyone who calls Prince Andrew a pedophile.
The vast majority of important free speech cases throughout history have involved the most deplorable people making the most deplorable kinds of speech, but e.g. American free speech would be nonexistent if the KKK hadn't won their landmark case.
The problem with your attitude is ...
No. That's your problem with my attitude.
"Free speech" absolutists don't convince me with their hypotheticals.
Believe it or not: absolute free speech is not the end goal and not as valuable as you all believe.
Forbidding some kind of speech can be okay.
Because not forbidding it creates an awful lot of very real and very current pain. Somehow the theoretical pain that a similar law could create is more important for your argument, than the real and avoidable pain thatthis law is attempting to prevent.
but e.g. American free speech would be nonexistent
And I say that the specific American flavor of free speech is not very valuable at all.
(the UK hasn’t got free speech as an enshrined right)
In practice, does the US?
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
It seems to me there are a lot of exceptions to free speech in the land of free speech. I wouldn't see any harm in adding hate speech to the list given how large it already is.
e.g. passing a nearly-identical law copying Thailand about the royal family and putting in prison anyone who calls Prince Andrew a pedophile.
That seems more of a problem with flawed democracy or autocracies, than to do with free speech. Any awful thing could become law under a flawed democracy/autocracy. The UK has plenty of undemocratic elements and they're abused to pass horrible laws right now, and we need to fix those elements - the laws are just the end result.
Haters gonna hate...
..up to and until they face real consequences for their behavior. Then they'll just whine about being treated unfairly.
Rowling was literally on Twitter breaking the law and daring anyone to do anything about.
They likely won't, because she's rich as fuck.
So yeah, they're being treated unfairly, just not how they think.
Her hostile fixation with trans people is just bizarre at this point.
I understand she is concerned about biologically-born women (sorry, I don't know what the correct term is) being at risk from a very small minority of criminal trans women assaulting them in bathrooms etc. But statistically that risk seems far out of context to the shouting she keeps making on it. And her ranting is just doing harm to the vast majority of trans people who just want to live their lives, because it sows animosity towards them and emboldens bigots and their hate crimes.
It's basically an axe-grinding exercise on her part. And she probably keeps going due to the fact that people keep calling her out. So she then doubles, triples, quadruples down out of pride.
It's just irritating. I wish she'd just calm down and either keep her opinions to herself or be more tactful.
I'm not quite sure why anybody gives a fuck about what she tweets.
She wrote a handful of successful books (I can't comment on the content, I never read them), made a fucktonne of money, wrote a few other plays and books under a rando name... and yet she's being quoted and reported on every five seconds.
Taking a step back a bit - my entirely personal opinion is that 95% of the people ranting and raving about this new law are the people who are gobshites anyway. The other 5% are quite rightly asking the question whether the law is proportionate, whether the police service is the right way to enforce the laws, and whether this could have been delayed to launch with the misogyny bill.
edit while I'm on a soapbox: as for Musk and Rogan, who gives a fuck what they have to say? Musk has probably been in Scottish airspace more than he's been on Scottish soil, and Rogan is so far removed from Scotland politics that he might as well be on Pluto.
Oh no someone disagrees with me. Better ban political dissent.
I am anyways dismayed at how Joe Rogan stays relevant. He's such a moronic ape, who pushes misinformation and hate, and yet he's always at the top of the charts and half my relatives listen to him
It's basically just because he's like, a moronic ape. He is able to kind of, wear the aesthetics of your everyday college dorm bro, who thinks the dark knight is the greatest movie ever made. Or at least, wear the aesthetics of their middling 30 year old, balding, divorced versions, because that movie came out in like 2008, or whatever. You can basically put him in any context, and he's able to function as the same idiot self-insert character. He's the vessel through which they can imagine themselves talking to famous celebrities, academics, comedians, and right wing conspiracy nuts.
i think this has a lot to do with it.
and i think he's also boosted a lot by the fact that he doesn't really communicate that many original thoughts. instead, it seems like he tends to blindly agree with whoever he has on camera. so he simultaneously cultivates these personas of "having intellectual curiosity" while also being a stand-in for the average college dorm bro.
(i'm not trying to defend him here, he still causes serious harm by platforming bad actors and endorsing their views.)
I just don't get the Joe Rogan hate. I've watched a fair number of episodes of his, maybe a few dozen. I'll sometimes agree with his take on something, other times I'll disagree (often in the same episode), but it's usually at least interesting. I watch them for the topics not in some kind of idol worship of the guy. Despite whatever hot takes people are going to throw at me from his hundreds or thousands of hours of hosting his podcast, I still think he asks good questions and that his long-form interviews and laid back discussion format fosters more interesting discussion than I see in other places.
I'm not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater if I find someone I watch on YouTube or wherever says something I disagree with or holds a viewpoint I don't like, though.
I don't think he's a malicious actor, just an uneducated jock type dude. Suspect his audience is partly comprised of people who are also uneducated and enjoy seeing someone who is not an expert pontificate on things.
Reminder that he was on Infowars on 9/11. He actually pushed back on some of Alex Jones crazier statements that day, but not quite enough, and he's lost that subtle praise since then.
I still can't believe Rowling ended up in the same sentence as these fucks. What the shit happened yo. Remember how happy people were when she made Dumbledore gay?
BITCH THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT HATED YOU WERE RELIGIOUS NUTJOBS
Remember how happy people were when she made Dumbledore gay?
No? Most people I know thought it was cheap to just say he was gay long after the books were released and not having any part of the story. Right there with implying that Hermione could be black in the books.
Honestly I respect the Hermione comment. Obviously Hermione was written as white, like duh. She was expressing her support for a black-casted hermione because her race is unimportant. It was just a cheeky way of supporting the casting choice amid the backlash from racist fans.
The Dumbledore being gay thing is... idk. I think it makes sense that he can be gay but JK should have been explicit and not canonized his queerness after the fact for clout.
Obligatory fuck JK for being a TERF.
What happened was she was severely mistreated by men growing up and she's now so scared of men that it completely clouds her judgment. To her, women are vulnerable and all men are predators that can never ever be trusted. It's been there all along, it just wasn't visible until she made some comments on trans women (that she's terrified of, because "men"). And then people went nuts, and she tried to explain herself, and people didn't care about her explanation and instead of going "hey that sucks, let us help you overcome that trauma and become a better person" they went to war which made her defensive and double down instead of changing her mind, as always happens, and it's only been getting worse ever since.
What happened is she is from TERF Island and plenty of people there hold the same exact bullshit viewpoint. Many of which are males.
Its that she hates women, or thinks women are inferior to men. You see this with all terfs.
So she invented some magical bullshit about why she was a full person.
But the magical bullshit is magic; doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Which trans people inherently bring/are.
So trans people must be stopped (from existing), the territory must be flattened to match the map!
A guy I used to follow on social media would post about once a month a picture of a wasp larva emerging from inside of the bug it had consumed from inside with the caption "your brain on Terf".
It summarized it well for me. Doesn't matter what you were once you get infected with the anti-trans virus it will either not take or eat you within, then discard you when it is done.
Oh man...Woke with hate juice drooling.
My guess is $$$billionaire$$$ money is involved somewhere in this woven tale of bigotry. Nobody is doing this level of terf shit for free.
She is a billionaire in her own right, she doesn't need to be paid off, she's rich enough to do what she wants without consequences. Like blatantly break hate crime laws solely to flaunt her legal immunity.
The only billions that corrupted her were her own, but all they did was expose who she is deep down.
Nah, she’s entirely capable of being cold wet garbage on her own, and for free! She was just smart enough to come out with her shit takes after making tons of bank on her average storytelling. The again, Harry Potter is still stupid popular even after she piped up, so maybe it wouldn’t have matter if she’d shown her whole ass right after the fifth book, people don’t care.
Because the internet can't handle shades of gray? Perhaps there's more to her than "she's a liberal" or "she's a conservative"? Hive mind will be the end of society - if someone doesn't agree with the party line on EVERY point, they're suddenly an extremist.
Perhaps, PERHAPS there are people who are otherwise liberal that have some pretty strong feelings about the trans movement? Outside of the trans thing, Rowling is pretty liberal by the classic definition of the term based on everything I've seen. But because she's taken a stance here she's put in the same sentence as Musk and Rogan. I have a tough time taking anyone seriously that tries to make that comparison. Musk is literally defending fascists and Rogan regularly has Alex Jones on his show. She's not even on the same continent as those two.
Because yes, she literally made Dumbledore gay, which both Joe Rogan and Elon Musk would tell you makes her a woke libtard... but they're the same!!!!1111
professional haters don't like a hate crime law? Color me surprised.
They’re only “professional” because they get to bypass all the filters in society and skip to the front unlike us amateurs who drown in the background noise.
Calling those people professional haters is giving them far too much credit. Their hatred is amateur at best.
Disagree; I've met some pretty terrible professional chefs abd some pretty amazing home chefs.
that's how you know scotland's hate crime law is good.
To be honest it's not. It's extreme and the content of the bill itself breaks the very law it describes.
Basically if you say any comment about a singled out group and anyone over heard you and takes offence you can br prosecuted.
So you're in your own home, on the phone, talking about how all black guys have massive dicks. A neighbour overhears, gets offended and reports you. Even if you don't get arrested, prosecuted or go to jail that incident goes on your permanent record.
that's literally not what the bill is...
Except for the fact that Scottish police already came out to say that she wouldn't be charged for recent comments.
Israely bombs sometimes hit Hamas, not just civilians. Does not make them good. Just like (supposedly) doing a good thing in this one case does not make it a good law.
And it was confirmed Rowling won't even be prosecuted. Because of course these kind of laws don't apply to the rich and famous hatemongers. They apply to the poor schmuck making a bad taste joke.
They can go fuck themselves.
How dare people disagree with me!?
When people disagree with me that humans should have some basic human rights, then yes, fuck those sub-humans who disagree.
Nothing good in all of human history has ever come from conservatism. Not one single thing. Yet nearly every act of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia and other bigotry ever committed has been by conservatives.
It sounds like what we disagree on most is if there is such a thing as a "good conservative" anywhere on planet earth. I'm not convinced there is.
Man... it isnt like I agree with you but the mods are deleting your comments like... automatically. I really though Lemmy was a better place than that.. I guess I'm going back to the cavern (or reddit)
Lol, the bigots are mad. Good.
How dare you protect a marginalized minority!
I did wonder what all the fuss was about. I don't live in Scotland, I live in the UK though. So it's kinda partially relevant to me. It's also relevant to JK Rowling I guess. But really not sure why Musk or Rogan feel the need to weigh in.
So, the act itself is not that long and is here https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/introduction. There was also a 70+ page consultation/memorandum document that I also read (here https://www.parliament.scot/-/media/files/legislation/bills/s5-bills/hate-crime-and-public-order-scotland-bill/introduced/policy-memorandum-hate-crime-and-public-order-scotland-bill.pdf).
So, I think generally the law is well-meaning and a good thing. I think there were a few things I took issue with in the consultancy. Those were mainly that they had a review of the law by a lord, and a consultancy with individuals and organisations. However, they seemed to just not take into account some of the recommendations from either source when it didn't suit them.
When the consultancy didn't turn up a result they liked, they would just state that it's likely the people didn't favour hate crime law overall. Now to me that's kinda the point. If most people don't want an extension of hate crime law, and you're asking them about creating an extension of hate crime law, that consideration should have been taken into account.
I also think that Lord Bracadale raised a few good points which were also dismissed. The main one being about not including insulting as a qualifier for the new hate crime law. Here, I'd agree with what the people surveyed said. The term is far too subjective to be used in a law with such a maximum sentence. There's nothing wrong with the spirit of the law, but I believe it should be abundantly clear when the line for breaking the law has been crossed. Saying "that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting" isn't a clear objective statement. It makes it very subjective and very interpretable by the police officer(s) involved and the CPS.
Of course, none of the above is why the aforementioned people are complaining. But having read through it, those are just my concerns.
I have the same concerns about the Public Order Act (UK law, 1986) that has similar subjective definitions. However, that doesn't include "insulting" and only has a maximum sentence of 6 months and is almost always dealt with by way of a fine. So, the threshold being low and subjective isn't as concerning. This law seems to have a lower threshold to satisfy (despite the memorandum document stating it was meant to have a higher threshold than the existing laws it replaced and augmented) but a considerably longer maximum sentence (1 year summary, 7 years on indictment), which will almost certainly mean higher values in the sentencing guidelines. This is my main concern with it.
In summary, I think as an act and new law overall, it's fine and I do hope if used appropriately it will make people safer. I just feel like there's scope for over-zealous application due to the subjective language used. Time will tell I guess if that happens or not once cases and convictions start to happen.
Thanks for your analysis. I was busy being angry about Bro Jogan and this diffused it and brought me back to the more important topic. I’ll give the memorandum a read.
The issue I have is unintended listening to deliberately inflammatory jokes between friends. And that any reported incident, crime or not goes on a permanent public record.
Yeah, I did notice the lack of exception for a private dwelling as exists for the Public Order Act. On one hand, I don't think there's a place for some jokes. But on the other hand, if they're happening between people in a private setting, then I don't think it should be the law's business.
In terms of reported incidents. I think recording for anonymous statistics is fine. I'm very wary of naming people that haven't even been charged, for example. It's a slippery slope. But, keeping the number of reported incidents is good for statistics. I am aware of the risk that also entails, though.
Got to admit, despite knowing next to nothing about the law, if those three are against it I am most likely going to support it.
Generally speaking, that's a poor way to decide what to support.
For a bunch of miserable whingeing bastards, the Scots are pretty progressive.
Lol
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And that should tell you everything you need to know about the law. Which is to say it's clearly on the right side of history.
It tells me everything I need to know about you, jumping on the hate train.
Forget about those 3 people's and read this guy's comment; https://kbin.life/m/[email protected]/t/173338/-/comment/2549722
I'm sorry. The hate train? The hate train???
Are you trying to use a mirroring technique to try and manipulate me or other readers with some cheap psychological trick, or did you just sort of stumble into those words like you stumbled into this thread?
The purpose of the law is to protect people who are actually receiving hate trains. Like the kind that fucking kill them. Every fucking day.
Remind me again how many self absorbed narcissistic Billionaires die a day due to hate trains?
What's that fucking number again?
Zero?
Yeah. That's what I thought.
Fuck off with your nonsense cheap psych101 shit trying to make, literally the most powerful people in the world, into victims, while the real victims: trans people, are actually getting murdered, and beaten, and raped, and tortured.
But, fuck do go on. Really.
Tell me how much these billionaires are suffering because they can't turn their massive insecurities into dog whistling hate speech that ends with innocent people dying.
I'd hate to upset their mamosa mornings on their private fucking yatch you absolute waste of space in a human skin.
Get the fuck on the right side of history and stop sucking the dicks of the oligarchs that have never, and will never give a shit about you or anything you care about.
"It's okay to censor people who disagree with me."
Yeah, cause that worked out so well in the past...
No. You don't get to make that weak bad faith argument that keeps getting used here by the intolerant.
Additionally, I said no such thing that you straw manned my argument with, which tells me everything I need to know about your motivations.
You do not get to use our system of tolerance against us.
There are limits to tolerance. There must be, or else fascism will always creep in. Whether or not you yourself are a fascist, you are using one of the oldest arguments of fascism to undermine a functioning society.
You know what we call someone sitting at a table full of fascists?
A fascist.
So stop being a bigot?
Why should Rogan and Musk be concerned about a law in Scotland? I can't be botheres to look up if Rowling lives in Scotland, but she's at least on the same island.At the minimum Rogan and Musk should mind their own business. As a German I also don't judge US gub laws, for example. None of my business.
They are paid to stir up shit. So they did.
Rogan is paid to stir up shit, Musk is somehow losing gobs of money doing the same thing....
It's interesting to see her timeline is full of Trump hate considering how much she hates LGBTQ
This is why we can’t have nice things… Just because two people agree on one topic doesn’t mean they agree on all other topics.
As a left-leaning feminist, why would she like Trump? Whatever your opinions of her, even her enemies call her a TERF; RF stands for Radical Feminist. Hardly Trump's primary demographic.
JKR actually lives there, the other two are just hate-signalling in their culture war and should mind their fucking business.
Hilariously Harry Potters world does have hate crime laws, its like a fifth of the book series.
Damn muggles and mud-bloods
A lot of astroturfing bots are also really mad about it as you can see with the tens of "I'm going to use this to report Humza Yousaf for anti-white racism" highest top-level comments you can see in UK subreddits right now.
Three dumbasses think alike.
The bizarre thing about Rowling is her hatred for trans people only extends to MtF trans people. She has no problem with FtM.
*Apologies, I did have these mixed up, I typed this while walking and only just read it back now.
Don't you have it exactly the wrong way around?
Also, since the hate itself is already irrational, any additional "quirks" in that hate shouldn't be surprising anyone.
Yep, had it the wrong way around! Oops, was typing while walking.
As mentioned, I think you have those reversed, but yes, as do all the so-called "anti-woke" brigade who are worried about crimes they've made up (which don't happen), and have no real solution. There is, however, anti-trans hatred which they are riling up, resulting in violence and murders of transfolk at an alarming rate. If you ever ask about FtM people, they are suddenly quiet, because it completely messes with their logic.
Did you mix those up?
Yes I did, wasn't paying attention while I typed it! Fixed now.
TERFs generally in fact do hate both, just in different ways. While I haven't heard Rowling's take, I'd be somewhat surprised if it wasn't some version of the usual patriarchal agency denying thing where trans men are just confused by society telling them lies about escaping repression as women and how horrible it was that these poor girls were going to damage their bodies because they were just too dumb and weak-willed to know what they really wanted, which is a marriage to a good man and pumping out eight or nine kids. They want to take choice and self determination from all trans people, that version just plays better currently.
Incidentally, FtM and MtF are generally deprecated terms. Usually these days the terms, relative to my ordering in the prior sentence, are trans men and trans women, it's less alienating than the older terms that tend to describe people as a segment of their life that isn't them.
Oh no... She doesn't like any of us. The transphobia she levies at FtM is just different. Rowling is notorious for Championing the works of Abagail Shrier who is famous for her work trumpeting the very discredited but viral "social contagion" theory that frames trans men and non binary trans masc people as being misguided lesbians and women fleeing from misogyny who spread transness to their friends who need to be protected from making terrible decisions and undermining the worth of femininity.
Transphobia is best described as framing trans people as a problem for other people. Naturally the problem framed is different for the two groups. In this instance trans men are still framed as being dangerous but rather dangerous by association...
"If we let them exist then they will tempt our perfectly healthy daughters into pursuing surgeries to make themselves into sterile parodies of men! We must stop them! Save the children! " Clutch pearls, repeat.
White supremacy in action.
so is jonathan pie to be fair
More relevant than these other jokers
This is such a complicated issue. Free speech is a human right but hate speech can incite fear in targeted groups effectively silencing their voices. The Scottish hate crime law is consistent with international human rights laws which protect freedom of expression but do not protect hate speech. But they may been better served keeping hate speech within civil law. It's a balance between the freedom of expression of individuals and the freedom from harassment, discrimination and abuse of some of the most vulnerable individuals.
Hate speech can also incite violence against targeted groups. I'm fine with freedom of speech but there's got to be a line somewhere. I'm not sure whether this legislation is over the line or not, we'll see how it's enforced.
Well they're in good company at least
Oh no
Anyway
Who gives a flying fuck about their opinions?
The law is silly to start with and only intended to illustrate a direction but having no powers at all. Its a huge waste of time and resources.
It’s good for putting the spotlight on assholes.
Cry more emo kids, your tears are delicious.
free speech tho
Aint America tho