Arresting JK Rowling wouldn’t have made her anti-trans comments any less harmful

For free actual time breaking information alerts despatched straight to your inbox signal as much as our breaking information emails

Sign as much as our free breaking information emails

Arrest me,” wrote JK Rowling, at 11.45am on 1 April 2024. Despite the date, this was no April Fools’ prank. The Harry Potter creator’s dare – aimed on the authorized authorities in Scotland, the place she lives – was solely critical. It got here on the finish of an 11-tweet thread, 10 entries of which had been devoted to sharing names and images of various transgender girls. Among these had been a number of convicted intercourse criminals, in addition to an athlete, the pinnacle of a rape disaster centre, and broadcaster India Willoughby. In one tweet, she particulars the crimes of a trans little one rapist; within the subsequent, she sarcastically praises Gaelic footballer Giulia Valentino for taking “some boring cis girl’s place” in a squad. Rowling wrote: “Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.”

It is that this rhetoric for which Rowling claimed to be inviting a police arrest; authorities introduced the next day that they had been taking no additional motion. Rowling’s comments got here on the day that new hate crime laws comes into impact in Scotland, which specifies protections for transgender identification, alongside incapacity, race (and associated traits), faith, and sexual orientation. The invoice, which was authorised by Scottish parliament in 2021, additionally provides “stirring up hatred” as a felony offence, one thing that has been against the law elsewhere in British legislation for the reason that Public Order Act of 1986. Under the brand new act, the utmost penalty is a jail sentence of as much as seven years. Women as a bunch are usually not protected by the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, an omission that has been criticised by Rowling and others. Per the BBC, the Scottish authorities is anticipated to introduce a separate misogyny legislation at a later date, following a session final 12 months.

Rowling’s 1 April tweets have attracted criticism for the obvious conflation of trans sexual predators with the broader trans group – a neat microcosm of a lot of the broader transphobic rhetoric that pervades British discourse. But there’s little about her comments that’s new. Rowling has wilfully misgendered trans girls earlier than; she has expressed a willingness to be arrested for breaking hate crime legal guidelines earlier than; she has judged a whole minority group by the crimes of some earlier than. But Rowling’s tweets have grown bolder and extra controversial in current months. Last month, she was accused of holocaust denialism: replying to a commenter who made reference to the Nazi persecution of trans individuals and the burning of trans books, Rowling instructed them to “check [their] source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream”. She was embroiled in a protracted public dispute with Willoughby, a trans girl, misgendering her and accusing her of “cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is”. Willoughby wrote that she was “genuinely disgusted” by Rowling’s comments, which amounted, she wrote, to “grotesque transphobia”.

Go again even just some years, and Rowling’s personal tone was noticeably totally different. In 2018, after Rowling “liked” a transphobic tweet, the creator’s spokesperson instantly distanced her from it. “I’m afraid JK Rowling had a clumsy and middle-aged moment and this is not the first time she has favourited by holding her phone incorrectly,” they stated. She has denied being transphobic, writing on Twitter in 2020: “I know and love trans people[…] The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences is a nonsense.” As lately as 2023, she was arguing on The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast that her stance had been “profoundly misunderstood”.

Rowling’s contentions are primarily ones of free speech: that she holds sure beliefs about trans those who she must be free to specific publicly, as she has been doing for a number of years. That these beliefs come from a place of feminism and a need to guard the rights of cisgender girls. It is, she writes, “impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man”. She mentions single-sex areas – public bogs and prisons being probably the most ceaselessly set upon speaking factors, notably as hotbeds of sexual violence.

It is estimated that trans individuals account for 262,000 members of the UK inhabitants; the 2021 census reported that 0.52 per cent of people that listed their intercourse as feminine recognized as trans, and 0.56 per cent of males. As such, gaining any kind of dependable knowledge is inconceivable. Asked final 12 months in regards to the violent crime charge for transgender individuals in contrast with the final inhabitants, the Office for National Statistics stated it was “unable to publish prevalence estimates by gender identity because there were too few cases within those who identified as trans to produce reliable estimates”. The trans-exclusionary argument, such that it’s, is pressured to depend on anecdotal proof, particular person cases of crime perpetrated by trans individuals. This isn’t any grounds for coverage; loads of cisgender girls have additionally dedicated violent crimes, however it will after all be ludicrous to litigate round a presumed shared criminality.

What we do know of crime charges is that this: knowledge from 2022 suggests there have been simply 230 transgender prisoners out of a jail inhabitants of 78,058 in England and Wales – 168 of them trans girls, and solely six of whom had been housed in feminine prisons. In Scotland, the place Rowling resides, there have been solely 11 trans girls (5 in feminine prisons), out of a complete of 284 feminine prisoners, and seven,220 males. Trans persons are 4 occasions extra prone to be the victims of violent crime than cis individuals. In the 12 months ending March 2023, 4,732 hate crimes towards transgender individuals had been recorded – an increase of 11 per cent on the earlier 12 months – but transgender and disability-based hate crimes had been less prone to end in a cost than these primarily based on different protected traits.

When it involves the matter of ladies’s areas, the problem with Rowling’s argument is partly one in every of practicality. With the tiresome “bathroom debate”, there’s merely no means of implementing the type of cis-only guidelines for which the anti-trans foyer advocates. The dialog, because it all the time does, fully elides the existence of trans males. If trans girls are, as Rowling insists, males, then trans males are likewise girls – and certainly then entitled entry to female-only areas.

As Shon Faye writes within the 2021 e-book The Transgender Issue: “The logical endpoint of their ideology is that a person with a deep voice, full beard, masculine clothing, a typically male name and in some cases a penis will be permitted to enter a female space because he is a trans man or, in fact, just because he says he is (you cannot test for chromosomes in a public toilet).” The “false premise”, she continues, is that it’s “always possible to detect a trans woman on sight” and deny her entry to the women-only area. She provides: “This simply is not true in many instances, and could easily lead to a situation where masculine cis women and intersex women are challenged erroneously as ‘male’ based on their appearance.” Already, social media has seen cis girls testifying to this expertise.

Let’s get again to Rowling’s hypothetical arrest that wasn’t. Whether the creator’s comments contravened the hate crime act was all the time a matter of some uncertainty. SNP minister Siobhian Brown had beforehand stated that the act of misgendering – one thing Rowling has carried out many occasions – wouldn’t be labeled as a hate crime. This week, she instructed Radio 4’s Today programme: “It could be reported and it could be investigated. Whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland for that.”

In the wording of the invoice, the paradox most stems from the problem of intent, and whether or not Rowling’s comments met the standards for “stirring up hatred”. The first definition of the offence – which says it’s a crime to behave “in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting” – has fairly clearly been met. Listing Willoughby and the opposite trans activists alongside convicted intercourse criminals is sort of straightforwardly “insulting”, even when “abusive” or “threatening” are less clear minimize. However, the definition additionally states that the individual has to “intend to stir up hatred”, or {that a} “reasonable person would consider the behaviour or the communication of the material to be likely to result in hatred being stirred up”. This is the place opinion muddies the waters.

For Rowling, it was a win-win. With Scottish authorities refusing to oblige her supply of an arrest, it’s a vindication of kinds, proof that her opinions are usually not in reality hateful, as her detractors say. (How this freedom to misgender and offend would manifest in precise feminist development is unclear.) Were she to really be arrested for her comments, then again, it will have certainly been learn as an act of martyrdom – a lady being silenced for utilizing her platform, an assault on free speech. “Bring on the court case, I say,” she wrote final 12 months. “It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.” But loads of individuals will battle to search out the enjoyable on this debacle. Just as a result of one thing isn’t a hate crime doesn’t imply it’s not harmful. Just as a result of one thing’s authorized doesn’t make it proper.