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.
Have you heard of the paradox of tolerance? It states, “if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate.”
Seems to me like something we all have to care about.
I have yeah, it’s a fine line where to draw the line though. That can equally be used to silence people whose views are entirely sensible but inconvenient to whoever is writing the rules.
The question I’m struggling to grasp is why her? How come she’s the lightning rod for these opinions when she’s just spewing nonsensical bollocks and bile?
She might be “just spewing nonsensical bollocks and bile” OR she might be publicly and seemingly proudly flouting Scottish law.
So why not her?