Calling someone “fat” may be a “hate crime” under Scotland’s dystopian new law that went into effect this week, which also criminalizes using accurate pronouns to refer to transgender-identifying people.
On Monday, J.K. Rowling, the famed author of the Harry Potter series, dared authorities to arrest her under the new law with a series of posts correctly identifying as men even those who claim to be women.
“In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed 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,” Rowling wrote on X. “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces.”