J.K. Rowling has said she would happily do a spell in jail if a future Labour Government makes it a hate crime to deliberately call someone by the ‘wrong’ (i.e., biologically correct) pronouns. The Mail has the story.
The Harry Potter author said she would rather do time for misgendering than submit to “compelled speech”. She spoke out after the Mail on Sunday revealed that Labour plans to introduce stricter sentences for abuse targeted at transgender people.
Deliberately misgendering someone is already a hate crime if it is motivated by hostility to the victim’s transgender identity, the Government said last year, but Labour’s policy would mean tougher penalties for perpetrators.
If it becomes an ‘aggravated offence’ such as race hate attacks, harassment based on someone’s gender identity could result in a prison sentence of up to two years.
But because of the police’s heavy-handed intervention in previous online spats, critics fear the move could see gender-critical campaigners prosecuted for refusing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns and referring to them by their birth sex [sic].
Ms. Rowling joined the row last night after posting on social media the word “no” above an image of the slogan “trans women are women”.
Told by a user on X, formerly Twitter, that voting Labour would mean two years in jail, she replied: “I’ll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex.
“Bring on the court case, I say. It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.”
Worth reading in full.
If the Government really wanted to fight this ‘war on woke’, of course, it would introduce a statutory right to use biologically correct pronouns and ban discrimination against anyone who elects to do so. Similarly, we hear that Ministers are going to “tell” the General Medical Council that “women are women” and stress “the importance of the use of correct language” after the medical regulator removed the word ‘mother’ from maternity guidance. Or the Government could pass legislation requiring that all maternity guidance use the word mother. It’s the Government, for goodness sake, not a think tank. Why aren’t Ministers coming up with laws to counter all the nonsense? If the people pushing this stuff were susceptible to pleas to be sensible we wouldn’t be in this mess.
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