this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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JK Rowling has challenged Scotland's new hate crime law in a series of social media posts - inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.

The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.

She said "freedom of speech and belief" was at an end if accurate description of biological sex was outlawed.

Earlier, Scotland's first minister Humza Yousaf said the new law would deal with a "rising tide of hatred".

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of "stirring up hatred" relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.

Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.

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[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Who knewa serial plagiarist would be a shit person

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Can you point me at where to learn about this? Not being snarky, I'm out of the loop.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_disputes_over_the_Harry_Potter_series

There's a lot of gray area in the whole Young Adult Fantasy Wizard space. Case in point:

In June 2009, the estate of Adrian Jacobs, a children's author who died in 1997, sued Rowling's publishers, Bloomsbury, for £500 million, accusing her of having plagiarised "substantial parts" of his work in writing the novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In a statement, Jacobs's family claimed that a scene in Goblet of Fire was substantially similar to Jacobs's book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: Livid Land.

Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures

Is it possible that Rowling (or one of her ghostwriters) lifted passages from another Wizard Adventure novel with a similar theme of deadly puzzle games? Certainly. Is it possible that there's simply some overlap in how a couple of authors with relatively limited creativity can compose a cliche of the genre? Also certainly.

There's not any material evidence to suggest Rowling straight copypasta'd text from a prior copywritten work. But that would be devilishly hard to come by. As it stands, I'm open to the theory that Rowling's writing team cut corners by pulling a bunch of low-circulation published works and mining them for ideas. But I have relatively little confidence in their ability to prove any of it.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also Gaiman's Books of Magic was a huge "influence" on her work.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Well, sure. But if we're going to chase after every author who was influenced by Neil Gaiman, we're burning down half the modern fantasy fiction produced in the last 30 years. If we rope in Anne Rice, I think we'll get the other half.

[–] ArtVandalist@lemmus.org 3 points 7 months ago

It's written in the stars.