JK Rowling has said people who criticised her decision to highlight a series of trans sex criminals are like “those who hushed up paedophile priests to protect the church”.
Only hours after the SNP’s controversial hate crime laws came into force on Monday, the Harry Potter author posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people and ridiculed their claims to be women.
They included the “double rapist” Isla Bryson, whom she mockingly referred to as a “lovely Scottish lass”, and Katie Dolatowski, a trans paedophile who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet.
At the end of the list, she tweeted: “April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.”
Rowling dared Police Scotland to arrest her for misgendering under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. The force later said complaints against her had been rejected because her comments did not meet the threshold for criminality.
But Humza Yousaf said that her tweets “may well be offensive, upsetting and insulting to trans people”. She was also criticised by some for including trans women who are not convicted criminals in the same list.
Rowling used Twitter to defend her list, writing:
One critic responded that there was a “massive difference” as the convicted sex offenders on her list had “faced justice”, whereas “the church covered up horrific crimes to prevent justice”.
However, Rowling responded: “So all sex offenders have been convicted, there’s no risk to women or girls any more, so no need for any safeguarding?”
Supporters are ‘astonishingly stupid’
It comes as a Scottish Harry Potter actor branded one of Rowling’s supporters “astonishingly stupid”.
The supporter tweeted: “J K Rowling taught a generation to read and then she challenged them to think.”
In a post liked 1,300 times, Sean Biggerstaff, who played Oliver Wood in the popular film adaptations of the books, wrote: “This is an astonishingly stupid thing to say.”
In a separate post last week, the 41-year-old actor also told the prominent SNP politician Joanna Cherry KC to “for the love of God get a life” after she defended Rowling’s views.
India Willoughby also lashed out at Rowling’s latest comments after being included on the author’s list.
The trans TV personality said that it was “another JKR tweet putting innocent people in danger” and tagged the accounts of Northumbria Police, Police Scotland and the Metropolitan Police.
In her response on social media, Willoughby used the hashtag #NotOurCrimes to argue that Rowling was trying to tar all trans people using the actions of sex criminals.
The First Minister also hit out at Rowling after she said that most Scots were “upset and offended by Yousaf’s bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism”, following the introduction of the legislation on Monday.
The author tweeted: “I don’t believe in putting people I disagree with in jail. We’ve got a ballot box and that’s where Yousaf will get his richly deserved comeuppance.”
Speaking on a visit to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Mr Yousaf said: “It’s a ludicrous suggestion. Actually JK Rowling’s tweets are a perfect example of how the law actually works.
“JK Rowling produced some tweets that were offensive, that were insulting – but of course the law does not deal with offensive. The law is dealing with new offences, criminal behaviour that has to be threatening or abusive, intent to stir up hatred. Hence why she was not arrested.”
