For her many critics, arresting JK Rowling wouldn’t have made her anti-trans comments any less harmful

Arrest me,” wrote JK Rowling, at 11.45am on 1 April 2024. Despite the date, this was no April Fools’ prank. The Harry Potter author’s dare – aimed at the legal authorities in Scotland, where she lives – was entirely serious. It came at the end of an 11-tweet thread, 10 entries of which were dedicated to sharing names and photographs of different transgender women. Among these were several convicted sex criminals, as well as an athlete, the head of a rape crisis centre, and broadcaster India Willoughby. In one tweet, she details the crimes of a trans child rapist; in the next, she sarcastically praises Gaelic footballer Giulia Valentino for taking “some boring cis girl’s place” in a squad. Rowling wrote: “Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.”

It is this rhetoric for which Rowling claimed to be inviting a police arrest; authorities announced the following day that they were taking no further, which specifies protections for transgender identity, alongside disability, race (and related characteristics), religion, and sexual orientation. The bill, which was approved by Scottish parliament in 2021, also adds “stirring up hatred” as a criminal offence, something that has been a crime elsewhere in British law since the Public Order Act of 1986. Under the new act, the maximum penalty is a prison sentence of up to seven years. Women as a group are not protected by the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, an omission that has been criticised by Rowling and others. Per the BBC, the Scottish government is expected to introduce a separate misogyny law at a later date, following a consultation last year.