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.
I don’t think you can ethically separate art from artist when the artist is still alive, profiting from their work, and using those profits to further causes that you abhor. JKR doesn’t limit herself to expressing her views on social media.
Even there, I think it’s a grey area. I was already in middle school when Roald Dahl died and I’m Jewish, but my dad (who was remarkably sensitive to antisemitism in almost every other case) still read me his children’s books. He did profit off of them and he shouldn’t, but it’s hard to deny that books like James and the Giant Peach or The BFG aren’t amazingly good children’s books which don’t themselves have any bigotry issues (Willy Wonka not so much re the original Oompa Loompas) and it would be hard to say that children shouldn’t have been reading books that good just because the guy who wrote them was horrible.
I just don’t know how to feel about such things. At what point is a work so good that it transcends how horrible the person who made it is? I don’t have an answer there.
As I said, I’ve never been a fan of Harry Potter, so this particular issue does not apply to me in this case and I honestly do not know what I would do about it if I did.
I don’t know the extent of Dahl’s antisemitism, and am not currently inclined to research it. I also enjoyed his stories growing up, as well as Lovecraft’s, and lots of other authors who held views that I strongly disagree with. I don’t think all art created by deeply flawed people is worthless, by any means.
However, I strongly disagree with the notion that a piece of high-quality art is some kind of ethical trump card; it’s a bald-faced cop-out. Providing material support to someone who habitually crusades against an oppressed minority isn’t a gray area because you(rhetorically—I don’t mean you, personally) like their stories. Art is everywhere. There’s really no dearth of excellent stories written by people that are either dead, or don’t spend their time stirring up hate.
I don’t mean to suggest that the work somehow justifies the abhorrent views of the author, just that sometimes art transcends the artist. It’s in no way a universal thing and maybe it doesn’t and/or shouldn’t apply to Rowling’s works. I only read part of the first book and I didn’t enjoy it, so I personally don’t think so.
But my post was more about not beating yourself up about liking something made by a terrible person.
Yeah, I feel like we’re mostly talking past each other. Cheers!
And I agree, that would be silly.