It was no April Fool’s joke.
Harry Potter author-turned culture warrior J.K. Rowling kicked off the month with an 11-tweet social media thread in which she argued 10 transgender women were men — and dared Scottish police to arrest her.
Rowling’s intervention came as a controversial new Scottish government law, aimed at protecting minority groups from hate crimes, took effect. And it landed amid a fierce debate over both the legal status of transgender people in Scotland and over what actually constitutes a hate crime.
Already the law has generated far more international buzz than is normal for legislation passed by a small nation’s devolved parliament.
When you define a word loosely enough, it can cease to be meaningful. When most people hear “opposition to censorship,” they’re not going to expect the reference to be advocating for the legalization of public and deliberate slander or open threats of violence and attempts to incite violence.
Using the phrase in that way may not be technically incorrect, but it is still misleading at best and disingenuous at worst. Again, you are welcome to your view of what constitutes censorship and the belief that it is always, ipso facto, abhorrent, but I don’t think that view leaves any room for meaningful discussion about this case, so I don’t think I’ll be engaging any further. Call it self-censorship if you like.