J.K. Rowling vs. India Willoughby: Here's what you need to know

EXCLUSIVE 🚨🚨🚨@IndiaWilloughby has called the police and reported @jk_rowling for an alleged hate crime for misgendering her.

This could lead to Rowling’s arrest. pic.twitter.com/iJMDmDeMaO

— Byline TV (@BylineTV) March 6, 2024

“J.K. Rowling’s definitely committed a crime,” Willoughby says in a video with Byline. “I’m legally a woman, she knows I’m a woman, and she calls me a man. It’s a protected characteristic, and that is a breach of both the Equalities Act and the Gender Recognition Act.”

She continued to say that since Rowling’s tweets about her, she’s received some of the worst online harassment that she’s ever seen. When the interviewer asked if she plans on doing anything about it, Willoughby revealed she filed a complaint with the police.

“Well I’ve been to the police and I reported it as an issue,” Willoughby said. “I have reported J.K. Rowling to the police for what she said, which I don’t know if that’s going to be treated as a hate crime, malicious communications — but it’s a cut-and-dry offense, as far as I’m concerned.”

Some time ago, lawyers advised me that not only did I have a clearly winnable case against India Willoughby for defamation, but that India's obsessive targeting of me over the past few years may meet the legal threshold for harassment. 1/5 https://t.co/kMSMBWO7gm

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 6, 2024

Rowling replied on X/Twitter, where she wrote that “some time ago, lawyers advised me that not only did I have a clearly winnable case against India Willoughby for defamation, but that India's obsessive targeting of me over the past few years may meet the legal threshold for harassment.”

Aware as I am that it's an offence to lie to law enforcement, I'll simply have to explain to the police that, in my view, India is a classic example of the male narcissist who lives in a state of perpetual rage that he can't compel women to take him at his own valuation. 5/5

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 6, 2024

“Surprisingly for such an eminent legal authority, he appears to have forgotten that the Forstater ruling established that gender critical views can be protected in law as a philosophical belief. No law compels anyone to pretend to believe that India is a woman,” Rowling continued.

“Aware as I am that it's an offense to lie to law enforcement, I'll simply have to explain to the police that, in my view, India is a classic example of the male narcissist who lives in a state of perpetual rage that he can't compel women to take him at his own valuation,” she said.

Unfortunately, the U.K. has some very confusing rules regarding hate speech and whether or not gender critical beliefs are protected as “philosophical beliefs” in the country. The country’s Equality Act says that a belief must meet five criteria to be protected:

1. It must be genuinely held.
2. It must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.
3. It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behavior.
4. It must be a belief that attains a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
5. It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

This last point is what had previously been used to disqualify gender critical beliefs and misgendering from being protected speech, as it clearly is incompatible “with human dignity” and “the fundamental rights of others.”

However, when the issue was brought to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, the tribunal ruled that categorizing misgendering as hate speech was an error and that a belief would only fail to satisfy that criteria if “it was the kind of belief of which would be akin to Nazism or totalitarianism.”

When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, one thing they did was strip away rights from trans people, who had been legally allowed to live as their correct gender and change their names under the Weimar Republic.