Of all the people the woke left dearly wishes it could cancel, author JK Rowling is certainly at the top of the list. Today she once again upset people by tweeting a link to a story in the London Times along with some references to George Orwell’s “1984.”

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.https://t.co/SyxFnnboM1

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 12, 2021

As it stands now, Rowling’s tweet has about 65,000 likes and 23,000 retweets but only about 8,000 responses. So she’s not really close to being ratioed at this point.

The underlying story here comes from this report in The Scottish Sun. There are new laws likely coming in 2022 which will allow people to self-identify as whatever gender they prefer. These self-ID laws, which already exist in several other countries and a number of US states, would allow someone to identify as a trans-woman whether or not they’d made any legal effort to change their gender. So Scottish police were asked a hypothetical question about how they would handle a rape by someone who claims to be a woman:

Former Holyrood Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill last night branded the move “absurd”.

In correspondence seen by The Scottish Sun on Sunday, the ex-Nats minister asked the force how it would deal with recording sex assaults once new gender self-ID laws come in.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie set out a number of scenarios where a rapist could be recorded as a woman — including “where a person, born male but who identifies as a female and does not have a full gender recognition certificate and then commits rape”.

MacAskill said of that response, “It’s physically impossible and is about dogma overriding common sense.” That’s the sentiment that JK Rowling was agreeing with when she wrote, “The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.”

Obviously that does seem pretty absurd and ought to be an indication that the self-ID law could be subject to some kind of abuse. However, it’s worth noting that this actual outcome hasn’t happened in Scotland because the law isn’t even in place yet. So, at least for the moment it’s a theoretical objection.

Self-ID laws are in place in 21 states in the US according to this Wikipedia article. So, for instance, in California you can mark whatever gender you prefer on your driver’s license after making an affidavit declaring your gender preference. Gender can also be self-IDd on American passports without any medical validation.

Is there any evidence of people committing crimes against women and then claiming to be a different gender? I’m aware of one case that happened in Los Angeles where a man claiming to be a woman exposed himself to some women at a spa. That case was initially declared a “transphobic hoax” by some and the person charged claimed they were in fact transgender and were being harassed. But the person has been charged with a crime and in fact had been charged for a similar case of exposure in 2018. However, that case didn’t involve rape. It would be interesting to see if there is such a case anywhere where self-ID laws have been adopted.