Oh not THAT Jo
Scottish police have been accused of targeting JK Rowling by inventing a fictional character called “Jo” who thinks that sex is binary and bizarrely calls for transgender people to be sent to gas chambers.
“Bizarrely” is not the right word.
Let’s get one thing straight: there’s no wiggle room here for Scottish police to say oh they didn’t mean Jo Rowling. Of course they did. They’re obsessed with “trans rights” and evil people who don’t believe trans ideology. Of course they didn’t call this gas chambers fan “Jo” at random with no reference to JKR intended whatsoever at all.
At an official Police Scotland hate crime event, attendees were presented with a “scenario” in which Jo is described as a passionate gender-critical campaigner who, like Rowling, believes people cannot change sex and has a large social media following.
Women’s groups claimed the character was a thinly veiled parody of the Harry Potter author, whose Christian name is Joanne and is called Jo by her friends, and fuelled unfounded conspiracies that there was a link between gender-critical beliefs and Nazism.
It’s not a parody, it’s an incitement, and of course the Harry Potter author is the target.
The hate crime “youth engagement” event, held in February, was part of a programme of events organised by Police Scotland for LGBT history month.
Ahead of the enforcement of controversial new hate crime laws coming into force on April 1, other sessions were given to police officers in which concerns about male-bodied people having access to women’s facilities were mocked and described as “completely ludicrous”.
This is the cops, don’t forget, not a bunch of dim-witted kids talking nonsense. This is the police. (Why exactly is it ludicrous for women to fear men having access to our locker rooms and toilets? Please do explain, Ossifers.)
The hate crime event, which was supported by Police Scotland and jointly organised by the Scottish LGBTI Police Association and the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign group, invited attendees to consider the case of “Jo”.
She is described as an “online influencer” who is “very active” on social media platforms TikTok and Instagram, with a “large following”. Rowling is active on X, formerly Twitter, and has 14 million followers.
The fictional scenario states that Jo “travels around university campuses” to “debate her beliefs about the LGBTI community”. It states that Jo “often gets very passionate about her beliefs and will say things like ‘there are only two genders’” and “too many attention-seeking wannabes”. Rowling regularly expresses similar sentiments on social media. The scenario concludes by stating “Jo posted her most recent video with the caption ‘they all belong in the gas chambers’”.
The police did that. The police.
I’m honestly having a hard time believing it. The gas chambers bit is just…I don’t have the words.
Holy fuck.
The POLICE.
Holy fuck.
That’s just evil. This is one of the scariest things I’ve read in a long time, and I’m not a woman and I don’t live in Scotland. This is approaching Protocols levels of hateful incitement. How is Rowling to expect police protection now that THE POLICE have painted this huge target on her back? No wonder they didn’t add sex to the list of protected characteristics in the Hate Crime bill; it would have made doing this illegal. It’s now impossible to claim this was not the intent of the bill from the outset. It’s open season on women’s rights.
There had better be an inquiry about this. There are a whole lot of officers and bureaucrats who need to be struck off immediately. Whoever organized this event; anyone who signed off on this; any and all presenters; any official who does not immediately condemn this unreservedly. And that’s just for starters.
Well sure, but then your police infrastructure is gone; even if there was the political will it’d be a long road to hoe…
Rowling’s got money; she’ll be fine… Everyone else, just fuck off out of Scotland if you’re not into this sort of thing; it’s the best way.
F***!
Is there an open records Act or equivalent in Scotland? Maybe Jo’s lawyers should request all emails, memos, notes, proofs etc of the development of that seminar. Even if it really isn’t JKR, just the utterly made up inflammatory nature of the hypothetical. From the Police!
And for the Police to be scoffing at male bodied people having access to female spaces when the issue of male prisoners in female prisons has already been a scandal in Scotland within the last few months. To say nothing of all the examples from the UK and elsewhere of male bodied trans-claiming people entering female only spaces. Or are they going to claim no true Scots(trans)man…
Horrific as it is, and believe me I’m horrified, I suspect it demonstrates that these cops, for all their desire to be seen as progressive, are still PC plods and plodders don’t do post-modernism, or they do it in an entirely ham-fisted way. You’re supposed to understand, all the clever people understand, that while the cries of ‘genocide’ represent a deep truth that must never be denied, it is that most truthy sort of truth, a “my truth”. And of course while it’s a literal truth because that’s what ‘literal’ means now, it has to be understood as something like metaphor, but for smart people.
It’s just a pity that the world if full of so not-smart people like these cops and a good proportion of trans people. They think words mean things and that leads them to do harm, to themselves and others.
Francis #6:
I have just finished re-reading Small Gods (the book – IMO – where Pterry went from writing comic novels to writing comic novels containing profound wisdom). Your comment reminded me of this passage that I highlighted on my kindle:
@Graham
Ah, Pratchett! My favourite author who I have never read (except in situations like this). Seems like Small Gods is a god place to start.
That seems to be a distinction without a difference.
The following is one definite possibility IMHO: There is a trans-sympathiser or two (hundred?) with some sort of clout at some level or levels in the police organisation. As well, this character ‘Jo’ who calls for trans people to be sent to gas chambers, is a fantasy figure, just like Harry Potter. (NB: I have never been a fantasy fan myself.) In other words, some cop or cops with one or more axes to grind and a bit of influence in the cops’ organisation are working this to produce some sort of outcome they desire. And the first question cops usually ask when investigating some matter or issue is ‘who benefits?’
Elementary, my dear Watson. I would begin by asking ‘who does not think sex is binary?’
That shortens the list of suspect insiders quite a bit.
@Francis Boyle: Small Gods is fantastic, it’s my favourite Pratchett book… ok I love most of his stuff, but it’s indeed a great entry point. There are some inside jokes referring to other characters that we meet in earlier books, but the story is self-contained.. ok technically all of his are self-contained, but some depend more on familiarity with recurring characters for their hilarity than Small Gods does. Like all his books, of course has some really great quotes to pull, too ;-) Enjoy! :-)
Letting activists write training materials for the police is just a bad idea to begin with.
@Francis Boyle: Check this chart out if you want to dive into Discworld in general. The books are mostly self-contained, but the characters do also develop over time, so reading them in the wrong order won’t necessarily be confusing plot-wise, but may make some of the recurring characters seem randomly written.
Each of the sub-series on the charts tend to be pretty internally focused. After “Pyramids” and “Small Gods”, I’d recommend starting with either the Witches, Watch or Death sub-series (grab three Pratchett fans at random, and you’ll likely get all three picked as the ‘best’ series). It’s almost universally agreed that the Rincewind novels, especially the first ones, are some of the weakest (he was still getting into his craft, then, and the first two books, especially, are more ‘parody’ than ‘satire’.)