Police accused of parodying JK Rowling with ‘Jo’, who thinks trans people should go to gas chambers

[dutchman]

Scottish force invents the fictional gender-critical character to illustrate a ‘scenario’ at session on hate crime



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.

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.

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”.

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’”.

Attendees were then asked to discuss whether a hate crime had been committed by Jo and “what action do you think the police should take”.

Views expressed by young people were then recorded and “fed back to decision makers within Police Scotland”.

Marion Calder, a director at For Women Scotland, the campaign group, said the materials were “clearly trying to create a link with JK Rowling” and that it was “deeply concerning” to see “Jo” quickly leap from “reasonable statements” to the Holocaust.

Trans activists often claim there is a link between the gender-critical movement and far-Right ideology, and compare those who do not accept that trans women are women to racists.

“This suggests that gender-critical women with a high profile endorse a mass extinction, which is frankly bonkers, and sends a message to police that perfectly sane women have been radicalised,” Ms Calder said.

“These woke training sessions given by activists present highly contested statements as fact and would leave officers tasked with enforcing hate crime legislation with a warped view of the issues.”

Trans rights activists have vowed to target Rowling under new hate crime laws. She has denounced the legislation as “ludicrous” and has vowed to carry on “accurately sexing” males who claim to identify as women.