JK Rowling has sadly opened her mouth again

[DayAndAge]

How the metro can put out this tweet which effectively suggests a woman shouldn't be allowed to speak is beyond me. Shocked but not surprised. Comments are heartening though, as is the ratio.

'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me god apart from when I am ordered to call this man a woman in which case I have to do that and it means you as a jury cannot judge any of my other words as you have no idea which bit is now true and which is not but anyway'.

That was my thought too, pronouns - how can a court ask you to swear to tell the truth and then expect you to lie?

When Maria MacLachlan was assaulted by a man who says he was a woman, the judge withheld some compensation due to her not using the perp's preferred pronouns.

That was way back in 2018.

That was an absolute travesty, and the judge deserved to be stripped of his/her office - but I applaud Maria for her actions.

Very good, I'm sure FWR can make it watertight.

'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God, apart from when I am ordered, against my wishes and beliefs and the evidence of my eyes and ears, to call this man a woman. As I have to lie about this one thing, I'm not really clear whether I also have to lie about anything else the accused wishes. If the accused identifies as innocent, should I also go along with this? It's really unclear. "

Any lawyers? It does seem some statement of words indicating you're lying at the court's request is needed, sadly.

wtf has happened to the Times recently, they used to mostly do a fairly decent job of reporting these sorts of things rather than being part of the problem.

I hope they read the comments on this.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8b433831-84bf-44b6-a02a-2fcb7a9bba37?shareToken=7832499727a7df9fe4a3a7f03340703f

JKR is a good egg- Times page linked by @ErrolTheDragon shows article referencing another JKR donation
Such a good egg 😍

At the bottom of that Times article, they quote the Guardian's correction [my bold]: "This article was updated on February 23, 2024, to add further details and biographical information, including reference to Scarlet Blake’s transgender identity, which were not included in the agency copy on which our initial version relied.”

I remember when newspapers used to have fact checkers, not just rely blindly on whatever an agency sent them.

"Ideological misinformation is not journalism"

Amen.

Trans status not relevant to crime? Well it wasn't, until the ideology forced it to be so, by trying to compel the world to pretend a violent man was a woman.

I'd fucking love for this "agency" to prove that they did in fact mention it in their initial copy and the Guardian are just using them as a scapegoat.

Also, if trans status "isn't important" then is biological sex? Or assumed gender? Why not just put "X did this to Y". Why report them as a woman, if their trans status wasn't important? Why report them as anything other than a person?

Hi - no worries! That is exactly how I interpreted it. My post should have read "worth shit" but I had already asked for my original post to be withdrawn in case DadJoke is female.

I believe the bench book was changed after this and victims are now allowed to misgender their abusers. How it looks to the jury though, when everyone else is she/her-ing. Maria (who I think is amazing) was in an incredibly stressful situation and had sworn to tell the truth, then was punished for failing to lie. I don't believe she actually deliberately meant to misgender the violent thug who had attacked her.

Also, if trans status "isn't important" then is biological sex? Or assumed gender? Why not just put "X did this to Y". Why report them as a woman, if their trans status wasn't important? Why report them as anything other than a person?

This is what Thames Valley police have done, in this statement which scrupulously avoids any mention of Blake's sex or gender. No pronouns even at points where you'd normally have one.

They show more respect for Jorge and his family than most of the press reports have managed.

Having had to deal with Blake I'm sure they know exactly what he is but don't want to focus on him. The press (and other police forces) could learn a lot from this.

https://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/news/thames-valley/news/2024/february/19-02-2024/guilty-verdict-for-murder-into-death-of-jorge-martin-carreno--oxford

In my mind’s eye is a man with a carefully curated beard and an opinion.

Maybe the username “earnestwokebro” was taken?

Or perhaps Thames Valley Police have taken notice of the criticism by their Police and Crime Commissioner and many of the public after saying a "woman' had been charged with sexual offences against a child.

MN thread here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5004313-51-year-woman-charged-with-sexual-assault-of-a-child-in-witney-town-centre

Amen! The only people I have to mother are the ones I gave birth to. … and my cats. They are very against separate spaces and closed doors.

Also, if trans status "isn't important" then is biological sex? Or assumed gender? Why not just put "X did this to Y". Why report them as a woman, if their trans status wasn't important? Why report them as anything other than a person?

Batshit, isn't it?

All the people (men) lining up to shout 'it doesn't matter what sex it's recorded as!' - oblivious to the obvious that if it didn't matter they wouldn't care about women saying 'don't dump this man's horrific offending on us please' . They'd be indifferent. They're emphatically not, they are very keen indeed that it matters that this man is described as a woman and the trans part is hushed up.

Where as in other cases, as PPs have mentioned, where the optics are favourable, a person's trans status is waved around in all direction like a banner.

Their intellectual dishonesty is essentially deflective. Blake's (claim of) transgenderism matters not in and of itself, but because it's what clarifies that Blake is male: the real point. That matters within statistics, it matters within research and it matters within justice. The crimes were many, many times more in line with male patterns of offence than female ones. A woman doing something like this is very much an outlier even within female patterns of offence. A man, much less so.

As PPs have said, if it doesn't matter whether it's recorded as being by a man or woman, then why do they so badly want it to be recorded as being by a woman?

It's the same intellectual dishonesty that crops up again and again. "It doesn't matter that they're trans!" No, but it does matter that they're male.

They know this, of course. I don't know what they get out of seeking out a community of mostly women (again, they know!) and talking arrant bullshit at them. Perhaps modern life has eroded their own masculine identity and this is how they make themselves feel like men. Can't they go spear a toy mammoth or something?

intellectual dishonesty

There's bugger all 'intellectual' about it.

I think the phrase is 'terminological inexactitude.'

‘Telling lies’

Horseshit.

Utter falsehoods.

Dad jokes.