Amnesty - “no such thing as a biologically male/female body”

These larger and often well established and often excellent charities have all turned into orgs with business models, run by business type people. It's hardly surprising that they have totally lost sight of their original purposes.

Yes, I think this is a sort of natural progression. People with a particular passion start a charity, work hard, raise money and profile, establish recognition as a leader in their field, then the career execs move in, demand high salaries, and lose the plot as they jump on the latest wokey bandwagon, destroying all the good work that went before.

Is it a variation of the Three Generation trap aka the Rags to riches to rags again in three generations thing?

This saying is a famous one in Chinese culture and refers not only to monetary wealth, but more generally towards family fortunes. ... Namely, that in three generations, a family or dynasty will have run its course. The wealth (be it money, power, or influence) of a family can rarely last past three generations.

(The first generation in a family makes money (goes from rags to riches); the second generation holds or keeps the money; and the third generation squanders or loses the money (and so goes back to rags).)

Just read the link, I didn't know about amnesty and the Russian chap.

Wtaf? What are they thinking?

If they agree that people whose views they don't agree with can and should be detained, then that makes them as bad as all the regimes and groups that they used to fight against.

So aside from deserting women they are also deserting political prisoners if they have views that amnesty disagree with?

Yowzers that's huge.

These larger and often well established and often excellent charities have all turned into orgs with business models, run by business type people. It's hardly surprising that they have totally lost sight of their original purposes.

Fed up with this rubbish now.

Well done for those with the energy to fight this crap

Any 'social justice' movement which isn't based soundly in realities is surely futile.

And isn't that what we're seeing?

But, still, it forms a community, and if there are enough like-minded people who want to get together to create institutions to their Woke taste, as liberals you can't really say "no". Freedom of assembly/religion. You can't force people to pay attention to reality.

The problem is imposing this on everyone in the institutions that are supposed to serve all, soaking up general funding. Secularism. They can do their thing, but they can't make anyone else.

isn't what's needed a non-trivial social justice informed by and underpinned by objective truth?

Yes - I'm not saying the "truth" university wouldn't think about "social justice". It's just that truth would be paramount - any social justice couldn't just be a campaigning ideology, it would have to actually permit questioning, be prepared to argue its case and not try to cast out heretics.

The third comparator in the talk was a "Christian" university (apparently a thing in the US?) Christians aren't banned from non-Christian universities, and those universities might still study Christianity, or even follow some Christian principles. But Christians just wouldn't get to control the overall institution or have veto over anything. They only get to do that in their own establishments, which people can choose to go to.

Interesting idea, Necessary. I've not watched the link but I'm a bit perturbed...
Any 'social justice' movement which isn't based soundly in realities is surely futile. This seems like a false dichotomy; isn't what's needed a non-trivial social justice informed by and underpinned by objective truth?

I've written this elsewhere but Amnesty Ireland has gone completely off the reservation and far outside its remit into a wide range of issues which have little or nothing to do with their proported USP. In recent years these issues which they have chosen to focus on are not based on any kind of rigorous assessment of where and how the most aggregious human-rights violations are happening but are instead based mainly so far as I can see on the thoughts and 'causes' swirling around the head of its Executive director Colm O'Gorman who never saw a media opportunity or fashionable cause he didn't want to attach himself. He is almost beyond parody at this stage. Another letter here to the Irish Times along the lines of that mentioned by @miri1985

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/amnesty-and-freedom-of-conscience-1.4419263

www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/women-were-in-the-fight-of-our-lives-to-save-our-identity/news-story/89fcf7c8da5821b7f5aadcce63da9ae3

The state of Amnesty, and other orgs like the ACLU in America, are an extension of what Jonathan Haidt started talking about a few years ago, now spread further throughout the system, and increasingly abroad.

He was addressing universities - saying they can't do both "social justice" and "truth". They have to choose one to take priority. They have to understand what their core mission is, and declare it. Maybe you can have "social justice" universities, but they can't pretend they're "truth" ones. And having all universities be "social justice" ones is market failure.

This is the same thing extending to other previously single-purpose organisations - they've let the general "social justice/equity" thing replace "defending people against political targetting" and "universal civil liberties".

Leaving a massive gap in the market for new organisations that will prioritise what Amnesty etc used to do.

If you have an hour to spare, try this:

Excellent post miri1985

They've lost the plot. So sad. They did such good work in the past. Now they police women for their views.

I have read the OP but not the full thread.

They need to be exposed for this. I am gobsmacked.

How did we come to a position whereby stating a FACT is "spreading hate"?? It simply doesn't make sense to me.

Lost.

That's a great article, and yes it is a sad departure.

Abosolute madness. Shocking for an organisation who works with women in third world countries and presumably knows better than most, the atrocities inflicted on those of the female sex.

Amnesty’s current position undermines the key distinction that made their advocacy on the issue of prisoners of conscience so effective in the past. They used to argue that it did not matter what the substance of a person’s views was, the important thing was that people should not be imprisoned for peacefully holding and expressing them.

Now the position is that if someone is guilty of advocating ‘hatred’ (itself a concept notoriously susceptible to concept creep), a person cannot be a prisoner of conscience. In other words: express views that Amnesty finds abhorrent and you cannot be a prisoner of conscience.

So Amnesty has not only dumped its original good purpose, but now preaches the opposite. Sickening.

It's like a secular, left wing version of "young earth creationism."

It really is.

Imagine giving birth and the midwide declaring 'it's a vagina-haver!'

It seems as if the Irish media has finally woken up to Amnestys capture as a pressure group for what they deem acceptable speech rather than freedom of speech

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/amnesty-has-lost-focus-on-rights-of-prisoners-of-conscience-1.4497378

Same article here but without potential paywall www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/comment-amnesty-has-lost-its-sharp-focus-on-prisoners-of-conscience/

"In some ways, this is the endpoint of a longer story. Amnesty’s mission has been steadily changing over recent decades. As their own website puts it “Amnesty has grown from seeking the release of political prisoners to upholding the whole spectrum of human rights”. Amnesty has broadened its focus to campaign on a whole range of broader human rights issues such as poverty, gay rights, abortion, trans rights and migrant rights among others.

Although I usually supported the goals Amnesty campaigned in favour of, I confess that this change made me uneasy. I feared that the disciplined, principled USP that allowed Amnesty to make such a particular contribution on the question of prisoners of conscience would be undermined by a broader focus. There are organisations campaigning on all of the broader issues that Amnesty began to engage with, so the opportunity to add value seemed less. In addition, the term “human rights” covers such a range of policy questions that I feared that the difference between Amnesty and a more generally left-wing pressure group may become difficult to see........

Amnesty’s current position undermines the key distinction that made their advocacy on the issue of prisoners of conscience so effective in the past. They used to argue that it did not matter what the substance of a person’s views was, the important thing was that people should not be imprisoned for peacefully holding and expressing them.

Now the position is that if someone is guilty of advocating ‘hatred’ (itself a concept notoriously susceptible to concept creep), a person cannot be a prisoner of conscience. In other words: express views that Amnesty finds abhorrent and you cannot be a prisoner of conscience.

Perhaps this was inevitable. It is hard to be an effective advocate on the issue of prisoners of conscience at the same time as taking substantive positions on a range of other politically sensitive issues.

Perhaps Amnesty has a successful future in store for it as a left-wing campaigning group. "

Who bailed out the vagina museum? Weren’t they going to the wall (quite deservedly?)

I'm disappointed about The Vagina Museum but to my delight, I have discovered Jess De Wahls and places on the internet that haven't disappeared through the looking glass.

the principle of 'self determination' applies to 'peoples'
Yep - it's an international law thing (twas the subject of my masters thesis)

Thanks @EyesOpening and others. I'm taking them off my Smile thing.

We're not even allowed to own our own vaginas now. Or again. It's taken us long enough to get to a place where are vaginas are something to celebrate and now they belong to people and not women.

Excuse my language, but fuck that shit.

Ravenesque there’s this thread about The Vagina Museum and it also has some links to other threads
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4068162-vagina-museum

Education helps, but when we are so clearly being gaslit by governments and this sort of shit from the likes of Amnesty it's harder and harder to hold on to what is real.

Ravenesque I absolutely agree and that is where life experience comes in as a problem rather than as asset. Life experience means the older generations are going to be more resistant to this, so this dogma pits older against younger people and labels their views ‘phobic’ or ‘problematic’.

Younger generations are less able to resist it and TRAs don’t want sceptical older, more established or more grounded people coming in and being sceptical about the dogmatic beliefs. So they use authoritarian tactics to get the dissenters to shut up.

The lack of resistance hasn’t always been a problem of lack of critical thinking, of a lack of education. It’s not that more information was needed. It’s about adherence to specific political beliefs. This dogma is better viewed as extremist politics or a cult.

We can see multiple influential educated people and key organisations who could have been instrumental in stopping this along the way, (GMC, MPs, Charity Commission, EHRC for example) being presumably too scared or self serving for their own reputation to go near this topic or to speak up even to ask questions.. or under resourced and sexist and incurious.. or successfully groomed by the lobby misrepresenting the law and legal obligations around all this. It’s absolutely individually and collectively damaging and anti democratic and it all starts with undermining facts and reality.

I work at one and our diversity training is supplied by Stonewall.