A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK says Amnesty who claim over 50% are Gender Critical groups

[IwantToRetire]

Quote:

Anti-rights actors seek a society in which women and men have fixed and distinct roles, based on what they view as ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’. These actors perceive the idea that gender is socially constructed as a threat because it suggests that gender roles can, and do, change across societies and over time. In fact, progress in the rights of women and LGBT+ people has been underpinned by changing understandings of gender and social roles.

Anti-rights actors refer to this perceived threat as ‘gender ideology’, portraying it as an attack on national traditions, family structures, marriage and religious freedom. These narratives often seek to generate fear and uncertainty and rely on misinformation or exaggerated claims.

The term ‘gender ideology’ emerged in the context of debates within international institutions, particularly the United Nations, about gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights.

In 1964, the Holy See became a Permanent Observer at the UN General Assembly, the only religious body with this status. As a permanent observer the Holy See can participate in processes at the General Assembly as well as other UN bodies. It cannot vote but it has the possibility to co-sponsor resolutions if a member state requests a vote. Although it cannot vote, the Holy See can participate in UN discussions and processes and has played an influential role in debates on women's rights and LGBT+ rights.

The term ‘gender ideology’ gained prominence in response to progress on gender equality and Cairo in 1994. These conference were a landmark moment for the global women's rights movement. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is widely regarded as a key international framework for advancing women's rights and gender equality, and states continue to report on its implementation through the Commission on the Status of Women.

While opposition to sexual and reproductive rights predates the Beijing conference, the term ‘gender ideology’ became a particularly important response to the advances achieved there. The phrase was coined to explain the growing influence of gender equality agendas and to mobilise opposition to them.

Although the term originated in debates at the international level, it has since become a broad political narrative used by a wide range of anti-rights actors. Today, it is often used to connect campaigns against gender equality, sexual and reproductive rights, and LGBT+ rights across different countries and contexts.

From intro to report at
https://media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Report_-_A_growing_threat__the_anti-rights_movement_in_the_UK_July_2026.pdf

See images of the list of 51 groups Amnesty is claiming are right wing.

I'm incredibly wary of the big donors like Bill Gates and Coefficient Giving (set up by one of the FB co-founders and his wife). They can (and do) give megabucks to charities that campaign for the causes that they think are important, and they can do this via numerous of mid-sized and small charities, which might either fade away or have minimal impact without their $$££$$. This gives the impression that there are lots of committed grassroots activists with a mass of loyal funders, which in turn puts pressure on politicians to pay attention to whatever the issue is, because voters. (I think this is called astroturfing - it looks like grass(roots) but it isn't really.)

They can also exert their influence in other ways. Coefficient Giving, in the days when it was called Open Philanthropy, had a deal with the Guardian which ran into the hundreds of thousands of pounds over several years (I can't remember the details off-hand) to engage in investigations and publish articles about farm animal welfare. Firstly, blink and you'd miss the fact the article was sponsored with a particular aim in view and thus wasn't likely to be entirely balanced and fair. Secondly, it's highly unlikely that this agreement didn't have an impact on wider editorial decisions. Thirdly, while farm animal welfare sounds like a good cause, the people funnelling in the money had shares in fake meat companies... It took me a bit of digging a few years ago to find all this out.

Essentially they're using their immense wealth to push issues in which they have a personal concern, rather than sullying their hands with nasty politics. I suppose to an extent this has always happened, but philanthropists used to fund things like hospitals and museums and village halls and the public knew who they were and what they were doing.

And yes, I know JKR funds GC causes, but she's completely upfront about it. She's not sponsoring articles with a little logo at the top. She's out there on Twix, taking the heat.

This funding of significant social campaigns around contentious issues by a handful of individuals in a less-than-obvious way - trans, persuading us all to go veggie, whatever - really bothers me. Very wealthy people are able to influence the political process from the sidelines, and in countries where they are not resident, whilst also making it look as if it's ordinary journalists and concerned citizens who are pushing those issues.

It makes me very reluctant now to believe what I read, or to trust large charities.

That's really interesting! It makes me wonder, rich as he is, who is Trump's Puppetmaster? He's not smart enough to come up with half of what he advocates on his own. I know he has donors, and supporters, and acolytes, and cronies. But who's the Big Cheese actually pulling his strings?

Reminds me of that scene in Contact where
*SPOILER ALERT**

Ellie finds out that there was a secret space program, funded by the obscenely rich guy living in space.

*

I'm imagining there is a guy like that, somewhere, who knows where all the bodies are buried, has more money than God, and is telling Trump what to think and do.

I also no longer donate to large charities. Aside from the fact that I believe most of the money goes on salaries, I just don't trust what they do with the rest of it. So I focus on small, local charities.

No, there is no single Big Cheese. There are just a lot of vested interests all trying to exert influence for different reasons, often pulling in different directions, sometimes making alliances. Bloom County used to be very funny about political influence in the USA. Remember Opus the Penguin and the NRA?

If you're interested in how political influence works in the EU and internationally from a womens / GC perspective then try Roisin Michaux's substack "Peaked" https://www.peaked.news/

It's quite an eye-opener and very funny in places. I'm still processing her interview for "You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist" (thanks to the MNetter who recommended it, sorry I can't find your post just now)

Agree.

For one thing, if a 'Big Cheese' were successfully pulling Trump's strings, they wouldn't have ended up with the fiasco in Iran.

Unless a fiasco in Iran is what they wanted... 😉

Your mention of the podcast intrigued me, so I went hunting - looks fascinating:

YOU MUST BE SOME KIND OF THERAPIST EPISODE 223

223. The HIV Money Trail Behind Global Transgender Health Policy | Róisín Michaux Returns

July 20, 2026 Stephanie Winn Full Transcript View the website

Today I welcome back Róisín Michaux — the Irish writer based in Brussels who covers women’s rights and free speech in the context of the transgender movement — for her second appearance on the show. When I booked this interview I had no idea what we’d cover; I simply trusted her to bring something worth digging into. What she brought is her ongoing investigation into the new World Health Organization guidelines for global transgender healthcare, and I’m hearing most of it for the first time right alongside the listener.

Róisín walks me through how a 2019 reclassification in the International Classification of Diseases — moving gender identity out of mental health and into sexual health in order to “depathologize” it — created a conundrum: how do you get hormones and surgeries reimbursed for a condition that’s no longer a condition? That question, she argues, is the thread that connects the WHO’s guideline development group to a much larger story about HIV funding, the Global Fund, Open Society Foundations money, and decades of AIDS-elimination targets.

We get into the “third gender” populations of India, Thailand, and Latin America; why so many of these vulnerable young men end up in prostitution and at high risk of HIV; and how offering the hormones and surgeries people want became a mechanism for getting them into clinics and onto antiretrovirals. We also cover the insurance-coding sleight of hand happening closer to home — mastectomies billed as “scar repair,” girls documented as males with gynecomastia — and what it all means for the parents and therapists trying to make sense of what their kids and clients are actually saying.
The question the episode keeps returning to: if the price of ending AIDS is medicalizing vulnerable kids and reframing whole populations as trans, is that a victory worth claiming?

Tweet from MurrayBlackburnMackenzie:

NEW: Our latest blog provides an update on the now withdrawn Amnesty International UK report 'A Growing Threat'. We trace how AIUK responded to the unfolding controversy and show why it cannot be dismissed as an isolated, unrepresentative incident.

https://x.com/mbmpolicy/status/2080333621030781145?s=20

https://nitter.net/mbmpolicy/status/2080333621030781145?s=20

Link to the blogpost:

https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2026/07/23/amnesty-international-uk-rights-and-wrongs-part-2-a-troublesome-audit-trail/

Maybe no single operator but some very dubious, very rich men have been linked to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 that, it's strongly suggested, is Trump's blueprint. And billionaire Peter Thiel is definitely in the mix - he believes that freedom and democracy are not compatible.

Their problem with having Trump as a puppet is that he has the attention span of a gnat, the memory of a fuse wire, and the attachment to reality of a soup dragon. Which makes it hard to keep any schemes on track.

This is true. He's a complete liability. And, he'll crush you like a bug if he gets up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

So, if there is a Puppet Master, he'll (and it will be a man) have to have more money, intelligence (not difficult), and perseverance and patience than The Donald. And not gives two hoots what anyone thinks of him. And control all the information. Everywhere.

I can think of a few right now..

ed bloody spelling

Amnesty International UK launches probe into its OWN comments

The charity is investigating itself after it defending a controversial report which branded JK Rowling's rape crisis centre Beira's Place 'anti-rights' before then deleting it.

... an internal investigation has also been launched into how it reacted to criticism. When first asked for a comment on the report, a spokeswoman stated: "The organisations we listed are campaigning against human rights protections for trans people, in the context of a general backsliding of human rights protections for LGBTI people, migrants, as well as women and girls across Europe and the UK.”

Amnesty also claimed that there had been a “pattern” of anti-trans and anti-abortion campaigns advancing across the globe, causing a “significant and damaging” impact on the people whose lives are affected. But just two days later it removed the offending report, which is now gone permanently.

According to the Herald, the charity has now admitted this press comment is part of the "ongoing investigation" and is a "serious matter." Critics urged the organisation to apologise as soon as possible to all the groups it smeared as "anti-rights."

Full article at https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/amnesty-international-uk-launches-probe-37480950

And here's another cracking interview from Mr Menno - this one with the remarkable Irishwoman Iseult White. She's grandaughter of Sean MacBride who co-founded Amnesty talking about the recent report, about the history of Amnesty and her family's involvement, how Amnesty got its international standing and how over the last decade it's been mis-using its standing and reputation to do the opposite of what it was originally set up to do (and what many people assume it's still doing) and instead to shut down organisations that disagree with its own political positions.

Iseult White also talks about some of her own run-ins with gender politics in Ireland since 2020. Which I for one didn't know about.

Iseult is a brave woman who’s been treated nastily by Ireland’s bien-pensant and NGO class. She’s viewed as an apostate so they see no accusation against her as too horrible.

Found an archive of the article for anyone who needs it:

http://archive.today/7CJpB

In the Times today:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ff158cd4-4d64-48cf-ba46-6cc741e184d1?shareToken=76671c6949e689cbd52ccf09e742c43a&ver=article

She’s been great on Twitter for years.

I keep seeing quotes of AI saying this about their report

“Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed,”

So what is their position then? I think Maya is going to ask them this.

So are we going to get down to word games again.

Does "hate" not mean hate or .... ??

What they've said so far isn't unequivocally an apology at all. It sounds as though basically they just regret that their nasty insinuations were published in words that weren't weaselly enough to avoid laying them open to being sued.

Fair enough, if they now come up with a handsome and uncompelled apology and recantation to Maya, JKR and all the other people they've slurred, but until then I'll doubt that they have any real remorse for what they've done.

I mean, "use of language" works in that the report was, well, written in.... language?

And the names of the organisations are, after all, words?

🤔

Isuilt White is very astute. She says that Amnesty is minimising because (from her own experience with NGOs) that's what she'd do in their place!

It's important that Amnesty's paper is recognised not just as a one-off but as part of bigger policy decisons by Amnesty. Both because the paper says that other organisations, including small grass-roots organisation exercising their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association, should be blacklisted, defamed and defunded all of which go against Amnesty's founding principles. And also because Amnesty are arguing against women's rights and lesbian/gaybisexual rights and child protection, also against their principles.

And I am sure that Sex Matters, Genspect, MBM, FWS, JKR and Beira's Place and many others are on it. FWS and Maya Forstater have the receipts 😂

JKR is on the war path again -

In light of newly discovered information showing that Amnesty International UK had already defamed Beira's Place before its recent hastily withdrawn report, lawyers for Beira's Place have written to Amnesty again.

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2081902324750967262

'Use of language' weaseling is only fine if it's a line or perhaps a couple of lines of wording which may be misinterpreted.

When you have a whole fucking report saying these organisations are a threat to human rights and actions should be taken against them, that not a problem with the use of language. The intention and aim is very deliberate and not arguable. Especially given the degree of harm to the organisations targeted.

I'm sorry but that response is just plain insulting.