Thread by @MForstater

Who are the US religious right orgs seeking to influence the sex and gender debates?

This analysis from @openDemocracy is interesting (but not evidence of funding to UK gender dissidents)

Clip below is orgs tagged "anti-LGBT" spending in Europe, 2018

opendemocracy.net/en/5050/intera…

Some observations:

1) No gender critical campaigns or legal crowdfunders are getting funding from these organisations.

Crowdfunders are anonymous of course. This is what mine looks like - mainly small donations from lots of people.

2) The total is not that big $2.8m (£2.1m)

...for the whole of Europe.

(and around $7m for the world outside US)

By comparison Stonewall's annual budget is £8m, including £3m from the Diversity Champions programmes with employers, universities and schools

3) Calling this "dark money" is shoddy.

What the researchers did here is look at the US Foundations Form 990s (ie. public financial reports) and added up the regional expenditures.

This is no more "dark money" than the international funding that Stonewall gets (or indeed that Open Democracy gets).

As i used to argue in my old job, making cheap points by calling stuff you don't like "illicit" is a bad idea if you value open democracy and the rule of law

4) How does it compare to funding for gender identity?

I had a look at Arcus's Form 990

This one foundation spent $0.75m on LGBT projects in Europe in 2018

(interestingly, 70% has a religious focus)

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

According to @LGBTfunders global philanthropic and public LGBT funding in 2018 was $297m

globalresourcesreport.org/wp-content/upl…

The vast majority of this is in North America with about $23m annually spend across Europe and $31m on international projects

@ILGAWORLD gets over $5m

These are the top funders in Western Europe.

Number one by a long way is the UK National Lottery.

@GATEOrg has funding to study the (unfunded) gender critical groups of the UK.

https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1322679833411944449

(hey @MauroCabralG : I've done the job for you: gender-dissidents.net - can I invoice for the job? )

NB: This is not an argument against funding for LGB&T projects (nor against the religious right funding what they want)

In a democracies letting people do what they want w their money, while having checks & balances about the influence of money is what we should do

Perhaps most important to note is that LGBT funding is only 31c in every $100 of private foundations

(and funding by Open Democracy's list of anti-LGBT orgs is only around 1c in every $100 of private foundations)

The big influence on the the global debate is the other $99.68

Does this funding come with strings and informal expectations that grantees won't challenge the "trans women are women" dogma?

@openDemocracy is funded by big foundations that are committed to open democracy, but also to the US progressive view that TWAW opendemocracy.net/en/supporters/

I wonder if they would host a story about what UK gender critical women (unfunded or influenced by the US religious right) are actually concerned about?

gender-dissidents.net

@maryftz @ClaireProvost @sunny_hundal (#pitch)