Thread by @MForstater

Amnesty have written to people saying

“We regret ‘A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK’ briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK's positions. It's use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.”

“We remain committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.”

This is insulting double-speak.

By “the rights of women” they include men who identify as women.

They have told us this for years and years.

This is what they tweeted the day I lost my employment tribunal in 2019 and it was wrongly declared that gender critical beliefs were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”

When JK Rowling spoke up for me the next day Senthorun Raj, then Chair of Amnesty UK accused her of “transphobia”.

At that time it was almost impossible to get gender critical arguments into the mainstream media, and people who spoke up publicly were routinely being harassed and discriminated out of work, with impunity.

In 2020 @suzanne_moore managed to get an article published in the Guardian, defending women’s right to speak in the debate on gender self ID.

theguardian.com/society/commen…

In response over 100 people including Amnesty’s then CEO Kate Allen signed a letter of condemnation.

theguardian.com/society/2020/m…

Moore was hounded out of the Guardian by internal bullying over that article.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/why-suzan…

In November 2021, shortly after Kathleen Stock was hounded out of Sussex University for expressing her utterly reasonable gender critical views and seeking debate, this is what the Chair of Amnesty UK tweeted.

You might remember that time Amnesty activists picketed the FILIA conference in Portsmouth .
Protesters chanted and held signs from Amnesty International saying “I am who I say I am” along with homemade signs saying “No TERFs on Pompey TURF” and “suck my dick you transphobic cunt”. They chalked obscene and threatening messages and pictures on the ground where a vigil for murdered women was due to be held.

I wrote to Sasha Deshmukh, then CEO of Amnesty
hiyamaya.net/2021/10/18/amn…

Amnesty investigated and issued a statement saying that they provided placards to one group and that the abusive messages must have been the work of another, unconnected.and unnamed group, and that they were shocked.

web.archive.org/web/2021102122…

This is what the Amnesty sanctioned official protest organisers (the group that later became “TransLucent”) had to say:
- They protested “ because FiLiA openly admits they support LGB Alliance….Need I say more? …Red rag to a bull?”
- And because Maya Forstater was speaking ther “ ...now what words is she synonymous for, ah yes ‘ views not worthy of respect in a democratic society’.
- They protested because “transphobia should be eradicated in society”
- “Why can't Gender crits get that through their thick heads!”

That was the kind of thing Amnesty defended as respectful.

web.archive.org/web/2021101507…

Amnesty’s position on “trans rights” is not consistent.

In 2020 when they were campaigning for legal gender self-ID they argued that access to single sex services is regulated by the Equality Act not the Gender Recognition Act.

mumsnet.com/talk/womens_ri…

Then in 2024 they went to court and argued that GRCs are what regulate access to single sex services (they lost).

sex-matters.org/posts/for-wome…

In May 2026 they published the Like a Snowball report the Growth and Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK in which they describe gender critical speech as “transphobia” and say that it shouldn’t be normalised.
They also show they still don’t accept or understand either the Forstater judgment or the FWS judgment.
amnesty.org.uk/knowledge-hub/…

The Like as Snowball report tells the media that it should say that gender critical people want to restrict human rights and not to quote them unless they are explained pejoratively.

They press released it with the same kind of rhetoric as the Portsmouth protestors. Gender critical view points are transphobia and should be eradicated from society.
amnesty.org.uk/latest/new-uk-…

It’s true that Amnesty’s communications on trans rights do not read like an organisation whose systems to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment are working.

But this is not just at the level of a grating proofreading failure or the decision to publish this report without considering the risk of libel.

Amnesty does not have a position which is consistent, accurate and aligned with its own charitable objects.

Why is Amnesty’s position on “trans rights” so inconsistent and shoddy?

I think it is because it isn’t really a properly constituted institutional position.

You don’t destroy the ability to debate publicly until you have already destroyed the ability to debate internally.

This is how Amnesty described the development of its position on gender self ID in 2018. They asked Stonewall and Mermaids and “trans children”

Amnesty published a little booklet on transgender language in 2019 which desribed how to be an ally.

amnesty.org.uk/knowledge-hub/…

Its answers to difficult questions were basically “ask Stonewall”.

But this document wasn’t produced by Amnesty in the normal way. On the back it says it was written by the Amnesty “Rainbow Network”

It looks like “Amnesty” signed the recent NION letter against the EHRC code of practice, but no that is “Amnesty Feminist Network”.

notinourname.org.uk/womens-organis…

These networks within the organisation which can include trustees, staff and activists cut across systems of governance and schemes of delegation.

They break the organisation’s ability to develop positions through debate and reasoning.

Debate and reasoning are “transphobic” and if you want to keep your job you declare your pronouns and keep quiet.

This is how organisations fail.