Genderist heads must metaphorically roll as we reach the 'find out' stage of the 'mess around' era
Ostriches in Scotland’s political, cultural, and third sector organisations are still pushing warped attitudes within their captured institutions
To use the printable version of a well-known phrase, we’re entering the ‘find out’ stage of the ‘mess around’ era.
Last week, Amnesty International took one last gulp of air before sinking into the acid bath it’s been bobbing in for years.
Though once a universally respected human rights charity, a recent report from the organisation makes it clear: it’s swum miles from its founding principles.
“A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK”, purports to chart the rise of anti-democratic forces opposed to women’s and LGBT rights.
A perfectly suitable concern for Amnesty UK, one would have thought. But, due to embedding the foundational lies of gender-identity ideology into the heart of its operation, the world has turned turtle, reality itself warped.
As well as falsely claiming those who oppose ‘gender ideology’ are all right-wing conservatives, the report smears as ‘anti-rights’ Beira’s Place, the single-sex rape crisis service set up by JK Rowling; highly-respected policy outfit Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, and several other women’s and LGB organisations.
For terminally-online activists for whom the ‘gender wars’ is but a game of consequence-free hounding, a frenzy of glee greeted the report, adding fuel to a wholly unnecessary fire.
Yet another opportunity to fling out twisted barbs against women who have successfully defended their rights. A perfect chance to spread yet more hatred and misinformation. The worst responses insinuate the service-users of Beira’s Place - victim-survivors of the worst of male violence - are somehow bigots for wishing a single-sex service.
It’s obscene. It’s also one thing – and tedious enough - for online misogynists with enough empathy to fill an eggcup to speak this way about reputable charities, and women-focused services.
It’s quite another for an organisation with Amnesty’s legacy to publish such fact-free, surely defamatory ‘reportage’. An investigation by the Charity Commission has subsequently been launched.
JK Rowling has committed to funding legal action against the organisation, on behalf of both Beira’s Place and the other besmirched groups. She rightly notes Amnesty have ‘underestimated’ the solidarity that exists between them.
While Amnesty sees a ‘growing threat’ from new organisations – all defending human rights – formed in recent years to counter the near-obliteration of women, lesbian, or gay-only spaces and services in the UK, the counter is it’s brilliant, necessary, and should be applauded.
Over the last decade, the UK – and Scotland in particular - has hosted the most impressive, effective, and motivated women’s rights movement in a century.
The ostriches in Scotland’s political, cultural, and third sector organisations - still pushing genderist attitudes within their captured institutions - routinely fail to recognise a very salient feature about the women of that movement: They’ve had more than enough of this bulls***.
Women had their rights reconfirmed thanks to For Women Scotland’s win at the UK Supreme Court last year.
They won their right to say they are adult human females and this matters - without being fired, or otherwise discriminated against – due to the 2021 employment tribunal win of former international development researcher, Maya Forstater, now CEO of Sex Matters.
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Her former employer, the Centre for Global Development, let her go due to her ‘gender-critical’ beliefs.
These were subsequently found to be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society.’ This was confirmed over half a decade ago, yet still some act as if basic reality is heresy.
Because said bulls*** hasn’t stopped, when it very much should have, if it must take even more legal action to set things right, then so be it.
Unfortunately, a galling feature of the terminally foolish ‘gender wars’ is that, in so many cases, it’s taxpayers footing the bill for all of this.
Which takes us to Scotland’s human rights watchdog, the Scottish Human Rights Council (SHRC), charged with protecting “awareness, understanding and respect for all human rights… to everyone, everywhere in Scotland” according to their website.
Who’d possibly take issue with that? Well, it transpires, that very body allegedly, all on upwards of £1.5million of taxpayer’s funds per annum.
It was announced on Saturday that internationally renowned civil liberties lawyer, Claire Methven O’Brien, is suing the organisation on discrimination grounds for her treatment after being appointed to the body as a commissioner in 2022.
After suggesting revisions to the SHRC’s submissions to the Scottish Parliament during the passage of the ill-fated Gender Recognition Reform Bill, amongst other matters pertaining to defending women’s human rights, O’Brien alleges complaints were lodged against her, her informed viewpoint stymied.
While full details are yet to emerge, this astonishing situation is, on the face of it, yet another example of how gender-identity ideologues have waged a war – not just against women’s rights - but on competency.
The SHRC isn’t the only taxpayer funded organisation using our money in this manner.
Two such groups – Engender and the Equality Network – have long been on the radar of gender-critical campaigners. Ostensibly set up to support women’s, and LGBT rights respectively, neither do so in accordance with the law; quite the opposite.
Both lack transparency, are funded almost entirely by the Scottish government, and neither support the Supreme Court judgment. Why is our money being siphoned to groups who push unlawful positions? How, precisely, do they operate?
Egregiously, neither are subject to Freedom of Information legislation. Does this bother taxpayers as much as it does journalists? I suggest it might. Tick tock.
As the ‘find out’ era continues – as it will and must - many will find it difficult to find much pleasure in the necessary corrective. So much harm has been done.
A reality-warping agenda captured powerful institutions, throttling their core purpose, chucking it out their windows into the sky. For allowing this, some heads must metaphorically roll. Ideally, with teeth biting necessary and long overdue P45s.
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