When the rights of one group are eroded

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May 22, 2026

NEW RESEARCH: Exposing the anti-trans networks

A hostile environment against trans people did not emerge overnight.

Amnesty’s new research traces the rise of the UK’s “gender critical” movement and the role the media have played in normalising anti-trans narratives.

Anti-trans movements are increasingly connected to wider anti-trans networks like the US organisation the Alliance Defending Freedom which worked to overturn Roe vs Wade and access to abortion care.

When the rights of one group are eroded, the consequences never stop there.

Solidarity matters. For those who want to take our rights away, it’s their worst nightmare.

Trans rights are human rights.

Read the research.

But what are “trans rights”?

People who call themselves trans should have human rights of course, but if there are new rights that are specific to trans people, they may not be rights at all. There is no right to force people to agree with one’s personal fantasy idenniny. We can all daydream that we are magic or brilliant or supernatural or twenty feet tall or from a distant planet, but none of that generates a right to make other people endorse our daydreams.

It’s pathetic to see Amnesty International recycling this fatuous bilge.

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One response to “When the rights of one group are eroded”

Artymorty

May 22, 2026 12:32 PM

It is pathetic. And it’s a damn terrible shame that so many gender-critical groups didn’t have the foresight to stay away from the legitimately terrible right-wing orgs that wooed them. The Alliance Defending Freedom, the American College of Pediatricians, arrays of neocon/libertarian/Brexit groups, right-wing think tanks, and on and on.

It’s very, very, very hard to get the message across that we’re the good guys when so many of the loudest voices on our side constantly, willingly align themselves with the bad guys.

Whatever calculus people did in their heads to rationalize these dubious alliances, or to keep their objections quiet when they saw them, the math was wrong. It didn’t benefit these gender-critical groups to publicly align themselves with toxic right-wing organizations. And it hasn’t benefited the quiet majority of GC activists to not denounce those ill-advised ties more vocally.

All the logic and reason in the world is on our side, but this war isn’t being fought in the domain of logic and reason. It’s about political image, identity, and tribal affiliation. The gender movement has sold itself not as the side of truth but as the side of good. It’s awfully hard to fight that when so many of its opponents really aren’t good. Tribal allegiance is instinctual, deep-rooted, and liable to shut down any challenge to it the instant it smells danger. Just one connection to the Alliance Defending Freedom is enough for most people to shut out someone who’s trying to get them to change their mind.

I guess it’s a preaching-to-the-choir kind of phenomenon: the kinds of people who’ve already come over to the gender-critical side are the ones who don’t have such a strong tribalistic association with the gender movement, and who are therefore not as bothered by its association with toxic allies like the ADF. They were blind to the fact that to everyone else, that’s the most important thing that’s keeping them from buying into it. The GC early adopters have failed to see that they are the psychological outliers, and that’s why they’re not succeeding at selling their view to the people they most need to get through to — those who are tribally loyal to the left.

It’s just made an already very difficult political pitch even harder to sell.

When the rights of one group are eroded

Comments

One response to “When the rights of one group are eroded”