Asshattery International
It’s hard to imagine that Amnesty International would call a women-only support center and refuge for female victims of sexual violence that, during its first year of operation, served approximately 2,000 women, with 250 using it as a refuge, an “anti-rights organization,” but here we are. It might come as a surprise that someone might claim the only reason domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor J.K. Rowling founded that shelter, Beira’s Place in Edinburgh, was to have something from which she could exclude transgenders presenting as female, but here we are.
On 8 July 2026, Amnesty International, earning my renaming of it as Asshattery International, issued a report, “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK,” then quickly scrambled, out of embarrassment, to try to make it disappear. A related report from May, “Like a snowball: the growth and impact of the gender critical movement in the UK,” remains up on the website. Among the groups responding to being on the list are Keep Prisons Single Sex, LGB Alliance and LGB Alliance Cymru, the Gay Men’s Network, and Children of Transitioners and Trans Widows’ Voices. In other words, Asshattery International let it be said, in their name, that dissenting from gender ideology is an “anti-rights” move. Does that give away the game, or what?
And yet, their list also includes the Natural Family Planning Teachers’ Association, which I presume is all about the rhythm method of birth control. Because trans-identified males have no way of practicing it?
Rowland created Beira’s Place (named after the ancient Scottish Goddess of Winter and the harsh transformative power of nature, also known as the Cailleach) in response to evidence that many female survivors prefer a women-only service to safely address and recover from their trauma. As a women-only service, any contact will be from a woman, and if someone visits the building, everyone there will be women. Beira’s Place told the Advocate, a gay publication of very long standing, that “The service is offered in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, which permits the provision of single sex services and a single sex staffing policy in various situations where there’s a good reason for them. Many women subjected to men’s violence feel safer and fare better in women-only spaces, and wish to have support sessions with females only, and we exist to meet that need. We believe that women deserve to have certainty that, in using our services, they will not encounter anyone who is male.”
Because a freshly victimized woman encountering someone who looks and/or sounds male in a women’s shelter might get frightened AF, right? Not exactly rocket science.
One impetus for Rowling to go to pocket for women was a scandal involving the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, whose trans-identified male CEO(!) having was found by a tribunal to have “wrongly vilified” staff for “raising concerns about the centre not being a safe haven for women” due to its admission by self-ID practices. The Centre was found to have to have unlawfully harassed a staff member for her gender-critical beliefs through, costing it £35,000 in damages to the wrongfully disciplined staffer.
Trans people’s concepts of what interferes with their rights seem to range from the naïve to the openly colonialist. On her Facebook page, the early onset gender dysphoria transsexual Brianna Wu, who can be all over the place, asked, “Honest question: is there anything going on that you feel is unfair to trans women? The conversation is 100% about how much y’all hate us so I’m curious if you think anything going on is unfair or cruel? Or maybe even a violation of our human rights?” Coming up big were restroom access and ID documents. Remarked one commenter, “Any government action that denies your identity is a violation of civil rights - passports, DL, birth certificates, etc.”
Driver’s licenses are a cheap and easy way to allow individuals whose crossliving may be innocuous to get about with their lives. Otherwise, things like birth certificates are records of specific events, and passports are representations from one government to another about an individual. Allowing birth certificate amendment after sex-reassignment surgery was instituted as a kindness that presumed such surgery was a medically legitimate correction that should follow onto the records. Self-ID for documents seems based on a pretty naïve assumption.
A deeper dive into the thinking behind the Asshattery International list has been provided by feminist Bev Jackson on her Substack. Writes Jackson, “Three foundational assertions underpin the movement that is intent on imposing gender identity doctrine on society. One is ‘trans rights are human rights’, the second (a derivative of the first) is ‘trans women are women’, and the third is that there is no conflict between ‘trans rights’ and women’s rights. All these beliefs are – though sometimes sincerely held, as are religious beliefs -- demonstrably false.” And, they involve an outrageous positive rights claim to other people’s minds.
“When Amnesty says, ‘trans rights are human rights,’” Jackson writes, “it means that trans-identifying people have a ‘human right’ to be treated in all respects as a member of the opposite sex if they so ‘identify.’ With this false doctrine, it has pitted itself against UK law, as established by the UK Supreme Court, and against all the women’s groups and LGB rights groups that celebrated the Supreme Court’s clarification of UK law.” This also gets into the distinction between negative rights (rights) and positive rights (entitlements).
The author of the Asshattery International report also wrote, in January 2026, that sex-based rights “do not exist in human rights law.” Hooboy! Jackson cites CEDAW, while I’m still celebrating Title IX sex-based rights for females getting upheld in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (said respondent also being known as B.J.P.J. if you’ve read about her verbal sexual harassment of female classmates). And ask me about sex discrimination law exemptions and BFOQs.
Even our ACLU “now acts as if the most important ‘human right’ to be defended is that of being treated as a member of the opposite sex – if that’s how you ‘identify.’”
I think the inclusion of Trans Widows Voices on the list is a pretty good indication that trans rights activism is now actively about shutting down any dissent from gender ideology. This is group for women who’ve basically lost the men they married to crossdressing or full or partial transition. It sure looks to me like an online version the second-wave feminist consciousness raising groups, in which women would get together and share personal experiences. As they did that, they found their oppressive circumstances were not particular to them but common experiences—and not their fault. A number of the personal stories on their website—where each page has a “Leave Now” button in case of prying eyes—report psychological intimidating and even physical violence aimed at forcing the wives to accommodate and even actively involve themselves in their husband’s transitions.
The intimidation and even violence do seem to be characteristic of transactivist opposition to gender critical and other dissenters, doesn’t it? “Wham, bam, it’s ma’am, thank you.” J.K. Rowling has publicly offered to provide financial assistance to any group on the Asshattery International list looking to take legal action.
My mother taught me that bullies are cowards, and will back down if you stand up to them. I believe she would approve of J.K. Rowling. I know I appreciate her.
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