Amnesty is sorry you’re so offended
Amnesty UK has a stupid mealy-mouthed blamey “statement” distancing itself from the “suck my dick you cunts”- type activism at the FiLiA event.
We have a long history of campaigning against violence against women and this continues to be a vital part of our work.
But they’ve forgotten who women are, and which people are women.
We are equally committed to campaigning for the rights of transgender people to live freely, authentically, and openly, and to have their gender legally recognised without having to go through a dehumanising, long and costly procedure.
But the “right” of transgender people to live “authentically” entails requiring everyone to agree with them that they are their new gender in every possible sense, in other words that they have changed their sex along with their gender. This intrudes quite dramatically on the rights of women. That means it’s not a legitimate right at all. Amnesty is trashing women’s rights by leaning so heavily on new and unworkable “rights” for trans people.
We were approached by the organisers of a Fly the Flag event in Portsmouth at the weekend, who requested that we supply materials which reflect Amnesty International UK’s campaigning positions on the LGBTQ human rights. Two sets of placards were sent. One set of signs stated the slogan “I AM WHO I SAY I AM: Amnesty International”. The second set of signs stated the slogan “LOVE IS A HUMAN RIGHT: Amnesty International”.
Both of those slogans are a crock of shit.
As I’ve pointed out what feels like a billion times, it’s not true that people always or necessarily “are who they say they are.” Look at Trump. He claims to be a great many things that he’s not. Look at frauds and cheats and tricksters, look at narcissists and egomaniacs, look at cops who say they are a cop arresting a woman for violating Covid rules when really they’re a cop abducting a woman to rape and murder her.
As I’ve pointed out not quite so many times but still many, of course love is not a human right. Those 5 words are a rapist’s charter.
Photographs of the threatening and aggressive language and images displayed by other protestors present at the Guildhall have been shared with us and we are shocked by it. We recognise that the FiLiA conference was attended by a number of women who have been the victims of violence and harassment. Amnesty International UK believes there should have been absolutely no place for the use of any threatening or aggressive language or imagery towards any of the attendees of that conference, or indeed towards any women.
In other words Amnesty wishes it hadn’t been linked to those images, but as for the women at the FiLiA conference, they are bad women and Amnesty hates them.
Amazing slogans. You’d think Amnesty at least would understand what a human right is. They endorse Universal Declaration of Human Rights which lists 30 rights. Love isn’t included.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/universal-declaration-human-rights-UDHR
A highly entitled car driver once informed me that driving his car wherever he wanted to was a “human right”.
As for I AM WHO I SAY I AM – rights for Nigerian scammers wanting your bank account details.
I know. I got well acquainted with the UDHR for Does God Hate Women? There’s a chapter that compares the Cairo Declaration with the UDHR so I had to look closely at what each one said. You’d think Amnesty would be pretty informed on it too, wouldn’t you.
“I AM WHO I SAY I AM” — Amnesty International
I’d have no problem with the above if it was supposed to be a quote from the organization, though it would seem a bit weird.
As it is, though, it’s a LOT weird. It’s basically a rehash of “BELIEVE THE CHILDREN” from the child molestation panic in which daycare workers were accused by preschoolers of, among other things, killing a horse in the playroom and making the kids watch. People, young and old, make mistakes about their inner selves and what they “know” to be true. There is no human right to being believed.
But it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms: why isn’t it “I AM WHAT I SAY I AM?” Otherwise, it sounds like trans people can’t use credit cards because merchants routinely think they stole them or borrowed them from a friend.
I’ve heard similar, only it was usually a right to drive a monster truck, and a right to park it where they want, regardless of regulations.
Another one is the “right to smoke”. Not a right. My brother informed me he had a right to smoke, and that meant he had a right to smoke in my house. I told him I had a right not to invite him into my house. I never did.
I prefer “I am what I am.” – Popeye. At least that has the benefit of being true. I am what I am, but that doesn’t mean I, or anyone else, will know precisely what that is. But even if no one knows what (or who) I am, it is still true.
The “I say” in there changes everything, but most people don’t even notice it. “I am who/what/where/when/why/how I am,” is a tautology. As a speech act, it’s also both plea and defiance. Perhaps that’s why the trans modification passes without comment. We already understand the phrase as something one would say, so the addition of “I say” seems natural and sensible.
Many things seem natural and sensible. Among these are bad arguments, and most people are not equipped to recognize them as such. Consider the argument, “Some men are doctors. Some doctors are tall. Therefore, some men are tall.” Most people will tell you this is a good argument. It seems to me that the mistake happens because all three propositions are true. Since the premises and the conclusion are true, it’s intuitively obvious that the argument is good. But an argument’s validity is a separate question from the veridicality of its components, which we can easily see while retaining the same formal structure: “Some men are doctors. Some doctors are women. Therefore, some men are women.” Both premises are still sound, but the conclusion is not. Transitivity is a valid rule of inference across type A sentences but not across type I sentences.
Adding “I say” to “I am who I am” may go unremarked for the same reason that the distinction between a conclusion’s truth and an argument’s validity does. People generally don’t (or won’t, or can’t) parse precisely enough to recognize the difference between, “I am who I say I am,” and, “I say, ‘I am who I am.'”
Maybe, but honestly, I would think the “I say” would be a red flag at least as much as it would be effectively neutral. People say a lot of things. It’s kind of basic to functioning in the world to know that sometimes those things are false, whether by mistake or on purpose.
I mean, yeah, you’d think. But then, you’d think. You’re not most people, remember? Most people don’t know a participle from a predicate (they’re just some simple cobblers from Connecticut).
There’s also the problem, which always bears mentioning, of epistemic closure under known entailment. You’d think that if I know that p, and I know that p entails q, then I should know that q. Unfortunately, that’s not at all usually the case, especially as those chains of entailment get longer and more complex, because we actually have to evaluate the syllogism before we know its conclusion. If that evaluate() function never gets called, say because my finite mental processing power is busy running other programs, I simply never realize that q.
Empty link meant to go here: https://youtu.be/AK1hX_j0-E4?t=114
I need coffee.
I think that if Amnesty didn’t want to be associated with violent, threatening and disgusting language being used against women, and especially survivors of rape and other violence, they simply shouldn’t have sent their signs to what was known to be a counter protest against feminist women. They knew the context and they’ve seen how these counter protests unfold. Seriously, what did they expect. The more pushback they get the better.
What if I say I’m someone who isn’t who they say they are?
Universal head explosion.
Well, then obviously you are contained within the set of all sets that don’t contain themselves.
(logic reference for the nerds)
Re “universal head explosion”, there is a scene of nearly that in the movie “Kingsman”, rhythmically, to the accompaniment of Pomp and Circumstance.
(Content warning, for, you know, exploding heads.)
https://youtu.be/ZD24VY0YWdQ