For years, I got away with expressing polite but wide-ranging skepticism about the new roster of ‘progressive’ orthodoxies. I avoided a few known landmines but I didn’t falsify my beliefs, just softened them a bit. I asked questions I should not have asked, questions that strongly suggested I still knew things I ought to have
This was very much my experience too. The moment I was "marked" c. 2018 for saying publicly that I didn't think the Labour Party should be interrogating and punishing its female members for asking questions about proposed policy changes to the Gender Recognition Act, the machine came for me. Someone anonymously texted me to say they were sitting in a meeting "to decide what to do with me" and subsequently there were fake campaigns set up to target me (I was named explicitly in their founding statements!); people published anonymous "Open Letters"; I was denounced by former friends and so on. Everything I'd ever said was retconned as secretly already "evil". I was denounced for talking to people and being friends with people who'd already been cancelled - had I not gotten the memo? I felt for years like these people were looking for a dark stain, a little ant, in my soul, with a magnifying glass, and getting upset when they couldn't find it.
"You always think you’ll be able to explain yourself and be understood." I too thought this for years before I was cancelled. It's such a strange experience. The black and white thinking, the refusal to talk to someone you once knew, the abject cowardice, the baffling and defamatory accusations (I think the only things I wasn't accused of were the most serious crimes, presumably because at some point someone might have asked for evidence). The chronic misuse of political slurs - fascist, Nazi, far-right, as well as transphobe, TERF, bigot etc etc - absolute madness. And for what? Saying what everyone knew to be true five minutes ago! Let's hope the pendulum swings back/is swinging back to somewhere more dialogic, more pluralistic, more realistic.
Yes, as EM writes "It’s getting less lonely over here all the time." I forgot to mention the loss of work as well as the defamation and ostracisation! But you make new friends, and there was a freedom in having spoken the truth. I definitely feel less "mad" than I did for engaging in wrongthink/wrongspeak/wrongquestioning, and I've met many people who've had a similar experience. I don't think this kind of institutional capture and mob-like behaviour from the "Left" can hold, though it might take a while to dismantle/move on.
You find out who your real friends are when it happens. The people who will stick up for you. I've defended 2 people since I was marked. The appreciation they showed afterwards was nice. They thought they were alone. It's nice coming on to places like SubStack and finding a little community.
Nina, they are religious fanatics. I am gay and getting close to 70.....I know these people, no matter the flavor they come in, so well. But at least with old fundamentalists, there was the possibility of redemption. No more, my dear.
Let's not pass up the opportunity for another valuable lesson here.
Most of what we've been victimized by, we've seen before. Only it was usually the people on the other side doing it.
It's a message to anyone ready to finally hear it - this kind of insanity can happen to ANYONE. Oh yes, ourselves as well. Let's not be so conceited as to think that it's only by virtue of our character that we avoided joining this cult. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.
Hopefully, this experience helps us realize that the people on the other side of the traditional political divide, who we used to think more or less the same horrible things about as the cult members think about us now, were not actually the monsters we'd convinced ourselves they were.
My twist was being a liberal mom raising liberal kids (who graduated from college in 2009, 2013 and then the caboose in 2020). And my youngest went to college in Canada! My older two are pretty close to me in their thinking, though they consider pronouns a 'light lift' and I do not. (The eldest worked w Laverne Cox and thinks of LC as "her." The middle has NB housemates.) The youngest was *incensed* at me for some time. He graduated into covid and came home to being bored, which did not help. There's nothing quite like being considered a stealth heinous bigot by your own child! It took about two years, a dozen hot arguments and then many subsequent calmer talks for his knee jerk judgement of me to end. I had to pick at the argument from the edges in. I have been able to persuade him that the ideals I hold dear (child protection, women's rights, gay rights) demand I question and object to excessive demands of one group, impinging on those others.
I am a not-stealth heinous bigot to my husband. I'm so glad you are able to be understood by your kid after this time. It is very hard being misconstrued and villainized by people we love.
Sometimes it takes just one thing to open a person's eyes to the whole mess. At that point you can't go back. For me, it was a reel by a menopause nutritionist saying that transwomen go through menopause too. I wondered how could this be? Then I fell down the rabbit hole, and saw what my husband was seeing all along.
Kim, I want you take a moment and reflect on your privilege of experiencing menopause. Transwomen never get to experience the joys of hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal (pardon me, front hole) dryness and insomnia. Be kind, Kim. Think of the awful dysphoria transwomen experience being robbed of these wonderful experiences as they go through their menopause.
The cashstrapped UK National Health Service are offering 12 months 'male menopause' leave ... a slow reduction in men's testosterone over several years is obvs not the same as hot flushes etc and a shocking waste of money when cancer ops are being delayed .... I can only think it's really designed for 'trans men'.
Do the women get the same menopause leave? I don't think we get leave in Canada for that.
The strange thing, is that the nutritionist in question, aside from being a virtue signaler, is that her statement had no explanation, as though I was supposed to understand how that would work. Which backfired because though I found out about hormones and such, I also learned so many things that she never intended.
From searching the net on this, for women the NHS guidance is for flexible working depending on symptoms on the basis that they want to retain older staff - no mention of leave except for men!
Thank you for expressing so eloquently what so many of us have experienced. I suppose that finding ourselves on your side of the line and accepting that new status (kindly bestowed by SJW brigade) are the first steps to turning this new civic religion on its head. What I struggle with is how to channel this growing realisation that the "progressive" movement has gone off the rails into a new political movement that meets our needs. Elections are coming and so many continue to feel politically homeless.
So true. And something that strikes me profoundly is that somehow MeToo--which was supposedly about women's experiences--seems to have triggered a wave of misogynistic erasure. Body parts are irrelevant, but it's vital to transform and destroy them... especially that organ that feeds babies...
Of course! I see it now. Gone through that myself and now I can see why and how it happens. PS People, do a subject access request if you want to know what your DEI team are saying about you. I did and I am indeed a Bad Person.
The way I seek fellow travelers in our logical world is to write or place messages in books for Little Free Libraries. I print out reports for the adult books, such as the groomer nurse practitioner in Texas who recruits confused teen girls for his testosterone scrips and funnels them to surgeons for double mastectomies. The report on Soren Aldaco's case against Trans-Cendence International in Forth Worth, Texas is now taped into the back cover of an appealing cookbook on Super Seeds. I write encouraging messages into children's books directly. "You're not born wrong body!" I say, and "You will grow up strong--girls become women, boys become men!" Since I have to travel back and forth while my partner is in chemo for leomyosarcoma, I have all the Little Free Libraries in Park Slope Brooklyn at my service as well as several in my upstate town and the towns I pass through.
I have started copying these stories and mailing (the old fashion way, in an envelope) anonymously to people I know who have children or expecting. I am also taping it to the inside of bathroom stalls in pediatrician office bldgs and restaurants. I will no longer subject myself to cruel insults in person. I will do what ever I can to quietly get people’s attention even if it’s one person.
And this:
For years since the U.S. invaded Iraq I have typed out short messages like: "American War Dead total this week: 200." I copy and paste that sentence as many times as will fit on an 8x11 sheet of paper and then print it. Cut the sentences and take a bunch with me whenever I leave the house. I put them inside onion bags and greeting cards and underneath cans of green beans, inside pants and jacket pockets, and socks in clothing stores and in any other place I can think of where someone will find one. Placing them in bathrooms is an inspiration
Yes! Here's my new one, about putting paragraphs from the essays debunking these "settled science" studies into adult books to go into Little Free Libraries. These messages can be left all over; under a stone on a park bench, in the shampoo shelf at the local organic store, taped to letter boxes, taped to light posts. If you want to get fancy, use spray glue over it so harder to remove~
I'm fortunate to have been retired during most of this. The only cancellation I've experienced is having my comments blocked on various web sites.
Eliza, weren't you in the health-care industry? That's probably where the trans cult is most powerful. That and universities, although the liberal press is also fully infected by the virus.
I couldn't imagine what it would be like to work at a job where my coworkers have rejected reality in favor of condescending lies.
One thing I've started to realize about the huge effort that trans people are making to push their way into all aspects of society is that it is a measure of how hollow their ideas are. A lie like "a man is a woman if he feels like a woman" is so hollow that it requires large numbers of people to prop it up in order to keep it alive. The trans ideas are memorable specifically because they are false and untrue. A person who learns the trans ideas and the special language would probably regard him-/herself as superior and enlightened, as if it were a secret club with a special understanding.
In USA, as I understand it, it's the fact that you can have this 'affirmative care' on health insurance .... in UK it's the NHS which is paid for by taxes. As for 'non-profit', that surely requires a rant all on its own!
I friggin love your work. I read them all and look forward to them. Women like you are a breath of fresh air!! (Oh no! I referenced 'women', time to go flog myself)
If you want to know what's going on, study Maoist China. The Intersectional Inquisitors are the modern manifestations of the Red Guard. They'd throw you in the Gulag if they could. They yet might, one day. Don't underestimate how far this can go. History is littered with broken people who thought it just couldn't happen Here.
I’ve consumed enough James Lindsey content to see that pattern as well. Having never studied Chinese history deeply though, I can’t make a coherent argument to anyone. Fascinating and disturbing.
The People's Republic of China are putting shed loads of money into Western universities .... spies in UK government .... who's to say they aren't pushing this cr*p too?
You are not alone in this thinking. While I am skeptical of almost everything these days, I have heard from a few trustworthy sources working in the US government that this is absolutely happening. I would have laughed at them a few years ago, much like I laughed at the idea that trans identified men would ever be allowed to compete against women in sports.
I think I’m still seen as a Good Person Who Is a Little OffScript. I think. I constantly scan interactions for signs that someone thinks I’ve tipped over into Heinous Bigot.
I went to four academic conferences this spring and didn’t detect anyone obviously cutting or avoiding me. I know I’m well respected as an expert in my tiny subfield. And I’m working on a book project that I would like to be published at a good university press.
Because I’m worried my publishing and conference presentations will suddenly vanish if the perception tips, I’m staying anonymous here. But I follow too many Heinous Bigots on Twitter--I may be unmasked anytime. Perhaps I’m just lucky that most of the people who follow the party line have left Twitter?
Since I'm in the process of trying to get a book contract (and have told the publisher I can publicize it on Twitter), my daughter urged me to protect myself. I have just unfollowed a hundred "problematic" accounts (including Eliza's!) and will set up a burner Twitter account to follow all of them on. It will also free me to "like" and "retweet" them--which I can't do on my main Twitter account without fear.
Of course, who knows how long Twitter (no, I'm not calling it X) will be around?
FYI--a significant court decision linked for those who may not know about it. It is gratifying that the 6th U S Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down the ACLU in this decision by stating that 'trans' is not a powerless group (p.34 pdf doc.) and that 'transgender identity' is not immutable.
Once again thank you Eliza. It occurs to me this is exactly what it feels like to be a parent of an adult who is caught in the maze. I used to be the best, most liberal, caring, supportive parent. Then I had a lot of explaining to do. My extended family soon knew my son had ‘changed his mind’ about me and they all either criticized me or just wouldn’t talk about it. The loneliness is indescribable. The confusion profound. Btw I never stopped supporting my son, I just expressed worry and asked if he could slow down before making decisions he might later regret. I am cancelled, kicked to the curb…however one wants to describe that feeling of being in and then suddenly out.
I have to ask: do you subscribe to a weekly email presentation on cultural topics called Areopagus? Because I recently saw this:
[A] peculiar phenomenon has a name: mondegreen. It was coined in a 1954 article for Harper's by Sylvia Wright:
When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
What "And Lady Mondegreen" should have been, from Thomas Percy's collection of poetry was: and laid him on the green. No doubt this phenomenon is familiar to all you. The question of why we hear mondegreens is rather fascinating, involving everything from confirmation bias (when there is ambiguity we are more likely to hear what we expect to hear) to cognitive overload, such they tend to be incredibly personal.
Wright goes on to argue, if not a little drolly, that mondegreens are inevitably better
Oh I've been the problem child/brother/friend for a long time now. Even when I present evidence I'm still in the wrong. It's got to the point that my mother instructs the rest of my family not to discuss certain subjects with me.
No. She's oblivious to all off it really. She stays in her own bubble. She's not very tech literate at all. She can barely work WhatsApp lol. But she hates that when I do go home to visit it's always marred with little digs at me by my very left wing Father and brothers.
You know, I have been a liberal all my life, and now I am talking about liberals the way Republicans do. I'm still a liberal on most issues, except for the ones that deny reality. With the exception of one brother who is a conservative, all seven kids in my original family are liberals, but we came of age before transgenderism got a hold, so none of us believe in it. When I explained it to one of my brothers, he thought it was pretty bizarre.
I find it interesting that so many people are talking now about preserving the rights of gay people, given that gays are the group that is singled out by both the Bible and Quran. I think that Lesbians are more at risk from transgenderism than gay men are. It infuriates me the way that trans people have attached themselves to gays as if we were all one happy group. We aren't.
Have you seen the meme that Elon posted? With the person staying in the center but the person on the left runs further Left but the person in the center stays the same. That's me. Poor description and I apologise for that.
I think for me (I'm a live and let live kind of guy) it's how Graham Linehan was treated that opened my eyes. The J K Rowling put out her tweet. I read more and I was like nope. Leave women's sports and spaces alone and leave kids alone.
Also. you have one big family!! Christmas (if you celebrate it) must be a nightmare lol.
Once the kids grew up and left home, they didn't return for Christmas that often. It wasn't a happy family.
Some people are naturally repelled by trans ideas. We understand that humans are physical creatures, that you can't just make up your reality, and that the body determines one's destiny. The younger generation is the "surgery generation" for whom doctors are gods and can turn men into women and straw into gold. I was never that foolish.
Elon Musk's meme is more appropriate for ultra-conservatives than for "woke" liberals. Even with trans ideology, the craziness on the right exceeds the craziness on the left.
I'm going to bed. If you post more, I'll answer later.
I agree that the younger generation apparently has no sense of caution when it comes to medical interventions. They have a misplaced trust and belief in what medicine can accomplish and they do not see the dangers and risks of medical procedures and of hospitalization.
I suppose some of their lack of awareness is the invincibility of youth and that they trust what they are told by 'health- care' providers who often have mixed motives and are not unbiased. They have also been indoctrinated into the 'trans' 'gender identity' nonsense so they can no longer see reality.
And as to being 'cancelled' I have been cast out by former colleagues (Liberals) who are so educated they have fallen for the 'trans' claptrap. Thank you for sharing your experience Eliza--it resonates w/ so many of us these days.
One of the most insidious things about this issue is that, for many, it's provided an exit ramp for people from the left. It's the poison of doubt that spreads from one issue to another. "If they can be this close-minded about this…" then other questions arise. The real crime, for me, in this is that the planet will lose if this continues to leach voters from the blue corner.
I sure agree with you about that. It seems that the harm that trans activists are doing is greater than we realized. There is one Substack writer -- I've forgotten her name -- who seems to be chomping at the bit to join the conservatives, and she has written several articles about that. She is even flirting with the idea of supporting Trump.
Biden harmed himself when he had that disgusting character Mulvaney at the White House, and Obama harmed himself when he praised Caitlyn Jenner for coming out as a babe in some women's magazine.
People intuitively understand that there is something wrong with this. Of course, that same intuition is what tells them that gays are abnormal (which isn't good for me because I'm gay). But the apparent sickness level among gays doesn't match the sickness level among trans people. Gays are attracted to their own sex, while trans people want to change reality, their own and others'. If becoming your "authentic self" (puke) means taking hormones and having multiple surgeries to change your outward appearance, then there is something wrong with you.
Despite what Anita Bryant claimed, gays are not after everyone's children. Trans people, however, ARE after everyone's children. The effort to influence children to believe they are trans on social media is a poorly disguised effort to increase their numbers. (If only those pesky detransitioners would just commit suicide so as not to embarrass the trans lobby!)
I think the reason that liberals and Democrats can't take a middle-road on this issue is that trans activists shame them into believing they are bigots if they do. What I don't understand, though, is why people are listening to the activists. They are the world's most obnoxious group of people. Insofar as liberals are concerned, I think they were embarrassed when people began to see that they are racial bigots just like conservatives are. So the liberals decided that with this new group, they were going to "get it right" and be all-accepting. Part of the problem, though -- and this is a problem with most people -- is that liberals don't know how to be nuanced. They don't know how to support what's good about trans while rejecting what's bad about trans. Of course, most of what trans activists want is bad, so that would put the Democrats with the Republicans in opposition to transgenderism.
My reaction as well....at least to the notion of authentic self.
I think progressives got in line because their thought leaders said it was the thing to do. When doctors and the NY Times tell elites what to think they don't question it. Why doctors threw up their hands is another question. Pressure from peers probably. Or perhaps they thought of themselves as technicians, not arbiters of gender. For that they depended on their colleagues in psychiatry or psychology.
But for people like you and me the culture seemed to shift overnight and yet there was barely a ripple of curiosity about this change. It's been one of the strangest things in my life time.
This was very much my experience too. The moment I was "marked" c. 2018 for saying publicly that I didn't think the Labour Party should be interrogating and punishing its female members for asking questions about proposed policy changes to the Gender Recognition Act, the machine came for me. Someone anonymously texted me to say they were sitting in a meeting "to decide what to do with me" and subsequently there were fake campaigns set up to target me (I was named explicitly in their founding statements!); people published anonymous "Open Letters"; I was denounced by former friends and so on. Everything I'd ever said was retconned as secretly already "evil". I was denounced for talking to people and being friends with people who'd already been cancelled - had I not gotten the memo? I felt for years like these people were looking for a dark stain, a little ant, in my soul, with a magnifying glass, and getting upset when they couldn't find it.
"You always think you’ll be able to explain yourself and be understood." I too thought this for years before I was cancelled. It's such a strange experience. The black and white thinking, the refusal to talk to someone you once knew, the abject cowardice, the baffling and defamatory accusations (I think the only things I wasn't accused of were the most serious crimes, presumably because at some point someone might have asked for evidence). The chronic misuse of political slurs - fascist, Nazi, far-right, as well as transphobe, TERF, bigot etc etc - absolute madness. And for what? Saying what everyone knew to be true five minutes ago! Let's hope the pendulum swings back/is swinging back to somewhere more dialogic, more pluralistic, more realistic.
Nina, that’s horrible. I hope you’re OK now. We need writers like Eliza to remind us it’s ‘not just me’ and we’re not mad.
Yes, as EM writes "It’s getting less lonely over here all the time." I forgot to mention the loss of work as well as the defamation and ostracisation! But you make new friends, and there was a freedom in having spoken the truth. I definitely feel less "mad" than I did for engaging in wrongthink/wrongspeak/wrongquestioning, and I've met many people who've had a similar experience. I don't think this kind of institutional capture and mob-like behaviour from the "Left" can hold, though it might take a while to dismantle/move on.
You find out who your real friends are when it happens. The people who will stick up for you. I've defended 2 people since I was marked. The appreciation they showed afterwards was nice. They thought they were alone. It's nice coming on to places like SubStack and finding a little community.
Nina, they are religious fanatics. I am gay and getting close to 70.....I know these people, no matter the flavor they come in, so well. But at least with old fundamentalists, there was the possibility of redemption. No more, my dear.
Eh, these people are ordinary humans like us. How about we don't with the othering?
Nearly everyone has been part of the mob at one time or another.
They are people, but not so sure about the ordinary............
Let's not pass up the opportunity for another valuable lesson here.
Most of what we've been victimized by, we've seen before. Only it was usually the people on the other side doing it.
It's a message to anyone ready to finally hear it - this kind of insanity can happen to ANYONE. Oh yes, ourselves as well. Let's not be so conceited as to think that it's only by virtue of our character that we avoided joining this cult. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.
Hopefully, this experience helps us realize that the people on the other side of the traditional political divide, who we used to think more or less the same horrible things about as the cult members think about us now, were not actually the monsters we'd convinced ourselves they were.
My twist was being a liberal mom raising liberal kids (who graduated from college in 2009, 2013 and then the caboose in 2020). And my youngest went to college in Canada! My older two are pretty close to me in their thinking, though they consider pronouns a 'light lift' and I do not. (The eldest worked w Laverne Cox and thinks of LC as "her." The middle has NB housemates.) The youngest was *incensed* at me for some time. He graduated into covid and came home to being bored, which did not help. There's nothing quite like being considered a stealth heinous bigot by your own child! It took about two years, a dozen hot arguments and then many subsequent calmer talks for his knee jerk judgement of me to end. I had to pick at the argument from the edges in. I have been able to persuade him that the ideals I hold dear (child protection, women's rights, gay rights) demand I question and object to excessive demands of one group, impinging on those others.
I am a not-stealth heinous bigot to my husband. I'm so glad you are able to be understood by your kid after this time. It is very hard being misconstrued and villainized by people we love.
Sometimes it takes just one thing to open a person's eyes to the whole mess. At that point you can't go back. For me, it was a reel by a menopause nutritionist saying that transwomen go through menopause too. I wondered how could this be? Then I fell down the rabbit hole, and saw what my husband was seeing all along.
Kim, I want you take a moment and reflect on your privilege of experiencing menopause. Transwomen never get to experience the joys of hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal (pardon me, front hole) dryness and insomnia. Be kind, Kim. Think of the awful dysphoria transwomen experience being robbed of these wonderful experiences as they go through their menopause.
The cashstrapped UK National Health Service are offering 12 months 'male menopause' leave ... a slow reduction in men's testosterone over several years is obvs not the same as hot flushes etc and a shocking waste of money when cancer ops are being delayed .... I can only think it's really designed for 'trans men'.
Oh my god that's it. THEY WANT BOTH MENOPAUSE LEAVES. Clever bastards! But now we're onto them!
Do the women get the same menopause leave? I don't think we get leave in Canada for that.
The strange thing, is that the nutritionist in question, aside from being a virtue signaler, is that her statement had no explanation, as though I was supposed to understand how that would work. Which backfired because though I found out about hormones and such, I also learned so many things that she never intended.
From searching the net on this, for women the NHS guidance is for flexible working depending on symptoms on the basis that they want to retain older staff - no mention of leave except for men!
Thank you Eliza for this very accurate description of what it's like being "cancelled."
Thank you for expressing so eloquently what so many of us have experienced. I suppose that finding ourselves on your side of the line and accepting that new status (kindly bestowed by SJW brigade) are the first steps to turning this new civic religion on its head. What I struggle with is how to channel this growing realisation that the "progressive" movement has gone off the rails into a new political movement that meets our needs. Elections are coming and so many continue to feel politically homeless.
So true. And something that strikes me profoundly is that somehow MeToo--which was supposedly about women's experiences--seems to have triggered a wave of misogynistic erasure. Body parts are irrelevant, but it's vital to transform and destroy them... especially that organ that feeds babies...
Of course! I see it now. Gone through that myself and now I can see why and how it happens. PS People, do a subject access request if you want to know what your DEI team are saying about you. I did and I am indeed a Bad Person.
The way I seek fellow travelers in our logical world is to write or place messages in books for Little Free Libraries. I print out reports for the adult books, such as the groomer nurse practitioner in Texas who recruits confused teen girls for his testosterone scrips and funnels them to surgeons for double mastectomies. The report on Soren Aldaco's case against Trans-Cendence International in Forth Worth, Texas is now taped into the back cover of an appealing cookbook on Super Seeds. I write encouraging messages into children's books directly. "You're not born wrong body!" I say, and "You will grow up strong--girls become women, boys become men!" Since I have to travel back and forth while my partner is in chemo for leomyosarcoma, I have all the Little Free Libraries in Park Slope Brooklyn at my service as well as several in my upstate town and the towns I pass through.
I highly recommend this resistance:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QhyIVqPTBG0
I save similar encouraging comments:
I have started copying these stories and mailing (the old fashion way, in an envelope) anonymously to people I know who have children or expecting. I am also taping it to the inside of bathroom stalls in pediatrician office bldgs and restaurants. I will no longer subject myself to cruel insults in person. I will do what ever I can to quietly get people’s attention even if it’s one person.
And this:
For years since the U.S. invaded Iraq I have typed out short messages like: "American War Dead total this week: 200." I copy and paste that sentence as many times as will fit on an 8x11 sheet of paper and then print it. Cut the sentences and take a bunch with me whenever I leave the house. I put them inside onion bags and greeting cards and underneath cans of green beans, inside pants and jacket pockets, and socks in clothing stores and in any other place I can think of where someone will find one. Placing them in bathrooms is an inspiration
My hero my hero my hero. This is great.
Messages I dream of:
- you are wonderful exactly as you are and as you were born
-- it is OK to love and be loved by people who think differently.
-- your mother loves you!
Yes! Here's my new one, about putting paragraphs from the essays debunking these "settled science" studies into adult books to go into Little Free Libraries. These messages can be left all over; under a stone on a park bench, in the shampoo shelf at the local organic store, taped to letter boxes, taped to light posts. If you want to get fancy, use spray glue over it so harder to remove~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnByv3JdXR4
Good idea!
I'm fortunate to have been retired during most of this. The only cancellation I've experienced is having my comments blocked on various web sites.
Eliza, weren't you in the health-care industry? That's probably where the trans cult is most powerful. That and universities, although the liberal press is also fully infected by the virus.
I couldn't imagine what it would be like to work at a job where my coworkers have rejected reality in favor of condescending lies.
One thing I've started to realize about the huge effort that trans people are making to push their way into all aspects of society is that it is a measure of how hollow their ideas are. A lie like "a man is a woman if he feels like a woman" is so hollow that it requires large numbers of people to prop it up in order to keep it alive. The trans ideas are memorable specifically because they are false and untrue. A person who learns the trans ideas and the special language would probably regard him-/herself as superior and enlightened, as if it were a secret club with a special understanding.
Nonprofit public health sector. Much crazier than healthcare.
In USA, as I understand it, it's the fact that you can have this 'affirmative care' on health insurance .... in UK it's the NHS which is paid for by taxes. As for 'non-profit', that surely requires a rant all on its own!
I friggin love your work. I read them all and look forward to them. Women like you are a breath of fresh air!! (Oh no! I referenced 'women', time to go flog myself)
If you want to know what's going on, study Maoist China. The Intersectional Inquisitors are the modern manifestations of the Red Guard. They'd throw you in the Gulag if they could. They yet might, one day. Don't underestimate how far this can go. History is littered with broken people who thought it just couldn't happen Here.
I’ve consumed enough James Lindsey content to see that pattern as well. Having never studied Chinese history deeply though, I can’t make a coherent argument to anyone. Fascinating and disturbing.
The People's Republic of China are putting shed loads of money into Western universities .... spies in UK government .... who's to say they aren't pushing this cr*p too?
You are not alone in this thinking. While I am skeptical of almost everything these days, I have heard from a few trustworthy sources working in the US government that this is absolutely happening. I would have laughed at them a few years ago, much like I laughed at the idea that trans identified men would ever be allowed to compete against women in sports.
This comment thread reads like messages from The Handmaids Tale underground.
I think I’m still seen as a Good Person Who Is a Little OffScript. I think. I constantly scan interactions for signs that someone thinks I’ve tipped over into Heinous Bigot.
I went to four academic conferences this spring and didn’t detect anyone obviously cutting or avoiding me. I know I’m well respected as an expert in my tiny subfield. And I’m working on a book project that I would like to be published at a good university press.
Because I’m worried my publishing and conference presentations will suddenly vanish if the perception tips, I’m staying anonymous here. But I follow too many Heinous Bigots on Twitter--I may be unmasked anytime. Perhaps I’m just lucky that most of the people who follow the party line have left Twitter?
Maybe after my book is published I can go public?
Since I'm in the process of trying to get a book contract (and have told the publisher I can publicize it on Twitter), my daughter urged me to protect myself. I have just unfollowed a hundred "problematic" accounts (including Eliza's!) and will set up a burner Twitter account to follow all of them on. It will also free me to "like" and "retweet" them--which I can't do on my main Twitter account without fear.
Of course, who knows how long Twitter (no, I'm not calling it X) will be around?
FYI--a significant court decision linked for those who may not know about it. It is gratifying that the 6th U S Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down the ACLU in this decision by stating that 'trans' is not a powerless group (p.34 pdf doc.) and that 'transgender identity' is not immutable.
https://wp.api.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/CA6-Opinion.pdf
Once again thank you Eliza. It occurs to me this is exactly what it feels like to be a parent of an adult who is caught in the maze. I used to be the best, most liberal, caring, supportive parent. Then I had a lot of explaining to do. My extended family soon knew my son had ‘changed his mind’ about me and they all either criticized me or just wouldn’t talk about it. The loneliness is indescribable. The confusion profound. Btw I never stopped supporting my son, I just expressed worry and asked if he could slow down before making decisions he might later regret. I am cancelled, kicked to the curb…however one wants to describe that feeling of being in and then suddenly out.
I have to ask: do you subscribe to a weekly email presentation on cultural topics called Areopagus? Because I recently saw this:
[A] peculiar phenomenon has a name: mondegreen. It was coined in a 1954 article for Harper's by Sylvia Wright:
When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
What "And Lady Mondegreen" should have been, from Thomas Percy's collection of poetry was: and laid him on the green. No doubt this phenomenon is familiar to all you. The question of why we hear mondegreens is rather fascinating, involving everything from confirmation bias (when there is ambiguity we are more likely to hear what we expect to hear) to cognitive overload, such they tend to be incredibly personal.
Wright goes on to argue, if not a little drolly, that mondegreens are inevitably better
Scuse me while I kiss this guy. I got her name right away
Oh I've been the problem child/brother/friend for a long time now. Even when I present evidence I'm still in the wrong. It's got to the point that my mother instructs the rest of my family not to discuss certain subjects with me.
Your MOTHER believes in transgender ideology?
No. She's oblivious to all off it really. She stays in her own bubble. She's not very tech literate at all. She can barely work WhatsApp lol. But she hates that when I do go home to visit it's always marred with little digs at me by my very left wing Father and brothers.
You know, I have been a liberal all my life, and now I am talking about liberals the way Republicans do. I'm still a liberal on most issues, except for the ones that deny reality. With the exception of one brother who is a conservative, all seven kids in my original family are liberals, but we came of age before transgenderism got a hold, so none of us believe in it. When I explained it to one of my brothers, he thought it was pretty bizarre.
I find it interesting that so many people are talking now about preserving the rights of gay people, given that gays are the group that is singled out by both the Bible and Quran. I think that Lesbians are more at risk from transgenderism than gay men are. It infuriates me the way that trans people have attached themselves to gays as if we were all one happy group. We aren't.
Have you seen the meme that Elon posted? With the person staying in the center but the person on the left runs further Left but the person in the center stays the same. That's me. Poor description and I apologise for that.
I think for me (I'm a live and let live kind of guy) it's how Graham Linehan was treated that opened my eyes. The J K Rowling put out her tweet. I read more and I was like nope. Leave women's sports and spaces alone and leave kids alone.
Also. you have one big family!! Christmas (if you celebrate it) must be a nightmare lol.
Once the kids grew up and left home, they didn't return for Christmas that often. It wasn't a happy family.
Some people are naturally repelled by trans ideas. We understand that humans are physical creatures, that you can't just make up your reality, and that the body determines one's destiny. The younger generation is the "surgery generation" for whom doctors are gods and can turn men into women and straw into gold. I was never that foolish.
Elon Musk's meme is more appropriate for ultra-conservatives than for "woke" liberals. Even with trans ideology, the craziness on the right exceeds the craziness on the left.
I'm going to bed. If you post more, I'll answer later.
I agree that the younger generation apparently has no sense of caution when it comes to medical interventions. They have a misplaced trust and belief in what medicine can accomplish and they do not see the dangers and risks of medical procedures and of hospitalization.
I suppose some of their lack of awareness is the invincibility of youth and that they trust what they are told by 'health- care' providers who often have mixed motives and are not unbiased. They have also been indoctrinated into the 'trans' 'gender identity' nonsense so they can no longer see reality.
And as to being 'cancelled' I have been cast out by former colleagues (Liberals) who are so educated they have fallen for the 'trans' claptrap. Thank you for sharing your experience Eliza--it resonates w/ so many of us these days.
The trouble with Elon is that he doesn't care about anybody's principles or values or moral stances. He's just trolling.
In my opinion, we should call him "Musk". Only friends get called by their first names.
I do love his trolling though. Only because it tends to annoy everyone.
One of the most insidious things about this issue is that, for many, it's provided an exit ramp for people from the left. It's the poison of doubt that spreads from one issue to another. "If they can be this close-minded about this…" then other questions arise. The real crime, for me, in this is that the planet will lose if this continues to leach voters from the blue corner.
I sure agree with you about that. It seems that the harm that trans activists are doing is greater than we realized. There is one Substack writer -- I've forgotten her name -- who seems to be chomping at the bit to join the conservatives, and she has written several articles about that. She is even flirting with the idea of supporting Trump.
Biden harmed himself when he had that disgusting character Mulvaney at the White House, and Obama harmed himself when he praised Caitlyn Jenner for coming out as a babe in some women's magazine.
People intuitively understand that there is something wrong with this. Of course, that same intuition is what tells them that gays are abnormal (which isn't good for me because I'm gay). But the apparent sickness level among gays doesn't match the sickness level among trans people. Gays are attracted to their own sex, while trans people want to change reality, their own and others'. If becoming your "authentic self" (puke) means taking hormones and having multiple surgeries to change your outward appearance, then there is something wrong with you.
Despite what Anita Bryant claimed, gays are not after everyone's children. Trans people, however, ARE after everyone's children. The effort to influence children to believe they are trans on social media is a poorly disguised effort to increase their numbers. (If only those pesky detransitioners would just commit suicide so as not to embarrass the trans lobby!)
I think the reason that liberals and Democrats can't take a middle-road on this issue is that trans activists shame them into believing they are bigots if they do. What I don't understand, though, is why people are listening to the activists. They are the world's most obnoxious group of people. Insofar as liberals are concerned, I think they were embarrassed when people began to see that they are racial bigots just like conservatives are. So the liberals decided that with this new group, they were going to "get it right" and be all-accepting. Part of the problem, though -- and this is a problem with most people -- is that liberals don't know how to be nuanced. They don't know how to support what's good about trans while rejecting what's bad about trans. Of course, most of what trans activists want is bad, so that would put the Democrats with the Republicans in opposition to transgenderism.
"If becoming your "authentic self" (puke) …"
My reaction as well....at least to the notion of authentic self.
I think progressives got in line because their thought leaders said it was the thing to do. When doctors and the NY Times tell elites what to think they don't question it. Why doctors threw up their hands is another question. Pressure from peers probably. Or perhaps they thought of themselves as technicians, not arbiters of gender. For that they depended on their colleagues in psychiatry or psychology.
But for people like you and me the culture seemed to shift overnight and yet there was barely a ripple of curiosity about this change. It's been one of the strangest things in my life time.