There’s a name for what’s going on here—and it’s not ‘trans genocide.’ It’s called phobia indoctrination. Phobia indoctrination instills irrational fears in members of a high-control group and uses those fears to manipulate members so they won't question the group's beliefs or try to leave.
Eliza, I’ve enjoyed following you and reading your work over the past few months and this is one of my favorites so far. When you convince trans people (or anyone, really) that there is a bogeyman around every corner, everyone starts to look like a bogeyman. (Bogeyperson? Is that more inclusive?)
I think your point that “trans rights” has become synonymous not with actual rights but with this intense need to control people’s speech’s and expression (and who we sleep with, something I find so abhorrent) is so important and cannot be overstated. I am generally pro-decency—call people what they ask to be called; however, I’m not pro-consequence—lose your job, get banned from the platform—over a refusal to use made up neopronouns. Maybe there are a few trans people who are in such a fragile state that using the wrong pronouns might cause them to melt into a puddle on the floor, but I can’t help but wonder if much of the rage over “misgendering” is reflexive, learned, or downright performative.
To that point about the trans rights movement seeking to control thought and speech, I think that ended up being the thrust of the 2020 “racial reckoning” here in the U.S. What started as this real moment of collective effervescence and consciousness over the ways racism still pervades fizzled into this intensely individual witch hunt, trying to prove everyone had racism in their hearts, making these absurdly abstracted, associative claims about how innocuous comment A invoked the symbolism of racist thing B and therefore person C was clearly racist, and we must collectively shun them, get them fired, ruin their lives. It is the death knell of social movements to try and control speech and thought—the winners are not the oppressed people in question but the grifters like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram
X. Kendi who seize on a moment to peddle their snake oil to help you fix your alleged thought crimes.
Here in the U.S., as hardcore conservative lawmakers actually engage in poorly crafted legislative overreach and use trans people as a pawn in the culture war to rile up their base, trans activists continue to focus their ire on the liberals and LGB individuals who actually care about their wellbeing. But if you question plainly obvious phenomena like the spike in young transitioners, the puberty blockers that are handed out like candy, the clear correlation between mental health challenges and the self-proclaiming of trans and non-binary identities, or, god forbid, you don’t want to fuck a trans person, you become the monster.
Excellent article. Your insights are always spot-on. After reading this article, it is hard not to think of the transgender movement as a dishonest cult. They are not just trying to control the behavior of the public, but the behavior of their own members. And the fact that they vilify any person with a different opinion just shows how weak their ideas and arguments are.
As a gay person, I find this paranoia among trans people to be somewhat irritating because gay people have come in for much more persecution over the centuries -- and all because homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible and the Koran. If trans people are finding that people dislike them, it may have to do with the fact that they are making themselves so visible, and because their demands of society are so ridiculous. There are still countries in the Middle East which are executing gays.
But I think it is only the activists who are this dishonest. Most trans people are more reasonable than the activists are. But the fact that trans activists have to control their members just shows how unhealthy the movement is. It shouldn't be a movement at all. It really is nothing more than a mental state (like homosexuality) which some people need to deal with.
Of all the people writing about the movement, I think you are the most insightful. But how do we get more people to read your articles? I suspect that the only people who are reading your pages on Substack are the people who already agree with you.
I'm a relatively "online" person - and so while I recall as these things started to turn up in the then-classically-liberal circles I frequented, when it was still possible to be sympathetic while telling a joke, I recall with perfect clarity my first exposure to this sort of indoctrination.
It was the summer of 2012 - and there was a member of a moderate-sized community who we all knew and liked, even if we privately acknowledged she was a little bit high-strung and unpredictably reactive at times. While hanging out as a group of perhaps a dozen of us one afternoon, I got to asking her exactly what she meant by the whole "non-binary" thing - amazing that just 10 years ago one could still do that openly and expect discourse rather than an excommunication - and we talked a bit. It didn't seem so shocking to me that an art-school student would adopt an "alternative" persona - shrugging off gender norms. Where I think my skepticism about all of this took firm hold was when she explained to me how being non-binary was a secret in her real-life, because she was in mortal danger if people in her moderately sized city in Florida found out. Specifically I recall her saying that if she were to wear jeans to the mall, she might be raped and killed - and she was dead serious, getting agitated when I tried to suss out whether that was some form of very dark, cynical humor (which was the norm in the community).
Raped and killed, in American suburbia, because she was a college-age woman wearing jeans. She believed this, because this is what she had been taught to believe in those circles. Ten years ago. And now such declarations, and more, are taken as empirical fact, not to be questioned, as rooted in fact as germ theory and plate tectonics.
It's quite fascinating how easily the trans activists have taken control of the narrative and demonized women for simply wanting to keep their existing rights and for wanting to protect children. The apathy and gullibility of the public has led us down this dark trajectory and many actual young people's lives have been irrevocably damaged or lost. THEY, the trans extremists, are responsible, not radical feminists.
Misogynists have been accusing women of being evil temptresses, witches, in league with the devil, feminazis, and man-haters for centuries. Strangely enough, for all our supposed power, it's never amounted to us seizing power and actually committing genocide the way sociopathic males have for all of history.
What a fascinating post. I'm a fan of the podcast about cults "Let's talk about sects" and can see some potential common themes of coercive control exercised against groups of people - the division of the world into "them" and "us", the apocalyptic terrors, the grandiose tone, the attempts to limit engagement with the outside world. Of course, gender identity ideology does not employ the environmental tricks common to cults - eg limiting food and sleep, exhausting physical tasks, surveillance, requiring members to live together - yet I wonder if prolonged immersion in highly emotional and polarised digital spaces has a similar effect? (This may not be intentional, of course, just a highly unfortunate side effect of the technology.)
This is a wonderful exploration of the techniques of cult indoctrination as applied to the Trans issue, and highlights the dangers humans are facing now. In fact, this month's Technology Review from MIT features this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1057135/transgender-contagion-gender-dysphoria/ which "reasonably" and "based on science" debunks the concept of ROGD, and ends with the suicide threat. It is sobering and saddening how a generation is succumbing to this takeover of thought, and to what end? Sterilization and medicalization, loss of women's rights, rigid gender policing, the end of freedom. Thank you for elucidating some of the mechanisms here. And in the same issue, a discussion of how Instagram filters promote cosmetic surgery...
Why would you expect individuals whose fundamental states of being are so far removed from reality to express themselves in ways moreso grounded?
I saw a graphic listing reasons for not using preferred pronouns with the top entry as, "I know you better than you know yourself." Well, yes. You are talking to someone so beyond the pale that a complete stranger finds it more malicious to at best, feed into your delusions, or at worst, delivers sexual gratification against the stranger's will by way of "validation" (this actually is sexual assault).
Eliza, I’ve enjoyed following you and reading your work over the past few months and this is one of my favorites so far. When you convince trans people (or anyone, really) that there is a bogeyman around every corner, everyone starts to look like a bogeyman. (Bogeyperson? Is that more inclusive?)
I think your point that “trans rights” has become synonymous not with actual rights but with this intense need to control people’s speech’s and expression (and who we sleep with, something I find so abhorrent) is so important and cannot be overstated. I am generally pro-decency—call people what they ask to be called; however, I’m not pro-consequence—lose your job, get banned from the platform—over a refusal to use made up neopronouns. Maybe there are a few trans people who are in such a fragile state that using the wrong pronouns might cause them to melt into a puddle on the floor, but I can’t help but wonder if much of the rage over “misgendering” is reflexive, learned, or downright performative.
To that point about the trans rights movement seeking to control thought and speech, I think that ended up being the thrust of the 2020 “racial reckoning” here in the U.S. What started as this real moment of collective effervescence and consciousness over the ways racism still pervades fizzled into this intensely individual witch hunt, trying to prove everyone had racism in their hearts, making these absurdly abstracted, associative claims about how innocuous comment A invoked the symbolism of racist thing B and therefore person C was clearly racist, and we must collectively shun them, get them fired, ruin their lives. It is the death knell of social movements to try and control speech and thought—the winners are not the oppressed people in question but the grifters like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram
X. Kendi who seize on a moment to peddle their snake oil to help you fix your alleged thought crimes.
Here in the U.S., as hardcore conservative lawmakers actually engage in poorly crafted legislative overreach and use trans people as a pawn in the culture war to rile up their base, trans activists continue to focus their ire on the liberals and LGB individuals who actually care about their wellbeing. But if you question plainly obvious phenomena like the spike in young transitioners, the puberty blockers that are handed out like candy, the clear correlation between mental health challenges and the self-proclaiming of trans and non-binary identities, or, god forbid, you don’t want to fuck a trans person, you become the monster.
Thank you for your work.
Excellent article. Your insights are always spot-on. After reading this article, it is hard not to think of the transgender movement as a dishonest cult. They are not just trying to control the behavior of the public, but the behavior of their own members. And the fact that they vilify any person with a different opinion just shows how weak their ideas and arguments are.
As a gay person, I find this paranoia among trans people to be somewhat irritating because gay people have come in for much more persecution over the centuries -- and all because homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible and the Koran. If trans people are finding that people dislike them, it may have to do with the fact that they are making themselves so visible, and because their demands of society are so ridiculous. There are still countries in the Middle East which are executing gays.
But I think it is only the activists who are this dishonest. Most trans people are more reasonable than the activists are. But the fact that trans activists have to control their members just shows how unhealthy the movement is. It shouldn't be a movement at all. It really is nothing more than a mental state (like homosexuality) which some people need to deal with.
Of all the people writing about the movement, I think you are the most insightful. But how do we get more people to read your articles? I suspect that the only people who are reading your pages on Substack are the people who already agree with you.
I'm a relatively "online" person - and so while I recall as these things started to turn up in the then-classically-liberal circles I frequented, when it was still possible to be sympathetic while telling a joke, I recall with perfect clarity my first exposure to this sort of indoctrination.
It was the summer of 2012 - and there was a member of a moderate-sized community who we all knew and liked, even if we privately acknowledged she was a little bit high-strung and unpredictably reactive at times. While hanging out as a group of perhaps a dozen of us one afternoon, I got to asking her exactly what she meant by the whole "non-binary" thing - amazing that just 10 years ago one could still do that openly and expect discourse rather than an excommunication - and we talked a bit. It didn't seem so shocking to me that an art-school student would adopt an "alternative" persona - shrugging off gender norms. Where I think my skepticism about all of this took firm hold was when she explained to me how being non-binary was a secret in her real-life, because she was in mortal danger if people in her moderately sized city in Florida found out. Specifically I recall her saying that if she were to wear jeans to the mall, she might be raped and killed - and she was dead serious, getting agitated when I tried to suss out whether that was some form of very dark, cynical humor (which was the norm in the community).
Raped and killed, in American suburbia, because she was a college-age woman wearing jeans. She believed this, because this is what she had been taught to believe in those circles. Ten years ago. And now such declarations, and more, are taken as empirical fact, not to be questioned, as rooted in fact as germ theory and plate tectonics.
It's quite fascinating how easily the trans activists have taken control of the narrative and demonized women for simply wanting to keep their existing rights and for wanting to protect children. The apathy and gullibility of the public has led us down this dark trajectory and many actual young people's lives have been irrevocably damaged or lost. THEY, the trans extremists, are responsible, not radical feminists.
Misogynists have been accusing women of being evil temptresses, witches, in league with the devil, feminazis, and man-haters for centuries. Strangely enough, for all our supposed power, it's never amounted to us seizing power and actually committing genocide the way sociopathic males have for all of history.
This. This. A thousand times THIS. 🙏🏼
I agree with the other commenters. Replace "TERFS" with "witches" and we're back to the Dark Ages. These demented woman-haters are frothing at the mouth for OUR blood, while projecting their sick murder fantasies on their intended victims. Unlike these misogynist psychopaths, WE have the receipts to prove who is really the threat to whom. Let's make sure as many people see this as possible: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOM9J_ZIrYtiMagVRr_jhagMR-XP59TBsJFLwNlcS13iIUT4ovqKRN9zttevr0PmA?pli=1&key=NmJuV1AyRnVSU3dOS2VObVhLSm1uNUkxRjRBSk9R
What a fascinating post. I'm a fan of the podcast about cults "Let's talk about sects" and can see some potential common themes of coercive control exercised against groups of people - the division of the world into "them" and "us", the apocalyptic terrors, the grandiose tone, the attempts to limit engagement with the outside world. Of course, gender identity ideology does not employ the environmental tricks common to cults - eg limiting food and sleep, exhausting physical tasks, surveillance, requiring members to live together - yet I wonder if prolonged immersion in highly emotional and polarised digital spaces has a similar effect? (This may not be intentional, of course, just a highly unfortunate side effect of the technology.)
Hey Eliza here's a great one found in the wild today, from the generally very liberal/progressive (formerly Yiddish/socialist) paper The Forward:
https://forward.com/opinion/515868/libs-of-tiktok-is-fueling-a-pogrom-against-trans-youth/
Libs of Tiktok is not just TERFY it's literally leading to POGROMS of trans folx. (Nice to drop POGROMS into a Jewish paper, nu?)
No, really, that's what the article says, because Libs of TIktok bad and dehumanization and Nazis. It's just a brilliant example of the genre.
This is a wonderful exploration of the techniques of cult indoctrination as applied to the Trans issue, and highlights the dangers humans are facing now. In fact, this month's Technology Review from MIT features this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1057135/transgender-contagion-gender-dysphoria/ which "reasonably" and "based on science" debunks the concept of ROGD, and ends with the suicide threat. It is sobering and saddening how a generation is succumbing to this takeover of thought, and to what end? Sterilization and medicalization, loss of women's rights, rigid gender policing, the end of freedom. Thank you for elucidating some of the mechanisms here. And in the same issue, a discussion of how Instagram filters promote cosmetic surgery...
Crank the drama up to 11, and commence the orgy of self indulgent victimhood.
Why would you expect individuals whose fundamental states of being are so far removed from reality to express themselves in ways moreso grounded?
I saw a graphic listing reasons for not using preferred pronouns with the top entry as, "I know you better than you know yourself." Well, yes. You are talking to someone so beyond the pale that a complete stranger finds it more malicious to at best, feed into your delusions, or at worst, delivers sexual gratification against the stranger's will by way of "validation" (this actually is sexual assault).
👍🏾