Ideas and claims that can't withstand scrutiny create a dead zone. The dead zone surrounding gender ideology is so large that it covers women's rights and experiences entirely.
How does "taking back institutions" work when the driving force is both within and in those moving in? I see stories about medical schools and the woke medical students who are insisting on the usual TRA messaging — men are women, sex is assigned at birth, and all that. So we have the major medical associations, who simply are not paying attention and assume it's "just like the gay thing," followed by the clinicians, some who are complete ideologues, others who are following the crowd (the latest Porter-Jick) and still others who won't make waves even in the face of colleagues doing great harm, followed by the even more ideologically driven students fresh out of liberal colleges and universities where they are immersed in this stuff. I can't see it getting any better.
As for friends, I've lost my share and I know many of those remaining think I've lost my mind, become a bigot overnight because I can't face the thought of a trans child. That all of my ranting about studies and lack of evidence and detransitioners is a ruse to cover up my transphobia or simply a symptom of a distress-induced mental breadown. When I start talking about the wider societal harms and the threats to women's rights, the real shut down begins. They don't seem to notice or care about the subtle shifts, including that suddenly no one can define "woman," which they hand-wave away as a silly linguistic issue. It's LARP Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I very much want out.
Regarding the legal aspects of transgender rights, I'd like to make a point. It's possible that I've made this point on this site before, but I don't think so.
Gay people are discriminated against for their identity, and the courts have ruled that people cannot be discriminated against for any portion of their identity that they can't change (race, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc.). So far, the courts are applying the same standard to trans people and concluding that trans people must not be discriminated against for their identities. When a man says, "I'm attracted to my own sex", there is nothing to disprove that. When a man says, "I feel like a woman", there is nothing to disprove that. But trans people have gone a step further. They are now saying, "I feel like a woman, and that makes me a real woman". Unfortunately for them, there is already a class of women out there who aren't interested in being pushed aside. Furthermore, when a man says, "I feel like a woman, and that makes me a real woman", there is plenty of evidence that he is NOT a real woman. So far, the courts are sticking to the identity test, but the time will come when the courts start to recognize that feeling like a woman doesn't change what you actually ARE. They just haven't figured that out yet.
“They just haven’t figured it out yet.” That is far too benign an assessment or disingenuous. Who believes they do not know? Why are all the power centers taking this up? Not just the courts, it is every institution. Isn’t this an agenda, driven from the top down to all of us? It isnt clear how it serves power but I think it works well to draw people further into self-absorption and fighting, forgetting who has power and the serious questions concerning the conditions of our lives.
I don't think that I'm wrong about the courts. If a theory prevails in one case, it can be used before other judges in other cases, and the theory has the power of having succeeded before. Judges aren't always savvy when it comes to seeing the holes in a particular argument, especially if that argument is gaining traction. If you combine that with the natural misogyny of male judges, the judge may feel that the loss of women's rights is reasonable collateral damage when weighing the rights of trans people. I don't agree with that, of course. I'm just saying that this is what I see happening.
What we are seeing right now in the sporting world is giving me hope that people are now emboldened to say the emperor has no clothes! (With deep irony, I say thank you, Lia Thomas!) The issue is there are so many true believers in positions of power, and it will be very hard work to get them out.
Reminds me so much of growing up religious. "Don't question your faith" my dad would say when I would ask inconvenient questions. Patriarchal religions are about male supremacy and trans ideology is no different. The belief system serves to prop up male power by disempowering women and reinforcing our subordinate status. Female deities are supplanted by Father, Son, and Holy Ghost making males the end all be all of everything (trans women are women, men can get pregnant, sex is "assigned") and women superfluous. The best women can hope for is to serve men in any way we can, be that parroting his dogma, preaching his gospel, mortifying our own flesh, or giving him children for his church. It's a cult through and through.
I'm interested in trying to understand what you describe as 'gender ideology as part of a broader trend toward truth decay and post-truth politics'.
As such, I've found the following book helpful: Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
The book finds commonalities between a range of contemporary theories, including gender identity theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory and others, which have increasingly achieved a dominant status in university scholarship and in so-called Social Justice activism.
The origins of these theories are traced back by the authors to the postmodern theorists of the 1960s, particularly Foucault and Derrida. There is a shared belief that the only reality we can know is that which is socially constructed through linguistic discourse, a related rejection of meta-narratives such as 'science' and 'progress', and an analysis of power that views it as inseparable from knowledge and deployed through all social interactions. So the role of the Social Justice activist is to deconstruct linguistic discourse to identify ways in which the power of the 'privileged' groups (cis, white, het, male) oppresses those self-defining within the whole panoply of less privileged (and ever more fragmented) identity categories.
What initially seemed a relatively arcane body of theory, confined to obscure corners of academia, and often infused with irony and playfulness, has now taken root in the wider world in a reified form, turbo-charging a form of activism at odds with the values of universal liberalism that most of us on the socially liberal left sign up to.
Unwittingly, the theorists of early postmodernism have unleashed a monster.
Whereas civil rights movements of earlier times invoked an identity politics of common humanity (in which everyone should have access to the same universal rights), the Social Justice activists of today practise a politics of the common enemy, in which ones own 'authentic lived experience' is the highest form of knowledge, and in which the voices of those in possession of 'privilege' have to be suppressed. Hence 'research justice' becomes not just about foregrounding voices that would traditionally have been marginalised, but about actively shutting down voices perceived as privileged.
It is the politics of division, not inclusion.
It is increasingly important that those of us concerned with universal liberal values and social justice (in the old sense) speak out against this increasingly strident, aggressive, divisive mode of knowledge production and its associated activism.
I am gay, and I've been angry at the use of the word "queer", since I see that word as a slur. (It means "odd, strange, unusual, abnormal, weird", etc. -- how positive is that?) When I learned that there was something called "queer theory", I looked it up and was barely able to understand what I was reading (and I've got proof that I'm intelligent). But I did understand it well enough to know that it was mostly B.S. My father was a major bullshitter. He could spend hours twisting ideas in his head until they no longer had any meaning, and unfortunately a couple of my brothers are now like that.
I am a serious but unpublished poet. I write poems on a regular basis (although recently I have had a dry period). I finally found an online publisher who liked my poems and agreed to publish some. However, he had all the earmarks of what I now call a "bleeding-heart liberal" (of which I was one until recently). For example, he sided with the Palestinians against Israel, even though the Palestinians do more to keep the violence going. And I noticed that any time he mentioned trans people, his comments were dripping with sorrow and sympathy. So, I posted my one anti-trans poem on the forum that we were both participating in. That precipitated a full day of arguing via emails, and it also caused him to withdraw his invitation to post my poetry on his site. So trans people have now managed to prevent me from getting my poems published.
I have been trying to understand why this issue has made such inroads among liberals, and I find two reasons: First, trans activists have portrayed trans people as the most pitiful of the most pitiful of the most pitiful of minorities in the world. They have painted an image of trans people as experiencing extraordinary existential pain from being trapped in the wrong bodies, and they have convinced us that it is not just adults who feel this pain, but small children too! (and who wants a child to suffer?) The fact that a lot of trans people are murdered or commit suicide bolsters their argument that trans people have an EMERGENCY NEED for sympathy. Of course, there is nothing that we, as outsiders, can say about this since we are not trans. If I say, "I don't believe they are suffering THAT much", I have no response to the people who ask me, "How do you know?" Having experienced existential pain myself during my life, I finally got to the point where I simply had to say, "I don't believe it" with no way to back that up. In other words, having experienced my own pain, I just decided that I don't believe that their pain can be that much worse. After all, many trans people spend decades of their adult lives living as their birth sex before they finally decide to transition. If it was so horribly painful, why didn't they transition sooner?
Another reason why I think that trans people have made such inroads among liberals is that, before this, the response of liberals to other minorities was simply inadequate. They claimed to support women, but then continued to hold the glass ceiling in place. They claimed to support people of color, but then continued to exclude them from their companies and white neighborhoods. Having failed previously to live up to their ideals, I think liberals decided that this time they were going to "get it right", and "getting it right" to them meant going in on trans ideology 150%. And so, they swallowed the whole rotten animal -- head, horns, hooves and tail. And now they feel committed.
Ironically, however, what they've discovered is that supporting white men in dresses makes them less uncomfortable than supporting actual women and actual people of color. So it turns out that everything has worked out to their advantage. White prejudice is safe!
George Lazoff has some great stuff about framing and specifically, how the right uses it to strategically dismantle the left and its positions with voters.
‘Who benefits?’ could be answered by asking ‘Which group wants to erode women’s rights to reproductive freedom?’ How better to silence protests against making abortion and birth control illegal than to redefine women as ‘front hole owners’ and mobilizing a minority group to demand that having a uterus be redefined out of the definition of a woman? How better to erode women’s rights than to divide them from other potential minority allies, to the point of vilification and the approval of violence against women, if they speak out?
‘Where is this headed?’
Starting in the middle ages and up until a couple centuries ago, there was a commonly used device in Europe called a brank or scold’s bridle. It had a variety of sharp or otherwise pain inducing barbs attached to a tab held in place in the mouths of women by an iron cage. It was purportedly used to silence ‘nagging, gossiping women’, but more often women who challenged priests, defied their husbands or rioted. A husband could parade his wife wearing this device around town, as a form of humiliation and torture. She would often be abused by people along the way. It sent a clear message to follow the rules and keep quiet.
Is this trend the modern equivalent of a Scold’s Bridle? On one hand I think it sounds way far fetched, but it’s rather uncanny how similarly the agenda of the radical trans activists meshes with the Republican agenda, regarding the appropriate behavior of women, even if they’re only impetus is to divide the left.
It’s also of interesting note that in Iran, religiously enforced gender norms are so strict that gay people are forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery or be put to death. Many flee. That overt a policy would not fly in the states, but propaganda does work well in the US.
Also, 4chan users have been known to create fake feminist accounts to foment discord and discredit feminists by posting nasty things and bullying people. I met a guy in NYC who was a paid right wing online troll.
On the other hand, maybe some people have become so unbalanced in lockdown, so isolated from contact, that they don’t know what’s real anymore and they’re hyper concerned with being viewed as ‘good’ or not cancelled. More people than ever are taking antidepressants, which tend to blunt empathy, so perhaps external cues guide their perception of being good, more than their feelings?
I have spent a lot of time thinking about misogyny, and I think it has nothing more to do than with the fact that everyone needs to feel superior to SOMEONE. Women, being physically weaker than men, make a perfect target since their physical strength ("the measure of a man") is less than men's. Also, the way child-rearing occurs creates hatred of women. Men don't want to do it, so it is pushed off on women (and also because men can't breast feed). Many men have memories of when they were children and their mothers were in charge of their lives, and that breeds resentment. I imagine that there are some men who spend their entire lives wanting to get back at their mothers for this or that psychological wound.
I'm sure that misogyny goes deeper than that, but I think those are at least some of the reasons.
Jennie, I never heard of a scold's bridle before this, but even worse is all the women who were murdered because they were thought to be witches. That alone constitutes a centuries-long pogrom against women.
Eliza, what you wrote about not being able to predict 5 years ago what's happening now....is what I'm thinking all the time. 5 years ago my primary focus was preventing Ecological Disaster, including but not only Climate Disaster. Now I'm an outcast---a " transphobic bigot" to groups I worked with, and to friends. I'm doing pragmatic organizing work, but need new friends! And moral support. Do you have suggestions on this front....the front of how to find new friends, have moral support. It's hard in a time when people are afraid to state their names and show their faces? Are you anywhere near Seattle by any chance? I would love to invite you to a party! Feel free to email me thru my substack: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
A YouTube channel named Luxander has uploaded a video with a thumbnail of a concentration camp image covered in the trans flag and uses the horrors of the Holocaust to warn against 'trans extermination'.
I think I know where it's coming from. I've been repeatedly suspended from twitter and finally now permanently banned for questioning the science and logic concerning the evidence, and the way it is presented to us by the powers that be, that a new respiratory disease allegedly started in one of the most heavily polluted ( and increasingly more so) cities in the world and that a new invisible particle was definitely the cause of it, even though no-one had actually been able to see it or observe it indirectly. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/seeing-is-believing
These forces hate women, and the innate wisdom and power of women with a passion.
This assault on free speech, debate, women's rights, human rights to personal, physical, health and intellectual autonomy is all part of the same agenda to subjugate us.
How strange is it to find Covid denial trying to exploit the feminist opposition to trans activists' biology denial? When denial that the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists (or has killed millions of people globally) has so much in common with the denial that sex exists (or matters).
Both are products of a "post-truth" environment.
It's very far from being a sufficient linking argument that "malign forces with huge vested interests wish to silence dissent and debate" when this is more of a comment on our times in general: of resurgent forces of ignorance and prejudice, religiosity and political mania, proliferating on social media, and backed by anyone who can make money out of it -- even at the price (unless with the intention) of destroying democracy and common sense.
The medical industry stands to gain BOTH from exploiting the psychological problems of a relatively small number of self-identified "trans" people, by harmful drugs and surgery, AND by producing vaccines that save the lives of millions of people globally infected with various strains of a deadly virus: by priming the immune system to resist infection or reduce the severity of illness.
But I take it you are allergic not just to virology and DNA analysis, but also to epidemiological stats.
Please give us a break. Opposition to transactivist biology denial has nothing to offer to Covid biology denial, so stop trying to exploit it.
You seem to be saying it's OK to take away my right to freedom of speech and that its OK to attempt to discredit my credentials to enter a debate; if you disagree with what I'm saying. (In terms of the science dogma- I studied for an MSc in cellular pathology and spent 25 years in biomedical reasearch) (NB viruses are allegedly RNA not DNA) .
Peter Doshi, editor of the BMJ is on recored as saying that there is no evidence in the literature that the covid injectables are effective or necessary. The most cited epidemiologist in the world JP Ioannidis has said that considerable bias and spin has distorted the information we have been given about the pandemic. I do not think they are saying, and neither am I, that sex doesn't exist or matters.
You don't negate my point (and I believe Eliza Mondegreene's point) about the serious issue we face with restricting freedom of speech and debate (noting for example that google, facebook and YouTube are heavily invested in vaccine technology) and the intimidation and discrediting of those with dissenting views that is occurring , you seem to be reinforcing it.
There never was a "COVID-19" pandemic. Demonstrably not. The survival rate, even among the allegedly infected (the PCR "tests" are notoriously fraudulent) , was 99.98%. Check it out and get back to us.
As is increasingly obvious, the whole thing has been an outrageous lie. The same charlatans and careerists who pushed it are pushing the trans scam.
You also urgently need to start doing some rudimentary research into the history of vaccination.:
As for the "vaccines"... Scandalously, some pregnant women in the 1950s were science-denialists and said no thalidomide. Due to their uppitiness, they bore babies with a full complement of limbs.
Someone also recently sent me the link to Alfred Wallace writing in 1898 'misstatements have characterised the whole official advocacy of Vaccination from the time of Jenner down to this day. I claim, therefore, that all official statements as to Vaccination are untrustworthy.' and talking about vaccine mandates 'To talk of amending such legislation is a mockery. Absolute and immediate abolition is the only rational course open to us. Every day the vaccination laws remain in force parents are being punished, infants are being killed. An Act of a single clause will repeal these vile laws; and I call upon every one of our legislators to consider their responsibilities as the guardians of the liberties of the English people, and to insist that this repeal be effected without a day's unnecessary delay.' http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S536.htm
That's a great graph, thank you - I'm going to use it!
I am a serious but largely unpublished philosopher. I read the works of Tim Morton. Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Luce Irigaray, Gilles Deleuze, a number of contemporary and ancient Buddhist texts, and many more with great joy in my heart because here are expressed ideas that make me feel good. I once gave lessons in Foucault, which would have never let Butler's reading in the door. Everything I write is informed by my immersion in this beautiful philosophical world at my back. Although I once worked for a PhD many years ago, I felt that an auto didactic existence in a world of ordinary work and "business" would be personally more fulfilling than competing for tenure - and even thirty years ago I could sense the growing ideological power of university administrations and hierarchies. So I look forward to the day one of these woke idiots discovers a copy of Zarathustra or The Archaeology of Knowledge or some other such seminal work in the history of our western ideas and reads it to discover some offence, whereafter great bonfires are lit in the gardens of, just for example. the gardens of George Square in Edinburgh where I graduated with my Masters, as docile students run back and forth to the university library looking for fuel. For then I will be vindicated. Completely. The dead white men for whom students of media/gender/film studies are anathema will then surely be wiped from history and the next generation will be able to pursue the study of its own consciousness without hindrance.
"... ressentiment (it’s your fault) and bad conscience (it’s my fault) and their common fruit (responsibility) [are not] simple psychological events but rather ... the fundamental categories of Semitic and Christian thought, of our way of thinking and interpreting existence in general."
How does "taking back institutions" work when the driving force is both within and in those moving in? I see stories about medical schools and the woke medical students who are insisting on the usual TRA messaging — men are women, sex is assigned at birth, and all that. So we have the major medical associations, who simply are not paying attention and assume it's "just like the gay thing," followed by the clinicians, some who are complete ideologues, others who are following the crowd (the latest Porter-Jick) and still others who won't make waves even in the face of colleagues doing great harm, followed by the even more ideologically driven students fresh out of liberal colleges and universities where they are immersed in this stuff. I can't see it getting any better.
As for friends, I've lost my share and I know many of those remaining think I've lost my mind, become a bigot overnight because I can't face the thought of a trans child. That all of my ranting about studies and lack of evidence and detransitioners is a ruse to cover up my transphobia or simply a symptom of a distress-induced mental breadown. When I start talking about the wider societal harms and the threats to women's rights, the real shut down begins. They don't seem to notice or care about the subtle shifts, including that suddenly no one can define "woman," which they hand-wave away as a silly linguistic issue. It's LARP Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I very much want out.
Regarding the legal aspects of transgender rights, I'd like to make a point. It's possible that I've made this point on this site before, but I don't think so.
Gay people are discriminated against for their identity, and the courts have ruled that people cannot be discriminated against for any portion of their identity that they can't change (race, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc.). So far, the courts are applying the same standard to trans people and concluding that trans people must not be discriminated against for their identities. When a man says, "I'm attracted to my own sex", there is nothing to disprove that. When a man says, "I feel like a woman", there is nothing to disprove that. But trans people have gone a step further. They are now saying, "I feel like a woman, and that makes me a real woman". Unfortunately for them, there is already a class of women out there who aren't interested in being pushed aside. Furthermore, when a man says, "I feel like a woman, and that makes me a real woman", there is plenty of evidence that he is NOT a real woman. So far, the courts are sticking to the identity test, but the time will come when the courts start to recognize that feeling like a woman doesn't change what you actually ARE. They just haven't figured that out yet.
“They just haven’t figured it out yet.” That is far too benign an assessment or disingenuous. Who believes they do not know? Why are all the power centers taking this up? Not just the courts, it is every institution. Isn’t this an agenda, driven from the top down to all of us? It isnt clear how it serves power but I think it works well to draw people further into self-absorption and fighting, forgetting who has power and the serious questions concerning the conditions of our lives.
I don't think that I'm wrong about the courts. If a theory prevails in one case, it can be used before other judges in other cases, and the theory has the power of having succeeded before. Judges aren't always savvy when it comes to seeing the holes in a particular argument, especially if that argument is gaining traction. If you combine that with the natural misogyny of male judges, the judge may feel that the loss of women's rights is reasonable collateral damage when weighing the rights of trans people. I don't agree with that, of course. I'm just saying that this is what I see happening.
🎯🎯🎯
What we are seeing right now in the sporting world is giving me hope that people are now emboldened to say the emperor has no clothes! (With deep irony, I say thank you, Lia Thomas!) The issue is there are so many true believers in positions of power, and it will be very hard work to get them out.
Reminds me so much of growing up religious. "Don't question your faith" my dad would say when I would ask inconvenient questions. Patriarchal religions are about male supremacy and trans ideology is no different. The belief system serves to prop up male power by disempowering women and reinforcing our subordinate status. Female deities are supplanted by Father, Son, and Holy Ghost making males the end all be all of everything (trans women are women, men can get pregnant, sex is "assigned") and women superfluous. The best women can hope for is to serve men in any way we can, be that parroting his dogma, preaching his gospel, mortifying our own flesh, or giving him children for his church. It's a cult through and through.
I'm interested in trying to understand what you describe as 'gender ideology as part of a broader trend toward truth decay and post-truth politics'.
As such, I've found the following book helpful: Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why this Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
The book finds commonalities between a range of contemporary theories, including gender identity theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory and others, which have increasingly achieved a dominant status in university scholarship and in so-called Social Justice activism.
The origins of these theories are traced back by the authors to the postmodern theorists of the 1960s, particularly Foucault and Derrida. There is a shared belief that the only reality we can know is that which is socially constructed through linguistic discourse, a related rejection of meta-narratives such as 'science' and 'progress', and an analysis of power that views it as inseparable from knowledge and deployed through all social interactions. So the role of the Social Justice activist is to deconstruct linguistic discourse to identify ways in which the power of the 'privileged' groups (cis, white, het, male) oppresses those self-defining within the whole panoply of less privileged (and ever more fragmented) identity categories.
What initially seemed a relatively arcane body of theory, confined to obscure corners of academia, and often infused with irony and playfulness, has now taken root in the wider world in a reified form, turbo-charging a form of activism at odds with the values of universal liberalism that most of us on the socially liberal left sign up to.
Unwittingly, the theorists of early postmodernism have unleashed a monster.
Whereas civil rights movements of earlier times invoked an identity politics of common humanity (in which everyone should have access to the same universal rights), the Social Justice activists of today practise a politics of the common enemy, in which ones own 'authentic lived experience' is the highest form of knowledge, and in which the voices of those in possession of 'privilege' have to be suppressed. Hence 'research justice' becomes not just about foregrounding voices that would traditionally have been marginalised, but about actively shutting down voices perceived as privileged.
It is the politics of division, not inclusion.
It is increasingly important that those of us concerned with universal liberal values and social justice (in the old sense) speak out against this increasingly strident, aggressive, divisive mode of knowledge production and its associated activism.
Thanks for the post!
I am gay, and I've been angry at the use of the word "queer", since I see that word as a slur. (It means "odd, strange, unusual, abnormal, weird", etc. -- how positive is that?) When I learned that there was something called "queer theory", I looked it up and was barely able to understand what I was reading (and I've got proof that I'm intelligent). But I did understand it well enough to know that it was mostly B.S. My father was a major bullshitter. He could spend hours twisting ideas in his head until they no longer had any meaning, and unfortunately a couple of my brothers are now like that.
I am a serious but unpublished poet. I write poems on a regular basis (although recently I have had a dry period). I finally found an online publisher who liked my poems and agreed to publish some. However, he had all the earmarks of what I now call a "bleeding-heart liberal" (of which I was one until recently). For example, he sided with the Palestinians against Israel, even though the Palestinians do more to keep the violence going. And I noticed that any time he mentioned trans people, his comments were dripping with sorrow and sympathy. So, I posted my one anti-trans poem on the forum that we were both participating in. That precipitated a full day of arguing via emails, and it also caused him to withdraw his invitation to post my poetry on his site. So trans people have now managed to prevent me from getting my poems published.
I have been trying to understand why this issue has made such inroads among liberals, and I find two reasons: First, trans activists have portrayed trans people as the most pitiful of the most pitiful of the most pitiful of minorities in the world. They have painted an image of trans people as experiencing extraordinary existential pain from being trapped in the wrong bodies, and they have convinced us that it is not just adults who feel this pain, but small children too! (and who wants a child to suffer?) The fact that a lot of trans people are murdered or commit suicide bolsters their argument that trans people have an EMERGENCY NEED for sympathy. Of course, there is nothing that we, as outsiders, can say about this since we are not trans. If I say, "I don't believe they are suffering THAT much", I have no response to the people who ask me, "How do you know?" Having experienced existential pain myself during my life, I finally got to the point where I simply had to say, "I don't believe it" with no way to back that up. In other words, having experienced my own pain, I just decided that I don't believe that their pain can be that much worse. After all, many trans people spend decades of their adult lives living as their birth sex before they finally decide to transition. If it was so horribly painful, why didn't they transition sooner?
Another reason why I think that trans people have made such inroads among liberals is that, before this, the response of liberals to other minorities was simply inadequate. They claimed to support women, but then continued to hold the glass ceiling in place. They claimed to support people of color, but then continued to exclude them from their companies and white neighborhoods. Having failed previously to live up to their ideals, I think liberals decided that this time they were going to "get it right", and "getting it right" to them meant going in on trans ideology 150%. And so, they swallowed the whole rotten animal -- head, horns, hooves and tail. And now they feel committed.
Ironically, however, what they've discovered is that supporting white men in dresses makes them less uncomfortable than supporting actual women and actual people of color. So it turns out that everything has worked out to their advantage. White prejudice is safe!
(If the comment above won't expand, try reloading the page and then expand it again.)
George Lazoff has some great stuff about framing and specifically, how the right uses it to strategically dismantle the left and its positions with voters.
‘Who benefits?’ could be answered by asking ‘Which group wants to erode women’s rights to reproductive freedom?’ How better to silence protests against making abortion and birth control illegal than to redefine women as ‘front hole owners’ and mobilizing a minority group to demand that having a uterus be redefined out of the definition of a woman? How better to erode women’s rights than to divide them from other potential minority allies, to the point of vilification and the approval of violence against women, if they speak out?
‘Where is this headed?’
Starting in the middle ages and up until a couple centuries ago, there was a commonly used device in Europe called a brank or scold’s bridle. It had a variety of sharp or otherwise pain inducing barbs attached to a tab held in place in the mouths of women by an iron cage. It was purportedly used to silence ‘nagging, gossiping women’, but more often women who challenged priests, defied their husbands or rioted. A husband could parade his wife wearing this device around town, as a form of humiliation and torture. She would often be abused by people along the way. It sent a clear message to follow the rules and keep quiet.
Is this trend the modern equivalent of a Scold’s Bridle? On one hand I think it sounds way far fetched, but it’s rather uncanny how similarly the agenda of the radical trans activists meshes with the Republican agenda, regarding the appropriate behavior of women, even if they’re only impetus is to divide the left.
It’s also of interesting note that in Iran, religiously enforced gender norms are so strict that gay people are forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery or be put to death. Many flee. That overt a policy would not fly in the states, but propaganda does work well in the US.
Also, 4chan users have been known to create fake feminist accounts to foment discord and discredit feminists by posting nasty things and bullying people. I met a guy in NYC who was a paid right wing online troll.
On the other hand, maybe some people have become so unbalanced in lockdown, so isolated from contact, that they don’t know what’s real anymore and they’re hyper concerned with being viewed as ‘good’ or not cancelled. More people than ever are taking antidepressants, which tend to blunt empathy, so perhaps external cues guide their perception of being good, more than their feelings?
🤷♀️
I have spent a lot of time thinking about misogyny, and I think it has nothing more to do than with the fact that everyone needs to feel superior to SOMEONE. Women, being physically weaker than men, make a perfect target since their physical strength ("the measure of a man") is less than men's. Also, the way child-rearing occurs creates hatred of women. Men don't want to do it, so it is pushed off on women (and also because men can't breast feed). Many men have memories of when they were children and their mothers were in charge of their lives, and that breeds resentment. I imagine that there are some men who spend their entire lives wanting to get back at their mothers for this or that psychological wound.
I'm sure that misogyny goes deeper than that, but I think those are at least some of the reasons.
Jennie, I never heard of a scold's bridle before this, but even worse is all the women who were murdered because they were thought to be witches. That alone constitutes a centuries-long pogrom against women.
Eliza, what you wrote about not being able to predict 5 years ago what's happening now....is what I'm thinking all the time. 5 years ago my primary focus was preventing Ecological Disaster, including but not only Climate Disaster. Now I'm an outcast---a " transphobic bigot" to groups I worked with, and to friends. I'm doing pragmatic organizing work, but need new friends! And moral support. Do you have suggestions on this front....the front of how to find new friends, have moral support. It's hard in a time when people are afraid to state their names and show their faces? Are you anywhere near Seattle by any chance? I would love to invite you to a party! Feel free to email me thru my substack: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
I wish that I were! But I'm on the other side of the continent.
I just signed up for the social networking app for women, Giggle. I’m hoping that will help me find the same.
Thanks Jennie, I'll check it out.
A YouTube channel named Luxander has uploaded a video with a thumbnail of a concentration camp image covered in the trans flag and uses the horrors of the Holocaust to warn against 'trans extermination'.
Hyperbolic imagery on the DARVO principle: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender.
Remind me who calls for "Death to TERFs"?
I reminded of the Bush administration's disdain for the "Reality-based comunity" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community#Origin
I think I know where it's coming from. I've been repeatedly suspended from twitter and finally now permanently banned for questioning the science and logic concerning the evidence, and the way it is presented to us by the powers that be, that a new respiratory disease allegedly started in one of the most heavily polluted ( and increasingly more so) cities in the world and that a new invisible particle was definitely the cause of it, even though no-one had actually been able to see it or observe it indirectly. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/seeing-is-believing
These malign forces, with huge vested interests, wish to silence dissent and debate about the toxic gene therapy they wish to mandate and vaccines in general https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/lets-hope-the-monkey-pox-nonsense
These forces hate women, and the innate wisdom and power of women with a passion.
This assault on free speech, debate, women's rights, human rights to personal, physical, health and intellectual autonomy is all part of the same agenda to subjugate us.
We do well not to give in to it.
Thank you Eliza Mondegreen, power to you
Jo
How strange is it to find Covid denial trying to exploit the feminist opposition to trans activists' biology denial? When denial that the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists (or has killed millions of people globally) has so much in common with the denial that sex exists (or matters).
Both are products of a "post-truth" environment.
It's very far from being a sufficient linking argument that "malign forces with huge vested interests wish to silence dissent and debate" when this is more of a comment on our times in general: of resurgent forces of ignorance and prejudice, religiosity and political mania, proliferating on social media, and backed by anyone who can make money out of it -- even at the price (unless with the intention) of destroying democracy and common sense.
The medical industry stands to gain BOTH from exploiting the psychological problems of a relatively small number of self-identified "trans" people, by harmful drugs and surgery, AND by producing vaccines that save the lives of millions of people globally infected with various strains of a deadly virus: by priming the immune system to resist infection or reduce the severity of illness.
But I take it you are allergic not just to virology and DNA analysis, but also to epidemiological stats.
Please give us a break. Opposition to transactivist biology denial has nothing to offer to Covid biology denial, so stop trying to exploit it.
Hi Ms Gabriel,
You seem to be saying it's OK to take away my right to freedom of speech and that its OK to attempt to discredit my credentials to enter a debate; if you disagree with what I'm saying. (In terms of the science dogma- I studied for an MSc in cellular pathology and spent 25 years in biomedical reasearch) (NB viruses are allegedly RNA not DNA) .
Peter Doshi, editor of the BMJ is on recored as saying that there is no evidence in the literature that the covid injectables are effective or necessary. The most cited epidemiologist in the world JP Ioannidis has said that considerable bias and spin has distorted the information we have been given about the pandemic. I do not think they are saying, and neither am I, that sex doesn't exist or matters.
You don't negate my point (and I believe Eliza Mondegreene's point) about the serious issue we face with restricting freedom of speech and debate (noting for example that google, facebook and YouTube are heavily invested in vaccine technology) and the intimidation and discrediting of those with dissenting views that is occurring , you seem to be reinforcing it.
Jo
"Covid biology denial". Facepalm.
There never was a "COVID-19" pandemic. Demonstrably not. The survival rate, even among the allegedly infected (the PCR "tests" are notoriously fraudulent) , was 99.98%. Check it out and get back to us.
As is increasingly obvious, the whole thing has been an outrageous lie. The same charlatans and careerists who pushed it are pushing the trans scam.
You also urgently need to start doing some rudimentary research into the history of vaccination.:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKh0hnEXwAQCqsN?format=jpg&name=large
As for the "vaccines"... Scandalously, some pregnant women in the 1950s were science-denialists and said no thalidomide. Due to their uppitiness, they bore babies with a full complement of limbs.
Hi MacC,
I was going to also bring up thalidomide, revealing the dangers of just doing what we're told. https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/safe-and-effective,-then-and-now:6
Someone also recently sent me the link to Alfred Wallace writing in 1898 'misstatements have characterised the whole official advocacy of Vaccination from the time of Jenner down to this day. I claim, therefore, that all official statements as to Vaccination are untrustworthy.' and talking about vaccine mandates 'To talk of amending such legislation is a mockery. Absolute and immediate abolition is the only rational course open to us. Every day the vaccination laws remain in force parents are being punished, infants are being killed. An Act of a single clause will repeal these vile laws; and I call upon every one of our legislators to consider their responsibilities as the guardians of the liberties of the English people, and to insist that this repeal be effected without a day's unnecessary delay.' http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S536.htm
That's a great graph, thank you - I'm going to use it!
Jo
Right on!
Jo
I guess it was inevitable that conspiracy theorists would be attracted to these articles. I feel sorry for you people.
Hi Caleb,
Thank you, I will pass your condolences on to my people. Would your people cease to be your people if they expressed different views to you?
Jo
As a life long long Democrat, I find this utterly depressing. They no longer stand for free speech , they have abandoned women.
I am a serious but largely unpublished philosopher. I read the works of Tim Morton. Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Luce Irigaray, Gilles Deleuze, a number of contemporary and ancient Buddhist texts, and many more with great joy in my heart because here are expressed ideas that make me feel good. I once gave lessons in Foucault, which would have never let Butler's reading in the door. Everything I write is informed by my immersion in this beautiful philosophical world at my back. Although I once worked for a PhD many years ago, I felt that an auto didactic existence in a world of ordinary work and "business" would be personally more fulfilling than competing for tenure - and even thirty years ago I could sense the growing ideological power of university administrations and hierarchies. So I look forward to the day one of these woke idiots discovers a copy of Zarathustra or The Archaeology of Knowledge or some other such seminal work in the history of our western ideas and reads it to discover some offence, whereafter great bonfires are lit in the gardens of, just for example. the gardens of George Square in Edinburgh where I graduated with my Masters, as docile students run back and forth to the university library looking for fuel. For then I will be vindicated. Completely. The dead white men for whom students of media/gender/film studies are anathema will then surely be wiped from history and the next generation will be able to pursue the study of its own consciousness without hindrance.
"... ressentiment (it’s your fault) and bad conscience (it’s my fault) and their common fruit (responsibility) [are not] simple psychological events but rather ... the fundamental categories of Semitic and Christian thought, of our way of thinking and interpreting existence in general."