I came across this informative YouTube channel and this video struck me as interesting and enlightening. The nuns who went meow is funny, but it’s persistence and spread seem to have distinct parallels with the spread of young girls transing themselves. Add in the power of social media and you can see how even the oddest ideas take hold.
Add in a social climate which is strictly enforcing gender stereotypes and the-end-of-the-world zeitgeist which, (I think), is driving so much anomalous behaviour generally, and you have a perfect storm of uncertainty.
”For an episode of mass hysteria to begin, all that is necessary is troubled times in the culture, a shared set of beliefs and a final, fearful, anxiety-provoking trigger to set the phenomenon into motion”
”The disorder is thought to be driven by a subconscious attempt to "convert" a strong, unbearable emotional or sexual thought into something more socially acceptable. Moreover, whereas individuals can exhibit conversion disorder, it is not at all uncommon for more than one individual to share in this trick of the mind. The sufferers can reinforce the behavior in each other, particularly if they share a common set of beliefs and are burdened by similar anxieties and fears.”
www.huffpost.com/entry/mass-hysteria_b_1239012
I know there was a recent peer-reviewed paper which came to the same conclusion (but more scientifically). This is Transgender Trends annotated review of the evidence.
www.transgendertrend.com/current-evidence/
I suppose what struck me was that we’d certainly call meowing nuns ludicrous and not persuade ourselves they were cats or attempt to graft tails onto their bums. But when young girls, en masse, decide they are boys, what fracture in our culture led us to go, “Sure. We believe you. Take some (dangerous) drugs and book in for surgical mutilation.”?