The new religion

I was thinking this morning about Cartesian dualism (as you nerdily do ) and thought of this thread. Another similarity with religious movements is the framing of the mind/spirit/soul/essence and the body as two independent entities. So the gender identity is occupying the same space as the soul used to.

I never was able to find my soul when religious people assured me I have one, and I had exactly the same result when attmepting to locate my gender identity.

I’ve also always thought of my mind as being part of my body, too. My mind is in my body, my body is in my mind- inextricably linked.

Mary Harrington's Why it's time to take 'wokeness' seriously in Unherd discussed the proposition that 'Wokeness is a religion, or at least a re-emergence of religious impulse'

As this is happening more and more, I’m surprised it hasn’t been raised by religious communities?

I'm aware of a Muslim woman who has been talking to the council and local papers about toilets in the parks being turned gender neutral and having none that she can use. I think finally she was told that there would be a single sex toilet on the far side of one of the parks right away from the café etc where she could go - so males huge increase in access, females who can't access mixed sex due to protected characteristics, direct discrimination and less favourable treatment. But we're not talking about privileged, powerful women with loud voices and sharp elbows, and no one has cared that this woman has problems created by her losing facilities so that males can have their preferred, prioritised access to all the facilities.

Friends of mine from minority faiths and areas of known devout and orthodox traditions, I know simply won't be allowed by male relatives to go to activities such as yoga/swimming once those relatives know those 'women only' sessions will be mixed sex. At least one of those friends will try to keep this quiet as long as she is able. She would not be allowed to remain on a hospital ward overnight that was observably mixed sex, nor to receive certain types of medical care from a male person regardless of how the person identified themselves.

But she does not have much of a voice, the male people who hold authority over her do but are not much aware or interested and haven't much realised, and it would only be if the male community as a group significantly kicked off that there would be an issue the establishment would get very keen to listen to. In fact, many such males will have no problem with women having less access to such things as they needed a great deal of persuasion to allow attending women only things in the first place. And those things were created for such women to begin to have a means to access the world around them and to join the community and reduce their isolation. Their marginalisation. The contact with less rigid sex based codes.

Local Authorities actually threw a lot of money and planning at this for years. Until male people said they had a need and the female people were hurled aside as boring old hat. And we had idiot nineteen year olds in women officer positions with zero life experience or anything beyond their privileged middle class existence and male socialisation, who did excellent let them eat caking when this was pointed out. I think the comment was that women needed to just stop doing patriarchial religions if they got in the way of being woke.

I would really like Coleman et al to discuss whether they've ever met and talked to any such women. Or women who have gone to refuges. Or women who have been raped. And explained how, from their position of affluent and protected privilege, they feel entitled to throw these women's rights aside to make their lives worse to benefit some males whose needs could easily be met in other, fairer ways.

Thanks Eowyn - though making loos and changing rooms effectively mixed sex (in my work, the loos are ostensibly single sex but also have a sign indicating that people can use them according to their ‘gender identity’. So that affects religious people. As this is happening more and more, I’m surprised it hasn’t been raised by religious communities? They haven’t gone after them, no, but nor have religious communities noticed the clash of rights. Moreover, sex is a protected characteristic too, so technically we do have legal protection - it’s just it’s been misinterpreted (deliberately or otherwise).

I was thinking about the clash of this religion against others. The reason why in the U.K. is probably a simple one. Hate crime legislation protects religion and disability . If the attacked religious communities those communities are backed by hate crime law. So an attack on those religions would be rebuffed with he force of law behind them. In the way that bullies rarely pick on larger kids. But women have no corresponding protection from hate crime. The assymetry in protection whereby women are unprotected allows the bullies to attack a soft target.

Thanks for the Spanish examples. They were linking Protestant countries to queer theory more generally, but your Spanish examples would suggest otherwise.

It’s been interesting that this religion hasn’t clashed with others yet that I’ve seen. The issue of single sex spaces is relevant to religions that dictate separation of men and women in certain circumstances. Are religious groups unaware? I don’t like the old religions anymore than the new ones, but everyone has a right to those beliefs.

It is happening in Spain though. There was a great piece from a Spanish feminist in The Radical Notion. It’s becoming a big issue - same as here. There was also something on Twitter about a famous Spanish feminist coming a cropper.

Someone on a podcast (sorry can’t remember which one) suggested that it must be linked to Protestant world view because it maps on to the countries with Protestant traditions - US, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany etc but not to the Catholic tradition countries - Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico etc.

[quote NotTerfNorCis]The projection involved in this ideology is incredible. Here, a TRA likens believing in biological sex to believing in a soul.

twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1331691360135622669?s=19[/quote]
KM is interesting as I’ve seen KM use any argument made by GC feminists against - eg, ive seen KM use the phrase ‘thought terminating cliche’. I can’t think of any that we use, can you? Similarly, KM is turning ‘gendered souls’ on its head and saying that biological sex is like a soul. It’s so ludicrous but also clever. KM probably haunts this board looking for our own arguments to use against us.

The projection involved in this ideology is incredible.

Yes and it's one of the things that actually gets to me, because it reminds me so much of my gaslighting ex.

They project that TERFS are the violent ones, are guilty of DARVO, are detached from reality, make up stats and scientific findings, and don't care about GNC teenagers. It's breathtaking. But projection is what people do when they cannot admit any fault or illogicality in their own argument. They project, and cry "no debate", because what they are trying to claim would not survive reasoned argument.

Which is destructive without purpose.

I think there is. What you do is disrupt as much as you can, causing chaos with the confidence that, when most people, institutions, etc are destabilised, you can do a land grab. This is an old idea. It's what big tech has been doing for the past 2 decades, it's what Cumming has been interested in, Trump does it to some degree, Richard Rich was at it.

The projection involved in this ideology is incredible. Here, a TRA likens believing in biological sex to believing in a soul.

twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1331691360135622669?s=19

agenda is to fuck with language and its meaning to the point that normal itself is changed and thus alter the meta narrative and invert the power dynamic

Which is destructive without purpose. There's no plan as to what happens then, no ideal of it being better or how, and most of it appears a childish enjoyment of smashing up everything with no goal beyond the enjoyment of destruction.

A counter elite is what this is currently creating in practice, and what the end point of that will be. And currently it's quite plain that those who would like to replace who they perceive as the elite will be far less inclusive, kind, ethical, just or even logical and safe guardians of society with the many, many ways of belittling, despising and expressed wishes to harm anyone not in their gang. Hence the constant ageism, ablism, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia..... despite claiming to stand for such things. A massive reality gap between the words and the actions.

they think it inverts the power dynamic of the patriachy

Yet all it does is transfer power to a different tribe of men.

It's males with sex&gender issues who control the narrative. Female perspectives are only considered valid if they conform to the male narrative.

If they actually wanted to reverse polarity they'd be boosting and supporting those who have female bodies and acquired sex&gender issues. Yet detransitioners (who are largely female) are tossed aside as an irrelevance in the quest to champion the poor suffering willy-at-birth people.

Same old, same old.

Good call OP. Sorry for the essay, I've got a lot to get of my chest.

I think it's more dangerous and pervasive than a religion, but I think widely recognising it as a belief system is really important.

Pluckrose and Lindsay in Cynical Theories look in detail at this issue and I think what they say makes alot of sense.

They are not lone voices but they have made it very accessible. They see gender activism as a secular ideology, a significant part of the Social Justice Movement, which though seemingly innocent and charmingly titled is a very well padded out counter culture framework (more like communism than a religion, though something entirely new)

Pluckrose and Lindsay postulate that Queer Theory is the purest example in the SJM of reified postmodern thought in action.

An entire collective consciousness that believes as fact, that any dominant cultural meta narrative is just part of an incumbent power structure, race /collonialism, feminism/patriachy, gender/sex binaries (even academia, science and the scientific process itself) which are inherantly unjust should be "queered" or inverted. That truth itself is just the dominant discourse on a given structure and language is the way that "truth" is crafted.

Trans people in the traditional sense (i.e. intense dysphoria, so severe they need to transition for their mental wellbeing) and the LGB community are part of the existing binary, hence they are just tangental to the cause.

Thus all the labels of the non binary dictionary, TRA's, the TWAW mantra are at the frontline of changing language and discourse, not trans people and their rights. They appear to be centered but they are not.

They have made an abstract set of ideas (queer theory) into a concrete actionable revolutionary goal, the goal is to cause chaos and disrupt the meaning of things by "Queering" them. That women, actual Trans people and some gender non conforming people are being materially harmed is just collateral damage to the greater goal of the unmaking of the normal/ the status quo

I don't think most 'adherents' are conciously aware of the framework they are caught up in, they have no idea they are part of undermining the very liberal society which is (slowly and imperfectly) delivering true social justice.

Though it is utterly incomprehensible, the trans agenda is to fuck with language and its meaning to the point that normal itself is changed and thus alter the meta narrative and invert the power dynamic. I think that is why many feminists are sold, they think it inverts the power dynamic of the patriachy. Think Contrapoints and Alex drummond. It does not.

Of course it also opens the door to sports cheats, predators, misogynists, men with mummy issues, any one with a kink they haven't been able to openly indulge until now, and it platforms snowflakes and drama lammas, though I think that is tangental.

On a superficial level, it's very idealistic. It apeals to good people who are sensitive to real and existing, injustices in society, in the same way that Communism appealled to people who were sensitive to socioeconomic structural inequality. , it's just bonkers.

I do think that the beginning of the end is when normal people start to wake up to belief element, and that the way forward must come from liberal process and discourse, or the far right will eventually force it to a conclusion and that will be much, much worse. Like Nazism rose in response to communism. Vive la révolution libérale!

One salient aspect of the trans agenda is that to claim a "gender identity" that makes you unusual or "transgender", you have to have a rigid gender category to tell yourself you're pushing against. Trans activists routinely misrepresent "male" and "female" gender categories as if they are very strict and inflexible when in reality people have always found ways to step outside them, challenge them or not conform to them, plus they differ through time and in different cultures. It's part of the agenda to pretend that women are always fantastically feminine and gendered, for example, so you can express your woman-ness or lack of it through cultural stuff which is actually far more nebulous and non-specific than they claim.

For example that non-binary poet who got ratioed for that performance poetry rant about not being able to get a haircut, openly pretended that hairdressers were extreme zones of masculinity and femininity, when we all know that most hairdressers are unisex and even if not, tend not to turn away the "wrong" sex. But acknowledging that would make a nonsense of the concept of "non-binary", so lying to yourself about gender is essential.

Both sexes suffer from having gender expectations thrust upon them but women far more so in almost all cultures. The TRA need to ramp up gender expectations so as to have something to be different from / identify with expresses itself most fully with the "woman" concept
being depicted as frilly, girly, childlike, mothering, decorative etc.

JKR, storyteller for a generation, is seen as a mother figure, I think, and I think mother-hatred is prevalent.

I think she's more seen as a father, within the community at least, because we grow up steeped in "god the father/creator" symbolism etc.

In my fandom days, the author was seen as God-the-creator. The nurturing/empathetic/emotional-crutch associations with mothers weren't there, or at least not so consciously. The author was the dominant and all-powerful Other. Which fits nearly next to the "father" space in so many people's heads because so many people's fathers were just that, in those crucial early years.

From the outside, though, she looks like a mother because she nurtured the minds of the young.

What the obnoxious twats on Twitter are doing is railing against god-the-father in the form of JKR.

I think it's not just the male/female, though. I am also starting to think that mother issues are very deeply rooted in this movement/ideology. JKR, storyteller for a generation, is seen as a mother figure, I think, and I think mother-hatred is prevalent.

Because it's not just women that get it (although they all get it eventually) - it's the older women, the Karens and the boomers. Oh, and the lesbians. I suppose it's just women who are no longer 'on the market' in MRA terms? Yes, because that's sullying the image of pornified 'woman' as sex object for the consumption/gratification of male desire.

Is this all virgin/whore crap? I suppose misogyny has been ongoing for centuries, just keeps popping back up in new incarnations.

One last reply, but yes Michelle, so true.

Witness the wheedling pleas to the ego of John Cleese, based on the whiners being long term fans, and oh so disappointed and please would he reconsider.

And compare and contrast that with Jo Rowling, when she shared her experience of violence, receiving highly sexual threats and a desire to wrench her own work away from her.

What could be the significant difference between these two figures? Is it something to do with star signs?

We never realised our sex mattered until suddenly it did. We learn it the hard way.

Quite.

And in this incarnation of female people learning it the hard way, the insistence that sex is not real and biology is irrelevant is being enforced over the top of rigid sex based thinking and oppression.

We're not supposed to be able to tell who women are without silly accusations about 'genital checks', but there is no problem at all in proponents of this knowing exactly who has the power and who makes the rules, and who will accept a subjugated place or else, based entirely on having been born with female biology . The threats of violence and sexual assault are all directed entirely towards those born with female biology. The assault on rights is all directed entirely towards those born with female biology.

Inherent might be replaced by a better word, and I'm sure I could work out which one, but I genuinely am trying to be on FWR less, and I'm trying to plan a legal separation at the same time, so I'll let someone else do it!

Well, most feminists say that culturally conditioned rules governing what women can do or be or look like are gubbins, there is no inherent reason why women cannot do or behave the same as men.

"Inherent" is the point of contention, I think.

Does it mean born this way, or does it mean became this way? Different sides interpret the word differently.

Btw Floral I wish I'd seen your thread about "valid" at the time, because it's a great example of a niche concept being misapplied by the mainstream.