Brainwashed

[quote ChateauMargaux]@334bu... interesting.. would the conformity of women be so easy to control, would it make a difference if the stooges were male or female, does it make a difference if the answers are secret or shared.[/quote]
I know in Milgrim's experiment (where participants thought they were giving electric shocks to others) women were more likely to administer the shocks than men were. It was depressing.

Unfortunately, my suspicion is that women would be more likely to conform to the group in Asch's experiment. However, I'd love to be proven wrong on that!

@334bu... interesting.. would the conformity of women be so easy to control, would it make a difference if the stooges were male or female, does it make a difference if the answers are secret or shared.

@334bu

Interesting experiment EdgeOfaCoin. Another one for Caroline Criado Perez though , as no women included. So no change there.

I imagine it's been replicated more recently.

Interesting experiment EdgeOfaCoin. Another one for Caroline Criado Perez though , as no women included. So no change there.

Okay, I misremembered quite a few of the details! But the experiment is here:

www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

It was to do with comparing different length lines on a card. 75% of study participants conformed to an incorrect answer at least once.

25% never conformed.

Thank goodness for the 25%.

I remember being in junior school and a dentist coming in and asking us all to sit quietly and when we thought 2 mins (obviously the time it takes to brush teeth) was up, to raise our hands. So we sat and I counted in my head and before I'd got anywhere near 60, loads of kids were raising their hands. I doubted myself and put my hand up even though in my head I was still counting. When the time was up, my counting had been pretty much spot on, yet I'd sat there with my hand in the air for almost a minute. Maybe I'm just easily led! That would explain my previous capacity for gender bollocks.

There have been psychological experiments on this kind of thing. For instance, I remember an experiment where you had a small group of people who had to work together to assess the length of two differently-sized sticks. However, all members of the group except one person were stooges, not genuine participants. The stooges were all told to say that the shorter stick was longer than the longer stick. The study was actually about whether the one remaining participant would conform to the group and agree that the short stick was longer than the long stick, even though it clearly wasn't, or whether they would stick to their guns and speak the truth.

In almost all cases the study participant went along with the group and agreed that the short stick was longer than the long stick. Either they didn't trust their own perception, or they didn't want to go against the group. The need to conform to the group is very, very strong.

Interestingly, when the study was redone but just one of the stooges had been told to say that the sticks were, eg of equal length (so not agreeing with the study participant but not going along with the group either) the study participant was more willing to say that the longer stick was actually longer.

I need to find that study. I may have misremembered the finer details (like maybe the group were told to say that the sticks were of equal length when they obviously weren't), but the overall point remains.

I think this is why people can look at someone like Laurel Hubbard in their bulging shorts and confidently declare 'that's a woman'.

I think a lot about this too, OP. How did we get here? This whole thing has really shaken my faith in the media, institutions etc. Although I was probably naive to give them the credit of common sense in the first place.

Like others I noticed a few weird things along the way (I seem to remember the pregnant man was on the cover of People magazine, or on Oprah or something), and just thought it was an anomaly.

But was busy doing other things, not taking it seriously, and even if something did seem off, I was convinced that the 'people in charge' would ensure that nothing so stupid or ridiculous would be allowed to happen. How wrong I was. This wasn't by accident, but very much by design.

It's like the old Hemingway quote about 'how did you go bankrupt? Gradually at first, then suddenly...'

There was so much lobbying and sneaky dealings going on behind the scenes for several years that we didn't know about, and weren't supposed to know about. Then once that was safely in place, they could emerge from the shadows. Very sinister.

You should be proud in the UK, you upset the apple cart . Without your focus on this, and the push back by women's groups so many people wouldn't even know this is happening.

I never would have realised that we already have Self ID law in Ireland, and already have men in women's prisons here! It's not like the Irish government or mainstream media give a shit, they've all drank the koolaid.

Smoke filled room experiment.

academy4sc.org/video/the-smoky-room-experiment-trust-your-instincts/

So many interesting and thoughtful posts. Thank you.

I completely agree re: pronouns in sigs - it's not consistent, against the Yogakarta principles, arguably not "kind". It's been chosen as a way of getting people to visibly demonstrate to others that they're in the in group (be-kind) to pressurise the out group (not-kind-terf-bigots).

To be honest, it's not really working in our workplace. Everyone's keeping their head down, very few pronouns displayed despite the reminders. There was a badge too (if you signed the pledge) - not much sign of that either. Although apparently take up was "huge" .

I'm deflecting for now. Manager is a genuinely kind person, in the original sense of the word and would be massively uncomfortable in overtly pressurising anyone to take part.

A very interesting thread.
I used to be vaguely supportive of trans rights as part of the LGBT rights movement, without giving it much thought to be honest.
Then there was the backlash against J. K. Rowling‘s tweets and it made me wonder - why would a woman who always struck me as intelligent, thoughtful and openminded make „transphobic“ comments?
I read her essay and agreed with what she was saying. Yet I kept seeing comments on SM saying how horrible she was, how much harm she and people like her were causing etc.
The more I read about the topic the clearer it became to me that there was a conflict of interests between certain demands from the TRAs and women‘s needs for sex-segregated spaces.
Yet that conflict of interests seemed to be largely ignored by people trying to appear progressive and inclusive on social media. There just didn’t seem to be space for any discussion/ disagreement/ compromise.
Otherwise perfectly reasonable people would say how transphobic J. K. Rowling was and I just couldn‘t see why.
Or when I saw a post about the LGB Alliance and how they were a hate group - it was the first time I heard of them, but when I looked into what they actually stood for they didn‘t seem unreasonable to me and I could see their point.

That’s how I ended up on Mumsnet

Example:

Do I put "he/him" and then be forced to stick with it forever or suffer the humiliation of changing it later? People will think "oh he can't make up his mind what he is!"

Or do I put "she/her" now? But I'm just not ready!! Why are they making me do this!?

Kind? Or brutally unkind?

I think sleepwalking, kindness, lack of understanding, trust that "we'll do the right thing" got us to a point.

Then as people started asking questions, silencing, shaming, cancelling and no-platforming played (and continue to play) their part.

We've come too far. How do we go back?

Imagine:

You are a respected public figure in authority.

You have stated confidently and repeatedly, "transwomen are women" and have condemned "hate speech" by people who have suggested otherwise. You have worn a rainbow badge and visibly showed support and spoke in celebration of pride month and applauded the transwomen in women's sports as brave trailblazers and pioneers.

You may have not fully understood it, or the implications of doing so but followed advice and it was what everyone else was doing too.

Then comes the question : "So as you say, transwomen are truly women, are you allowing them into women's sports, prisons, refuges, associations and clubs, girl guides, changing rooms, toilets and other safe-spaces? And to claim women's awards and scholarships and to count as women for the gender pay-gap statistics?"

The cameras and microphones are all pointing at you. What would your answer be?

(made worse because I'm public sector so face potential sanctions for not conforming).

I'm in the same position @ditalini, if I was to say what I believe at work I'd be sacked on the spot. So I smile and nod along with the rest and try to avoid saying anything at all.

The language is insidious. I remember the "first pregnant man" stuff a few years ago and talking with friends about how this was ridiculous - it was a woman who'd had a baby but had taken steps to look like a man and we all agreed - how silly, only women could get pregnant and carry a child, no matter how that woman looked.

Then the pronouns thing and there was no way I could get my head round calling someone that I knew was male "she/her". Just didn't compute in my brain.

But then.....a few years and constant drip, drip, drip later, and pregnant person is everywhere, and I automatically she/her someone I know is a transwoman. And my boss has pronouns on her email signature and keeps trying to persuade us all to join us in "being kind".

My belief in sex remains that it is unchangeable and that no matter what you may believe about yourself, or whatever changes you make to your outward appearance, you will remain that sex, but even me, Ms Terfy McTerfface feels it seeping into my day to day (made worse because I'm public sector so face potential sanctions for not conforming).

Link won't paste. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Look for smoke-filled room experiment.

Turns out I didn't remember it accurately, but the insight is the same.

I was talking about this with my (very GC), DS (25) yesterday. We seem to be in the grip of a collective madness where loads of women are shouting that the King is in the all-together but no-ones listening and just nodding and agreeing how beautiful the suit is.

Call yourself what you like, wear what you like, I don't care but don't show me something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and tell me it's a fucking swan.

(Anyone want to write a dissertation on Hans Christian Anderson and lessons in critical thinking)?

I think it's like that experiment they did with a load of actors at a doctor's surgery. Various real life patients sat amongst a waiting-roomful of actors who were all primed to sit calmly while smoke was puffed into the room from under door. The receptionist is on on it, too. The subjects were watched and timed to see how long they would sit quietly like the rest before shouting "Fire!" or at least getting up from their seat to report.

Turns out if everyone around you is busy ignoring and normalising something weird and disturbing, most people would sit on quietly until overcome by smoke or burned alive. Especially women ...

Don't make a fuss, dear! Be nice and don't rock the boat.

I think you could take that graph and directly track it to the internet taking off and opening up.
The rise of YouTubers, Twitter and the invention of smart phones seems to directly correlate with the rise of gender identity.

I'm on the fence but I think in the end the internet will prove more a force for evil than for good. I don't think the ability for people to spread harmful ideology:whether healthy bodies need surgery or children being sexualised are balanced out by the gains of the internet in our lives.
Ultimately I think it might be the end of society as we know it, but that's rather pessimistic of me.

Loads of interesting comments here and I’m gonna spend some time reading the thread now but I wanted to add that the reason it’s taken me about 2 years to understand fully what is going on was purely out of my liberal mindset.

Absolutely the “what does it hurt” - if a man wants to live as a woman then really does it hurt anyone? No. If a kid says they are desperately sad as a boy and was born in the wrong body, shouldn’t we do what we can to help them be happy? Yes!

But I had no understanding that there was a movement to change what woman meant. No idea of the impact was if we base society - as in laws and legalities and healthcare etc etc - on letting people just decide how they are, rather than having a scientific basis for assessment (biology).

I was in the live and let live camp and for the most part there isn’t a problem with that mentality, in theory. Everyone deserves to be happy and free to live their life…..

I just didn’t see the bigger picture, I didn’t critical analyse what it mean to change language, I never understood the importance of language, the absolute necessity of it for protection.

I wasn’t brainwashed by any means, I was just very much in the camp of “there’s no harm” and totally uninformed - I think it’s very common.

Just to add. My partner's epiphany on the subjects mirrors mine. Once I realised what was happening, I told him. He didn't believe me. Within a week, he was like WTAF and calling for the GRA to be repealed.

I only paid half notice to the subject until about a year ago. There was a conversation on Facebook where unbelievably two men seemed to be arguing aggressively that trans women were LITERALLY women. This blew my mind. I asked them the question directly out of naivety - do you mean LITERALLY WOMEN? No response. But to me that was a huge moment and I then started searching for more information and became 'radicalised' by mumsnet. Prior to this, I'd felt it was nonsense to suggest we had a gendered soul, we're born in the wrong body or there was such a thing as 'feeling like a woman'. I'm knowledge about religion, ethics, feminism and philosophy. I intuitively understood the subject. However, the missing piece for me was understanding that others literally believed men could be women by saying the magic words. I would echo what others have said about trust institutions to do the right thing. Of course the Guardian would tell me if women's rights were under attack! Of course a prison would never put men in a woman's prison! Of course the NHS would never mutilate a child! This whole experience has pushed me from being a liberal socialist to a libertarian anarchist.

they know they’re not transphobic- those bigots you hear about must be doing and saying horrible things

This reminded me of a discussion I had recently with my daughter. I told her about the Marion Millar case and she looked at me in a skeptical way, wondering why I would support a woman when I didn’t know what she’d actually tweeted. She believes that for the police to get involved, Marion must have tweeted “something pretty bad”.

And I realised then that I have no faith whatsoever in the Scottish police when it comes to this topic and would believe a gender critical woman over them.

It will be interesting, if we ever find out, to see which of us was right.