Brainwashed

Everyone who reads about those experiments imagines they'd be the person who went against the crowd. Turns out they're not.

And dont forget there are penalties to go against the crowd.

I think the psychology of this is really interesting. As you say, OP, how could you have happily swallowed such an inherently absurd idea? (But thank goodness you woke up!) It fascinates me when you see supposedly intelligent people like, oh, I dunno, Neil Gaiman or Alice Roberts mouthing mantras like "Trans women are women" which they must know aren't true. Trans ideology (eg the idea that sex is a spectrum) completely undermines the central premise of Darwinian evolution. Alice Roberts must know that, yet she goes along with it. Why?

I sometimes feel as if I'm living through a giant version of one of those experiments in conformity they teach psychology students like the Asch experiment or Milgram. Everyone who reads about those experiments imagines they'd be the person who went against the crowd. Turns out they're not.

I didn’t notice it creeping in until Kaitlyn Jenner was given the cove of Vogue and named ‘woman of the year’ or whatever the award is and feeling a bit sad a natal woman had lost out.
Trusted news sources, the Guardian, the BBC weren’t covering it.
I never dreamt that there was a belief that trans women were LITERALLY women and would seek to abolish the concept of sex based rights.

I think human beings are susceptible to being brainwashed.

Even seemingly intelligent ones.

But When I read Wild Swans and the Cultural Revolution and the brainwashing of China, like the OP, I couldn't understand how it could happen. But it does. And things like the Stanford Prison experiment, again confirms how a group/crowd can go 'mad' with group think.

I come to accept that human beings are vulnerable to brainwashing. The only immunisation to this IMO is critical thinking, and seeing reality for what it is, REGARDLESS of what words are used. So often, it seems we are duped by the words 'BeKind', 'Be inclusive', that we accept as true, when in reality it is the opposite when you think about it.

Yes, Arabella.

The playbook makes for chilling reading!!!

We were played.

the way the 'T' was included in with LGB meant that no real scrutiny was given to what it actually meant- the effect on women's rights, the potential damage to children etc

I think a lot of it has been possible because it doesn’t (or didn’t) have a direct impact on the lives of many of us.

As a theoretical ideal, it seemed like the next human rights campaign, now that women’s and lesbian and gay rights were largely enshrined in law, if not yet fully implemented and successful.

Two years ago hearing about "pregnant men" I would've quite happily nodded along thinking "yes, yes of course men can be pregnant and have babies" How did I never come to the point of going "Hmm, I did GCSE biology and I'm pretty sure that men having babies would've been covered. I should maybe do a bit of research because that just doesn't make sense"

Presumably, like me, you didn’t believe it was literally true that men were pregnant. I know I had overlaid an ideal that it was medically necessary for some women to claim they were men and therefore it was the right thing to do to accept that these women needed to call themselves men in order to improve their mental health.

The practicalities, such as men being placed in women’s prisons and insisting that they must be accepted into all women’s spaces, was something I didn’t examine too closely. Part of the reason I didn’t worry too much was that I trusted that the medical profession knew what they were doing, and that common sense would ensure nobody would be so stupid as to put intact men in cells and showers with women.

And as Helleofabore notes, the Denton’s document demonstrates that the trust we had was deliberately used. Your acceptance (and ignorance) was not accidental, but was by design.

Indeed I think their biggest setback so far has been their failure to bring in self-ID in the UK under the radar, as they had intended. All the groundwork was there, all the policies were already in place. The legal changes that would back up the policies were assumed to be a foregone conclusion. Had women not come together and made such a persuasive case, it would have almost certainly gone ahead as planned.

You’re certainly not alone in wondering, but if you feel there’s something much bigger underlying this than a recent surge in the popularity of transactivism, it’s not your imagination. It may feel as if it’s come out of nowhere and is suddenly huge, but that’s an illusion. The only thing that’s sudden is our awareness. The campaign to get to this point began a very long time ago. If you want a lighthearted take on how we got here, you could do worse than reading Jane Clare Jones’ “The Annals of the Terf Wars”.

janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/

The Trans Inquiry Equality

Trans Equality Inquiry, obviously

The internet with children, obviously - they must, these days, be spending more time interacting with strangers online, and more intensely, than with their own families and probably their own friends or classmates. For the adults, I think the 'affirm the children or they'll commit suicide' line peddled by certain organisations and then repeated by captured, once reputable institutions like the BBC and some young celebs has played a big part: I know a family going through this now, the adults distraught, confused and terrified: it's not something any previous generation has had to deal with on a scale like this, teenagers demanding mastectomies or penis amputation where once it might have been a tattoo or piercing or an eating disorder. And the adults don't know where their children have been online, they don't know what they're reading and seeing. It's like letting your kid go and play in a vast, dark forest - they might meet Bambi but they might met wolves, and the wolves are set on sniffing them out.

It was when Theresa May was PM that self ID was first out on the table, wasn't it?

Yes. The Trans Inquiry Equality was held be the Women and Equalities Select Committee chaired by Maria Miller in 2015, which heard evidence from such luminaries as the disgraced NUS trans officer Jess Bradley. They published a report and recommended changing the Equality Act to make the protected characteristic "gender identity" and also legally recognise "non binary" which the government declined to do. However trans lobbyists kept up the pressure and had a big hand in writing guidance which implied that it was illegal to exclude MTF trans people from women's spaces. Maria Miller started a private members bill which had its first reading in December 2016. This failed when there was a general election and after that, with a mandate after being elected by the country, Theresa May saw trans issues as an easy win to make the Tories look more socially conscious and attract younger voters, and pledged to reform the GRA at a Pink News reception.

I actually had a young guy (mid 20s) telling me recently that I couldn't possibly be a feminist because I don't act like one. I asked him what he meant. Apparently i didn't look like one, didn't sound miserable or like a man-hater, and I was was wearing a bra

It's honestly so bloody depressing.

Also, well maybe it's no coincidence that an ideology that does such harm to women's rights has been allowed to run rampant. When have many politicians ever particularly cared about the rights of women? And the fact that women are doing this to other women... Look at Sturgeon in Scotland. It was when Theresa May was PM that self ID was first out on the table, wasn't it?

I think has a lot to do with the bad rap feminists get. Feminists have been warning about this for over a decade but a lot of people - male and female - dismiss feminists as cranks, men-haters etc etc. I know many women who make it very clear even now that they are NOT feminists. It is very difficult for women to centre women and not be chastised for doing so.

Agree with @Helleofabore

I also think that the way the 'T' was included in with LGB meant that no real scrutiny was given to what it actually meant- the effect on women's rights, the potential damage to children etc. I think it's incredibly wrong how it was added to LGB. It's completely at odds with LGB, imo.

But yes, #bekind (without any reasonable questions or objections), as well as a fear of repeating past mistakes, for example the past awful treatment of the LGB community.

As well as the fact that this has all absolutely exploded since the rise of social media, where the ideology runs rampant over Twitter etc. This was not a 'thing' when I was a teenager in the early/mid 00s, when there was no social media really. In fact I remember doing sociology at GCSE, and discussing gender stereotypes, and breaking them down. Now, I'm having discussions with my DC's primary school about Jigsaw PSHE lessons actually reinforcing stereotypes. It's very depressing, how regressive this all actually is.

People want to be nice.
People are easily lead.
People (straight men) are largely unaffected.
People trust the media.
People who see it sound like cranks recruiting allies because the strength of feeling makes them blurt the facts out too hard and fast (which sound so unbelievable) and a complete contrast to what BBC and channel 4 portrays.
Some people know someone with genuine gender dysphoria and they are a likeable person only harming themselves.
The challenges to publicly made arguments against are never addressed for what they are, they are always responded to with a version of "Why do you dislike trans people?"

How did we get here?

Being kind.

I agree OP. Once you see it, you cannot I see it. The Emperor’s willy is swinging free and some people are commenting on the fineness of the fabric.

The other lie is that those commenting on the fineness of the fabric are the majority. We hear it so very often here on MN. You are all the extreme minority, and then the AiBU polls show a clear majority every. Single. Time. Sometimes over 94%.

Have you seen the article about the recommendations from Denton’s (law firm I think)? Worth a read.