How it started...how it's going...where it'll go...

RealityFan · 2023-08-29T13:42:33+00:00

This isn't a thread about the deep origins of TRA. For one, I'm only aware of the basics, it's been going on for decades. I can't add much to what we already know about transvestism and the three letter acronym that gets you deleted on MN. No, this is my take as someone who got hooked on the subject a decade ago, peaked in the last few years, having had some CBT to clarify my thoughts and provide perspective, and how I feel it's "evolving". Additionally, I'm a male, no matter how empathetic I am to the damage done to the female sex class, as a male, I can only observe and comment. My chain is yanked more from a free speech, neo religion/philosophical POV. Better to be honest about where we're all coming from in this, so we can offer our best efforts to combat. What I'm seeing in 2023, and why I consider this a watershed year in the flip back to reality, is the froth and churn in the phenomenon. So, before the pandemic, in 2018/19, there were flashpoints like KJK and her first Adult Human Female rollouts that were nullified by TRA Adrian Harrop. There were the clinicians banned from pediatric mental health conferences for promoting Watchful Waiting. There was JKR, and Glinner, being actively bullied online. However, these still felt like isolated cases, I hadn't been on social media long, and despite being exasperated, felt that this was the extent of the phenomenon, no momentum built in any dramatic meaningful way. Yes, # NoDebate was in full swing, but no way would the Left at large really dig down on this. The Left still believed in free speech, yes? So, I was infuriated, but not overly worried, despite stories escalating (I was particularly peaked by Jessica Yaniv and a non trans cancel culture story, Oberlin College). Then, lockdown happened, we all bunkered down, we all lived online. Then George Floyd happened, BLM exploded, and I believe from that point the Left elites ramped up all social justice activism, primarily the Anti Racism mantras, and allied to those, trans activism in all its guises and radical tactics. And then for me, the movement took it's fateful dark turn, with the Lia Thomas story last year. Not only was Lia to be absolutely addressed as a woman, by teammates, rest of fraternity, but also media, society at large. To the point a few years ago where we went from "men believe they can be women, ID as their gender" a few years back to "men can become women, and you will accept it". Now, No Debate went from a cloudy concept to a full on dark thundercloud, the mantra TWAW to be meant literally, and to be literally enforced. And thence to Emily Bridges, Austin Killips. There were cases I read in 2019 of men in women's prisons, suddenly 2023...Isla Bryson, and had the UK been Canada, Mumsnet would be shut down for discussing it. We went from more and more ructions at demonstrations in 2019 to ramped up violence of masked men at rallys in 2023 literally breaking the skulls of old women. And the new phenomenon, whataboutery on VAWG from the Left. We went from male breastfeeding in 2019 as a fetish on TransReddit to a union activist doing it on Twitter in 2023, supported by the wider Left activist movement. We went from men shouting a lot in 2019, to lethal criminals being lauded for saying that TERFs should have their faces punched to huge cheers at an official Pride event. Last example, in 2019 the only place you found a Jessica Yaniv type was on TikTok or Trans/Reddit, today in August 2023 we have an out and out male fetishist being locked in the school room with students who to a boy and girl will be thinking "get me the fuck out of here!" Now, a year ago, I was in a deep funk. I had just read the story of Emily Bridges running the noses of women cyclists at the Thundercrit road race meet, and felt the war was lost. Totally. I was so upset that day, I looked like someone who's beloved dog had been run ocer. That a story so toxic and so preposterous, was allowed to stand, no MSM picked up on it, and the female who was robbed of Gold went onto Twitter to support Bridges. It couldn't get any worse. I actually think that was the low point. Because everything since has been an object lesson in focussed resistance from the GC side getting results, provoking overacting in the TRAs, and tactical defeats and the air leaking from their movement. The victories in court for Forstater, Bailey, Bindel, Cherry...hopefully soon Ali, the three OU cases. The humiliation of SNP over Bryson. And resultant change in Labour Party policy. The shitshow that is $billions share prices nosedives for Bud Light, Target, likely Costa. The opinion polls that show the high point of acceptance for the Stonewall position being 2019, polls recently all moving fast in GC direction. The absolute negative reaction to the likes of Mika Minio cos play breastfeeding, enforced language in NHS, public's increasing fears on RSE in schools and the messages on gender to kids. And the collapse of # No Debate...no more blackballing Helen Joyce, Kath Stock, Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian, JKR etc. What worked in 2019, is unacceptable in 2023. My conclusion? This is an (un)civil war, has been raging maybe since the late 60s as the mantra to an intersectionally analysed world transpired, embedded thru decades of elite Left drift in policy making, in academia and the law, knowing that Joe and Joely Public would never go for it, so our minds made up for us on our behalf. That was the landscape pre Covid, certainly up to 2023. But as the hot lava of trans policy in particular hits the cold ice of reality, only one result, billows of steam, and that's what we're seeing in 2023. Whether it's my CBT having been successful, I don't know, but Ive done a mental 180 to my dark days from 12-15 months ago, I truly feel as these various waves of TRA spike into public consciousness, the blow back is now so severe, that the TRA side tries harder and harder, their defeat more and more inevitable, even if it'll take a few more years. From Isla Bryson to Dylan Mulvaney to Emily Bridges to Austin Killips to Mika Minio to Sarah Jane Baker to the Z Cup Canadian teacher, this is the "best" trans has to offer. My conclusion...it sure started weird, it became beyond weird this year, the future will be a whole lot less weird.

StefanosHill · 01/09/2023 08:59

Also schools are mostly captured so I agree with pp that that is another major concern

StefanosHill · 01/09/2023 08:56

It’s an interesting post as it outlines many events and I broadly agree we’ve seen a kind of peak here in terms of no debate etc moving to now

We have a strong GC friendly media which is lacking elsewhere. Half of it anyway, obviously some is fully captured

However I am not certain it’s all downhill from now due to upcoming GE

I look to other countries and can see steady progression unabated and think maybe the U.K. will continue to reverse, or not

I hope so with everything I’ve got but post GE concerns me

ApocalipstickNow · 01/09/2023 08:50

That’s two threads Racoon’s love of coolness has popped up on 🤣

Where’s that Steve Buscemi gif when you need it? 🤣

PriOn1 · 01/09/2023 07:41

RayonSunrise · 31/08/2023 07:49

I don't believe "the elites" or "the 1960s" are running an Illuminati-type, top down war against The People.

It is very comforting, I think, to believe that humans are rational and therefore episodes of mass irrationality - aka "the madness of crowds" - are due to the machinations of shadowy puppet masters (handily from the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a particular ethnic or religious minority - pick your poison).

I think the truth is more prosaic. A generation has grown up spending more and more time "disembodied" online, playing games where you can pick & play your own handcrafted avatar, and joining mass fandom movements for bands, books and tv shows that end up being cult-like in their simultaneous veneration of their fan objects & insistence the fan object do/be as the crowd desires. The mass adoption of the internet was originally driven by people who had experienced these phenomena on a much smaller and less parasocial scale (I was one of them), and for a good portion of the late 90s/early 2000s to be "in the know" of what was coming next in the existing new digital economy was to be very online. This lead to a situation where the wildly successful Boomer generation captains of industry, heads of media, etc found themselves asking a bunch of GenX young adults for advice and trying to understand what the weird cyberspace people were up to.

Twenty years later the internet is mainstream, and there is no longer a niche of early adopters who can reliably act as sages telling society what new mass commercially successful & socially disruptive change is coming next. Just look at the desperate hype over Chat GTP - there might be an interesting and truly disruptive AI in there at some point, but right now all it does is generate highly plausible-sounding bullshit. But there's still this residual cultural cringe towards the Very Online, and it carries on the following "lessons" from the early internet breakthrough that are increasingly looking like fallacies:

Young people always "get it" while old people don't, so if you want to keep ahead of the economic curve you need to listen to the kids

Very Online people have their finger on the pulse, to a rumour from your Twitter clique is worthwhile in a way that a news bulletin on the Beeb isn't. (Over time this has lead to MSM adopting more and more Twitter clique rumours to seem more worthwhile to media cliques, which has lead to to downward spiral. "Alt media" is vulnerable to the same poison.)

If technology allows something, the opportunity to monetise it overrides everything else. (The early days of the internet were about creating great customer experience to persuade people to take up the new tech, but now it's about exploiting customers and shedding more and more human jobs - look at the way self-check outs are taking up more and more space in super markets alongside near-dystopian anti-shoplifting fencing.)

The people who carefully studied the lessons of the internet and how to make big bucks are now adults themselves and trying to apply these "learnings" so they can take advantage of the next big thing when it happens. It has influenced everything - not just universities, but politics, business (especially business!), media, and crucially, the individual behaviour and beliefs of a LOT of people who've grown up online.

It's going to take a while for people to accept that the low-hanging fruit of digitalisation was been plucked and now we all have to deal with and digest the social changes it's brought, and quite a few people are going to need to understand that we might want to actually roll back or slow down "disruptions" instead of hyping & blindly following them. And yes, it doesn't help that every fad has a venture capitalist stuffing investment into it hoping to make bank.

Trans is a fad, and it's hype cycle is starting to wane at last. It's caused incredible damage to liberal credibility though. If conservatism (who at this stage are every bit as Very Online and prone to hype bubbles) could stop trying to make out that the answer isn't to rollback feminism & gay rights and stop sending kids to university, but maybe to just stop following every dumb internet meme from Reddit like it's worthwhile policy and focus on housing costs and job creation, they've have fertile ground to work with.

Personally, I suspect what we actually have is a perfect storm.

I do believe the internet has driven this fad and has allowed it to gain ground like no other fad before it.

I don’t agree that it has occurred wholly randomly. I believe there has been a great deal of this that has been driven from the top down and continues to be. Dismissing it as an “Illuminati-type” situation is to ignore the fact that the extensive undermining of our institutions that has occurred strongly resembles exactly the kind of tactics that predatory businesses use when carrying out hostile takeover attempts.

There has certainly been some level of organisation, with the deliberate tactic of secrecy alongside aligning itself with other causes and more genuine rights claims. There has also been some careful positioning of people in key positions, who did not reveal their intentions until they were firmly embedded.

The Denton’s document did not write itself.

So there’s an extent to which those businessmen who have driven some of the changes have got lucky with their timing, but anyone who has genuinely looked at the levels of capture and the techniques employed in attaining that capture cannot doubt that there has been some top-down manipulation of the situation.

aloris · 01/09/2023 06:20

I am not as optimistic as you. While we adults might feel that things are settling to a more sane place, kids are being indoctrinated at school into the idea that womanhood is not a material reality. Many young people now believe that lots and lots of tiny women could easily beat a large man in a fight, if they would only try a little harder and believe in themselves more. I believe this distortion in their view of reality results partly from tv shows that portray kick-a$$ female heroines routinely defeating larger men. I confess I myself was an advocate of such shows. But I knew they were fantasy! Kids now don't realize that, apparently. The effect of mass media on our view of the world is pervasive, it turns out.

The future is with the youth and the youth are on board for the trans agenda. So any "sanity" is only temporary.

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 20:57

What makes you think anybody here wants to be “the cool mum that kids like to confide in”, BinRaidingRaccoon?

Is that what you would like to be?

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 20:32

BinRaidingRaccoon · 31/08/2023 20:15

Honestly lads I reckon most of your kids are secretly anxious about bringing friends over because of the high likelihood of you hate criming them. You're absolutely not the cool mum that kids like to confide in that you think you are, despite what the brainworms are telling you.

I'd be counting down the days until I could leave if I was one of your kids x

Ha ha, don't get RSI with all that stirring you're doing.
You know what happens if you keep at it too much, your spoon falls off.
Didn't your mum tell you it'll make you go blind?

OP posts:

BinRaidingRaccoon · 31/08/2023 20:15

Honestly lads I reckon most of your kids are secretly anxious about bringing friends over because of the high likelihood of you hate criming them. You're absolutely not the cool mum that kids like to confide in that you think you are, despite what the brainworms are telling you.

I'd be counting down the days until I could leave if I was one of your kids x

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 19:48

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 18:32

I take your point, OP. Nothing would make me stop. But that logic means civil war among female people … forever.

Well, in the spirit of my positive spin on things, I actually think this will have a resolution as well.

As the philosophy relents in the face of resolute logic and bravery from de-transitioners, and professionals rebelling, and we gain the upper hand, trans ally feminists will likely en masse revert back to class analysis, many not admitting to this surrender, many claiming they were only following the social justice zeitgeist, many not even remembering they were gatekeepers for men.

It'll be a footnote in feminist history, those that lost their mind upholding male rights.

OP posts:

NeverDropYourMooncup · 31/08/2023 19:10

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 17:13

OK … and what will make them stop? Seeing ‘white cis Karens’ as human?

Being viewed as Karens themselves.

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 18:34

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 18:32

I take your point, OP. Nothing would make me stop. But that logic means civil war among female people … forever.

What is fascinating is that PoC have always stood for no dissent on any whites IDing as black. Rachel Dolezal was ostacised a decade ago.

If only women had maintained the same on cultural appropriation of their ID by men.

OP posts:

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 18:32

I take your point, OP. Nothing would make me stop. But that logic means civil war among female people … forever.

Vegemiteandhoneyontoast · 31/08/2023 18:12

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 17:13

OK … and what will make them stop? Seeing ‘white cis Karens’ as human?

Perhaps when they have a daughter of their own they'll realise how unfair it is for that girl to have to compete against boys and for their sensitive daughter to be sadly resigned to having to undress in front of males. There isn't a teenage girl on the planet who isn't sensitive and many of them will be feeling all this keenly.

RayonSunrise · 31/08/2023 17:43

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 17:13

OK … and what will make them stop? Seeing ‘white cis Karens’ as human?

Growing up and realising that being female is inescapable, no matter how many men you invite in to identify as one of the girls.

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 17:18

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 17:13

OK … and what will make them stop? Seeing ‘white cis Karens’ as human?

What would make you stop trying to resist men accessing women's spaces and teen medicalisation?

Its a zero sum game, zero compromise.

OP posts:

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 17:13

OK … and what will make them stop? Seeing ‘white cis Karens’ as human?

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 16:20

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 15:25

Ok, here’s the thing that I really struggle with: female millennials, sometimes zoomers, trans-identified or not, who are not only acquiescing but actively promoting GI policies and ideology. They have nothing to gain from it in the cold light of day, but they are absolutely committed and zealous, not just going along with it due to peer pressure. I come across this type a lot IRL and for them it’s personal, they have to win this, they expect pushback but seem adamant that they have to persevere and fight.

Why? And what would make them stop?

A few reasons.

First of all # BeKind is an all encompassing catch all, and if you've seen PoC, gays, disabled etc been poorly treated over millenia, and of course in last few decades, trans is one to add, and in some ways the biggest disadvantaged minority to fight for.

Second, don't underestimate competitiveness in women. They hate white cis GC Karens even more than actual trans or PoC do. For them, it's a battle for their version of intersectional feminism. And they must win.

Effectively for them, the battle is not women versus men, but women versus toxic white cis male patriarchy, and they see trans as similarly victimised by white cis men as biological women have been. Ergo, transwomen are in the same boat as women, you're all women with the commonality of being downtrodden by cis white men.

And now they vote white GC cis Karens as in cahoots with cis white men, ergo white cis Karens are allied to the far right, and must be defeated.

Result, zero resistance to transwomen joining women, you're all women, anything else isn't feminist.

At this point, child bearing biological function, chromosomes, the cultural group experience of biological women, the class struggle of biological women, means nothing when another group who claim they're equally if not more disadvantaged by men claim kinship.

This is what fosters the extreme trans allyship from intersectional feminists, why that screaming harpie who shouted No Debate! No Debate on The Majority Report in US could bald faced say to camera that if Isla Bryson as a multiple rapist IDd now as a woman, we should accept and respect that, No Debate! No Debate!

OP posts:

TheirEminence · 31/08/2023 15:25

Ok, here’s the thing that I really struggle with: female millennials, sometimes zoomers, trans-identified or not, who are not only acquiescing but actively promoting GI policies and ideology. They have nothing to gain from it in the cold light of day, but they are absolutely committed and zealous, not just going along with it due to peer pressure. I come across this type a lot IRL and for them it’s personal, they have to win this, they expect pushback but seem adamant that they have to persevere and fight.

Why? And what would make them stop?

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 15:09

RayonSunrise · 31/08/2023 07:49

I don't believe "the elites" or "the 1960s" are running an Illuminati-type, top down war against The People.

It is very comforting, I think, to believe that humans are rational and therefore episodes of mass irrationality - aka "the madness of crowds" - are due to the machinations of shadowy puppet masters (handily from the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a particular ethnic or religious minority - pick your poison).

I think the truth is more prosaic. A generation has grown up spending more and more time "disembodied" online, playing games where you can pick & play your own handcrafted avatar, and joining mass fandom movements for bands, books and tv shows that end up being cult-like in their simultaneous veneration of their fan objects & insistence the fan object do/be as the crowd desires. The mass adoption of the internet was originally driven by people who had experienced these phenomena on a much smaller and less parasocial scale (I was one of them), and for a good portion of the late 90s/early 2000s to be "in the know" of what was coming next in the existing new digital economy was to be very online. This lead to a situation where the wildly successful Boomer generation captains of industry, heads of media, etc found themselves asking a bunch of GenX young adults for advice and trying to understand what the weird cyberspace people were up to.

Twenty years later the internet is mainstream, and there is no longer a niche of early adopters who can reliably act as sages telling society what new mass commercially successful & socially disruptive change is coming next. Just look at the desperate hype over Chat GTP - there might be an interesting and truly disruptive AI in there at some point, but right now all it does is generate highly plausible-sounding bullshit. But there's still this residual cultural cringe towards the Very Online, and it carries on the following "lessons" from the early internet breakthrough that are increasingly looking like fallacies:

Young people always "get it" while old people don't, so if you want to keep ahead of the economic curve you need to listen to the kids

Very Online people have their finger on the pulse, to a rumour from your Twitter clique is worthwhile in a way that a news bulletin on the Beeb isn't. (Over time this has lead to MSM adopting more and more Twitter clique rumours to seem more worthwhile to media cliques, which has lead to to downward spiral. "Alt media" is vulnerable to the same poison.)

If technology allows something, the opportunity to monetise it overrides everything else. (The early days of the internet were about creating great customer experience to persuade people to take up the new tech, but now it's about exploiting customers and shedding more and more human jobs - look at the way self-check outs are taking up more and more space in super markets alongside near-dystopian anti-shoplifting fencing.)

The people who carefully studied the lessons of the internet and how to make big bucks are now adults themselves and trying to apply these "learnings" so they can take advantage of the next big thing when it happens. It has influenced everything - not just universities, but politics, business (especially business!), media, and crucially, the individual behaviour and beliefs of a LOT of people who've grown up online.

It's going to take a while for people to accept that the low-hanging fruit of digitalisation was been plucked and now we all have to deal with and digest the social changes it's brought, and quite a few people are going to need to understand that we might want to actually roll back or slow down "disruptions" instead of hyping & blindly following them. And yes, it doesn't help that every fad has a venture capitalist stuffing investment into it hoping to make bank.

Trans is a fad, and it's hype cycle is starting to wane at last. It's caused incredible damage to liberal credibility though. If conservatism (who at this stage are every bit as Very Online and prone to hype bubbles) could stop trying to make out that the answer isn't to rollback feminism & gay rights and stop sending kids to university, but maybe to just stop following every dumb internet meme from Reddit like it's worthwhile policy and focus on housing costs and job creation, they've have fertile ground to work with.

Haha, well at 59, the only women I meet regularly (our village, my GF, her family, my friends) are no younger than 50.

Yes, I have some female patients under 30. And my GFs nieces.

I'm not sure I'd go to all the older ones for advice, lol.

OP posts:

Original poster

RealityFan · 31/08/2023 12:56

RayonSunrise · 31/08/2023 07:49

I don't believe "the elites" or "the 1960s" are running an Illuminati-type, top down war against The People.

It is very comforting, I think, to believe that humans are rational and therefore episodes of mass irrationality - aka "the madness of crowds" - are due to the machinations of shadowy puppet masters (handily from the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a particular ethnic or religious minority - pick your poison).

I think the truth is more prosaic. A generation has grown up spending more and more time "disembodied" online, playing games where you can pick & play your own handcrafted avatar, and joining mass fandom movements for bands, books and tv shows that end up being cult-like in their simultaneous veneration of their fan objects & insistence the fan object do/be as the crowd desires. The mass adoption of the internet was originally driven by people who had experienced these phenomena on a much smaller and less parasocial scale (I was one of them), and for a good portion of the late 90s/early 2000s to be "in the know" of what was coming next in the existing new digital economy was to be very online. This lead to a situation where the wildly successful Boomer generation captains of industry, heads of media, etc found themselves asking a bunch of GenX young adults for advice and trying to understand what the weird cyberspace people were up to.

Twenty years later the internet is mainstream, and there is no longer a niche of early adopters who can reliably act as sages telling society what new mass commercially successful & socially disruptive change is coming next. Just look at the desperate hype over Chat GTP - there might be an interesting and truly disruptive AI in there at some point, but right now all it does is generate highly plausible-sounding bullshit. But there's still this residual cultural cringe towards the Very Online, and it carries on the following "lessons" from the early internet breakthrough that are increasingly looking like fallacies:

Young people always "get it" while old people don't, so if you want to keep ahead of the economic curve you need to listen to the kids

Very Online people have their finger on the pulse, to a rumour from your Twitter clique is worthwhile in a way that a news bulletin on the Beeb isn't. (Over time this has lead to MSM adopting more and more Twitter clique rumours to seem more worthwhile to media cliques, which has lead to to downward spiral. "Alt media" is vulnerable to the same poison.)

If technology allows something, the opportunity to monetise it overrides everything else. (The early days of the internet were about creating great customer experience to persuade people to take up the new tech, but now it's about exploiting customers and shedding more and more human jobs - look at the way self-check outs are taking up more and more space in super markets alongside near-dystopian anti-shoplifting fencing.)

The people who carefully studied the lessons of the internet and how to make big bucks are now adults themselves and trying to apply these "learnings" so they can take advantage of the next big thing when it happens. It has influenced everything - not just universities, but politics, business (especially business!), media, and crucially, the individual behaviour and beliefs of a LOT of people who've grown up online.

It's going to take a while for people to accept that the low-hanging fruit of digitalisation was been plucked and now we all have to deal with and digest the social changes it's brought, and quite a few people are going to need to understand that we might want to actually roll back or slow down "disruptions" instead of hyping & blindly following them. And yes, it doesn't help that every fad has a venture capitalist stuffing investment into it hoping to make bank.

Trans is a fad, and it's hype cycle is starting to wane at last. It's caused incredible damage to liberal credibility though. If conservatism (who at this stage are every bit as Very Online and prone to hype bubbles) could stop trying to make out that the answer isn't to rollback feminism & gay rights and stop sending kids to university, but maybe to just stop following every dumb internet meme from Reddit like it's worthwhile policy and focus on housing costs and job creation, they've have fertile ground to work with.

I think this is a brilliant analysis. Despite me seeing a drive from the late 60s, I genuinely don't believe there's any conspiracy.

I think a bigger driver is herd mentality and purity spirals, and this weird phenomenon that the more outré and demanding a concept, the more it drives submission to it, and then radicalised adherence and promotion.

To watch this American activist "journalist" on the Majority Report say she didn't understand everything about Isla Bryson, but if female is the chosen gender, then we must accept and even embrace that choice. And no debate.

There's no way that prior to 5 minutes ago an ostensibly educated, motivated, liberal woman, a feminist, would be prepared to even countenance this, let alone accept it, then promote it publically.

And because she's surrounded in the media and online world by people who similarly have jumped thru multiple Overton Windows, the energy they all draw from each other and share creates the bubble they inhabit, or forcefield that protects them.

OP posts:

NeverDropYourMooncup · 31/08/2023 08:09

Middleaged women are becoming the safe people for younger people to speak to about this.

They can't discuss their unease at university, they're scared to talk about it with their friends, wouldnt dare put it online because they know exactly what will happen to them - but they get into the workplace and at some point, an older colleague becomes the person they voice their tentative concerns to. Then, once they find they aren't being attacked, they aren't being threatened, they aren't being publicly denounced, it all comes rushing out. They're angry. Really angry.

They don't want males with all their genitalia functioning around WAG and children, they don't want to have phones poked under the changing room doors by males whilst they're trying on a new pair of jeans, they don't want children to be medically destroyed, they don't want their thoughts policed and to be intimidated into standing aside as Autistic children and gay youngsters are physically mutilated and men colonise women's achievements.

That's why middle-aged women were targeted from the outset - because we're known to be the safe place. Cut us out and there's nowhere for the children and young people to go.

They went for the protectors. But there are always more of us, that's what happens in time. We cannot and will not be eliminated.

RayonSunrise · 31/08/2023 07:49

I don't believe "the elites" or "the 1960s" are running an Illuminati-type, top down war against The People.

It is very comforting, I think, to believe that humans are rational and therefore episodes of mass irrationality - aka "the madness of crowds" - are due to the machinations of shadowy puppet masters (handily from the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a particular ethnic or religious minority - pick your poison).

I think the truth is more prosaic. A generation has grown up spending more and more time "disembodied" online, playing games where you can pick & play your own handcrafted avatar, and joining mass fandom movements for bands, books and tv shows that end up being cult-like in their simultaneous veneration of their fan objects & insistence the fan object do/be as the crowd desires. The mass adoption of the internet was originally driven by people who had experienced these phenomena on a much smaller and less parasocial scale (I was one of them), and for a good portion of the late 90s/early 2000s to be "in the know" of what was coming next in the existing new digital economy was to be very online. This lead to a situation where the wildly successful Boomer generation captains of industry, heads of media, etc found themselves asking a bunch of GenX young adults for advice and trying to understand what the weird cyberspace people were up to.

Twenty years later the internet is mainstream, and there is no longer a niche of early adopters who can reliably act as sages telling society what new mass commercially successful & socially disruptive change is coming next. Just look at the desperate hype over Chat GTP - there might be an interesting and truly disruptive AI in there at some point, but right now all it does is generate highly plausible-sounding bullshit. But there's still this residual cultural cringe towards the Very Online, and it carries on the following "lessons" from the early internet breakthrough that are increasingly looking like fallacies:

Young people always "get it" while old people don't, so if you want to keep ahead of the economic curve you need to listen to the kids

Very Online people have their finger on the pulse, to a rumour from your Twitter clique is worthwhile in a way that a news bulletin on the Beeb isn't. (Over time this has lead to MSM adopting more and more Twitter clique rumours to seem more worthwhile to media cliques, which has lead to to downward spiral. "Alt media" is vulnerable to the same poison.)

If technology allows something, the opportunity to monetise it overrides everything else. (The early days of the internet were about creating great customer experience to persuade people to take up the new tech, but now it's about exploiting customers and shedding more and more human jobs - look at the way self-check outs are taking up more and more space in super markets alongside near-dystopian anti-shoplifting fencing.)

The people who carefully studied the lessons of the internet and how to make big bucks are now adults themselves and trying to apply these "learnings" so they can take advantage of the next big thing when it happens. It has influenced everything - not just universities, but politics, business (especially business!), media, and crucially, the individual behaviour and beliefs of a LOT of people who've grown up online.

It's going to take a while for people to accept that the low-hanging fruit of digitalisation was been plucked and now we all have to deal with and digest the social changes it's brought, and quite a few people are going to need to understand that we might want to actually roll back or slow down "disruptions" instead of hyping & blindly following them. And yes, it doesn't help that every fad has a venture capitalist stuffing investment into it hoping to make bank.

Trans is a fad, and it's hype cycle is starting to wane at last. It's caused incredible damage to liberal credibility though. If conservatism (who at this stage are every bit as Very Online and prone to hype bubbles) could stop trying to make out that the answer isn't to rollback feminism & gay rights and stop sending kids to university, but maybe to just stop following every dumb internet meme from Reddit like it's worthwhile policy and focus on housing costs and job creation, they've have fertile ground to work with.

WarriorN · 31/08/2023 07:36

Sorry double sentence there.

WarriorN · 31/08/2023 07:36

So, has the tide turned? The tide has stopped rising.

Great sentence.

Unfortunately I see it still rising in education. And locally, we are far from London here and things often seem to hit later.

The tide is still just hitting education I'm afraid.

I'm seeing new policies and "established facts" trends etc being formed across differing sectors of education.

WarriorN · 31/08/2023 07:33

I remember there were many threads a few years ago here about "when you see it you can't unsee it."

This was around the time traffic to fwr went through the roof.

(Matrix analogies were made, which were unfortunate in retrospect given the makers' own journey and how the film is now seen by TRAs.😆)

There is most certainly a rebound mental health aspect to learning about this.

The situation around children is particularly disturbing, not least as it feels so few recognise the issues.

What's changed is that it is slowing becoming mainstream. Some days I'm more hopeful but in reality I still thing no real major changes within healthcare and education will happen for another decade.

The GE will throw a spanner in the works here medical and research takes a long time to reach fruition.