Is anyone else starting to doubt their own sanity?

Whenever one side in a divisive issue wants to shut the the other up, and block them and dox them and delete their posts, whereas the other side is prepared to let them yammer away and then dissect their arguments, you know there are a lot of people stuck in an echo chamber.

The dissection of the arguments isn't for the residents of the echo chamber. It's for the vast number of people who don't really have a fully committed view either way. And you can feel mad, and outnumbered, when doing that dissecting, but if you understand that your views are rooted in reality, you'll know that you aren't.

I discovered the other day that a friend who I would have had down as one of the likeliest of my acquaintance to Beeee Kiiiind is actually GC. I think people are getting braver.

I've caught up on the thread now. Some great comments.

@Seethlaw I hope you don't mind the name check. It's good to see you on this thread. I remember having a really interesting discussion with you on the subject of gender identity some time ago on a different thread.

I have concerns about anyone who ends up believing themselves to be misaligned with their body in some way. As I don't believe in gender identity, I will naturally look for (other) root causes that explain how that person came to the clearly distressing point at which they found themselves. Obviously I'm not talking about the autogynophilic feigners here, but people who genuinely suffer from what is generally known as gender dysphoria, even by non-believers like me.

However, I've accepted that lots of people will have and will continue to have a belief that everyone has a gender identity. I'm not going to challenge that any more than I do someone's belief in god. If Christians start demanding biology books accommodate the idea that human conception without sperm is possible on an exceptional basis, I might speak up as a dissenter. But otherwise, all good.

From your previous posts, you strike me as someone who shares a similar live and let live approach to life as I do, albeit that we are polar opposites regarding the belief that everyone has a gender identity. Where we do appear to have perhaps the greatest overlap is we seemingly agree that nobody should ever be coerced into demonstrating that they hold a belief or that they don't.

I believe in ghosts. I don't expect everyone else to start speaking to my (late) mum just because I sometimes do. I don't regard it as disrespectful if they won't hold a conversation with her. I also accept that many people don't believe in ghosts at all and probably think I'm mad. But thankfully, noone is demanding that I stop believing in them. Live and let live. We all believe (or don't believe) in different things.

The pushiest TRAs are increasingly showing just how coercive they are here. The virtue signalling vocal allies that haven't really thought too much about it all are all starting to sound increasingly.....odd.

Edited for typo.

This.

Nope. I’m doubting others’ sanity, especially women who explain the physical basis of women’s vulnerability, maintain that men must be kept out of women’s spaces for safeguarding, and that transwmen are women.

🤦‍♀️

Loads of shrieking about girls sharing rooms with boys all day at school what's the difference sharing in an "after school club" its like they dont know they go on camps and share tents overnight 😳

If i feel the need to comment i point out that scouts dropped the "boy scouts" name and introduced safeguarding all the girl guides need to do is emulate that it usually goes down poorly and people bicker about intersex people honestly if you listen to them intersex people are most of the population

I got into this topic in Dec 2019 when JKR posted her "sex is real" tweet, every day it seems surreal. It's all so insane, crazy, harmful and regressive.

I have come to think that part of what makes these people so fanatic about it, is because the ideology underlying it is so insane and nonsensical. They feel like sinners because they don't truly believe it, that transwomen are women, etc. So to overcome their "sins" and guilt they must be ever more fanatic about it. And then many of the young people growing up with this are just fully brainwashed by it.

And it's overused but it really is like a cult in many ways, where if you leave it you are treated like anathema. And well, there are just so many other reasons it came to this as well, social media echo chambers, some really rich people behind the scenes pushing this (I forgot the name of one of the really big ones), people who think it's the same as LGB and just a continuation of that, etc.

The WHOLE gender grift
is men pushing back against women's rights gains in the 80's and 90's

the teen contagion
is against a pornified sociaety
and rich western kids with too few real things to worry about

No.

I do fear for the sanity of many others though. It feels like a collective brainwashing, particularly of lazy thinkers.

From the beginning I took care to read lots of articles and arguments from the other side. They only served to make me more confident that I was right and they were wrong, lying manipulating.

The more we all talk about it and explain the facts and correct the harm done by manipulative use of language, the more people will see the truth.

Yes me too. Even on the Independent’s Facebook page there were lots of people who agreed with GG and the WI. And they were getting lots of thumbs up. It used to be no-one dared to question the mantras, so there is definitely progress.

Where's the naked woman in the man's mind? (Or naked man in some cases I guess) and the enlarged image of his own penis?

I'm now actually seeing plenty of challenging going on. It's changed a LOT on SM just in this last year
And the more people challenging it, the more will feel empowered to join in.

I've not RTFT yet but wanted to comment and share one of the ways I've helped myself stay sane...

I've been reading dystopian novels. I find it really cathartic (and also an enjoyable read) to recognise that the madness that's going on IRL is just as bonkers as in these worlds. It helps me to make sense of how we got here. But unlike these novels, where the clever ones who can see what's really going on generally don't come off well in the end, I do have confidence that we'll end up with an Emperor's New Clothes ending instead IRL. More and more people are waking up from the hypnotic mantras of the Be Kind agenda because it's becoming increasingly obvious that it really is the opposite of kindness. I mean, we're about to start another round of childhood medical experimentation... and it's somehow OK because we're gathering data on the impact on their brains and bodies. WTAF?! It's so obviously Mengele-aligned.... he was great at collecting data on his childhood experiments too.

I'm currently reading Brave New World - no spoilers please! - and the parallel with the hypopaedic messaging in it is astounding. In the book, messages are played every night to children so that as they grow up, they absorb the mantras and end up believing that their thoughts and beliefs are their own, from their own free will.

In the real world, we're absorbing the mantras of gender identity while awake but the impact is the same. We're getting them in schools and workplaces. Every message is telling us that there is a marginalised community who are at risk of suicide if we're not kind to them... So....

"TWAW and anyone who says otherwise is a nasty, raging, pearl-clutching right wing bigot who doesn't understand the world as it is today. They need to Be Kind and we need to stand in solidarity as allies so that their hate can't be spread etc etc.."

Or not. FFS.

I agree Jeannie.
The TRAs have seized on it to make themselves look so oppressed. Meanwhile everyone forgets about the girls. Again.

I think the GG and WI announcements this week have been really unhelpful in how they’ve been reported. I’m a leader in Scouting and two of my fellow leaders have brought it up and said they’re shocked and disagree with GG but when I’ve explained that trans girls who ID as male are still welcome in Guides and that if there are boys who are IDing as girls that they can’t safeguard effectively they’ve then had a very different opinion. They didn’t know what was actually happening because the reporting just tended to say “trans kids banned from GG”.

I'm seeing articles about how peoples brains are different. Suggesting that all women think the same way.

Yet they call us the regressive ones whilst spouting ignorant nonsense that was peddled over a century ago to deny women the vote.

This is one of many reasons why history education is so important.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=lookaside.instagram.com/seo/google_widget/crawler/?media_id%3D3758396923154702874&tbnid=Nwqwv8GHm6_cnM&vet=1&imgrefurl=www.instagram.com/p/DQogha5jqIa/&docid=SWnRbaAS9KLNtM&w=1364&h=1578&itg=1&source=sh/x/im/m1/2&kgs=2bf45d0bf7e5b4ac&shem=damc,isst,shrtsdl&utm_source=damc,isst,shrtsdl,sh/x/im/m1/2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://share.google/F7UtIwJd1Yyifdmb0

They need a root and branch review and reset.

I don't want to derail the thread because it's so interesting, but I just have to say i agree with you @EnfysPreseli

If the GG and WI leaders are not supportive of single sex organisations, they have to go. As my ex-employer said when they made a load of people redundant "difficult decisions have to be made".

I've had to unfriend people on Facebook on this. But I've also seen news stories pop up on my feed from news publications, and I've been surprised at how many people commenting are still buying into the trans nonsense. It's at odds with the opinion polls, which show the majority of people support keeping single-sex spaces women only.

It is dispiriting when you see supposedly intelligent people peddling such a ludicrous ideology. The important thing to remember about gender ideology is that it's both profoundly stupid and profoundly unethical, so you'd assume that even if people don't understand the moral objections, they'd understand the intellectual ones, and vice versa, but it seems there's a whole bunch of people out there who lack the capacity to reason either intellectually or morally.

On the one hand, I’ve no problem being GC in public but on the other this is a long standing friend who I like very much and agree with on many things outside this topic. I don’t want to fall out with her, but the emotional responses on FB mean it’s impossible to have a rational conversation where we could share our views then agree to disagree. I suspect something like this is the reason so many of us stay quiet - it only takes one very vocal TRA supporter in your social circle to ensure everyone else stays schtum to retain the peace.

So true, that.

No, but I am seriously starting to doubt other people's sanity!

About 10 years ago when I began to take more interest in all this, I thought "this ideology will never seriously take hold because everyone knows what women and men are. How can you argue against biology and common sense?"

I honestly never thought people would take leave of their senses in this way.

I agree OP. In particular, the reaction of some to the Girlguiding decision to end their policy of allowing boys who wish they were girls to join has hit me for six. I knew that Guides HQ were captured and that the usual suspects had been involved in developing policies that weren't compliant with the Equality Act. I also knew that some Brownies, Guides and Rangers had been marching in local Pride events. What I didn't realise was how different the culture within the Guiding movement once was. Some Leaders, parents and young people appear to think that their championing of QT+ issues, attendance at Pride etc, and supporting gender confused boys and young men is why the organisation was set up in the first place. Very little concern about the actual girls who are involved, who are understandably - because of the extent of the mission drift - confused and hurt by what is going on. They need a root and branch review and reset.

Some parents don't get the issues at all and some volunteers and leaders seem to think Guiding exists to validate their trans offspring or the vulnerable young men they have 'rescued' by pretending that they were ever eligible to be members of a designated single-sex organisation. So many children have become indoctrinated. I really don't understand why Brownies and Guides would be attending events centred on adult sexuality as representatives of an organisation. If their families want to take them along fair enough, but how have they been able to justify the cult-like indoctrination of young girls and teenagers. The power of female socialisation is as strong as ever. Seeing and hearing it all has been like going back in time - and yes, it has made me question my sanity at times. But it really is them, not us, who have lost the plot.

I’ve had to snooze one long standing friend on FB. Lots of posting about how she has no problem changing with transwomen and cannot/will not see that it is perfectly reasonable for other women to have a different position. She has got quite a few trans friends posting their agreement on her ranty posts about GG and WI, so I’m leaving them to it. I tried posting the mildest comment on her posts about the SC ruling (something about being pleased for women’s sports post FWS) and another friend pasted something about it being good that transmen retained maternity protections but we got bluntly told we don’t know what we’re talking about. At least I found out the other friend is a closet terf too, so that’s one silver lining.

On the one hand, I’ve no problem being GC in public but on the other this is a long standing friend who I like very much and agree with on many things outside this topic. I don’t want to fall out with her, but the emotional responses on FB mean it’s impossible to have a rational conversation where we could share our views then agree to disagree. I suspect something like this is the reason so many of us stay quiet - it only takes one very vocal TRA supporter in your social circle to ensure everyone else stays schtum to retain the peace.

Blows my mind. Along with the thought terminating ‘it’s cis men not trans women that are the problem!’. I saw a great meme I wish I’d saved, four pictures of the same big hulk of a bearded guy, the first three had ‘not ok’ underneath but the last one had a dress on, that was the only difference and it had ‘ok’ underneath. Summed up this ridiculous ideology perfectly.

It's like lancing a boil. All the crap is coming out. Hopefully everyone will settle down soon. It does seem like everyone has gone insane though.