To what extent are we allowed to discuss parallels between cults and gender ideology?

"refusing to add nuance to concepts such as 'biology'"

Do tell what that nuance would be @cassandre

And I hope 'gender critical' feminists recognise that they have some awkward bedfellows, namely Trump and many other right-wing authoritarian leaders across the world.

The term had been modified maybe, by the time I heard it in the mid-90s from older transitioning trans women online. Women were always referred to as "GGs" or "genetic girls."

I am a male-exclusionary feminist. Because feminism has to centre females. For what it's worth, I'm definitely not part of a cult 😀.

To be precise, in the so-called 'gender critical' movement I have seen:

• a rigid belief set and dogma, refusing to add nuance to concepts such as 'biology'
• adherents saying that if other women (or men) don't agree with them, those people cannot possibly be feminists. You're only a feminist if you embrace a gender-critical ideology.
• terms such as 'peaked' to indicate people being converted to the movement. This sounds very evangelical.
• people within the community 'othering' those who disagree with them. You're either in or out, there is no middle ground and no room for debate.
• scaremongering. Calling people who disagree TRAs and lumping them together regardless of what their specific views may be. Jumping on stories of trans women criminals and saying that they represent the category of trans women as a whole.

All that is just off the top of my head, but yes, it's very similar to the fundamentalist evangelical Christianity I grew up with. And I find it repugnant.

I know that not all self-identified 'gender critical' feminists are like this, but on MN, many of them are.

I'm a transinclusive feminist and many years of seeing these MN threads have resulted in making me even more trans-friendly. I'm not going back to the cultish thinking of my childhood.

But each to their own.

It's extraordinary isn't it?

These people want women to have nothing for themselves. Not even a movement set up to promote their own rights.

The misogyny in this world is so deep rooted and ugly. I honestly had no idea how bad it was until the 'men can be women' brigade showed up 🙄

DARVO and projection. As predicted.

Please explain further.

Being gender critical means that someone rejects gendered stereotypes (eg, girls like pink and baking, boys like blue and engineering) and says that boys/girls can like any colour or enjoy any activity they like.

If you are talking about the position that mammals can't change sex, well, that is just material reality. This is completely demonstrable, and it would go on being true even if every single person on the planet didn't believe in it.

I have often thought that gender identity ideology is a kind of modern gnostic belief.

What exactly are you talking about?

Male exclusionary feminism.

Because if your priority for feminism is the inclusion of men, you're not a feminist. You're a male rights activist.

Got to centre those men, right?

This is interesting, because I was brought up in a cult-like background, and I have noted a lot of parallels between cults and trans-exclusionary feminism (aka 'gender critical' feminism). Threads like this one on MN reinforce the cult mentality.

I have read that Martine Rothblatt is the closest that gender ideology gets to having a 'cult leader'. Of course, the implication is that GI is just part of a greater move towards transhumanism.

There are people with a lot of power and/or money who are not well known to the general public who are moving 'behind the scenes'. The capture of institutions, the money made by drug/medical companies, etc.

Indeed. One of the reasons that calling trans activism 'progressive' is so ludicrous. Aside from misogyny, capitalism is one of the pillars keeping this going.

I think that @SylvanMoon 's information is enlightening
I think the absence of a cult leader is kind of definitive- it doesn't really make sense to describe transactivism as a cult but the psychological mechanisms that are cult-like are easy to see.

It's group think. Which I think has mostly been used (as a concept) to describe how groups can fail catastrophically in their allocated task. Although transactivism doesn't have an allocated task (that is agreed on, that they are all acting towards). I imagine someone, somewhere has looked at what can challenge group think, and it would be interesting to apply that to transactivism.

It was and is a very odd phenomina that punctuates history.

where until recent history it was just TIMS mostly not women.

As a person who was involved in the trot left in the eighties i recognise the groups such as bash back as purely anarchistic.

The hard trot left has become post modernist and buys in to the bullshit. The working class agenda left the revolutionary movement very long ago.

I think CRT and GI walk hand in hand.

The hard left has always been cult like as is gender ideology.

I am an ex evangelical Christian from a very culty style of church. The trans ideology movement seems very cult like to me. There are so many parallels in how they behave and relate to each other that remind me of high control religions.

l find myself thinking this about a lot of far left politics as well. There is a worrying extremism that can be scary.

I think that corporates were the ones completely in thrall to trans activists.

When Science companies- especially pharma companies pretend to not know the difference between male and female they can all get in the bin.

It's always good to get corroboration of a source so thank you.

Has to be the slowest moving, non-existent "genocide" of all time🤔

Oops, I crossposted with you @Waitwhat23, I didn't know you posted when I was writing my comment.🤗

I see they were claiming a genocide back in 1977 as well.

It's funny you mention this because I've been reading The Transsexual Empire by the radical feminist professor Janice Raymond, and she featured that letter in one of the chapters:

Dear Sister,
In regards to the Sandy Stone controversy: genetic women- Gennys-have never had to suffer the discrimination, self-hatred or fear that a transsexual must endure and survive in their lives. Genetic women are not ridiculed as severely, killed, tortured and arrested simply because they are
transsexual, as are transsexuals. Genetic women have many rights, in comparison to transsexuals, who have
none.

Genetic women cannot possess the very special courage, brilliance, sensitivity and compassion-and overview-that derives from the transsexual experience. Free from the chains of menstruation and child- bearing. transsexual women are obviously far superior to Gennys in many ways.

As some of you have discovered. because of the severity of the genocidal attitudes we must deal with all of our lives, many transsexuals have learned how to fight without giving any quarter or showing any mercy.

Genetic women are becoming quite obsolete, which is obvious, and the
future belongs to transsexual women. We know this, and perhaps some of you suspect it. All you have left is your “ability" to bear children, and in a world which will groan to feed 6 billion by the year 2000, that's a negative asset.

Transsexual and very proud,
Angela Douglas
Berkeley
Reprinted from Sister August-September, 1977

And yes, you are correct

Found it!

Maybe 'genetic'?