‘Transwomen are women,’ ‘born in the wrong body,’ ‘better to have a daughter than a dead son’ and ‘literal violence’ appear to be perfect examples of thought terminating cliches, a concept used in the study of ‘thought reform’ (what most of us would call ‘brain washing’). Their purpose is to end a discussion before it actually begins.
A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to end cognitive dissonance (discomfort experienced when one simultaneously holds two or more conflicting cognitions, e.g. ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions). Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.
The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1956 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
Anybody think of other common examples?