Thought Terminating Cliches

[AspieAndProud]

‘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?

I think 'male-bodied' is good but you still need an extra word either-

Male-bodied person
Male-bodied adult
Male-bodied child

Then perhaps an extra qualifier about their presentation or what they identify as.

A male-bodied adult who identifies as a woman...

Because this is long winded the need for acronyms comes along, you will have inadvertently coined a term for someone that they wouldn't choose, because they seek to obscure the fact of their sexed body or of their very shakey beliefs in 'innate' gender, in the terms they use for themselves.

what alternative is there?

Avoidance and compromise I guess, in a similar vein to how we avoid “misgendering” by avoiding use of pronouns rather than capitulate.

Avoidance means leaving swathes of important and significant details un-analysed. It ties your hands.

Avoiding so-called 'misgendering' makes it really hard to know what people are talking about. Sometimes you need to use 'he' and 'she' when you are trying to get a handle on male violence against women.

"They hit them"
"They hit her"
"He hit her"

Tiptoeing around really misses the impact.

"They won the women's swimming race"
"He won the women's swimming race"

"They went into the women's changing rooms"
"He went into the women's changing rooms"

It is bullshit having to linguistically skirt around what is happening because some followers of a weird faith that few people share get really offended if we don't.

Personally I tend to use people’s names. “McKinnon won the race”. We all have different levels of comfort with these things. But I just think that if you want to discuss something with someone who has a very different viewpoint to you, using language that immediately alienates them from the conversation - especially using terms specifically to describe them that they don’t choose themselves - just seems counterproductive to me. This isn’t specific to discussion around trans ideology, btw, but just seemed pertinent to me with posters coming up with alternate ways to describe transgender people.

I use people's names and 'they' when I am prevented from discussing matters sensibly because of rules set by followers of an ideology I do not share. Privately I make sure I always use the correct pronouns for a person's sex in order to counter this insidious brainwashing by forced-reality-naming-avoidance.

Also I am not sure how productive it is to mangle my thought processes and language to engage people who have an opposing viewpoint. If I were to discuss the existence of God with a theist it would be ridiculous for me to use language like 'The Lord' or 'Heavenly Father' to engage them. I would stick to terms which do not require buy in to their beliefs or avoidance of mine. It might well cause offence, so I doubt I would have such a discussion with such a person.

There's nothing wrong with using lots of words. Long sentences are underrated.

If I have to say "Rachel Mckinnon who is male bodied broke a women's world record" rather than using an acronym, I'll say it.

I would obviously rather not go through the rest of my life having to say/type "adult human female" when the one word "woman" should suffice but if I sometimes have to I'll do it if anything else to simply prove the lunacy of the whole thing.

Tbh it sounds a bit odd to say "Rachel Mckinnon who is male bodied broke a women's world record".

Saying "Rachel Mckinnon who is an adult male broke a women's world record" is clearer.

But it would be clearer still to say "Rachel Mckinnon who is a man broke a women's world record".

The pussy-footing indirect versions don't make the absurdity transparent enough. Someone could walk away thinking someone can 'be' a woman who just happens to have a male body - in the way that some women just happen to have a short body. It allows bullshit to flourish.

The pussy-footing indirect versions don't make the absurdity transparent enough...It allows bullshit to flourish.

Institutions spend a fortune teaching their staff to use direct, unambiguous communication with each other and to have so-called Fierce Conversations or Truth to Power. And so many official Inquiries and Commissions stress the need for clear, respectful and appropriately fearless communication.

And then, we impose social, official, and other constrictions on language use that enforce ambiguity and introduce uncertainty.

If this isn't a mixed message, then I don't know what is.

It's just a fucking Assault on the category of 'woman' isn't it
Just another way for men to attack the boundaries

Here's another one. I'm a student and had research methods training today. Lecturer declares:

'Sex, from a very outdated viewpoint, is a dichotomous variable - male or female.'

People just nod along as if this wasn't utter nonsense. Thought-terminating indeed.

The one bright point was that later on I pointed out in group discussion that sex is dichotomous, even if 'gender' (I hate the word, but used it to make a point) isn't, and the group agreed with me.

Is "equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It's not pie" come under the thought termination category?

Cos I can think of lots of situations where more rights for one group means less rights for another... equal rights though? I don't know it just irritated me today popping up on my Facebook with its smug condescension.

You'd have thought they'd have done their best not to mention PIE.

LOL 😂

Ok that went right over my head... significance of pie?

It's a 70s political movement favoured by certain sections of the political elite. Don't want to spell it out but it's easily googled.

significance of pie?

Paedophile Information Exchange

In the late Seventies, when the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was at its height, I was a young radical, daft as a brush, and worked for a feminist publication, Spare Rib, which it targeted.

PIE asked the magazine to “show solidarity”, after police began arresting members. Chief propagandist Tom O’Carroll — later imprisoned — sent the monthly glossy excerpts of his book, Paedophilia: the Radical Case, and invited us to a PIE public meeting.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10653950/We-on-the-Left-lacked-the-courage-to-be-branded-homophobic-so-we-just-ignored-it.-I-wish-I-hadnt.html

Christ. Significance of pie is depressing.

very outdated viewpoint

So true. Just 'outdated'.

Anything can be declared outdated - even laws that are only 14 years old!

Science is outdated.
Sexed boundaries are outdated.
Objective reality is outdated.
Class analysis is outdated.
Homosexuality is outdated.

It's ridiculous.

Talking the truth to power is outdated.

Indeed. Avoiding offending power is the new moral duty.