The mystery of screaming schoolgirls in Malaysia

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48850490

Very interesting article on mass hysteria in Malaysia. Also interesting to see how the problem persists and worsens when the professed cause for the outbreak (like seeing an evil spirit) is affirmed and treated as fact (by performing cleansing rituals), rather than the people involved being encouraged to understand their experiences in the context of reality. Not surprisingly the article points out that this is a phenomenon almost exclusively affecting young girls, that it produces real physical symptoms, that it spreads quickly in places like schools, and that it is most noticeable in countries that have rigid gender roles which limit and oppress women.

What's also fascinating is that the author describes this phenomenon in places like Malaysia with a tone of pity, as if they are a backwards country and nothing like this could possibly happen in our enlightened Western society where science is everything. The TRAs always make out that a belief in biological sex is a form of colonial white supremacy and that anyone questioning gender must be a racist, but honestly could anything be more racist than looking at a country like Malaysia and saying "wow, look at those superstitious people believing that 100s of school girls are really possessed by Jinn, it's obviously mass hysteria caused by a stifling sexist conservative society" while simultaneously believing that the 1000s of school girls suddenly identifying as boys in peer clusters over here are really literally boys (even though that's impossible) and it's definitely not mass hysteria in response to our stifling sexist culture. Obviously only them forriners are susceptible to such delusions, while us Westeners are so progressive and enlightened that anything obviously bonkers happening here must in fact be based solidly in reality.

In addition to all that, the fact that these girls are being subjected to "cures" by faith healers and witch doctors also merits discussion. I've met several women during my time in places like Africa and South America who were taken to witch doctors to be "cured" of various things and it almost always included some form of sexual abuse. One woman said that when she had malaria a group of male faith healers were invited over to tie her up, strip her naked, blindfold her, and take it in turns to spit on her. Even if that isn't the case here the description of the girl being "treated" as "thrashing about wildly on the floor and screaming before being restrained by two men" is really upsetting.

But we both actually know that there is nothing I can say or do to persuade you

Is this an admission of the weakness of your arguments?

Vasya

You don't know who is here - I am still very open to debate on the trans/sex/gender issue. I am sick of ploppers tbh.

But as Ereshkigal said, all you have done thus far is basically the equivalent of coming onto a thread and saying 'I believe in God, I know none of you lot do, but you are all wrong, but I'm not going to tell you why I believe in God because I know I will never persuade you so there is no point'.

So I still don't really understand why you are here?

I would genuinely like to see some of the research or articles you are referring to.

q

So why would I waste my time on it?

It may be more productive to ask yourself this question.

This thread has thrown up some similarities to social media, where people who support the TRA beliefs, refuse to debate, then block or deplatform.
This is indeed what happens in fundamentalist religions, or cultures where Shamanism and witch doctors abound.

@ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving

Mad props to you

You have provided an example of something I have been working on for some time and I was reflecting on the best way to explore some issues, but as you have started this thread I will post on here

I have very limited time and so will post a few things on here for readers to explore from time to time when I have a few minutes to spare

Firstly, and this is incredibly important, gender dysphoria (previously known as "gender incongruence”) was treated until very recently as a conversion disorder (in other words as hysterical conversion or hysteria).

If any reader has a share token or access tp the BMJ I would love to know the full contents of the letter in this link
Unequal treatment of transgender people

BMJ 2016; 353 doi: doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i2329 (Published 26 April 2016)Cite this as: BMJ 2016;353:i2329
Zoë Playdon, emeritus professor of medical humanities
University of London, London WC1E 7HU, UK

(emphasis mine)
Concern is growing that new General Medical Council guidance does not provide transgender people with the same consent to psychological therapies as other competent NHS patients. As Barrett says, being trans is not a mental health problem.1 It was first constructed as one in the 1960s by conversion therapists,2 …

www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2329.full

Of course the main comparison for the screaming schoolgirls in the OP is the satanic panic and the various lurid tales of satanic ritual abuse.

There is so much more to say about this but I am very pushed for time

Of course the main comparison for the screaming schoolgirls in the OP is the satanic panic and the various lurid tales of satanic ritual abuse.

No, I'm afraid that's not the case. Mass psychogenic illness is a real phenomenon that is not yet understood. There have been spontaneously arising cases in Tanzania, Nottinghamshire, North Yorkshire, Peru and many others. It is a largely unconscious phenomenon that affects mainly girls.

The Satanic ritual abuse panic seems to have been arisen spontaneously but was maintained by the mistaken beliefs and then practices of social work and other professionals.

The nearest thing to the contagious spreading of trans 'feelings' amongst especially young girls is the phenomenon of anorexia in Hong Kong as described by James Davies in his book Cracked - Why psychiatry is doing more harm than good

I would genuinely like to see some of the research or articles you are referring to

If you have mumsnet, you have google. I'm not doing your work for you.

Why would I spend time and energy on collating these resources for you when as we both know full well you will never accept their conclusions?

If you were genuine about wanting to engage with these resources, you would find them yourself (as I did, when I first started educating myself on the trans debate).

But the truth is, you have no intention of doing so. I doubt you would even read anything I posted, and if you did it would be for the sole purpose of finding ways you could delegitimise or dispute it.

I've heard plenty of crowing from people who say that if I refuse to do this labour for them, it's proof that I can't produce the resources I've alluded to. But I've posted earnestly posted information on this site before, and never even once received a thoughtful response to it. I don't expect people to agree with what I say, but I would at the very least expect a genuine engagement. It never happens. So I've stopped doing it. It's a waste of my time.

There's a trope that comes up a lot on mumsnet's FWR boards, that if someone won't have an argument with you then you're being 'deplatformed' or debate is being stifled. It's clearly just an emotive lie. You can debate until the cows come home with anyone who is willing, but you're not entitled to demand it and then feel aggrieved when the other person isn't interested. Nobody owes you a debate (and particularly when it's not actually a debate you're interested in). You aren't being 'deplatformed' because someone isn't interested in listening to you.

The extremely controversial organisation the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), an organisation that promotes conspiracy theories about satanic ritual abuse and dissociative identity disorder / multiple personality discover and other new versions on dissociative disorders (there seems to be a new one every few months) has created a new Special Interest Group (SIG)

July 22, 2019
Special Interest Groups

Potential New SIG: Trauma and Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) Experience

link (cached for safety)

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190814080639/news.isst-d.org/potential-new-sig-trauma-and-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-tgnc-experience" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20190814080639/news.isst-d.org/potential-new-sig-trauma-and-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-tgnc-experience
I am extremely concerned about this and would recommend that GC readers keep a careful watch on the activities of the ISSTD and its various international subsidiaries including the ESTD

Apologies for pointing out the obvious, but satanic ritual abuse and the resulting diagnoses of DID/MPD are commonly diagnosed using various models of "body psychotherapy”.

Promoters of SRA conspiracy theories and new age therapists involved in treating them claim that “the body remembers what the mind cannot” and use methods including but not limited to “eco-therapy” “body psychotherapy” (often incorporating massage), “muscle testing” aka kinesiology, “Emotional Freedom Technique”, chiropractic interventions and other So Called Alternative Medicines (SCAMs) to “release repressed memories of abuse”. There is no peer reviewed evidence that repressed memories of abuse can be released or recovered during massage or body psychotherapy. None.

Years ago the BBC broadcast a dramatised account that they claimed was based on real experiences of satanic ritual abuse but that was actually based on false memories generated by body psychotherapists. That drama was called May 33rd. The narrative involved a body therapist who treats a young woman for mysterious pains and she then recovers memories of satanic ritual abuse and is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. I would love to see a video of this if any clever person can find it.

So the point I am making is that when we consider women (and it is usually but not always women) who suffer from a range of mysterious physical pains and symptoms (sometimes including non-epileptic seizures) and associated emotional problems and anxieties for which there is no apparent medical cause, in days of yore these women would have been diagnosed with somatisation and conversion disorders or hysteria.

Nowadays, well we are all painfully aware of what can happen to these women in today’s climate of insanity.

I've heard plenty of crowing from people who say that if I refuse to do this labour for them, it's proof that I can't produce the resources I've alluded to.

If I want to persuade someone that my arguments are right, I will post information and links to articles. If I refused to do this, others would, quite reasonably, assume that I did not if fact have the evidence I claimed to have.

How am I supposed to find these articles you're referring to if you don't post any information about them - authors, titles, journals... If you refer to say 'a paper by Smith and Jones, published in the Journal of Waffly Crap in around 2016', I have a chance of finding it. If you just say 'there's lots of information out there, go and look for it' - where do I start?

I'll go off now and see if I can find a free link to the article mentioned by hoodathunkit.

@clitherow

I appreciate your thoughtful and considered response but I have to disagree with you

I have significant 1st hand personal experience going back to the late 1980s / early 1990s when women in the lesbian feminist communities I knew, including a few friends, started to believe that they had suffered incest, child sexual abuse and SRA.

Some were in therapy with therapists from the Women's Therapy Centre, several were seeing therapists who practiced "re-birthing" and some were seeing Gestalt therapists. Some were not seeing any therapists at all but suddenly announced that they had "recovered" memories of incest / SRA

Social contagion was definitely a causal factor IME

Success, hoodathunkit

Unequal treatment of transgender people

I thought this would only give me a preview of the first page, but it's only a letter, not an article, so it's only one page long.

If you search using google scholar, and when you find the article you want, click on 'All X versions', you often get a pdf or other free link on a site other than the publisher's site.

Thanks OldCrone

Much appreciated :)

I am now running very late and have to go but will read later

Social contagion was definitely a causal factor IME

Sorry - wasn't clear. I absolutely agree with you that social contagion was a factor both in the circumstances you describe and in trans ideology. What I think is that the mechanism of this contagion are poorly understood. I think the Satanic abuse panic had some peculiar elements that were very specific and very localised.

The incidents Davies describes are more, sort of, global. He identifies how the drugs companies have identified how social contagion can be used to manipulate whole populations - he specifically highlights how they engineered the perception of depression in Japan.

Wasn't criticising what you were saying - just trying to say that whole area of social contagion deserves a closer look.

If you were genuine about wanting to engage with these resources, you would find them yourself (as I did, when I first started educating myself on the trans debate).

But the truth is, you have no intention of doing so.

Who the hell do you think you are, that you are so sure of everyone else's motivations and intentions?

If you really wanted people to 'engage with these resources', you'd post at least one of them on here. I assume from your unwillingness to do so, that either they don't exist, or you don't really want to discuss them.

I am willing to discuss them, you are not.

You aren't being 'deplatformed' because someone isn't interested in listening to you.

Missed the last line of your post. I understand now. You're not interested in any viewpoints other than your own. I think there's a word for people like you.

bigot
/ˈbɪɡət/
noun
a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions.

You're quite right, Vasya, that nothing you could post would convince me that female people can become male, that men really ARE women once they've said so, or that we should totally ignore the differences between the sexes.

I don't think you believe any of that either, though, on reading your posts, so it must be a question of definitions. Which bit are people getting wrong that could be changed by more research?

I'm perfectly willing to believe that some people's minds make it psychologically impossible for them to accept their actual sex. The inner image we build up by reading, and looking at others, and slotting ourselves into the identity we feel is right for us, is very important to many people. I can see that gender ID is crucial to some people.

(I could never be a beautifully groomed and made-up socialite, or a loud uproarious type in boob tube and mini-skirt, or a tie-dyed hippy. It 'isn't who I am', and I have a very visceral reaction to 'wrong me' in mirrors.)

But one's actual sex matters to others.

How am I supposed to find these articles you're referring to if you don't post any information about them - authors, titles, journals... If you refer to say 'a paper by Smith and Jones, published in the Journal of Waffly Crap in around 2016', I have a chance of finding it. If you just say 'there's lots of information out there, go and look for it' - where do I start?

I know you don't owe me anything, just as I don't owe you anything, but would you faithfully promise to engage properly with the information I post? Would you promise to actually engage with them and not simply disregard them on the basis that their foundational premise is different to yours and therefore you can disregard anything they write?

I fear I know all too well that you will simply say something like 'that writer talks about gender and gender is just a religious belief like souls so their view can be disregarded'.

This is why I think there's little point in debate; if you are absolutely unwilling to accept that gender is a real and legitimate thing, and I am absolutely unwilling to accept that it isn't, what hope is there of a discussion leading to anything? Do you really think we can achieve anything by debate when we start from propositions which are antithetical to each other? Do you think there's any benefit in my linking articles which also start from a foundational proposition that you entirely reject? If you're truthful (and I hope you wouldn't pull the very patriarchal trick of asking me to do a lot of labour that you aren't interested in the results of) I think you would probably accept that there isn't any value in that activity.

And the reason I think that, is that if you were genuine in your desire to engage with pro-trans resources, you would simply find them yourself. It's a bit disingenuous to claim you 'don't know where to start' when you have the internet at your fingertips. You could google the questions you're asking me ('What is gender?' / 'Gender or sex?' / 'diagnosing mass hysteria') and find resources to assist you. The fact that you won't shows me that you aren't coming from a position of wanting to understand and engage. What you actually want is for me to 'prove' myself. And I don't have to prove myself to you.

And in typing that last sentence, I'm reminding myself that it's true, and that I don't need to be on this thread. Let's be honest - you're never going to respect me anyway, so I shouldn't waste my time trying to justify why I don't argue with the mumsnet GC troop. And you shouldn't waste your time trying to make me. We both have better things to do with our lives!

If you have mumsnet, you have google. I'm not doing your work for you.

Oh come on. The posters on this board have spent literally thousands of hours collecting and collating articles, blogs, news stories, research, links, screenshots, statistics, quotes from other threads etc on this subject. They have done this so that they can produce a robust argument that is backed up with fact.

And you won't post one article because 'you have google. I'm not doing your work for you'

I fear I know all too well that you will simply say something like 'that writer talks about gender and gender is just a religious belief like souls so their view can be disregarded'.

Well yes, if you are going to rely on a particular premise for your argument and that premise is not based in fact, then you have to back up the premise as well as the argument.

It's how this stuff works.

I have had a couple of good debates with posters on this subject, who have actually stuck around and formed an argument. However, I have not been convinced by their argument. This does not mean I haven't listened or havent engaged, it means that I haven't agreed with what they have said

But most seem to do what you have done, and use a lot of words to say nothing useful at all.

I honestly don't know why people come and do what you are doing. All it does is show up to outsiders (and we know there are a lot of lurkers) that you don't have any argument.

Would you promise to actually engage with them and not simply disregard them on the basis that their foundational premise is different to yours and therefore you can disregard anything they write?

If you post peer reviewed articles in reputable scientific or medical journals I'll read them and engage with them. I won't necessarily agree with them.

This is why I think there's little point in debate; if you are absolutely unwilling to accept that gender is a real and legitimate thing, and I am absolutely unwilling to accept that it isn't, what hope is there of a discussion leading to anything?

I believe that gender is a harmful social construct. You're right. If you want to present it as a positive entity, I cannot agree with you. I think the harm that we are seeing in children now, who are being led to believe that their 'gender' is an important part of their identity, is proof of its harm.

I'm not interested in the debate on here. I don't find it helpful or enjoyable. Anyone is, of course, welcome to share their views, but I don't have any desire to be drawn into a discussion of them.

Says the person posting their views and then discussing them. Largely from the position of 'I'm right because I say so, #nodebate". Really not convincing or engaging, so fairly pointless really.

Fairies exist btw. I say so. And I'm not interested in your views, you're all stupid and in 50 years you'll see for yourselves there are fairies everywhere . So shut up whining that you're being forced by law to dance around toadstools naked at midnight, tell your children that fairies are everywhere and will eat them if they're naughty, and chant that you do believe in fairies, and that it's messing with your personal beliefs and your religions and your disabilities and your right to freedom of belief. You throwbacks are just bigots who ought to be forced to maypole dance for the rest of your sad lives.

What the opening post actually said:

"believing that the 1000s of school girls suddenly identifying as boys in peer clusters over here are really literally boys (even though that's impossible) and it's definitely not mass hysteria in response to our stifling sexist culture.*

What Vasya claimed it said in her first post:

"you're trying to draw a parallel which suggests that anyone who believes these things is delusional / susceptible to peer pressure / suffering from some kind of cognitive malfunction"

It's obvious that Vasya either didn't read the opening post properly, or deliberately misconstrued it. Either way, the thread ended up derailed. Yet Vasya's posts have got increasingly self-righteous about the impossibility of discussing issues on here.

Vasya, if you want an honest discussion, it's a good idea to actually carefully read what the OP says, and respond to that, not to what you have arbitrarily decided that they are "trying to suggest". Anyone reading this thread from the beginning can see what you did there, so your accusations against other posters really ring hollow I'm afraid.

@clitherow

Thanks for the clarification :)

I study cults and coercive control within criminal networks so the issue of social contagion is both fascinating and relevant to my interests

There are many examples of people believing all kinds of apparently fantastical, hysterical narratives and I think that very often these beliefs arise from multiple causal factors

The mind / body connection is central to my research and interests. It is fuzzy territory incorporating liminal elements of medicine, philosophy, psychotherapy and multiple speculative hypotheses. Possibly for this reason the mind/body connection is something used by cults and quacks to influence people. They claim that “the body has its own wisdom” and “the body does not lie”. Of course it is up to the therapist / shaman / psychic to interpret the messages from the body, so although people may believe that their body is sending them a message the message may become convoluted in the translation.

Some of the sinister, misogynist cults that infiltrate / appropriate feminism and the CSA survivor movement promote the idea that the body may be in need of liberation from invisible parasitic entities in the reproductive organs. They also posit that one body can contain multiple personalities or “alters”. With the advent of the internet and of social media these apparently ludicrous ideas can be discerned spreading across accounts and websites in the same way that the spread of disease can be monitored using and epidemiological perspective.

It is apparent to me that there are multiple causal factors but that social contagion is a significant factor.

I just wanted to share an example of another situation in which a significant population of apparently intelligent people people share a belief that the body harbours multiple entities, has forgotten truths that should be remembered and that the body is contaminated with invisible parasites that need to be evacuated

vimeo.com/272691039

Apologies for posting in haste, hope this makes sense :)

This is also interesting

skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/skeptic-raping_demon_of_zanzibar/

I have so much more to say on this but time will not permit right now

also

highly relevant

please be warned, very disturbing photos

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy