The cognitive dissonance is driving me mad

[CogDiss]

I have a couple of acquaintances who I used to believe were intelligent, sensible women who are now display such strong cognitive dissonance all the time and I don't understand how they can't see it.
Example 1, mother to five kids, now identifies as non binary, complete with blue hair and they pronouns. 'Transwomen are women, JK Rowling is a T', who just shared a long article on FB. It turned out the article was Caitlin Moran's on her experiences of perimenopause. How can "they" not see that this article that they apparently love and idetify with is a prime example of why TWAM and not women? Biology matters!
The second acquaintance identifies as trans and non binary, despite having pushed a small human out of their body fairly recently, and even more so having made at least a partial living for the past few years through the fact that their body is very identifiabley female....
It just makes me want to cry and rage that they are being so deliberately dense. By all means appreciate the people in your life who are trans, but don't scream T with one breath while demonstrating with your next how important it is to acknowledge the biological reality of sex differences.

and breathe.
Sorry, I've been working up to that for a while and don't have a safe place to say it, so thank you.

It's infuriating, isn't it? I think humans in general are capable of great cognitive dissonance though, however rational we like to think we are, and I think most people would far rather look at what "their clan" are doing, and assume those are the views they should be taking, than looking critically at an issue. Humans tend to be pretty lazy thinkers really.

What I don't get is, with someone like JK who is quite clearly on the left, why aren't more lefties saying, "Hang on a sec. I agree with her on this, this and this. She's always paid her taxes, donated millions to charity etc., etc. Maybe she actually has a point...?"

I can't quite understand that lack of curiosity. It was what made me read through the Mumsnet threads about four years ago, and think, "Of course! How did I not see this before?" Admittedly I wasn't invested either way at that point. I think once people have dug in, it's hard to come back from that.

So you can't change sex but TWAW. How, my brain cannot compute but obviously I'm just a little woman and couldn't possibly understand.

It's ridiculous. None of what they say makes any sense, that's why they won't engage in debate, because they'd tie themselves in knots. Easier to shout 'transphobe' and bigot to throw all attention away from themselves and shut down questions that are impossible to answer.

What I don't get is, with someone like JK who is quite clearly on the left, why aren't more lefties saying, "Hang on a sec. I agree with her on this, this and this. She's always paid her taxes, donated millions to charity etc., etc. Maybe she actually has a point...?"

She did tweet that if every blue ticked person on twitter that had messaged her privately agreeing with her actually spoke up, we'd have an army. I'm sure she understands why they didn't, but it must have been awful having to face the wrath like that pretty much alone :(

The whole trans ideology is based upon unmeasurable feelings, not upon logic, facts or reproducible evidence. You are what you feel, and what you actually are is irrelevant. Hence 'some women have a penis' . And whatever you feel is right (as long as what you feel is not contradictory to what someone louder, stronger, more violent and more influential than you feels).

So to your friends, OP, what they feel or believe mais complete sense, because it shows not have to make any sense. They are like the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass: ^ Alice^ laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the White Queen . "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Yes cognitive dissonance is such a bizarre phenomenon. Not uncommon in any kind of ideological or religious context, but nevertheless still a sight to behold when you see it first hand.

No human being is immune to it, which is why it is always important to examine one's beliefs and ideas to ensure you subscribe to them based on some kind of factual reasoning, instead of just feelings. It's not always easy and we all have our blind spots, so it helps to read things you don't always agree with, so that you get a different perspective.

I'm not sure about anyone's experiences, but in mine it's the NB's who are often the most vocal and intransigent to discussion.

I find it deeply ironic that these people who apart from insisting on "they" pronouns have no skin in the game whatsoever.

Life goes on without any changes other than an acquired fervent sense of smug self righteousness and insistence on "specialness".

It's of course why they do it.

The whole gender identity culture is the perfect means to re-cast themselves special status repressed victims rather than the perfectly ordinary (if egocentric) person they are, whilst being able to "legitimately" free their inner troll against anyone who suggests otherwise.

Something interesting about religious beliefs is they are not like normal beliefs. Usually when you believe something it impacts all your other beliefs and your behaviour. Philosophers have noted that religious people don’t really seem to believe the content of their beliefs, and religious beliefs don’t appear to have a deep knock on effect on other concepts. For example, religious people will sincerely claim that when you die you go to heaven. Heaven is supposed to be fantastic - a far better place than earth. Yet religious people grieve just as much when people they love die - as if they were gone forever and not just for a brief period of time.

I think trans beliefs are like that . I don’t actually think there’s any real cognitive dissonance because the beliefs haven’t bitten hard enough to produce real dissonance - that is , they aren’t fully fledged beliefs. Here’s an example. One of my so called friends publicly denounced me for being a “TERF” and she loudly and repeatedly declared that “trans women are women”. Yet a few days later she was online making jokes about how the best bit about lesbian sex was you can’t get pregnant, lesbian sex doesn’t involve penises etc . Now I’m sure that if someone scolded her she would apologise for her mistake. What’s interesting to me, though, is that she supposedly strongly believes that trans women are women yet made that error in the first place. What it shows to me is that when the “twaw” mindset is not activated she reflexively goes back to the standard belief set -that is that people with penises are male and lesbians can’t have penises. And what that means is that her beliefs that “twaw” aren’t well integrated, reflective, deeply held beliefs .

So what I think is people hold these beliefs at a superficial, surface level but don’t genuinely believe that twaw (at least they don’t believe it in the same way that they believe, say, that jumping off a cliff will seriously hurt you.)

She did tweet that if every blue ticked person on twitter that had messaged her privately agreeing with her actually spoke up, we'd have an army.

They must also trust JKR's integrity enough to know that she'd never reveal who they are and this says a lot about her.

Didn't you point out how triggering the perimenopause article could have been and denounce her as a TERF because of that...?

I was listening to a podcast about Putin and Russia and how the KGB use disinformation to their rivals. constantly changing to lie to sow seeds of doubt and confusion. This is what I see here i.e. TWAW, then "we know you cannot change sex but sex and gender are different" then AMAB / AFAB, then "Born in the wrong body".

None of it make sense and all of it is contradictory but its not supposed to make sense, its supposed to cause confusion so that you don't really know what you're arguing. Anybody who has got into a Twitter spat will recognise it.

I'm with you OP, I struggle with women who will Be (so bloody) Kind they use terms like pregnant people or birthing person but honestly what gets me most is those who do this but they have daughters.

There's something about erasing words that will (or should) exist in someone's future that cuts me very deeply. I don't think I'll ever get over it.

It's hard so I hope you find some comfort here.

She did tweet that if every blue ticked person on twitter that had messaged her privately agreeing with her actually spoke up, we'd have an army.

I didn't know that. I'm so curious to know who contacted her now.

None of it make sense and all of it is contradictory but its not supposed to make sense, its supposed to cause confusion so that you don't really know what you're arguing. Anybody who has got into a Twitter spat will recognise it.

Yes!

I get mystified by it as well OP - but agree with what WeeBisom says too. I think there is definitely that aspect that a lot of people don't really, deeply believe it but also it has become a woke thing where saying TWAW, and that being Non-Binary is a real thing you can actually take seriously, etc are what you have to say to be morally acceptable.

IMO this has come about because of the way trans issues have been linked to gay and bi sexuality for so long as a "cause" and fight for rights - even though they are not even remotely the same kind of thing. Anyone lefty and liberal is probably on the side of gay rights and against moral majority/bigoted types who hate gay people, and would hate top be seen as intolerant about sexuality - and for many people who haven't thought it thorugh, and who aren't aware of a lot of what is going on with bullying lesbians, pressures on young people to be trans, males in female prisons, sports etc., trans is just another "wing" of lovely rainbow LGBT community who we of course all love and defend. The trans lobby often tries to align anyone who questions them with anti-gay bigotry, even though that makes no sense at all, adding to that fear of being a bigot, so a whole lot of people who just want to be seen as worthy and morally correct have to make a big leap to actually question the concept of transgender ideology.

I do agree though that when someone like JKR takes a stand, you have to be quite stubborn to really convince yourself she must be some kind of old-school bigoted trans-hater - I mean why on earth would she be given who she is and her clearly left-wing, compassionate behaviour to date? But then that's why what she's done is important - it does help a lot of people to start questioning the situation, and I think the changes that we need are gathering pace - very slowly but surely.