Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Wheels coming off the wagon

101 replies

Kantastic · 03/08/2020 12:15

So James Lindsay has trolled the Woke into arguing that 2+2=5.

He's being insufferably smug about it but honestly I think the smugness is earned here.

twitter.com/conceptualjames

Note that the logic of "trans women are women" is identical to the logic of 2+2=5, that has been admitted too.

twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1289939130898505730/photo/1

This strikes me as a great step forward in Discourse. Genuinely. It's all hanging out there now, it's going to get increasingly hard for people who want to be seen as Serious to defend this shit.

Posie should use 2+2=4 as her next poster.

OP posts:
crunchermuncher · 03/08/2020 12:22

Yes, Id love to see Network Rail try to argue a justification for taking that down!

Kantastic · 03/08/2020 12:26

I look forward to instructing my number-obsessed niece that she's a bigot who should re-educate herself when she tells me the latest sum she's worked out. Actually no, I'm going to get her Mathlink cubes for her birthday. We might be winning.

And maybe this is a good place to list other signs of the wheels coming off:

  • The BBC removing Mermaids and GIDs from their resources page
  • The NHS rewriting their guidance on trans children to be evidence based.
  • A paper in a high-impact journal that claimed to prove that trans healthcare improves mental health has now been "corrected" to say that it proves no such thing. (The paper actually found that hormone treatment didn't do anything positive and SRS had a statistically significant but clinically miniscule positive effect, now they've had to acknowledge that SRS didn't do anything positive either.)
pbs.twimg.com/media/EedvFvUWkAEnQO6?format=png&name=large
OP posts:
MsMarvellous · 03/08/2020 12:42

You should add Rugby's draft rules statement about excluding Transwomen from the sport.

DialSquare · 03/08/2020 12:48

I watched the live stream of speakers corner in Edinburgh yesterday and was surprised to hear no heckling. Is this also a sign the wheels are coming off? TRAs are not as confident anymore to come along and try to disrupt?

StandUpStraight · 03/08/2020 12:50

This has been shared before on this board but is on point for this thread and raises a smile on a Monday.

2020Wumben · 03/08/2020 12:51

I've recently started following him on Twitter, it's has been really enlightening and got me thinking. His podcast with Joe Rogan was great but a lengthy 3hours. He recently did one with Kellie-Jay in her woman by definition podcast, I would really recommend it.

Thelnebriati · 03/08/2020 13:02

Does anyone have a link to his essay instead of his Twitter feed?

Kantastic · 03/08/2020 13:09

This has been shared before on this board but is on point for this thread and raises a smile on a Monday.

Oh my god. I think before I saw that Twitter thread I wouldn't have liked this film, I'd have interpreted it as overly smug rightwing strawmanning. But after seeing that thread on Twitter I cannot do anything other than applaud the prescience of the film makers.

OP posts:
Kantastic · 03/08/2020 13:10

newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/

that's the essay. It's very interesting. But the Twitter feed is where all the 2+2 action is happening.

OP posts:
Al1Langdownthecleghole · 03/08/2020 13:25

Love that Standup. Worth waiting for the punchline. Grin

TheRealMcKenna · 03/08/2020 16:14

James Lindsay is fantastic. I can’t wait for ‘Cynical Theories’ to be released at the end of August. I think Helen Pluckrose is narrating the audio book.

His interview with Kellie Jay is well worth watching.

TheRealMcKenna · 03/08/2020 17:09

This is another good video of his, although it’s a bit long.

I think it’s in this video where he talks about the fundamental differences between critical race theory and queer theory and how one leads to the idea that biological sex itself is a social construct which can be set aside whereas race is the centre of everything.

TheRealMcKenna · 03/08/2020 17:09

Don’t know why that link appeared twice - it’s the same video.

Shedbuilder · 03/08/2020 21:54

I've watched most of it and need to think about it. My initial reaction is that it's both useful and offers insight into queer theory and its origins and aims, and that it explains a lot of what we're experiencing today. But there's a lot of casual sexism and questionable throwaway remarks about black people. They seem to say several times that racism is kind of over. They're also pretty dismissive of second wave feminism.

Just like Jordan Peterson they're privileged white men who can't begin to understand what it might be like not to be like them.

XXSex · 03/08/2020 22:05

[quote StandUpStraight]This has been shared before on this board but is on point for this thread and raises a smile on a Monday.

[/quote] Place marking!
StandUpStraight · 03/08/2020 22:18

If anyone is interested in what led to the whole 2+2=5 thing on twitter, James Lindsay has written at length about it here (including a whole lot of maths - since he is a mathematician - and I know some people on this board just love a good mathematical discussion Smile):

newdiscourses.com/2020/08/2-plus-2-never-equals-5/

“Although it’s generally true that no one wants to have to stomach more mathematics than they absolutely have to, looking at some of the actual ways these activists and their water-carriers have tried to defend that two and two aren’t necessarily four is obligatory so that the general themes of their activism can be exposed and explained. That theme is this: there is, in every case, some play on words or meaning in at least one of the basic concepts on the table: “two,” “five” or “four,” “plus,” and “equals.” That is, they’re playing word games with the pretense to being profound all with the underlying (and amusingly backfiring) motivation of getting more people to be willing to destabilize meaning and accept deconstruction so that they, the enlightened deconstructionists, can tell people what is right and wrong to think in any given circumstance.“

FloralBunting · 04/08/2020 00:45

There's a very simple, accessible reason which explains this mindset, and while the newdiscourses essays are excellent, if you can't necessarily follow the densely argued points, it's basically exactly the same mental process as a highly controlled religious person.

Wokies will deny it until they are blue in the face, because they will probably attribute religiosity to the old structures they are trying to dismantle in their quest for the Holy Grail of Woke Utopia, but the entire edifice of Wokery rests on the religious impulse in humanity. It has simply been unconsciously repurposed as a quasi-political social movement.

Why do think I've been banging on about cults all this time?

Stellwagen · 04/08/2020 01:23

Floral,
Could you explain the mental processes of the highly religious, please? And how wokery relies on it?

I have a young trans person in my life who's a good critical thinker about nearly everything and is an atheist but insists that trans ideology is nothing like a religion. I don't have a good response to that other than of course it is!

FloralBunting · 04/08/2020 09:10

Sure, Stellwagen. I've written lots on FWR about it over the past couple of years, from a number of angles. Mostly I've looked at the way compliance to the basic belief system is enforced, which happens via the use of language which doesn't make anything clear, it only serves as a marker to show who is in the group as a believer, and who is outside the group and not to be trusted.

I'll use an analogy of a religious group to help explain the full mindset. Jehovah's Witnesses see themselves as a group of people who have God's favour. They are tasked with sharing a very specific message, based on a quirky, cherry picked set of verses in their own approved version of the bible, which insists that the world as we know it will soon end and that only they will survive into the new world and live forever.

They knock on doors and stand on street corners with their literature, which is all written with this perspective in mind. Some of it is persuasive if you squint, but all of it would collapse like a house of cards if held up to scientific or even mainstream theological scrutiny. It functions simply to reassure the members that they are in the right group, and to add a very thin veneer of reasoned argument to their beliefs.

In their meetings, they go through preset articles, which have preset questions for each paragraph, which are then answered by the congregation using the words in the paragraph (They are encouraged to shift the order about so it sounds more like their own thought).

They are discouraged strongly from reading information from 'apostates', and even spending too much time interacting with non members for any purpose except proselytism. They get their information from approved sources, which are trustworthy, unlike anything in 'this system of things' which they believe is ultimately controlled by the devil.

If you attempt to use a logical argument with them, if you point out where their beliefs in the date of the end of the world have changed, they will blank it because you are part of this 'system of things' and the changes in their doctrine are explained by another doctrine they have of 'new light', which means that the organization gets new inspiration about how a previous doctrine was a misunderstanding and therefore not a glaring error that can be used against them.

You only get out if the lightbulb goes on in your head about how their mindset only works well as a closed system. You feel safe and righteous and like you are on a holy mission. And it takes a huge psychological shift to break away because your entire social circle, often your family and support system, and indeed your sense of self, is sunk into this mindset, and if you transgress, you will be 'disfellowshipped' which is basically being radically shunned, even by members of your own family.

So compare that to the Woke. A shifting language system that mostly serves to highlight who is using the up to date terminology and highlight those who are not in the group. So, 'cisgender', TWAW, 'cishet', the blurring between 'sex' and 'gender', whether there is a gap between trans and woman and so forth.

Lots of glossaries of terms, often overlapping meanings that defy clarity, because the language is not meant to clarify, merely signal that the user is assenting to the worldview.

Approved sources of information, and a flat refusal to engage with apostates - how many of the woke do you think read JK Rowling's essay themselves, compared to how many had it filtered through YouTubers or the Mermaids response?

A surface willingness to ask questions, but only approved answers allowed, and independent thinking discouraged. You must both educate yourself and make sure you come to the right conclusion.

And if you do not comply, if you slip with the language, if you ask the wrong questions, or do so with any persistence at all, you have the spectre of being 'cancelled' and Wokies, unlike JWs, won't stop with only members shunning you, the Woke belief system believes they must pursue you throughout the rest of society too, so friends, job, etc. If you are a member of the Woke group, this will be even more frightening than it is for those of us outside the group, because you are then going to be shunned from your entire support network, and the only people out in the cold world who agree with you are de facto bigots.

I know this is a long post. It's challenging to explain the mindset for people who haven't experienced it, because that's kind of the point. It's all about experience, emotion, feeling you are in the right group etc.

I hope that helps. I should probably write a books on this stuff.

TheRealMcKenna · 04/08/2020 09:14

Stellwagen Mike Nayna put together a short video to accompany James Lindsay’s essay on the woke religion. Don’t know if it answers any of your questions.

One of the features of the ‘woke religion’ is its utter dismissal of the tools of reason and the scientific and mathematical methodS which would question the validity of its claims. These are considered to be ‘white supremacist ways of knowing’. Thus, biological sex is dismissed as being the product of a tool of white supremacy. Heretics are to be silenced, cast out, excommunicated. Claims can be made which are utterly absurd be it related to race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and as long as they ‘fit’ within the dogmatic ideology they are not questioned with the rigour that would accompany a hypothesis following the scientific method. Thus, it was so easy for Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian to get so many hoax papers published.

Like all religions, the ‘social justice’ religion creates the sense that the follower is doing ‘good’ in the world. Who doesn’t want ‘social justice’ or to help the oppressed? The problem is that it utterly shuts down any idea that contradicts its framework of beliefs. The list of apostates grows daily.

One of the more sinister and cult-like aspects of the social justice religion is in the way it calls on individuals to ‘question their own ism/phobia’ in an accusatory and aggressive manner. Benjamin Boyce has just released this recording from the session at Evergreen following the 2017 riots. Put it this way, I wouldn’t want my children educated at a college where students were treated in this way by members of staff...

highame · 04/08/2020 09:22

@FloralBunting That was a really good read. I also thought about the age demographic and how our institutions are enabling without question. I'm not sure I've worded that very well, but I'd like your opinion

TheRealMcKenna · 04/08/2020 09:34

If you attempt to use a logical argument with them, if you point out where their beliefs in the date of the end of the world have changed, they will blank it because you are part of this 'system of things'

This system is known as ‘white supremacy’ or ‘whiteness’ and is not to be trusted as it is used as a tool to oppress other groups. Note the inclusion of he ‘scientific method’ on the list attached.

www.cascadia.edu/discover/about/diversity/documents/Some%20Aspects%20and%20Assumptions%20of%20White%20Culture%20in%20the%20United%20States.pdf

Hence the publication of recent articles stating ‘biological sex is a tool of white supremacy’.

FloralBunting · 04/08/2020 09:40

highame, well, ime, most people who adopt a mindset and worldview like this do so for two main reasons - Comfort and/or Power. These two things are the 'itch' that the religious impulse scratches. (To be clear I'm talking about 'religious impulse' as a natural part of the human psyche that not every individual has, but is still very common, and is why some people can have a strong attachment to this kind of thinking, whether connected any overt 'supernatural' belief or not, and some people just haven't the slightest interest or connection to metaphysical ideas.)

So, any adherent to anything like this is either seeking a sense of comfort - so, belonging to a group, a sense of purpose, a feeling of righteousness or forgiveness etc. IMO, this is why you will see so many vulnerable young people embracing it enthusiastically. Or, and perhaps as well, they are seeing the power that this can give - from relatively simple psychological payoffs like being considered enlightened among their circle and revelling in a sense of knowing what the masses don't grasp, all the way to those with a power cynical eye to controlling others or perhaps enacting a vindictive streak.

7Days · 04/08/2020 09:40

I'm thinking about the fetishisationof youth too, it's very relevant. Maybe it's a natural consequence of an aging society. Experience and wisdom is valued in the relatively rare individual who attains them. But when middle/old age is a commonplace state you can dispense with that cultural imperative.

A sexualised society goes hand in hand with the glorification of youth too.

DickKerrLadies · 04/08/2020 09:44

I've just had a lightbulb moment reading this:

Woke people think racism, sexism, and bigotry are baked into the language and concepts we use. Since we think and communicate with language, if the language we use is inherently racist and sexist then our communication, and the ideas we communicate will be racist and sexist...

And I immediately thought of the bit in 1984 where Syme is talking about newspeak:

In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

www.george-orwell.org/1984/4.html

Another time, for those at the back - not an instruction manual.

Swipe left for the next trending thread