The new religion

[xxyzz]

So many things coming together over the last few days have brought home how much gender identitarianism is truly a religious movement. (I could call gender identitarianism transactivism, or trans rights activism, though that would give the misleading impression that this whole business is led by trans people or in any advances trans rights, neither of which I think is remotely true.)

The Amnesty Ireland case this week - twitter.com/JinnysJoe/status/1329847671063015424 - has made clear the religious nature of every aspect of the attack on women's rights. In a country where organised religion still holds huge power, blasphemy laws which have only been repealed over the last couple of years live on in the desire to cast out women who blaspheme against the gender identity religion from the community of the righteous. These women may not be heard, for by their words, they are now sinners. "No debate" is no more than a modern formulation of "Thou shalt not blaspheme". Even the term 'trans' itself, tied to the idea of a soul magically transforming matter, reflects transubstantiation, the seen-to-be-literal changing of bread and wine into the body of Christ.

Janice Turner's great Twitter thread today, being discussed elsewhere - twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1331606970252599298 - refers to true believers compelling women to agree that "science is erased by magical thinking", with threats of violence if they refuse. She talks about believers in biology being "hounded" if they refuse to agree with the "quasi religious concepts" of gender identity over biology. Like nearly all religions, as Janice points out, this religion is patriarchal and virulently misogynistic. I could add homophobic to that list too; many of the 35+ staff members who resigned from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51806962 - did so citing concerns over transition being used as gay conversion therapy by homophobic parents.

As Suzanne Moore points in her fabulous long piece today - unherd.com/thepost/suzanne-moore-i-felt-absolutely-betrayed/ - while the new gender religion (like most religions) demands that women "be kind", adherents to this new religion have shown no reciprocal kindness towards women and our "fears and concerns". Instead, women who dare to speak out in favour of biology, science, women's rights, have been branded as witches and threatened with the kind of ritual attacks ("Die in a grease fire", anyone?) previously reserved for witches.

TRAs often wonder why the UK has so many T**fs .Seeing what has been happening in Ireland this week, seeing the way gender identitarianism has overtaken the US left so thoroughly, has overtaken Spain last week - twitter.com/ALLIANCELGB/status/1329500723734843402 - I am beginning to wonder if what has left British women particularly impervious to the siren call of this new religion has been our lack of religiosity as a country. Iran is another religious country where transition is actively encouraged, even as homosexuality is forbidden and women's rights even to show their own hair are curtailed. It would certainly be interesting to see how far adherence to organised religion maps directly to organised gender identitarianism aka transactivism.

Thanks for the Spanish examples. They were linking Protestant countries to queer theory more generally, but your Spanish examples would suggest otherwise.

I was thinking about the clash of this religion against others. The reason why in the U.K. is probably a simple one. Hate crime legislation protects religion and disability . If the attacked religious communities those communities are backed by hate crime law. So an attack on those religions would be rebuffed with he force of law behind them. In the way that bullies rarely pick on larger kids. But women have no corresponding protection from hate crime. The assymetry in protection whereby women are unprotected allows the bullies to attack a soft target.

Thanks Eowyn - though making loos and changing rooms effectively mixed sex (in my work, the loos are ostensibly single sex but also have a sign indicating that people can use them according to their ‘gender identity’. So that affects religious people. As this is happening more and more, I’m surprised it hasn’t been raised by religious communities? They haven’t gone after them, no, but nor have religious communities noticed the clash of rights. Moreover, sex is a protected characteristic too, so technically we do have legal protection - it’s just it’s been misinterpreted (deliberately or otherwise).

As this is happening more and more, I’m surprised it hasn’t been raised by religious communities?

I'm aware of a Muslim woman who has been talking to the council and local papers about toilets in the parks being turned gender neutral and having none that she can use. I think finally she was told that there would be a single sex toilet on the far side of one of the parks right away from the café etc where she could go - so males huge increase in access, females who can't access mixed sex due to protected characteristics, direct discrimination and less favourable treatment. But we're not talking about privileged, powerful women with loud voices and sharp elbows, and no one has cared that this woman has problems created by her losing facilities so that males can have their preferred, prioritised access to all the facilities.

Friends of mine from minority faiths and areas of known devout and orthodox traditions, I know simply won't be allowed by male relatives to go to activities such as yoga/swimming once those relatives know those 'women only' sessions will be mixed sex. At least one of those friends will try to keep this quiet as long as she is able. She would not be allowed to remain on a hospital ward overnight that was observably mixed sex, nor to receive certain types of medical care from a male person regardless of how the person identified themselves.

But she does not have much of a voice, the male people who hold authority over her do but are not much aware or interested and haven't much realised, and it would only be if the male community as a group significantly kicked off that there would be an issue the establishment would get very keen to listen to. In fact, many such males will have no problem with women having less access to such things as they needed a great deal of persuasion to allow attending women only things in the first place. And those things were created for such women to begin to have a means to access the world around them and to join the community and reduce their isolation. Their marginalisation. The contact with less rigid sex based codes.

Local Authorities actually threw a lot of money and planning at this for years. Until male people said they had a need and the female people were hurled aside as boring old hat. And we had idiot nineteen year olds in women officer positions with zero life experience or anything beyond their privileged middle class existence and male socialisation, who did excellent let them eat caking when this was pointed out. I think the comment was that women needed to just stop doing patriarchial religions if they got in the way of being woke.

I would really like Coleman et al to discuss whether they've ever met and talked to any such women. Or women who have gone to refuges. Or women who have been raped. And explained how, from their position of affluent and protected privilege, they feel entitled to throw these women's rights aside to make their lives worse to benefit some males whose needs could easily be met in other, fairer ways.

Mary Harrington's Why it's time to take 'wokeness' seriously in Unherd discussed the proposition that 'Wokeness is a religion, or at least a re-emergence of religious impulse'

I was thinking this morning about Cartesian dualism (as you nerdily do ) and thought of this thread. Another similarity with religious movements is the framing of the mind/spirit/soul/essence and the body as two independent entities. So the gender identity is occupying the same space as the soul used to.

I never was able to find my soul when religious people assured me I have one, and I had exactly the same result when attmepting to locate my gender identity.

I’ve also always thought of my mind as being part of my body, too. My mind is in my body, my body is in my mind- inextricably linked.

One of the elements of it that’s actually the strangest though, is how having a gendered soul has implications for the body, and for which sex class you want to be seen as part of. It’s central to trans dogma that your gender essence or soul is not your body. So why not just get on with your sexed body as it is, and your gendered soul, without having to either harm the body (indeed some people who identify as trans don’t do anything to their body, especially if it’s a male body) or demand to be accepted as a sex you are not?

After all another tenet is that there are multiple gender identities including the nonsensical “non-binary” (if sex isn’t binary and gender isn’t binary, what’s the binary to not be?). These gender identities cannot all “map” onto a sex. So it should be obvious that stereotyped masculine and feminine identities also don’t map onto a sex.

I find that very suspicious and where the misogyny really shows. It’s really about crushing the sex-based identity that allows women to organise, be protected, be counted and make headway.

sophocles this also has me pondering Cartesian dualism and I love it that that’s not weird on MN :o

@secular111

Mary Harrington's Why it's time to take 'wokeness' seriously in Unherd discussed the proposition that 'Wokeness is a religion, or at least a re-emergence of religious impulse'

That was a depressing read. ☹️

@HerselfIndoors

sophocles this also has me pondering Cartesian dualism and I love it that that’s not weird on MN :o

Opening up formerly wonen-only spaces to all comers (and let's be realistic, if anyone can self-identity as a woman, it will indeed be all comers because predatory men don't need any encouragement) the inevitable result will be the further narrowing and restriction of many women's lives and opportunities for leisure, pleasure, education, healthcare and exercise. We will all be that bit less safe, less entitled to challenge, less able to operate with autonomy.

I can't help but think this is not an unintended consequence of the pressure for greater trans rights but the true goal itself: to shut us up, shut us away and then shut us down.

Shut us up, shut us away and then shut us down.

Control. Organised religion has always been about control.

I think the reason the UK has held out this far is that UK feminism has deep roots in trades unions and the public sector generally. It is grounded in material reality. Whereas North American feminism speaks the language of psycho analysis.With exceptions like Barbara Ehrenreich. I recall my London feminist friends thinking US feminists were ' more sophisticated '. On closer inspection this turned out to mean they wrote lots about orgasms - not boring stuff about equal pay rates for women in Fords

I read a good theory somewhere a while back that the reason the UK is further ahead on resisting this stuff is that its a smaller place. Women can meet on mumsnet from all over the UK and organise irl pretty easily. Most of us are physically able to get to the big cities, although we're obviously hampered by things like kids and caring responsibilities (another reason the TW/men were able to organise so well I think, they don't have the same care burden on them as women do). But when WPUK hold a meeting lots of people from all over the UK can go. If someone on one side of America meets someone from the other side of America online they can talk and share ideas but the chances of them being able to meet and organise are pretty remote.

Also yes to the points about dualism. Religions which centre on mind/body dualism have always pushed back against secular ideas of physical monism. Now dualism is making a come back in the form of gender identity so of course its arch nemesis is once agaim going to be physical monism, now rebranded "bio essentialism" which is of course a Very Bad Thing. It would be quite a fascinating thing to observe if, yno, it wasn't our rights specifically that it was gunning for.

There’s nothing new under the sun, grabthar, is there? We’re having some very old and venerable debates, dressed up anew for the 21st century.

The "bio essentialist" argument is so stupid because it implies that you are claiming that being physically female indicates something about you, other than that you are physically female. It's just a misrepresentation of what essentialism means and a projection, like other trans lobby "arguments".

It's a bit like watching creationists distort and mangle science to try to put forward a convincing scientific argument that evolution isn't real. It inevitably looks ridiculous, and has to misrepresent and dissemble, because the whole point is to "prove" something illogical and circular, that logical argument doesn't relate to.

A sincere thank you to all the women who have posted on this thread. It makes fascinating (albeit chilling) reading.

Sometimes religious people will support practical woman-friendly initiatives, on the grounds of religious freedom of choice.
(That’s even if the religious people said they wouldn’t ever be involved in those initiatives themselves, which is fine).

Most religions believe in some kind of individual conscience which allows a direct discussion between that individual’s conscience and their religious ‘higher power’. If religious people can recognise women as being (..just like men..) individuals with human dignity, then they can recognise that it’s not for any human being to dictate women’s individual conscience and their relationship with the higher power in respect of her participation in the woman-friendly initiative.

There’s also a practical political side to this. Most religious leaders will know that in some areas of life, what the leaders say believers should do and what the believers actually may do in their private life can be quite different. They will know that believers will be often quietly getting on with doing something more woman-friendly than whatever the leaders have said to do, and that in general, everything is still OK despite that.

Religious leaders have to consider many of these many believers could really be called ‘unbelievers’ just because they didn’t follow every single religious requirement, many which will have been changed by different leaders over the years?

So I’m trying to think how this translates for genderism. (I like OP’s term ‘gender identitarianism’ ).

Genderism is more like a leaderless cult, than like religions with a leadership hierarchy. Genderism has loads of changing rules and beliefs that are contradictory and it seems that individuals can remake the rules and move the goalposts for themselves and others to follow and that’s absolutely fine. It can also be a way of showing how committed you are to do that. So it is different in some ways and I find it harder to see ways in to that discussion for outsiders.

This is fascinating--I've been thinking about it too.

Try this as a response to apostasy:

www.transactual.org.uk/transphobia

For many years I have worked with groups of techie young men in IT start up environments.

I see parallels with gaming, super heroes and online presence. Magical worlds. Easy overlap with religion.

They are used to being anything they want online. They shape their avatar. They obey the rules of the universe. They care about canon. The story lines are often mediaeval and/or pseudo religious.

The female characters in these worlds are large breasted, tiny waisted Amazons as strong as any male or monster. The males are like Henry Cavill in the The Witcher, extreme alpha males. You can be anything you want except boring.

IT jobs are easy to find. In the pandemic more IT jobs were created as the online economy became even more important. In work they code things at a computer and something changes in the real world.

They don't hear no very often. Except from girls they fancy and their mums.

For most that's not a problem. They are still perfectly nice young men.

But for some, I don't see it as a big stretch for them to become obsessed with making their physical body match an idea they have in their heads. Expecting everyone else to play along with the rules of their universe would seem like a reasonable expectation. Those lads at Twitter managed to use coding to shape Twitter to seem to obey the rules of their universe. It does not surprise me.

I think the change back to reality will continue through men noticing unfairness in sports, detransitioners suing the arse off doctors and schools and middle-aged men in positions of influence deciding to end it from within using various court rulings as the excuse in the board room to make changes without debating the validity of the magical beliefs.

Whoops I was missed out a ‘how’ in my post above:

Religious leaders have to consider how many of these many believers could really be called ‘unbelievers’ just because they didn’t follow every single religious requirement, many which will have been changed by different leaders over the years?

StrippedFridge I have heard that identifying as trans is over-represented in IT fields, and I know of a few examples. Though I have also read that it may also have something to do with the link with ASD.

@MichelleofzeResistance

As this is happening more and more, I’m surprised it hasn’t been raised by religious communities?

I'm aware of a Muslim woman who has been talking to the council and local papers about toilets in the parks being turned gender neutral and having none that she can use. I think finally she was told that there would be a single sex toilet on the far side of one of the parks right away from the café etc where she could go - so males huge increase in access, females who can't access mixed sex due to protected characteristics, direct discrimination and less favourable treatment. But we're not talking about privileged, powerful women with loud voices and sharp elbows, and no one has cared that this woman has problems created by her losing facilities so that males can have their preferred, prioritised access to all the facilities.

Friends of mine from minority faiths and areas of known devout and orthodox traditions, I know simply won't be allowed by male relatives to go to activities such as yoga/swimming once those relatives know those 'women only' sessions will be mixed sex. At least one of those friends will try to keep this quiet as long as she is able. She would not be allowed to remain on a hospital ward overnight that was observably mixed sex, nor to receive certain types of medical care from a male person regardless of how the person identified themselves.

But she does not have much of a voice, the male people who hold authority over her do but are not much aware or interested and haven't much realised, and it would only be if the male community as a group significantly kicked off that there would be an issue the establishment would get very keen to listen to. In fact, many such males will have no problem with women having less access to such things as they needed a great deal of persuasion to allow attending women only things in the first place. And those things were created for such women to begin to have a means to access the world around them and to join the community and reduce their isolation. Their marginalisation. The contact with less rigid sex based codes.

Local Authorities actually threw a lot of money and planning at this for years. Until male people said they had a need and the female people were hurled aside as boring old hat. And we had idiot nineteen year olds in women officer positions with zero life experience or anything beyond their privileged middle class existence and male socialisation, who did excellent let them eat caking when this was pointed out. I think the comment was that women needed to just stop doing patriarchial religions if they got in the way of being woke.

I would really like Coleman et al to discuss whether they've ever met and talked to any such women. Or women who have gone to refuges. Or women who have been raped. And explained how, from their position of affluent and protected privilege, they feel entitled to throw these women's rights aside to make their lives worse to benefit some males whose needs could easily be met in other, fairer ways.

Thanks Michelle - this is very interesting. I hadn't thought about it not being in the women's interests to speak up about this. Bloody hell. I think someone needs to write about this in the papers and see if they can get some of these women to speak - hard I know, but this clash must be made more widely known.

I’ve been thinking about this thread with so many brilliant posts. It’s really important in everyone’s interests that democratic civil society and not populist politics can solve this clash of rights.