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 In a country where organised religion still holds huge power, blasphemy laws which have only been repealed over the last couple of years live on in the desire to cast out women who blaspheme against the gender identity religion from the community of the righteous.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.

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

I know it's not central to the discussion, but I could weep at the fact there are women in the UK whose lives are so circumscribed by religion, their male owners would let them suffer or die rather than have medical care.

This is a reality that has to be faced. Those women cannot just say no. Those faiths and people living them can't just be told to stop it. This is not going to change quickly, and to push the women of those communities back into their homes undoes a whole lot of the work that's been going on patiently for years to try and prevent cultural separations and ghettos.

To make things mixed sex to make males happier means a whole lot of problems for these women and for the wider picture, and it's reinforcing religious intolerance, separation, groups who are divided. Where is the benefit in this? There are other ways to meet those male people's needs that don't require this to happen.

[quote FloralBunting]I'm quite deliberately not posting in FWR much these days, but this is definitely my area, and I've posted a lot about over the past couple of years. This is a thread from earlier this year that might be helpful.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3881259-To-be-valid?pg=1[/quote]
That's also a really interesting thread FloralBunting.

Thanks for the link.

@SophocIestheFox

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.

Yes, I completely agree with you, Sophocles. The 'mind' is not outwith the body. It's not possible to have a 'female brain' in a male body or vice versa - if you have a female body, your brain is female as that's part of the sexed body, shares the same chromosomes, etc.

Also agree. Mind body dualism has been roundly debunked. Weird to see it rear its head and be adopted again with such enthusiasm.

Although, one TRA argument is that there's a study that shows via MRI that trans people's brains are more similar to the brains of the sex they identify with. I haven't had time to chase that up but it's well known that MRI is not always a reliable indicator of brain function, and also it begs a lot of questions about what that means, how it's measured, and whether is just applies to trans people, or maybe also to non-trans GNC people, in which case it wouldn't indicate anything. But it pops up a lot, again like creationists trying to find a "science" argument.

If it could be proved though via brain scans that e.g. a man can have a "female" brain and is therefore "provably" trans, that would be the end of self ID, according to that argument. Instead the brain scan would show if you were trans, and if you didn't have the markers, you wouldn't be trans. I don think they thought that one through.