How do we undo the cultural change

[notassigned]

It is just 3 years since groups started springing up in the UK to counter transgender ideology and I see that the same is happening now in Canada, Ireland and elsewhere. But the pernicious effect of parts of the internet and of the ideology that has been embedded into schools mean that we have a generation of people up to at least age 25 who unquestioningly buy into it all. Optimistic as I am with results such as Keira's, I struggle to see how we essentially de-brainwash an entire generation.

Not to mention the ideological capture of 'respectable' organisations such a Amnesty, Liberty, The Labour Party, various unions and more.

There isn’t an entire generation who unquestioningly buy into it all. There are signs that some young people are not on board.

thetab.com/uk/edinburgh/2018/08/30/83-per-cent-of-voters-are-against-pronoun-badges-in-tab-poll-47366

But as to how to undo the cultural change.... I had a discussion with my daughter regarding this a couple of days ago. We talked about the “six words” vote in Scotland and she said that most people she knew, when faced with a defined situation, such as traumatised women being treated by men who say they are women, they would “get it” immediately. But when I asked her what that would mean vis-a-vis JK Rowling, her impression is that mainstream media had painted JK Rowling as transphobic and that many would believe the hype without bothering to examine the situation.

So my conclusion is that my children’s generation are not so brainwashed that they don’t understand the issues, but that perhaps there needs to be more sunlight and perhaps more work put in on revealing the fact that some of the media that they tend to follow unquestioningly is not a reliable source.

Just read your second post. I found the recent furore around Amnesty Ireland on Twitter heartening. The position they took up was so inappropriate, and the voices that rose up in opposition were (to my mind) sincere and credible. I do think we’re entering a phase where the Overton window has moved and for them to continue to defend their position is looking increasingly unreasonable. I think their own arguments will be their downfall. We have to keep on making them debate.

Don't forget that change is no bad thing. It always needs some moderation but moving equality and environment up the agenda is a good thing.

These latest moves to change are just a swing of the pendulum., It has been travelling towards extremism for many years and I think it may now have reached its peak because it doesn't carry along the majority. Real change must do that. The changes brought about because of the 60's were the ones society accepted (not always easily) but they were the ones that didn't cause conflict for the majority. An ideology does not see its extremes until it confronts the real world. Most young people will realise that when they butt up against moderate society (that's the experience of most students), those who hate moderation, will become employed by Amnesty et al.

Must have another coffee.

I have always thought that the overreach will be what swings this pendulum back. Targeting children although 'successful' in terms of gaslighting a generation has of course ended up in the courts with a damming verdict.
Sport is next with research evidencing what everyone 'knows' and can see - that biological males have an advantage over women in countless sports.
Despite all the linguistic contortions and untruths demanded of the media, there were enough courageous journalists who refused to play the silencing game when they saw the evidence abuse stacking up.
Health care - with the recent Scottish insistence that men must be allowed to examine rape survivors against their wishes if the men identify as women - the vote showed how unacceptable that was to a majority.

I suspect that, just as adults change our minds as we move through our 20s onwards, younger people will start realising that trans rights should not mean the end of women's sport, prisons, hospital wards and common standards of child safeguarding etc. And there will (eventually) be a time where the 'sacred caste' ideology erodes and everyone is expected to appreciate the rights of others and acknowledge where they conflict.

I hope.

I have hope. My young teen daughter (who is very "alt culture," anime-loving, has a close friend who recently switched from being lesbian to transboi, etc) raised her concerns about online cancellation last night over dinner.

The emerging view in her group is that EVERYONE they like seems to end up getting cancelled at some point - bands, authors, brands, online celebs, etc. "No-one is safe," she commented gloomily.

We had quite an interesting all-family chat about human fallibility, self-righteousness, being "good enough" vs being "pure," and finally about what might motivate people to join a cancellation pile-on. It was heartening to see how quickly the kids were able to see that motivations could range from genuine offence, to jealousy/aggression, to fear of being cancelled yourself if you don't rush to stick the boot in, and so on.

I think this upcoming generation will not be quite as credulous as the previous one, as they're seeing the impact of these "right side of history" mobs and are starting to see them as just another form of bullying.

I do have hope, I feel like the momentum is gathering in the right direction as the information is getting out there.
The Mail on Sunday has a circulation of nearly 1 million readers (it seems to be one of the biggest?) and to have a front page headline (see other thread) has to be indicative of good things.

I would imagine that a lot of people who are uninformed on the issues but just ‘want to be kind’ and ‘who does it hurt if we use pronouns/share loos etc’ will start to see more things that make them stop and engage their brain a bit and see the real damage that is happening.

As pp says hopefully this will sharpen up people’s critical thinking skills - I know mine are enormously improved.

I would agree that many young people will change their opinions as they grow up and understand some of the issues better.

I am 40 and was firmly a liberal feminist. Was unquestionaling supportive of the trans agenda until about 5 years ago when I started to feel uncomfortable with some of the more extreme demands. This has led me to consider feminism in a far more radical light, not just on this subject but surrogacy, prostitution, how society is set up. So I would agree with other posters that we may find the pendulum will swing back further the other way. I was guilty of thinking all the right for women had been won and was very complacent. I just put up with every day sexism in my life and ignored it. This issue has let me to meet older women I would never have had the opportunity to speak to before and gain a better understanding of their experience and why we must protect the rights they fought for in the 60s and 70s.

We may see a new generation of radical feminists! Definitely the recent Scottish discussion about sex v gender for rape victims was an example. Women fought for these services but have to re fight to keep them sex specific which I think for most people (as evidenced by the voting) is shameful.

I raised my daughters with critical thinking skills from the cradle! DD1 actually runs a gender critical autistics group and has made public speeches on the subject, plus published online articles.
She has many young friends who are fully aware of the risk that gender ideology poses to women’s rights. Don’t despair - all the signs are that the public are growing wise to the gaslighting and propaganda. You have only to look at the ratio in any newspaper’s comments thread.

I'm a current university student myself, and it is a very complicated topic. One of the massive issues is that throughout school we were taught so much about rights and being kind to people, that if something is put forward as being 'progressive' the almost default position is to mindlessly support it. Now, because so much of the trans stuff is so explicitly bonkers, a lot of people dont personally buy, but due to the massive dangers of getting fired or kicked out of education for being 'phobic' in whatever way, most stay quiet.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-lincolnshire-51501202
Perhaps more worrying the police have 120 000 none crime hate incidents, which will show up on advanced DBS checks, if someone perceives you to be offensive. The term gets bandied around lots, but this is Orwellian, and it speaks to a far wider shutdown of free speech and thought which permeates everywhere though our society, and quite honestly, it scares me.

We are a nation too used to free speech to allow anyone to take that freedom away. Student133 you are nearer to the coalface but many one this board have seen life and seen how cultish ideology never gets ahead of the game, though this one has done particularly well using stealth. Stealth however, is a poor strategy because once mainstream gets wind, the backlash can be far worse than what would have happened by just arguing a good case

I struggle to see how we essentially de-brainwash an entire generation.

I teach 11-18s. We've had a big cluster of ROGD but even at it's height I don't think the vast majority of kids bought it. It's about stopping the rot- reality will undo the nonsense once the input is removed.

I think a key target is to generate the same challenge to social transition that the Bell Judgement is going to cause to PBs. Telling a 12YO girl they are a boy (as in my class) is not healthy. If that child genuinely does have GD then psychological treatment should be by qualified specialists- not the local CAHMS.

@highame though I hope you're true about your first point,from what I've seen that no longer exists in universities or the public sphere. Though you can talk about whatever you like in private, discussion of anything like this publicly is quite frankly dangerous unless you are in an incredibly comfortable position, as the odds of you losing your job are quite possible. I would not be posting this under my real name, as there is a good chance I'd get reprimanded by my university. Unfortunately my study of history though my course has shown me that the default position of humanity is tribal and cultish in nature, so the recent drive in intersectionality and identity politics across the west is so damaging. Though I hope we return to a culture of individuality, I fear this may not happen, as the root is so far in to our institutions I dont know if it is possible to remove.

It's very scary Student133. The situation is very similar when working in public services. I'm often a bit when I read on here people stating that they wouldn't call a transgender woman she but only refer to them by their birth sex. Not having a go at anyone but that's just not an option if you work in the public sector.
But I am cautiously optimistic that the courts and laws will begin to rein in the lunacies and there will be a drip drip effect of the removal of much public funding for obviously ideological / biased research. How far that will stretch I cannot imagine - this is one massive gravy train for a lot of people.

Embodiment.

People are understanding more and more that we are our bodies, and the "embodiment" movement is starting to build up steam. It's a very pronouny culture from what I've seen, at least where people are doing stuff online . But I think eventually as the concepts and practices of embodiment become more and more mainstream, the self-evident logical contradiction, and the actual impact of people becoming more and more attuned to and identified with their bodies, will sweep away genderist bullshit.

I think we can't think about this from a "reversing the cultural changes" perspective. It will be something new coming in. There is a positive momentum towards embodiment in the wider culture, and it's a natural next step for "wellness" movements. There are enough practical benefits to embodiment that it can appeal to individualistic, selfish, virtue-signalling types who are drawn to the trans movement.

So anyway that's my bet for the new trend that will wash all this bullshit away.

And when I said "trend" above I think I was being too flippant actually - there are quite profound intellectual consequences from really getting to grips with the idea that "we are our bodies." It's an idea that strikes right at the heart of all the queer theory and other wokist bullshit that's been capturing academia. It also doesn't make transhumanism and fantasies of uploading our brains into the cloud and whatever look too good. But it's also, more and more, self-evidently true.

And the profound intellectual consquences, once people start grappling with them, will lead to profound cultural consequences downstream. I'm optimistic today I think! But I bought into TRA bullshit and other intellectual/cultural trends way before they became mainstream, I hope I might be ahead of the curve on this one too!

I’m currently listening to an audiobook from C.J Sansom’s Shardlake series set during the reign of Henry VIII. It goes to great lengths to get across the feelings of fear and paranoia brought about by a febrile atmosphere of religious intolerance, where an accusation of heresy, of having certain beliefs, or the possession of certain books, can be potentially ruinous or even deadly.
The parallels to today are striking.

I teach 11-18s. We've had a big cluster of ROGD but even at it's height I don't think the vast majority of kids bought it. It's about stopping the rot- reality will undo the nonsense once the input is removed.

This is a good point and encouraging that a lot of kids just don’t buy it - pp on another thread reported a youngish child telling her about a kid in their class that they were supposed to refer to as a girl but everyone knew they were really a boy (sorry can’t quite remember the details).

Sadly, I think it is the vulnerable kids that are struggling with various life issues that are the most susceptible and believe the grown ups that are betraying them by promising a fix for their difficulties.

On the hopeful side, this is such a big scandal brewing that when it all breaks, hopefully the ‘be kind’ advocates will see the reality and rapidly distance themselves from anything remotely associated with the ideology.

Their allegiance is generally not based on any well researched or deeply held belief so there will be little to keep them held to that belief when the tide turns.

I think it is the vulnerable kids that are struggling with various life issues that are the most susceptible

Every one of them was vulnerable in some way. There was one child who might well have been genuinely dysphoric and intending to transition permanently but several were certainly just looking for acceptance or attention.

(I have trans family and knew several kids well so while I would not presume to diagnose dysphoria I can certainly say that some were not classically dysphoric and had other issues which were ignored)

My experience convinces me that inappropriate social transition is probably worse than PBs.

I think part of the problem, and why so many people have been happy to dismiss the impact of this ideology on female victims/survivors of male violence, is that our society treated those women so appallingly in the first place.

Disclosing that you are a rape victim all too often leads to you being treated with contempt, blamed, shamed, disbelieved and silenced.

It rarely results in being able to access the trauma-informed care you need, or in public sector organisations complying with the public sector equality duty let alone making the reasonable adjustments you need. And good luck accessing reasonable adjustments in the private/third sectors.

People blame you for being traumatised. It's your fault for being raped, it's your fault for being traumatised, and it's your fault for not getting "over" it. You're even shamed for daring to use the neutral descriptor "victim" to describe your situation. Because that makes you weak and a failure and shows you're choosing to suffer.

That's why all the pleas to consider the impact of obliterating single sex services and respecting women's consent have fallen and continue to fall on deaf ears.

People don't give a shit about rape victims and they sure as hell don't give a shit about enabling them to access society and healthcare without being further harmed and retraumatised. The damage done to rape victims every day by people failing to care for them appropriately is horrendous and shames us as a society.

That needs to change too.

For instance, I have yet to see the BBC giving a platform to a rape victim to comment on how unsafe she feels being forced to use unisex toilets.

Or about how she was so traumatised she attempted suicide after a hospital placed her on a mixed sex ward and refused to listen to her when she attempted to withhold consent from being examined by male staff.

If we're talking about people feeling unsafe due to mixed sex / single sex provision, why are female victims of male violence never ever ever listened to or given any consideration or platform?

Why don't we matter to anyone?

The topic of this thread is a really important issue, and the much more difficult one to deal with. I agree with pp who said that a reversal isn't the right way to think about it - there will be a new phase not the same as the old one.

I thought about setting up feminist clubs for girls, or producing materials which could be used. Not specifically against any other point of view, but just promoting the kind of standard feminist principles which were uncontroversial (within feminism) until a few yrs ago - to help teenagers to understand that the things that are expected of us - femininity, stereotypes - are cultural, even if they are very ingrained.

Student133 Have you done any gender history as part of your degree? How is it coming across?

Just wanted to add - it's obvious now that the usual checks within democracy have failed to prevent a particular belief system from being adopted into policy by all the main institutions. The law courts are the only way to do this. We have to keep going with that, funding the cases etc. Slowly, each of the institutions which have to follow the law will have to change their approach, and so how children are treated, what they are told at school & elsewhere and on media aimed at them will have to slowly change too.
The Internet will remain a wild west of ideas though. Partly a strength, partly a horror show.

@allmywhat

Embodiment.

People are understanding more and more that we are our bodies, and the "embodiment" movement is starting to build up steam. It's a very pronouny culture from what I've seen, at least where people are doing stuff online . But I think eventually as the concepts and practices of embodiment become more and more mainstream, the self-evident logical contradiction, and the actual impact of people becoming more and more attuned to and identified with their bodies, will sweep away genderist bullshit.

I think we can't think about this from a "reversing the cultural changes" perspective. It will be something new coming in. There is a positive momentum towards embodiment in the wider culture, and it's a natural next step for "wellness" movements. There are enough practical benefits to embodiment that it can appeal to individualistic, selfish, virtue-signalling types who are drawn to the trans movement.

So anyway that's my bet for the new trend that will wash all this bullshit away.

I feel like I need to know more about this. Where & what can I read? What shall I search apart from embodiment?

Is this coming out of disability studies/activism, or feminism, or both? It strikes me that disability studies has produced some of the main resistance to the gender identity movement & its culture for children (Michele Moore and one or 2 other academics) but the response to her speaking out shows that a big chunk of that field are fully signed up and aggressive in their loyalty to it.

There needs to be more awareness of what exactly this movement stands for. ANY man who says he’s a woman is treated as one. When I’ve spoken to a couple of millennials recently they say things like ‘ oh but sex offenders claiming to be women aren’t really trans women’. Obviously that’s irrelevant.

Have to say in my small sample size I was shocked how fully they have bought into this ideology. These are women who work in the charity sector and espouse strong feminist views.