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.

@user131426479642

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?

This may be from not caring, but I also think there is something else going on in these instances.

I have noticed in our mainstream left leaning media a tendency to have a strong narrative line on certain issues, which they won't deviate from under any circumstances. Trans issues is one of them, race issues another, and indigenous rights another.

I had been aware that the reporting on these was a little one dimensional, but I had tended to assume that it was at least in good faith. Until a year or so ago, when there was a controversy attached to one being reported on in a very partisan way, but the whole thing seemed really odd. As the days went on it seemed more and more clear that they were deliberately not asking certain questions, and that by doing so, they were potentially screwing over the very people whose interests they normally supported unquestioningly.

After a few weeks it unraveled a little and some moderate right media asked the questions, and it became clear the story did not support the usual narrative the left wanted - but they also could not support the other side. And the story was completely dropped.

It's not that they hated the people represented by the other viewpoint or didn't care - but there was a real substantial disagreement about the issue among the people concerned, and that wasn't part of the narrative they wanted to present.

There is a meta-narrative around how everything fits together, and if something doesn't fit, it just can't be mentioned. It's very disturbing.

I think that legal change can follow cultural change, as with gay marriage, but here it is more likely that cultural change will follow legal change, both judicial reviews challenging lots of ways that the law has been misrepresented, or organisations have been working ahead of the law.

More than that, I think that Keira's case may well set off a train of litigation over the dangers of transition, and I imagine it is possible there may be cases brought (unfortunately) by women and children attacked by predatory men in women's spaces. If doctors, schools, companies, start to fear being sued, they may rather less willing to push the genderist line.

One forgets how close the country, especially on the progressive left, came to welcoming PIE. Or how dominant McCarthyism was in the US. Lots of people just lied and hid what they'd gone along with in the past, one these episodes were over, and have managed to rehabilitate themselves. Cultural change does happen.

One forgets how close the country, especially on the progressive left, came to welcoming PIE. Or how dominant McCarthyism was in the US. Lots of people just lied and hid what they'd gone along with in the past, one these episodes were over, and have managed to rehabilitate themselves. Cultural change does happen.

People also sometimes speak as if there are lines that would never be crossed, as if our humanity would stop us doing it. It might, but there are no guarantees, IMO.

I was talking to someone the other day about the changes to the laws around children and euthanasia in the Netherlands, and she was saying something along those lines. I pointed out to her that there have been plenty of cultures historically that have euthanised or abandoned children who were seen as medically imperfect, deformed, or just unwanted, and even insisted on it. It seemed right to them to do so. Why would we be somehow immune from similar kinds of thinking? I seemed to be that her assumption was that they were morally compromised, and since we are more enlightened that isn't a danger.

I agree, there are no guarantees, culturally.

But it is clear that in the UK at least, what has been happening has been technically illegal. And the judges at least are of an age where they are unlikely to be woke (though they may be misogynistic).

And each court case brings lots of sunlight, lots of articles that reveal what has been going on behind closed doors to the nation.

Sport is another area where the lie of changing sex is immediately, visually apparent, and no education is necessary to spot the unfairness.

Bookmarking for later!

Very interesting responses. I think the comments about social transition hit the nail on the head. It is obvious, when you think about it, to try and stop the rot where it starts. This wouldn't capture the ROGD craze but if we could highlight the danger of social transition and the sheer stereotyped nature of it through a legal judgement that would be a huge step.

We have got to get lobby groups and queer guidance and books that tell kids they can choose whether to be a boy or girl out of primary schools now.

Children told from a young age that they are in the wrong bodies will unquestioningly accept it in the way children brought up to believe in a religion accept it. Rowing back from it all and saying 'it was a mistake' is more than most people can do.

Persistent I'm in a couple of RSE teachers groups and sadly TT are (very wrongly) framed as transphobic. It's incredibly frustrating.

Guidance may have an impact; but until the charities and external providers are regulated with specific and explicitly spelt out safeguarding dos and don'ts around this issue, it's going to take a long time.

Also, so many people have written or updated their books or schemes to be timed for sept 2020 or before, the dfe ruling came very late and at a time when most teachers were gritting their teeth over going into full time schools.

A lot of curriculum work was done during lockdown in many primary schools (I certainly did) using what was then available.

So many charities have inserted themselves into education; I now get spidey senses twitching weekly with various things that pop up.

Decent media coverage of the cases and issues are important. The mail article was brilliant in how Mrs A had experienced the contagion for her daughter. Sadly few teachers would read the mail. The guardian is their usual go to, if anything. I don't think many young teachers are interested in news tbh.

If these issues were spelt out in safeguarding guidance that would go to staff meeting level, we'd get somewhere.

The example of what happened at little teds nursery is given repeatedly in safeguarding training for example.

Agreed MammothMashup it's very frustrating that the PSHE Association have been so comprehensively captured. They feature in TT's accounts of dreadful practice.
Safeguarding is the way to go to expose what is happening but to date there's only the Child J judgement that comprehensively details what happens to a child when adults fete an ideology rather than protect a child. Maybe TT & SSA will be working on something that details how this issue is a safeguarding issue as the judgement lays the basis for this?

I think any threat of legal action will help stop schools promoting this ideology. A pupil suing their school for unthinkingly agreeing with them and encouraging them in their gender identity? Schools don’t insist other students must call someone with anorexia fat, for example.

If schools were willing and able to teach this as an ideology, a belief system, and counter it with facts, then perhaps that might offset online disinformation and encouragement.

I’d also like to see some kind of campaign about puberty, particularly female puberty, explaining that ‘negative feelings’ are normal. I’d like to see women talking about their feelings then and now and reassuring girls.

I’d like Stonewall’s legitimacy questioned and their position as the go-to source of information about trans removed.

Culturally, I think things will follow naturally after legal action and ‘pro-body’ pushes (I don’t know what word to use there). Gradually, gender Identity will be seen as a regressive thing, more akin to conservative ideals than modern thinking.

That would be good Persistent. I think they/ we need more well known orgs involved too, especially eg the nspcc. To have welly. If that makes sense. It must be embedded at the highest point though, eg government.

Excellent analysis of this yesterday from TT:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/keira-bell-court-judgment-schools/

Actually, being gender critical fits in perfectly with the existing body positivity movement, which people are widely aware of and support. So it's not that a huge cultural change is needed to get people to agree that loving the body you're in, instead of changing it with plastic surgery, is a good thing.

Likewise, lots of woke people would agree that sexist stereotypes are bad - see eg Stella Creasy this week complaining about her infant daughter being expected to wear pink.

Just the woke crew have been sold branding that says the opposite of the truth. And haven't yet figured out the incoherence of a position that says sexist stereotypes are bad, but gender ideology is good. Or figured out that if they support body positivity, it doesn't make sense to also support telling children their bodies are wrong unless they get plastic surgery. The cognitive dissonance is massive.

It's just about branding.

In reality, gender identitarianism = body negativity and support for regressive sexist stereotypes.

But this truth has been hidden by a highly successful campaign to prevent women and allies from pointing this out, via 'no debate', and via conversely branding anyone who reveals the reality of gender identitarianism as 'T*s'.

The attempts at gaslighting young people to prevent them spotting the sexism and regressive nature of gender identitarianism has also been backed up by both physical violence and coordinated attacks on social media and on the jobs of those who object.

Like all regressive positions, it requires censorship, violence and threats to maintain its position.

So the branding remains strong and many people don't think to look behind it. Or they're too scared to say anything publicly .

Gradually, gender Identity will be seen as a regressive thing, more akin to conservative ideals than modern thinking.
..... which is exactly what it is, of course, reliant on the most regressive stereotypes. The problem is, this is obvious, and yet people have been able to keep their eyes shut and refuse to see it. Let’s hope there’s a limit to how long people can persist with the cognitive dissonance.

Actually, being gender critical fits in perfectly with the existing body positivity movement, which people are widely aware of and support. So it's not that a huge cultural change is needed to get people to agree that loving the body you're in, instead of changing it with plastic surgery, is a good thing.

Very encouraging. I feel inspired by this.

user131426479642 I am so sorry that this has happened to you and I agree with your posts entirely. It is a scandal.

I think key to culture change is keeping talking about women’s issues and communicating these taking into account perspectives from as wide a group of women as possible.

I also think the insistence on very robust corporate governance is going to be key as a part of reversing institutional capture. That won’t be achieved by pointing unfairness and pointing to the right thing to do in itself. because they really don’t care, but it will be done by bringing legal cases. It will be done by staff being clued up enough to be pointing out the huge legal and reputational and financial risks of following and promoting this dogma. That needs big legal cases and big media attention and keeping talking.

Also we should continue to press MPs to examine specific issues via the Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry route and maybe post-Bell there will be more interest in doing that taking into account GC issues. Ideally a public inquiry but I think that is so costly it’s a very long shot that it would happen and if it did it would be years away so we need to keep going, all individually doing what we can.

Excellent point Kesstrel

.... which is exactly what it is, of course, reliant on the most regressive stereotypes. The problem is, this is obvious, and yet people have been able to keep their eyes shut and refuse to see it. Let’s hope there’s a limit to how long people can persist with the cognitive dissonance

That’s the whole success of it - managing to override people’s perception by comparison with gay rights/racism; by getting the left wing onside; by ‘taking over’ major organisations; by promoting the false idea that if you don’t believe in Gender Identity, you’re a hateful person who wishes harm on trans people and wants them treated as ‘less than’ in some way; by using social media to get young teens on-side....

It’s clever really - and demonstrably effective. But the whole edifice is built on sand and will eventually come tumbling down.

Kesstrel's deletion proves it will be a loooong time before we see that happening.

Kesstrel's deletion proves it will be a loooong time before we see that happening.

Yes, I must say I really didnt think there was anything objectionable in what I said. But I do understand why Mumsnet feels vulnerable about that topic at the moment. The Times, for example, however, would not be vulnerable in that way, and I think we will eventually see them address this topic - though I agree it may be a while yet!

The other thing I think could be a big factor is when more people start to realise the true desistance rate among children when they aren't medicated - and of course following Keira Bell's case this is likely to become a lot more evident, as there should be far fewer children (if any) starting puberty blockers in future, in the UK at least.

If you look at all the schools' packs and promotional materials, and all the talk about "trans children", living their "true identity" and needing to be affirmed as having been "always a boy/girl really" - this all falls apart dramatically when people start to realise that for every "trans child" or every new "transgirl" allowed to use the girls' changing room, there is an 80%-plus chance (without blockers) that they will no longer be calling themselves trans, or a girl, by the time they finish puberty. So schools, for example, need to face up to what happens if they tell the girls they MUST allow this person to see them undressing as they are "a girl too really", for several years, and the boy then realises he actually never stopped being a boy... and to how much harder the affirmative/social transition approach makes this, both for the child who is statistically likely to change their mind in a few years, and for the other children being gaslit in the meantime. And I do think the questions arising from this are likely to make people think more about adult transition too, in various ways.

Something that gives me hope is looking at the results of that recent yougov poll about the public’s attitude to trans issues. The poll revealed that beliefs about trans stuff appear to be very thin and poorly integrated - they are surface beliefs that are not truly or deeply held. For example, on its face, the majority of British people support “gender self identification”. But at the same time hardly anyone agrees that there should be no medical gate keeping, and the public overwhelmingly thinks you should be required to live as the chosen gender for the years. In other words , the public say they support self id but when asked if they agree with the actual specifics of self Id they strongly disagree- they want what we currently have, which is medical hate keeping . For another example, most of the public overwhelmingly say that trans women are women. But when they are asked if trans women should be in women’s sports or changing rooms, the support evaporates. Overwhelmingly the public says no. This highlights a contradiction - trans women are women but shouldn’t be treated as women.

What I think this shows is people are very good at superficially virtue signalling their support for trans issues, but aren’t fully committed. It could also highlight a lack of understanding. People vaguely support self id because that’s the right thing to do, but have no understanding in what that means. What this entails, I think, is that the actual strength of support for trans issues is really quite weak.

@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.

To go right back to the start of the thread. Canada:

nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-teen-transgender-treatment-boom-life-saving-services-or-dangerous-experimentation

'Mary has always known her daughter was a little different and never had an issue with that. The teenager was in elementary school when she came out first as bisexual, then as lesbian.

But what happened when the girl entered Grade 9 at an Ontario high school was unexpected. The young woman gravitated naturally toward other LGBTQ students, including a transgender boy. The school leapt into action to accommodate him, making sure a gender-neutral bathroom was available.'

Someone said on twitter that that was the first time the issue has been dealt with sympathetically in Canadian main stream papers. If so, that's huge. There was just a similar article in Australia. The beginnings of a recognition that there's an issue.