Peter Boghossian

[TheCurrywurstPrion]

I found this fascinating video on Twitter. Philosopher Peter Boghossian was carrying out a thought experiment around the statement “There are only two genders” in the street outside the social work department of Portland University.

A group of people come out to challenge him. Watch what happens when it comes to the point that they cannot challenge him further and realise to continue means they will actually have to engage.

Yes, I first became aware of Boghossian through the Grievance Studies affair. (For those unfamiliar with it, the Wikipedia article is here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair ) Inevitably, this exposing of the intellectual deficiencies in modern day Gender Studies etc. led to Boghossian being investigated by way of an attempt to "cancel" him.

The other two participants in the Grievance Studies hoax, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, went on to write the excellent 2020 book Cynical Theories documenting the origins and rise of the various strands of Critical Theory. (I fully grant that Lindsay's opposition to "Social Justice Warriors" seems to have led him to adopt some uncomfortable political positions, such as endorsing Trump in the 2020 election.)

Yes, I noticed that! Just goes to show how mad it all it.

What @DrBlackbird said.

This whole self identity nonsense is so very compelling as young people have none of their own intellectually and just parrot the next thing that the rest of the tribe is claiming, without thinking.

Critical thinking is largely absent. We live in a world where ideas and feelings are more important than facts. And also harder to debate of course.

Ie If I think it, it's true.

So dangerous a road to go down and am flummoxed they don't see this.

This was a lovely example of him using the techniques from his book.

I loved it when he said "how do you know we're not queer?'

And when he said he was a gender studies scholar and they ignored it.

And when they asked him if he knew what social constructionism is 😂

He is so patient and it works.

At the end when he asked them what people who watched it would think, or if anyone would change their mind watching it was so revealing.

They hadn't considered this and didn't want to.

Yup, and in their employment tribunals Allison and Maya have both had to correct misgendering of people mentioned by the QCs cross-examining them. The irony hopefully wasn't lost on the judges/panels in both cases.

Speaking of which, aren't we due to get the decision from Maya's case any day now?

It was all interesting to watch but the girl not wanting to fit in a box then calling him a boomer was the cherry on top for me.

I do wonder how much of this is a class thing though. We're in a mostly working class/lowe middle class area and my son is one of the only one of his friends to go to university, none of his friendship group buy into this ideology and he has little patience for what he calls "The Alphabet People" it his uni. He describes them as very similar to the people in the video and he has gone to broaden his views not be dictated to.

I do wonder how this will all play out, on the one hand these people are not living in the real world, on the other these are our future policy makers and leaders. How will this affect the rest of society and how will they respond?

The term has been colonised. It's an accurate definition of what happens when, say, a PTSD sufferer is pushed into a yet another episode of days or weeks of absolute hell because something clicked that "start video" button which causes the relapses.

But now it is used for anyone feeling bad or even uncomfortable, and even in its proper usage it's not up to other people to alter everything about the reality so that these triggers don't exist. The solution is therapy for the sufferer (and more therapy and more therapy).

It's amazing when you have real world issues to deal with, you don't make up things to worry about. The problem with those people in the video is they have mistaken gender with personality. It the absence of the life struggles that help to form an interesting person, they have jumped on bandwagon that they think makes them seem unique and or fascinating. They are neither. The one who patronised Boghossan is a particular example of this.

I do wonder how this will all play out, on the one hand these people are not living in the real world, on the other these are our future policy makers and leaders. How will this affect the rest of society and how will they respond?

This lack of ability to deal with ideas outside ones they're comfortable with is just the result of the past few years of making sure children always feel safe and secure; that we must cushion them from every danger. So they have no learned way of coping with things they see as a threat and no awareness of how to deal with an unexpected situation. No educated adult, which presumably university students are, should be so upset by a sign that they have to go home and lock themselves in their room. They should be robust enough to be able to examine, what is to them, challenging ideas. But this didn't just happen in a vacuum. It's the result of years of protecting them to the nth degree.

As for the future, most will grow up and reality will intrude into their world and they will moderate their views. For instance, it's a fact that many young people at universities are strongly left wing but as they start to earn a living, raise a family and face realities, they tend to move to a more central left ground. They're just kids, they have some freedom and think they're grown up and know it all. In five years they'll realise just how little they know.

Love the non-binary person patronising quite a famous philosopher: "I have to explain this to the Boomer generation"

Does she KNOW that these despised ignorant boomer people made it possible for her to say this stuff? To reject gender as a social construct. Does she KNOW to whom she is speaking?

Some of us were doing it 40 years ago. She should be sitting at the feet of this man, and ALL THE WOMEN who have made it possible for her to be such a narcissist.

It's at about 11 minutes in.

And she should just read Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, or any other second wave writing - she would find we've been there, done that.

So many words spoken with so little meaning! Really frightening that articulate people don’t understand that debate involves listening as well as speaking. He on the other hand was a brilliant listener which is why he was able to move the discussion along, accept changes of direction, pick up inconsistencies in responses, pose questions . It’s interesting that as soon as it got to the point where he asked them a direct question about why they had come down from the roof they all moved away, because answering a question honestly that didn’t quite fit with their preconceived mindset suddenly set up mental discomfort and challenge. Which is what a university education is supposed to do………

He should gave told her she mis generationed him and he found that triggering! Joking aside, I seriously wonder how the generation of people who have to go home because one of their beliefs is challenged is expected to cope with life. They are screwed if they leave academia and head out into the real world.

This needs pointing out every time- it’s devaluing a very real issue.

Makes me wonder how they'll cope as social workers, that will seriously test their world view!

Came across to me that they were indoctrinated into a cult. One dimensional thinking, no independent analysis of what anyone else is saying, no respect for other views. Automatons at the robot handle of an ideology.

It is ok to have differing views. You have to be prepared to argue for them if others are against them, with intelligence, critical thinking, and empathy.

Strikes me that their college has a Stonewall behind their social work department at the very least. Can any of them think for themselves and argue on the basis of fact, not potential suicide and the need for professional support when someone sees a sign.

Mandodari:

Joking aside, I seriously wonder how the generation of people who have to go home because one of their beliefs is challenged is expected to cope with life. They are screwed if they leave academia and head out into the real world.

I have come across some who have not matured at all from this, even after working for up to five years, though this has been in areas of social justice activism.

One example concerned someone in an online discussion posting the link to a published and peer reviewed academic article which did not support the arguments of the group having that discussion.

The person posting the article wanted it to be dissected and disproved, but the very act of posting the link was interpreted as violence, as making the discussion an 'unsafe' space, and ultimately the poster of the link left or was forced to do so.

I was struck by it, and not just the lack of resiliency and the definition of 'unsafe' as having to do with needing to address opposite arguments, but the apparent inability of the participants to critically evaluate published research in the very area where they worked. I read the article to see if it was so bad that the reactions were justified. It wasn't, and it wasn't even terribly threatening to their beliefs.

I read this today from Transgender Trend - it's an account of a 6th former being literally hounded out of her school for having the temerity to tell a certain Baroness who is over keen on the activities of Stonewall / Mermaids etc that she respectfully disagreed with her views in the Q & A after the Baroness's performance.
It's an interesting snapshot of the pressure activists and groups put UK schools under and how easily young women are taking up the battle for intolerance and silencing legitimate views - just as seen in the Boghossian piece.

www.transgendertrend.com/transgender-ideology-in-schools/

We're some of these teachers and practicing social workers? The main lady speaking had the air of a lecturer.

It's worrying because these aren't kids on an arts course, these are current/future social workers who seem like very passionate TRAs or at least allies and would seemingly intervene with any non affirming parent or guardian of vulnerable children if issues arose. They desperately need retraining to be honest but it seems the US likes a cult and they are just not there yet in terms of debate.

I would also expect better of them than to stand from a distance yelling F.O. Like a bunch of children. Well done to the presenter for keeping coming back to this.

I do wonder how much of this is a class thing though.

It is very much a class thing. The vast majority of people buying into gender ideology are young, white, middle-class and heterosexual. A surprising number are female. I tend to think that it's a combination of peer pressure to be "kind" and to have liberal political views with the fact that they are very unlikely to be at the sharp end of gender ideology (eg they won't be going to prison or using domestic violence shelters, or at least they think they won't be).

It's quite sad, because this is a group that tends to do well at school and go to university. Yet they are quite incapable of thinking for themselves.

It is very much a class thing. And they are training to be social workers, so they will have caseloads of people who very much do not share their world view. How the hell are they going to cope when their clients completely reject their way of thinking? Will they be so triggered that they won't cope with the job?

How do they cope with everyday situations I wonder; I mean, when someone cuts you up in traffic or skips the queue or tells you something like, I think Game of Thones was crap, when you loved it, or when someone insists that The Bay City Rollers were the best band to come out of Scotland. The normal human interactions you have on a daily basis. Are they mentally robust enough to cope or will they just crumble. It seems cruel that society and/or parents have produced a group of individuals who can not deal with having any aspect of their reality questioned.

You've summed it up perfectly @nepeta
A real physical traumatic reaction has been colonised.