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.

I've found myself contemplating the idea of things being "triggering" a lot recently, because of a friend withdrawing from my life on the basis that seeing me was triggering.

Gosh that must be painful @Manicsfan

As I understand it, people with genuine PTSD or who have genuinely been through harmful experiences, can be triggered by things that might appear to be random. That is, unexpectedly, and not necessarily always a replication of the actions that harmed them originally.

I'm from a much more stiff upper lip generation, but I was once violently mugged in my street (just a few doors from my house) - I was beaten about the face until I was so off-guard that the mugger grabbed my bag. I cam through the experience, although there are still situations/people I will cross the road to avoid.

I found myself thinking "Well that wan't too bad. At least I wasn't raped." (typical female minimising male violence, I guess).

But a few weeks later, I was in a gym circuits class, and one of the stations was a Boxercise type station. I found I just DID NOT want to do that - having been beaten about the head, I just couldn't do it, even in play/training. So I told the instructor this, and I've told instructors and my personal trainers ever since. I don't do Boxercise or combat style classes at the gym.

But I don't demand that my gym stop holding Boxercise classes, nor do I hyperventilate watching others do sparring etc on the floor of my gym.

I suppose I was 'triggered' in that gym class, but I dealt with it like a grown-up! And it was a pretty minor triggering in the scheme of things.

But pedagogical research suggests that "trigger warnings" are not necessarily effective, and we can't really predict what will trigger people who've been through trauma. I think also that part of being a responsible grown up is trying to deal with the after-effects of trauma, and get on with one's life. Although I realise this is very dependent on one's material circumstances. Very dependent.

In terms of the sign, there are only two genders: feminine and masculine. It's the set of social expectations applied to the two sexes, that tells us how we're supposed to behave. This is the thing feminists have been fighting against for over a century. All the other millions of "genders" are actually personalities.

Re this being a class thing:

There's a brilliant thread by a former MNHQ person, now free to say what she really thinks wonder if she posts here now?

Brilliant thread:
WTFoucault on class & gender identity ideology

I'll own up to using 'triggered' in the past somewhat trivially. There's a whole level of hyperbole around the use of language; trauma, violence, unsafe, erasure and I'm sure lots of others.

The story (linked above) of the girl forced to leave her school is appalling. I'd wish she could sue but after Rachel and Bristol....

It's odd tra's are so worried about hypothetical harm they're causing actual harm. There's been a story in the Guardian about right wingers piling onto a student over removing a picture of the Queen. The Guardian rightly condemns these rw, the young man seems to have been put through it. Are the left really so blind to the hypocrisy? Well, obviously they are.

Yes. I agree about trauma bring colonised.

What amazed me is that they refused to even hear his view. He listened patiently to them, giving everyone a chance to speak, but when it was his turn they literally shielded themselves from what he was saying. Weird.

And they arrogantly assumed that they were "teaching" him. He responded generously and openly to that, in contrast to their responses to him.

That was great thanks!

I fear for the future of social work in the US.
Masterclass in socratic questioning and all round class from the Professor.
Lots of words but very little depth or genuine curiosity from the mob.

These are the "educated" people who will lead our institutions in the future. I find that terrifying.

”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.”

I think it’s worse than overprotection, though that plays its part. If you tell a young person over and over, that if they see or hear something challenging they will be unable to cope, and should feel justified in removing themselves from the situation, then all chance of that person discovering that they CAN cope is lost.

Given that the best known treatment for irrational fears (and there are few fears more irrational than fearing something written on a sign) is exposure therapy, it seems obvious to me that what they are doing is encouraging these people into fear, instead of holding their hand (metaphorically or literally) and helping them face it.

Imagine, if you will, that when the young person saw the sign, the lecturer had said to the student, “why don’t we go down and talk to him” then the student would have learned a valuable lesson, because there was nothing whatsoever unsafe in that situation.

This is a manufactured problem, and not just by over-protective parents.

I doubt they will. Sooner or later the women supporting this crap will discover they are the 'wrong' type of woman when they go forward for jobs. Wait till they see that female shortlists are made up of natal males, or its easier to hire the bloke and just say its not sexism, he is non binary or identifies as a woman, or its easier to hire the trans women that won't be on maternity leave, or when they are considered to be too emotional in comparison to trans women, or not as reliable or any of the other stereotypes that feminists have been trying to stamp out for years. Then they will cry about discrimination and expect the rest of womankind to sort out the mess they have helped make. If they honestly think that the aim of the trans movement is advance the rights of women than they are fools.

The way they bandy around the words

causing harm
triggering
emotional support
trauma

and so on - you’d think they were discussing something genuinely potentially very very distressing. I just don’t understand how these precious snowflakes will be able to function in the outside world. I am embarrassed on their behalf.

Thank you for posting this. Enlightening and depressing.

Excellent post - couldn’t agree with you more.

Sorry - am referring to @TheCurrywurstPrion post from 21.10.

Fucking hell. it's incredible how brainwashed they all are!

Watching that made me remember that there was a fascinating interview on Bari Weiss' podcast at the start of the year with a Columbia University psychology Professor about how PTSD has become over diagnosed, he talks a lot about the idea of triggering etc and its just a really fascinating interview

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/humans-are-more-resilient-than-you-think/id1570872415?i=1000547660535

This is the book he wrote about PTSD and trauma www.amazon.co.uk/End-Trauma-Science-Resilience-Changing/dp/1541674367/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UDRPZBZWZTAZ&keywords=bonanno&qid=1652565554&sprefix=bonanno%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1

Friend of mine is a social worker, she doesn't go a week in her job without being called a name because of her appearance (she has nothing in particular that someone could pick on but they still find something). From what she has told me social work seems like a job that requires incredible mental toughness and being able to not take things personally

Fascinating stuff.

The trying to listen and reframe what people are telling you is something I do naturally, not just as a technique, I genuinely do want to understand, to get to the core of what they actually think, to see if it has any merit. Maybe it's the mathematical training, I always want to find and test the weak points in any position I hold.

A lot of people on here do the listen and reframe thing actually. When we ask people how they do actually define a woman if not through biology. When we ask people what they actually mean by gender if neither biology nor stereotypes. We're always casting around for a way to phrase gender beliefs in a way that at least makes logically coherent sense even if we don't agree. We keep asking the questions.

It seems to come up against a brick wall when it comes to gender. People react hostilely. They assume we're not asking in good faith. I think that might be because the question triggers cognitive dissonance. They don't really know what they believe themselves, only that they must believe it to be good people, and if you come close to that uncertainty it hurts them.

Not sure we're ever going to get to the how do you know that/scale part of the plan.

I found this so painful to watch. They assumed that a hypothetical question someone was asking for a thought exercise - which he clarified multiple times could be any statement, 'should we defund the police' or whatever - was his actual belief and launched into an argument about how his age, race and/or sex makes him wrong, rather than actually realising what he said and having the tiniest shred of intellectual curiosity about what his intention with the confidence scales etc actually was!

I find "What would it take to change your beliefs to THIS' a really interesting question and more people should ask it of themselves more often.

They can't even answer what the 'harm' is of asking "Do you think there are two genders?" - they assume that people who will answer in one way rather than another will feel bad to the extent that they started talking about suicidal ideation.

They came down to feel pleased that they could tell someone they thought they knew better than him. That was it. To get that feeling.

I can't even bear to watch this sort of thing, and haven't watched this one. The few I have seen bits of are just too horrible.

I actually feel like this too, it's the same sort of feeling of despair I get when I hear e.g. people just chatting a stream of casual racism in a queue or something. It's the predictability and self-righteousness of it, you know that by giving a key word 'gender' you will hear a load of sexist misogynist rubbish that is like a stupid person's idea of what a clever argument is.

Totally shocking, that poor young woman. The author of the article is absolutely correct when he writes: Groups like Mermaids like to advise us on our ‘duty of care’ when dealing with the issue of transgender in our schools. This has an intimidating effect on senior management. Isn’t it more the case that by kow towing to ideology and by inviting in activists and propagandists as opposed to genuine educators we are ‘failing’ in our duty of care? If there had been no ideologue activist speaker that day our young student would most likely still be at school preparing for her A levels.

Comparisons to discussing religion with someone who has very different beliefs comes to my mind when I watch that video. I've had a similar conversation in the past, after reading through the Bible and then trying to talk about it with a very rigid Christian, though he was alone so it wasn't quite so asymmetric. But when something, whether secular or not, is a question of faith, people get very upset and defensive or they try to convert you with a small set of approved tenets.

When the conversion doesn't happen anger might follow or perhaps a pseudo-pious wish that the other person might one day see the light (receive Christ, have a trans person in the family etc.).

I think the foundational tenet in the gender identity belief system is that mantra I have seen so often in social media (trans women are women, trans men are men, nonbinary are nonbinary). Anyone who doesn't accept it is a heathen or a heretic, because that's what the whole edifice depends on.

But it also means that nobody can be 'woman' without having that unverifiable/unfalsifiable/ inner feminine feeling, and that nobody can be a 'woman' based on the sex of her body.

So their belief system violates my identity (embodied, based on living in a female body and how people with those bodies are treated), forces me to pretend to have a feminine 'soul', threatens my rights, and makes fighting sexism almost impossible.

I wish transgender rights didn't get pushed within that belief system, because it is not possible for me to accept it. It's not transgender people but those who created this edifice that I find truly troubling and hostile.

I wish transgender rights didn't get pushed within that belief system, because it is not possible for me to accept it. It's not transgender people but those who created this edifice that I find truly troubling and hostile.

your post really hits the nail on the head. It would have been so much better to have fought for rights from a position of reality. Perhaps it’s deliberate. This way total acceptance will be impossible so trans people will be held up as the most oppressed for the rest of time and women who do not believe can be denounced as fascists.

Re those who felt they had to leave due to seeing the sign as it had upset and triggered them so much.

I get it. Some people are pushing this ideology and some people are passively accepting of it. Others are believers and are victims of the pain it causes, including the emotional distress it can feel like to be discriminated against. Repeatedly. That distress is real. Even if we don't believe the discrimination is.

I'm disabled and have been discriminated against multiple times in some very disgusting and distressing ways, and also some 'every day bullshit' ways. I've been disabled 10 years and I know what it was like before, and when this discrimination is real.

I had an issue where I couldn't get in or out of the door to my workplace, it was a double door that was locked on one side and I could pass through the side that opened only if I went straight on in my wheelchair. So I needed someone to always be there to open the door and let me in or out. When trying to explain to security and to HR why this was unacceptable, I got so upset I cried and decided to go home. It was too much for my.

I'm a very Senior Manager at director level, hugely resilient in other ways, responsible for multi million £ budgets etc but I couldn't keep my cool over a door. Because it wasn't just that door or that one time. It was every single time before it as well where I've struggled to access somewhere or I've been bullied out of my job. My career is literally on the line, it feels, if I can't access my workplace and get on with my job.

So I don't think it's as simple as some people can't see a sign they disagree with and still cope, I think it's the perceived discrimination and the emotional fallout that comes with being part of the 'the most marginalised group'. Those who can't cope with this should be seen as victims of the ideology just as much as those who de transition. It's robbing them of their perspective and resilience.

It's time to get rid of the word "gender" altogether. What these people were talking about was nothing more than individual personality v outdated stereotypes.

The person on the left of screen, wearing a mask, seemed to be directly contradicting herself. Either gender is a meaningless social construct (that Old People will never grasp), or it's the vital characteristic underpinning of all human identity that must never be challenged, but it can't be both. They claimed to be gender non-conforming, but by definition they absolutely ARE conforming- they're conforming into one of the new stereotype boxes that have been invented for them to conform into.

To my mind, gender non-conforming means doing "boy stuff" whilst being girl, not doing "boy stuff" whilst calling yourself a boy 🤷‍♀️