Friendship ends over my sticking to GC principles

[RealityFan]

First thing to say is I have mixed feelings, but no regrets. Secondly, I am somewhat a "dog with a bone", somewhat culpable, but I also have my pride.

This is a fellow in my hobby, Californian, an online only friendship we'd cultivated over a few years. He's somewhat more intellectual and articulate than me, way better read (retired English Literature professor). And maybe most critically, a self-labelled liberal progessive (although only a small "d" Democrat voter), generally dismissive of all things conservative (let alone Republican, Trump etc).

A lot of our politics meshed, I've moved away from strong emotional connections to Brexit, populism, anti-migration. As usual with almost everyone liberal/progessive I talk to, I'm the one who's moved more centrist on so many issues, yet they strangely have been settled, and there's an underlay of almost snobbish derision ("it took you HOW long to realise Bxt, populism etc are poison?").

The only policy areas that I haven't mellowed on, after massive research and introspection, have been cancel culture/trans politics.

And so as our online chats developed we moved past dry discourse on our hobby, to free wheeling politics and culture wars shibboleths.

And here the fault lines developed. Whether a liberal v conservative or progessive v stable or US v UK disconnect, our heated discussions overboiled.

Strategically, all my fault. I returned again and again despite seeing not much common ground. Even when we did find an isolated patch of grass to share, our definitions around the issue were never agreed, so that seeming unanimity was nothing of the sort.

Culmination of the argument was his insistence on data...show me that damaged kids are not trans and being misled into medicalisation etc.

When I quoted the Tavistock GIDS expose book findings that vast majorities of referrals getting transition services were autistic/ADHD and other co-morbidities/likely gay/self-harming/over half from families with major issues incl abuse, and I gave him the deteriorating narrative from the Dutch Protocol over four decades, and that one European nation after another are putting transition services to teens on hold, he then switched the argument to say I couldnt extrapolate this to all teens, or all those seeking help globally, especially in US.

Well, I kinda lost it at that point. Now a fellow whom I looked up to as a proud rigorous intellectual (he certainly got me being more de-cluttered in certain analytical processes) is shown to be as guilty of closed loop thinking, unable to make the leap to at least starting to doubt his more fixed views. What data beyond Dutch Protocol and Tavistock does anyone need?

Other areas are more subjective (my arguments on the silencing of the female sex class and transing the gay away) and harder for me to nail with a progessive, but on this Tavistock story and data, I expected better from him. Way better than simply the shoulder shrug and demand for me to show him more evidence.

To then after strongly defending myself and for the first time aggressively labelling him as an ostrich (or do I mean lemming?), I get the return compliment of conspiracy theorist, pints swilling pub bore etc.

Final messages of "farewell my sweet" and "is it goodbye or au revoir?"

Now, I've only given a potted history, and he would write a wholly different version to what I have, but the basics are basically right.

How do I feel? Not bothered at all, actually. I'm my own worst enemy for unecessarily dragging an irreconcilable subject out, I provoked the final showdown.

And I've learnt that even certain common ground doesn't mitigate for a drastic chasm in temperament on one of the biggest conundrums of the age.

Yes, I'm sad. But I've learnt that on trans, you're vilified for being emotional/kneejerk, for not getting with the zeitgeist, and then even when you do what you're asked for and show data to back up your escalating misgivings, it's still not enough.

I've spent a year in therapy to help me reconcile and manage reactions to the trans labyrinth. An episode like this 12 months ago would have left me hurt and angry.

Today I'm sanguine and philosophical, proof I'm a more rounded person now, and that I won't sell my principles down the river.

Interested in the collective wisdom of MN on this.

*rub noses in doo doo. Gotta get my shit phrasing right!

He just wants to convert everyone to his opinion, like a lot of extremists, they're not interested in anyone else's thoughts. You should have given up the lost cause long ago. The extreme right and extreme left in the US are both impossible to reason with.

A lesson learnt late, is still a lesson learnt.

Hey, my English literature loving ex-bud should give me top marks for that! Lol.

Nailed it

I think I’ve been lucky. I’ve only lost one friend on this issue and, ironically, she was the one who most prized herself on being rational and scientific and evidence based and who mocked all SN beliefs!

On R4 recently they were talking about conspiracy theories and how people who believe in them prize themselves on being open minded and in doing their own research and seeking out evidence. And apparently lots of people who fall for financial frauds are themselves as being really smart, ( too smart to fall for a fraud). I think these drivers are behind people believing in gender bollocks. They are too smart to fall for nonsense, right?!

So if this was just an on line friendship, you don't know whether what he told you about himself is actually the truth in the first place. I would stick to real in person friendships in future. He is of course no loss, more a lucky escape.

Sounds like it was never a fully equal relationship from the start. In that you tended to defer to his wisdom or learning in certain ways?

Perhaps the change in dynamic was unsettling for both of you - with you refusing to bcak down and avoid a topic that was important to you - and he didn't like the level of challenge you were presenting and didn't feel equipped or prepared to deal with the fact that you knew so much more, than he, about it.

Maybe!

I've thrown every grand theory on the establishing of trans activism on so-called advanced Western societies.

From demonic plots and energy, to cultural Marxist march thru the professions, to simple social justice activism, to conspiratorial lobbying interests, to a new post modern religion. And many others.

And I come down to the most boring one of all. A confluence of high IQ elites and people who think they're so clever. That have consolidated to produce the polite society that makes the rules.

Ie the cleverest people are also the dumbest, the least flexible, the most astringent, the least humble, the most full of themselves, the most hating of dissenters, the least analytical, the least soul searching.

Yes, there are the woke landmarks of a religion forming. Yes, there are lobby interests via Stonewall, UN, WHO, Dentons, Pritzker Foundation. Yes, Gen Z and the veterans of the late 60s and 70s civil rights movements have common aims. Yes, there are social anarchists who want to tear apart the nuclear family, sexualise children, and destroy any common linguistic links and ways of communicating and understanding of the world.

But none of these would have had any traction if the cleverest people who are in positions in the law, education, science, the arts, media, NGOs etc, weren't by dint of their big brains so easily led to this outcome, and then so resistant to any self reflection or changing of opinion.

I've been there myself on different areas of public policy and politics, I had to wrench myself back to the centre.

I'm afraid polite society is not ready to realise how impolite it actually is.

Final messages of "farewell my sweet" and "is it goodbye or au revoir?"

😂I think it's fuck off, tbh. What a dolt. You're well shot of him, OP.

Well, he's been such a helpful character in my hobby. And I was happy to let agree to disagree be the mantra.
But to provide data, totally damning, and be told, hmm not enough, and my emotionalism then leads to labels of tin foil hatted drunk, then yes, go forth and multiply!

This 😂😂😂 there's a reason these guys have so many online 'friends' and it's generally because they're completely fkn insufferable irl!

Yes. I think so.

It is like the friend is living in their own novel and they have just written the suspect filled ending in their head. Just so they can write another in the series.

It is twaddle.

Peter Boghossian and other academic dissidents have been persecuted by this liberal -progressive elite that first captured U.S university campuses, followed by those in most other anglophone countries, and which now wields a kind of hegemonic influence on so many branches of state and society.

I suspect that most adherents have not the faintest clue of the real life realities and consequences of the post modernistic idealistic politics they espouse, and in many respects that is because the politics of identity and 'best true self' sentiments are the end point/natural progression of what went on before. They are taking things to their conclusion.

But some of us have stepped back and started to review the whole of the last fifty odd years of civil rights movements and the cult of the individual. People like Mary Harrington who now refers to herself as a reactionary feminist who no longer believes in 'progress'.

I think the new radical is actually to be conservative - to reject, or at least question, the headlong rush towards transhumanism and AI.

https://www.thefp.com/p/my-university-sacrificed-ideas-for

@DameMaud
"Reminded me of this article Reality:
https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/why-smart-people-hold-stupid-beliefs"

I think that is over-generous. A couple of quotes that I feel more often hit the mark:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
"It is easier to fool someone, than to convince someone that they have been fooled" - Mark Twain.

For some people what matters most is that they are perceived as the smarter person. And for these people everything else follows from that. To not recognize this is to waste endless hours of ones life in fruitless argument. The only value to exposing the flaws in such a person's view, is to expose them to others. Only then, when they see others think they are wrong, will they change their view, because their attitude deep down is based upon social ranking.

@RealityFan ityFan
"I'm very sorry to hear that.
"What doesn't kill you...," etc."

Thank you for that. Sadly the actual quote from Nietsche was "That which does not break your back makes you stronger". Some things are hard to recover from and having people you regarded as friends all turn their backs on you is hard. Thankfully I had one friend who stuck by me and for his support I am very grateful.

"Yes, my language can be colorful and overly pertinent, but don't fucking call me a pub bore conspiracist."

The phrase 'conspiracy theorist' is a Thought Terminator. A thought terminator is a label, phrase or assertion which stops further consideration of something. An example thought terminators from history was "heresy", a thought terminator from US cold war politics was 'socialist'. They all have the same purpose: to declare a viewpoint or idea outside the acceptable norms for discussion. I could give you a long list of conspiracy theories that turned out to be true. The very idea that the collusion of powerful interests doesn't happen is absurd. But label something a 'conspiracy theory' and people back away because it's been labelled as outside acceptable bounds of discussion. That you risk social exclusion for voicing it. Look how much criticism is shut down by calling something "Right Wing" or "transphobic". Thought Terminators are easy to spot once you know them for what they are: 'You will be excluded for thinking this'.

Talk to most 'conspiracy theorists'. Very few of them will say "I believe space lizards control our minds with devices hidden in our mirrors which is why I wont them in my house". Many of them will say things like: "I don't believe Covid-19 came from someone eating a pangolin, I believe it came from a lab and here's a bunch of publically available records which show Eco Health Alliance was funding coronavirus gain of function research in Wuhan laboratories which you can verify independently yourself". And then one year later, it'll be shown to be accurate and everybody will say 'oh, we all knew that all along'. Well yeah, they did, what's changed is that you're allowed to say it and it gets memory holed. Best thing to do when someone labels you a conspiracy theroist over something you have reason to believe is true is just say 'not much of a conspiracy when the evidence is right out in public' and carry on with your case.

"Well, the first comms on this was that "don't you understand different genders, I've taught Shakespeare, and gender bending was all the rage in his works"

Eh, not really. I mean Twelth Night has a girl disuise herself as a boy. The happy ending is when she reveals she is a girl. This is an example of where someone takes advantage of someone else not knowing a specialist field as well as they do and forcing the other person to take their word for it in what they say. I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of Shakespeare but enough to not recognize "all the rage" as a suitable description.

There's a fundamental power sleight of hand which has been pulled here as well which is that it's been placed on you to convince him. Best thing to do is swap that around by making him convince you and one way to do that would be to pick specific examples of the trans movement causing harm and make him show you why they do not stem from the trans movement. However, fair warning if you do successfully put him on the back foot and force him into the role of being the one who has to prove something to you he will simply disengage and drop the topic because it is no longer providing him what he wants - superiority.

A confluence of high IQ elites

This has been one of the more difficult things for me to swallow. I revere intelligence, but lately I've been questioning just what the fuck is intelligence after all. Must reread that Reality piece (I saw it when it came out) and quiz myself afterwards.

That Upton Sinclair quote is an old favourite. It explains so much.

Correction: that Gurwinder piece. (Smart people triplecheck before hitting Post.)

Couldn't win the argument so he flounced. We see this on here all the time.

Agree with every word of this.

He’s completely wrong about Shakespeare.

In my albeit limited experience, I have found Americans very unlikely to change their mind when faced with evidence. I think a lot of it has to do with how much their identity (as Democrats, liberals, Christians, atheists..whatever) is wrapped up in believing a certain line.

RealityFan - "I've spent a year in therapy to help me reconcile and manage reactions to the trans labyrinth."

Yup. It's the American thing. Debate is so polarized and shrill over there, it makes sensible discussion impossible.

As PPs have said, his mind will automatically shut out anything you say because it senses the risks that lie there: if he starts to be convinced of anything you say, it means he either has to start falling out with all his friends in California and becoming isolated, or he has to live as a silent hypocrite and quietly seethe at all the stupidity he sees around him.

Both hard options.

I "get" why people in liberal American enclaves just continue to do the easy thing and keep on chanting TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN like a bloody mantra; it's comforting and reassuring to believe that all your friends and peers are right.

The actual issue is a red herring. People, particularly friends, should be able to have different views on all kinds of issues if expressed respectfully. My friends are across the political spectrum but they all show the same kindness and fun. Otherwise they wouldn't be my friends.

I was amazed when I joined MN and read of people cutting others out of their lives because they held different political views. It was just so alien to me and how I was brought up.

You just don't need a guy you'll always be tiptoeing around.

Well, he's in my hobby, and men really do bond over hobbies (eg cake, and the eating thereof, lol). And I learnt a lot about American politics from him (yes, I'm weird this way).

I'm also still a believer in free speech, thrashing issues out, listening to the other side. I know, it's somewhat quaint, but I spent the whole of 90s and 00s in Big Topic discussions with friends, fellow students and strangers alike, on politics, philosophy, religion etc.

I don't recall anything being off limits, and I was a dog with a bone in those days, never countenanced any shutting down of dialog.

As the 00s evolved into the social media dominated 2010s, and then deteriorated into the No Debate 2020s, I've learnt to keep my head down a bit more, but on some issues I refuse to shut up about (although I've mastered being tactful to situation and people at hand). Trans is one of those.

Where I'm guilty is not picking up signs early to cool it. Where I'm not guilty is the heartfelt nature of my fears, and my wish to see both sides, my ever allowing the other side their voice, never resorting to jibes, and backing up the emotionalism of my arguments with data and objective info.

What I won't do is then take it lying down when a so-called liberal and intelligent academic turns my emotionalism into an attack on my character, chucks in some culture war insults for good measure, and won't look at the data I've provided.

Another closed mind, life too short to waste on.