Helen Joyce & Peter Boghossian - Reality vs Trans Ideology

[meowgender]

Helen Joyce in discussion with philosopher-skeptic Peter Boghossian on trans ideology:

Video description:

Helen Joyce is causing a lot of trouble. YouTube recently removed her conversation with Jordan Peterson (due to vague accusations of “hate speech” and “inciting violence”) and the BBC doesn’t invite her on air anymore. Among her heresies, she is guilty of believing there are two sexes and saying it out loud.

Helen, an Irish journalist, bestselling author, and director of advocacy at Sex Matters, spoke to Peter Boghossian about the differences between men and women. In many arenas, the differences don’t matter, but they are a matter of consequence regarding women’s privacy, vulnerability, and physical competition.

Peter and Helen discuss the definition of sex, why trans men should be allowed in women’s spaces, the tragedy of the commons, fa’afafine, evolution, the “thought-terminating cliché,” the tribal fear of rejection, the cultivation of mental illness, why institutions are losing their North Stars, and much more.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Helen's views on transgenderism
7:45 "Transphobia"
9:45 Discussing the beliefs around "changing sex"
20:20 Trans women in women's sports
23:30 The cost of speaking out
28:00 Was the New Athiest movement wrong?
31:20 How people believe obviously wrong things
39:15 Society is encouraging mental health crises
42:35 Is trans a culture-bound syndrome?
47:13 Why people can't engage a simple claim
57:04 Helen and Peter react to a pro-trans clip
1:03:35 Conversation wrap up

I finished this video this morning. I absolutely adore Helen Joyce and will listen to her all day long. She has always been very clear, but it's wonderful to see how much more firmly she now holds the line, than when she first started speaking publicly.

I wonder if this is the first time Peter has heard someone say that there's no (object) thing as trans. He seemed quite shocked.

One of my little epiphany moments in this morass of mixed emotions and challenges to intellectual rigor, was that trans is a misnomer.

There is no gender dysphoria, it's plain ol' garden simple body dysphoria.

People are unhappy with their bodies. That can be the only reason for being happy to give themselves over to surgery, lifelong hormones and sterility.

Women who have plastic surgery ostensibly to look better and attract, aren't Beauty Dysphoric, they're unhappy with their bodies.

I view this new breed the same way.
Gender is a pure red herring.

Self harm, cutting, eating disorders, self amputation...now "gender", it's all variations on a theme, deep dislike, unease, disgust with themselves.

Now, if this was just the unfortunate victims altering in their own private grief, that would be bad enough. But now the bogus phenomenon is projected outwards to wider society, and women in particular. And you're expected to re label and re categorise for the damaged narcissism of a group of people unhappy with, literally, themSELVES.

The selfishness and self centeredness is off the scale.

I’ve tried to find the podcast that youtube banned, but can’t find it anywhere other than Peterson’s website which I’d have to pay to join before I could watch it.

It's still here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AgnjaxYfqbZiaAcZIxKlL

And here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000579214694

And there's also this (not sure if this is the same one):
https://twitter.com/JBPpod/status/1667673536905838592

Yes I'm the same. I followed so many of them and thought they were so clever.

I think the book The Intelligence Trap is relevant here. I'm so disappointed in them though, if they got their teeth into this issue they'd bring about some change and generally make it uncool for clever people to get swallowed up into this ideology. Oh well. Privately I laugh at them and how stupid they look after thinking they were all such brainboxes.

Thank you @OldCrone !

I think for many New Atheists - not necessarily the big names, but plenty of their followers - science, reason and scepticism were just an excuse to get angry at religious people.

And did you know, a vast number of make heads of humanist orgs in the US have transed. Way more than 0.2% or wherever the stat on trans in general population is.

I'm talking a third, a half.

Makes you think...

I completely agree!

So I'm not totally mad, then? Thanks.

The Coddling Of The Western Mind, supercharged by social media.

Hyper individualism and the authentic self (the natural end point of self help books over four decades plus).

Year Zero hate for all that the Enlightenment West has produced and provided, for Boomers, for older generations (the barely restrained disdain for under 25s who view us all as sucking up all the wealth, destroying the planet, interfering in the happiness and sense of worth their transing friends and siblings).

Women for the first time viewed as the aggressors, men transing as the victims.

Capitalism happy to lose whole swathes of customers (us) to serve the New Consumers (TRA elites/Gen Z/woke Millennials and Gen X), these groups less interested in the product or service, but how they're socially framed or marketed.

To us, gender is so alien, so destructive, so contrary to science and logic. However for the young who see it as the last great civil rights battle, and the TQ+ friendly elites, who see gender as obligation to set aside other groups ie women, more and more gays, to prioritise it, it's manna from heaven.

It's very lack of logic, corroborating evidence, pure subjectivism, makes it like the quantum physics of social sciences. Never in the same place twice, impossible to pin down, means 1001 things to 1001 people...and a moment later, another 1001 things.

That suits the "bring it crashing down" toxic alliance of angry Gen Z activist youths, and nihilistic older SJWs, and consumerism that feeds off the controversy.

Yes, again @RealityFan! Add in the point Helen mentioned about teens/youngsters (naturally) wanting to rebel against their elders. Given that older generations fought and won on rights for gay/women/black people, and have created a very socially liberal world, there's not really anywhere sensible for the young ones to go. There's no next civil rights battle*. There's no sensible way to demonstrate "I'm more right on than my parents".

Maybe, in this context, it does make sense that they are pushing a socially regressive agenda? Just 'thinking' aloud, here...

*well, there's lots to do on class and disability but that would be hard work and not something that attracts corporate money interest!

And of course there's lots of older people driving this too, I'm just talking about the young element in this particular thought

Jacqueline, absolutely. Gen Z girls and young women in particular see First and Second Wave victories leading to the Third (or is it Fourth? Lol) Wave victories of social freedom and science provided opportunities to delay having children, the freedom to have none, burgeoning womb harvesting techs etc allowing the "possibility" of anyone becoming a mum. Throw in the minimising stigma on surrogacy, porn, sex work, and you can see young females falling for the fallacy that the Suffragettes and Germaine Greer led to Only Fans, lol.

This is augmented seperately, but then interwined inextricably, by the social justice nature of TRA, where so many older feminists really see biogical women and trans womens IDs as lockstep, the common enemy being the far Right, Trumpism, anti abortionists, misogyny endemic in the Andrew Tate wing of male peoples.

Now Gen Z and older SJWs have common cause.

In the hazy recesses are the lobby groups like Dentons, and medics and corporatists who can then frame the overall message to be one of progress, personal growth, happiness, choice.

With social media to provide the central nervous system and beating heart and circulation system to keep this escalating show on the road.

Thanks for the podcast link @OldCrone - perfect timing as I have an hour-and-a-bit of repetitive work coming up.

I'm up to 28 minutes, and Helen is on fire
"There are two sexes and sometimes that matters".
So simple, and yet the whole of Western elite opinion forming is set against it.
Just about to start on the New Atheists.
My pulse is racing!

That was a wonderful interview. No lightbulb moments as I have come quite a long way on my own journey, but she has a way of speaking with absolute clarity that helps to crystalise the arguments.

I think the thing about “trans people” is that (like so many other words) its meaning changed or perhaps was changed would be a better way of putting it, because it was deliberate. That term was used originally as a replacement for transsexual people and therefore did specifically reference a social group: those who were undergoing a process of medical treatment which involved taking steps to make their body look more like the body of the opposite sex.

But now that context has been removed and we are to believe that “trans people” are a group that have some kind of invisible brain difference which cannot be tested for or even really defined but which sets them apart and makes them vulnerable and if we challenge their inner belief we are abhorrent and all the rest. I don’t believe there is any such coherent group. It is meaningless.

Just finished the video. Wow, just wow. Helen just carves her way thru the undergrowth.

For me, the reconciling to there are no trans, it's pure societal contagion, the New Atheists being weak minded, and maybe the scariest thing, that those in the highest echelons of society and commerce who have fully converted to the trans borg will feel compelled to promulgate it, even if, maybe even moreso, if the elastic snaps and society moves back to common sense reality.

The clarity from Helen is startling. Love Peter's eye boggling reactions to what she was saying. He knew it was all true, but even he'd tempered or covered up his aversion to this, likely subliminally.

I know in my case, when 6 months ago when my CBT was working, I reconciled to, nope, there is no trans, just unhappy body dysmorphic folk, and there are no trans kids, just kids let down by the adults around them and in society, and personal pronouns, fine, you knock yourself out, but I'm not gonna kowtow.

The feeling at that moment was partly apprehension...am I being nasty, judgemental? But more importantly, mainly liberating. ENOUGH being blind to the world and denying reality and letting down women and kids.

Helen just confirmed I made the right choices.

Something else that is notable, IMO - in my experience the sceptic movement is dominated by science people, rather than philosophy people.

Philosophers, atheists or not, don't tend to see the kinds of arguments the movement produces as very compelling. M

Boghossian is kind of unusual in that regard.

Being committed to reason isn't enough. Higher order reasoning isn't as nearly straightforward as many people think, nor does it give as clear answers as they'd like to think. Debunking stuff like bogus vaccine studies, or paranormal things, doesn't necessarily mean you have the tools for dealing with complex questions about language or epistemology or even historical issues.

Another fantastic Helen Joyce interview. Like a pp I could listen to her all day, her calm, compassionate, clarity is just so refreshing, reassuring and soothing!

I am an absolute fan girl!

But Dawkins is hard science, biology, yes?
For me, this chat has begun to answer the remaining blocks I've had in my head. Yes, it didn't take too long for it to dawn on me that doctors and surgeons like to play god, the cult of personality and heirarchy is pronounced, and whistle blowing culture is so toxically discouraged and penalised, that surgery on teens and permanently life altering hormones, has been so easily ushered in.

But the New Atheists, those slayers of wrongthink and simplistic belief systems, and the religious cons, just how could attack dogs like Sam Harris and Ben Goldacre fall into line, become cheerleaders even?

Helen has laid it out. They were just another group. They got off on the hothouse atmosphere of criticising religion. Maybe they didn't all believe it, but their kudos within the group and the burgeoning atheist movement was addictive.

And it made them money. Yep, that perennial weakness of man. Dawkins and Harris and Goldacre et al made serious sums selling their books.

I think as has already been pointed out, these Western Atheists only had experience of Christianity, maybe some of it bad. Hence the majority of Dawkins "God Is Dead" was an anti Christian tract. Indeed he's literally scared stiff to even mention Islam after what happened to his close friend Rushdie.

All the New Atheists attacked was Christianity, nary a mention of Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Church Of Satan, even Scientology.

Maybe that should have rung alarm bells with me at the time, because as an attack, it's hugely inconsistent.

My take is that the New Atheists were not so much non believers in a Christian god, but counter culture attackers, unhappy with all the rules foisted on society by Christianity, especially the judgements from on high...honosexuality and sex outside marriage as sins, other constraints on public and personal morality, open judging of individuals.

So where we see trans ideology as similarly moralistic, judging, rules from on high, evidence free, and would have expected the Atheists and leftist elites who lapped up Dawkins and cast the likes of Mary Whitehouse to cultural oblivion, to be of our mind...I truly believe that mindset in high society and the intellectual set see us as the defunct moralists of old.

It's us telling youth they can't be what they feel they are/want to be, it's us judging a whole group of people, it's us with an invariable set of rules.

Yet the moralistic stance of the TQ+ community is either given a bye, or is not seen.

Yes, we're viewed as reheated Christian moralists, judging and casting aside a group needing the protection of the community.

We're the bad guys.

The other scary take from Helen is that trans liberation is now ingrained at the highest levels in left elite society. Perhaps every doctor, journalist, politician, charity executive, scientist, historian, writer, artist, actor, ethicist etc...has a child/knows one in family/has friends and work colleagues who have/is surrounded by in their community/...one or more trans children, maybe the majority having had blockers or surgery.

Even if society rebounds to sanity, how do "the great and the good" ever recover, and ever admit wrong?

Helen says they can't, and they won't. Those at the top will push this ideology as far as it can go.

If that's the case, then Generation Alpha is the key. If they reconnect to reality, we have hope. If they don't, then thats two generations of youth lost, and a fully entrenched elite mindset.

I'd agree. In fact, I'd say it's not just a way of getting angry at religion but "proving" that they are cleverer and therefore above those "stupid" enough to have a faith.

It does not surprise me that the few people I know who are extremely sneering and intolerant of religious belief are those who are full-on TWAW And The Fascists Are Coming To Get Us.

Their form of atheism, with its doctrines, unshakeable beliefs and condemnation of non-adherents, is as much a religion as the faiths they denigrate.

Ironic really, isn't it?

Even if society rebounds to sanity, how do "the great and the good" ever recover, and ever admit wrong?

I was watching Mike Nayna and James Lindsay yesterday, discussing the Grievance Studies thing that they and Peter Boghossian were involved in, and Lindsay at least was quite positive. Basically the non-great and non-good are getting increasingly pissed off, and there will be a tipping point.

(Lindsay's concern was just that we don't tip into a whole other bad direction.)

But Joyce's particular point about those who've devoted their children to it is correct - there will be a core of people who can't back out.

I'd agree. In fact, I'd say it's not just a way of getting angry at religion but "proving" that they are cleverer and therefore above those "stupid" enough to have a faith.

The New Atheists were also discussed in that video, together with this "clever/enlightened" versus "stupid/ignorant" trap that makes this stuff very attractive. Lindsay keeps pointing out that this is basically Gnosticism, not something really new. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism:

Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.

This stuff is all about the "esoteric insights"...

I've just listened to Dawkins on Triggernometry, and they were asking him if he'd gone too far on attacking religion, and whether we need it or we just create new ones.

What struck me was how he talked about 'the truth' as being his guide, and I thought this felt like a religious belief.

As a religious person myself I felt that he was talking about a deep 'truth' that is sacred & good in itself. And the only real difference is some people find that in the mystical experience, and some like him find it in unravelling the awesome order of the world.
But it's the same feeling and drive; that there is something bigger than us unknowable (so far), that we strive for.

He'd probably hate my interpretation 😁.

And without this belief in something true and good beyond ourselves we just descend into narcissistic naval gazing where only our own feelings and truth matter. And we should just focus on gratifying our selves, which might mean modifying our bodies in whatever extreme ways we want, and creating our own reality.

He talked about the threat to biology from the trans stuff and said that sex is almost the only binary biological concept he could think of. Most things are on a spectrum without a delineation point except sex.

It was a good listen:

TRIGGERnometry | Richard Dawkins: God, Truth & Death on Podbean, check it out! https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-zhehz-195c4b37

In the 90s and 00s, publishers were falling over each other to get The God Delusion and God Is Dead type books out there.

You could swap every mention of god, Christianity, religious morals, for trans and Stonewall mantras, and repackage as The Trans Delusion and Trans Is Dead.

Now, these self same publishers would treat you as a social leper.

'I've just listened to Dawkins on Triggernometry'

Planning to watch this later on YouTube, really looking forward to it