Trans: the new ideology of the ruling class (article)

[PorcelinaV]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/25/trans-the-new-ideology-of-the-ruling-class/

I don't think the 'ruling class' in this context relates so much to traditional social hierarchies - but to the new social and cultural elite which dominates the mainstream zeitgeist and decides what is now desired practice or policy.

It may be middle claass academia that have originated wokery - but most of its advocates and allies have no clue about its theoretical origins. They are just the foot soldiers who repeat the slogans and mantras and don't question the concepts or edicts at all. In that sense they too are like the uneducated working classes.

Well yes.

But its still a way of closing conversation by intimidation.

I've come to the conclusion thats a religion (its definitely an ideology).

And once seen though that lens it can't be unseen.

The more I educate myself the more I think it is all a load of nonsense.

I think this is a fairly common experience. Martina Navratilova said the same.

I remember JCJ writing that when all this started, she wondered if she was missing something. Surely it couldn't possibly be as bonkers as it seemed? But when she looked into it, yes, it really was that bonkers. I went through exactly that process. And as soon as these people are expected to explain their beliefs publicly - as in eg the Allison Bailey tribunal - it becomes quite evident that this is an incoherent ideology, and the people who advocate it are unable to offer any rational or consistent account of what it entails.

I also think that the reason middle-class, educated people are susceptible to falling for trans ideology is not just tribalism, though that's part of it. It's that all the complicated explanations about gender and sex and so on sound clever and sophisticated, and if you parrot them, you can kid yourself that you are so much smarter than the dimwits who think there are only two sexes, and that humans can't change sex.

I don't know if this by Roisin Michaux has been shared here previously?

"You meet more perverts when your poor"
https://4w.pub/author/roisin/

I agree with PP's analysis re Brexit. Even at the time, as a remainer, I found the mischaracterisation of the working class as inherently racist just horrible.

I'm over educated and ashamed to admit it took me longer to realise that class was part of genderism too.

My working class dad with very little formal education can only speak plainly about his views on gender ideology. To characterise him as anti LGBTQ etc because of this is ridiculous. He's had several gay friends since before I was born. He's highly intelligent. He's just not been educated into mincing his words.

I think it should always have been at least partly about social class. It's fine for middle class and wealthy people to take away womens safe spaces when they know that the likelihood of them or their daughter/sister/mother/ going to prison , being made homeless, escaping an abusive relationship etc is remote compared to people from marginalised groups. And if it did happen, they have the money to mitigate against it. I doubt Daniel Radcliffes daughter will be anywhere near a council swimming pool.

In the new Cormoran Strike book, which I started reading last night, JKR quotes George Orwell:

"Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them."

Seems pertinent here.

It's that all the complicated explanations about gender and sex and so on sound clever and sophisticated, and if you parrot them, you can kid yourself that you are so much smarter than the dimwits who think there are only two sexes, and that humans can't change sex.

Good point.

Back to the tribalism side of it, and they probably wouldn't want to risk looking like they are the intellectually unsophisticated one, to their peer group.

"Educate yourself on what a woman is"
"Ok, what's a woman?"
"Not telling, that's a bigoted question"

I also think it's a way for middle class and upper middle class younger (usually) people to stake a claim on some of the cultural capital that is perceived to be reserved for marginalised groups.

Self identifying as "queer" is the easiest route into that, with none of the public shaming that comes from doing what Rachel Dolezal did. Arguably self id mental health is fast catching up, although as a person with a recent diagnosis I have mixed feelings on that!

I think this is actually quite a working class trait as well, calling a spade a spade.

Whether due to their level of education or, if well-educated, still being in touch with ordinary people, I feel that working class people are less afraid to make simple statements such as "women don't have penises".

They know that the people around them by and large agree that women don't have penises and won't think any less of them for saying it, and they don't much care for the opinions of people who can't explain why they think some women have penises without descending into incomprehensible waffle.

When you look at middle class people - and I realise that the middle class is so big as to be almost a meaningless term these days, but let's say university educated people working in professions - there's a lot more insecurity there. They like to think of themselves as being above working class people when in reality they might not be any financially better off, especially these days. They attach an awful lot of social capital to things like having a university degree and a fancy job title and for them it's much harder to say, "I don't understand what the hell you are talking about."

I think there's a part of them thinking, "There are some very well educated academics and politicians and people in positions of authority saying women can have penises and even though I'm a bit hazy on how all this gender stuff works I'm sure it's true, and trans people are after all the most marginalised so I can afford to be magnanimous, and overall I'd better just take their word for the fact that some women have penises. After all, it doesn't really matter, does it? We're all people."

It's a combination of their own insecurity in not wanting to be the one who stands up and admits that they don't have a clue what any of this gender stuff means, and the security of knowing that they'll almost certainly never end up in prison or in a women's refuge so they don't give any thought to the consequences of all this for women who are in those places.

Unwillingness to admit when you don't understand and relative privilege shielding you from the consequences of your lack of understanding are a disastrous combination.

i'M nOt DoInG tHe WoRk FoR yOu! 🙃

Well left leaning, so that isn't a surprise.

But things like academia, the media (or part of it), political parties, e.g. NHS management, management of major companies, is going to be towards higher middle class.

@MargotBamborough I often find myself nodding along so much to your posts that sometimes I think you are me!

Some cracking thoughtful posts on this thread. Too many to quote! Food for thought.

'Be kind' is the epitome of middle-class sensibilities.

'Fuck off' is more honest and, ironically, more kind in the long term.

Plus why do they always choose somewhat feminine -ish and heavily made up TW for these videos rather than a hulking, bearded bloke wearing jeans (no less likely to be a TW are they?)

Because they persistently conflate feminine with female.

This comes out all the time when they claim that gender critical feminists want to police access to toilets on the basis of how feminine someone is, which could have consequences for e.g. butch lesbians.

Please.

I couldn't care less how feminine someone is, because I don't define men and women according to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity the way they do. As far as I am concerned there is absolutely nothing biologically male people can do to make themselves feminine enough to use women's spaces, because they will never be female, and the relevant criterion for being a woman is female, not feminine. And there is almost nothing female people can do to reject femininity and embrace masculinity enough to make it inappropriate for them to use women's spaces.

I say almost nothing, because I think it is easier for some trans men to pass as men than it is for trans women to pass as women. I can conceive of the possibility that a trans man who is tall and muscular and has taken testosterone to grow facial hair and deepen their voice might pass as a man, and in that situation I think firstly they probably wouldn't want to be in women's spaces, and secondly if they genuinely do look male then their presence in women's spaces might be as distressing to women as the presence of an actual man. In most cases, however, it will still be obvious to all of us that the person is biologically female.

Interesting the comparison with Brexit. As a working-class Remain voter (yes, we do exist, although you'd never think so to listen to the TV news), I'm going to disagree a little with @MargotBamborough . My argument at the time was that the claims of wages being depressed by immigration were arguably exaggerated, and even of they weren't,

a) All governments want immigration, even when they claim they don't. Tories who suggested to people, we'll send the Poles back home, would only replace them with more immigration from India or Pakistan, and how do you like those apples? Which is exactly what happened. Tories had been promising for years to cut immigration, remember Theresa May? And she didn't of course.

b) Do you really think Leave will result in an economic bonanza, when when we've just made trade with our nearest partners more difficult?

c) The Labour Party and the unions cravenly tacitly accepted the govt's view. Rather than appeal to the best motives of working people, they appealed to fear, and xenophobia. Why shouldn't working-class kids get the chance to go to uni in Paris or Barcelona? The only difference Brexit has made to w-c people is, gaps on the shelves in the supermarkets and longer queues at the airport going on holiday.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that I wish the Labour Party, and the left in general, would be straight with people. IMO, they could have argued honestly for Remain, which would have been, on balance, to the benefit of Brits of all social classes. But they didn't. Just like they are not prepared to speak honestly to women, with Starmer unable to say what a woman is, until he's put it through the latest focus group. My contempt for them could not be greater. For all the reservations I have about the Spiked crew, BON is right on this.

'Be kind' is the epitome of middle-class sensibilities.

I don't really understand the "be kind" attitude, as don't they have the self awareness to know how simplistic it is?

It's just treating someone as the equivalent of a school bully.

There are at least somewhat complex moral issues that have different sides to them; e.g. like limiting the total amount of benefits a family can receive.

A liberal is probably going to argue that with large families it's leaving children in poverty and that's unconscionable.

A conservative is probably going to argue that it's unfair to working families that non working families could be taking home more money. Or argue that you need to design the system to encourage/discourage certain behaviour.

A liberal can tell the conservative to "be kind" to the kids in poverty, but it doesn't really get us anywhere.

It is currently the voice of leftist politics in general.

They have special pets - the disabled, the working class, LGBT at the moment - who are there as a kind of social status symbol of how very progressive and caring they are. And yet when you look at how those groups are spoken of and how they are treated if they get out of the box, use their voices to go off message? They are immediately put back in their place. They are for patronising and using, not for actual equality.

Look at how those shouting Labour policies - that very young Labour 'women's officer' for one - immediately spin around and come out with the most vile and derisive prejudice when one of that group dares to say something unhelpful to their agenda. For example

• that Muslim women who cannot use mixed sex spaces just need to abandon their patriarchal religion on command because someone more educated and superior to them said so, which means by extension leaving their home, their family, their culture, all the many issues there - but the issue for the person speaking is that all of this prevents a man getting what he wants, which is that woman removing her knickers in a toilet where he is present.
• That women's refuges are a wonderful thing and absolutely as a nice progressive Labour person huge support, look at me supporting - how often have we all seen that virtue signalling performance? But those women can die at home at the hands of their partner for not getting over their trauma and going to a refuge with men in it. Because those men wanted to be there, and aren't expected to get over anything or ever consider others.
• That God help you if you don't loudly shout that you support gay marriage but homosexual women need to do men who identify women because it's so nasty and mean to gatekeep their body from validating the needs of a man, and they should expect punishment and ill treatment if they don't adapt to a 'better' meaning of homosexual (which is basically that nice people aren't.)

It's beyond revolting when unpicked. They are empty words, marketing, so thin and superficial that it falls apart to the slightest touch. There are no real values or understanding beneath. There is however a fixed belief in the innate superiority and right to know better than others, and that if you do not agree you are not of the right class, are beneath them, and need to be made and punished into the way that your betters see fit.

It's very Victorian Upper Class with the servants.

I also think that the reason middle-class, educated people are susceptible to falling for trans ideology is not just tribalism, though that's part of it. It's that all the complicated explanations about gender and sex and so on sound clever and sophisticated, and if you parrot them, you can kid yourself that you are so much smarter than the dimwits who think there are only two sexes, and that humans can't change sex.

This. Social status seeking has played a huge part in all this.

Absolutely, I don't disagree with any of that but the pros and cons of EU membership are incredibly complex and I actually don't think there's any shame in admitting that you don't understand all or even any of it. It's a complex issue which was almost simultaneously misrepresented to the electorate as simple ("Brexit means Brexit. Take back control. We send £350 million a week to the EU, let's fund the NHS instead.") by Brexiters and complicated ("Too complicated for plebs like you to understand so shut up and listen to the experts.") by remainers.

And now a lot of the same people who supported remain are talking down to the same people who voted leave over trans issues. Although in this case, there's a slight difference which is that the same side are now presenting it as either simple ("Trans women are women, no debate.") or complicated ("Sex and gender are not the same. You do have a gender identity even if you think you don't, it just means you have cis privilege. Sex isn't binary, it's much more complicated than that, intersex people, chromosomes, blah blah blah..."), largely depending on how much pushback they're getting. And then if all else fails they resort to just calling people bigots.

But the really crucial difference here is that the EU was actually a complex issue. Remainers could and should have been less patronising about it, but it was undeniably complex and beyond most people's level of understanding.

This isn't.

This is actually a fairly simple thing that some people are pretending is complicated. Some male people believe they should be allowed in women's spaces and women's sports because of how they feel inside, and so we are all now expected to go along with the idea that a woman is something other than a member of the childbearing sex, otherwise some people will be upset.

It really isn't any more complex than that.

It is a good, interesting article, although whenever “woke” enters I sigh and roll my eyes, why do they do it? It doesn’t ever add to an argument and for me actively detracts from it. So annoying, so lazy. I’m woke in the old-fashioned sense - alert to injustice - lots of people are woke even if they’d never describe themselves as such. If woke now means pro-gender ideology they should bloody well announce it, so we can #RevokeTheWoke.

I would argue that middle classes are more vulnerable to the pressure to conform. The keeping up with the Jones's and fitting in and not rocking the boat mentality. As well as a naive trust that the 'powers that be' wouldn't say this is fine and doesn't harm anyone' without first checking if that was true in a rational properly assessed way. Therefore they don't need to check what they are told is correct or not and are more likely to accept at face value.

I think the Brexit stuff works when you consider my above point about trusting sources and authority.

Both middle classes and working classes are guilty of not doing their research.

What annoyed me about Brexit was the suspension of reality by the ideologs. But when you actually bothered to talk to more working class Brexit voters it became very apparent very quickly there was an issue with the 'left behind' issue and that had been piggybacked onto the ideology of Brexit (which was bullshit). This was actually ignored by a certain section of the most hard core Remainers - I ultimately had a massive issue with this group and their tone deafness. And we see that mirrored again with the trans issue.