How the fuck did we get here- reading recommendations

[GenderBlender]

Having woken up to the wonderful news that a worker in a rape crisis centre, a centre run by a male who identifies as a woman, was unlawfully discriminated against and constructively dismissed for believing that survivors of violence and abuse have the right to know the sex of the people involved in their care.

Whilst this is great news, it begs the big question just how the fucking fuck did we get here? How has the left become this warped?

I don't have a particularly strong grasp of trains if thought and philosophies such as post modernism and I feel the need to get a better idea of what has been driving this madness at an ideological level.

I am currently listening to the Identity Trap on Spotify, and am finding it enlightening. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Possibly a tad America-centric, not completely up-to-date, but I recommend this book; decent explanation, copious references:

"Cynical theories : how activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity-and why this harms everybody" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

I don't agree with everything the authors say, but overall it's an easy read, and it covers the ground (of Theory) pretty well.

Of course there other - less Theoretical perhaps - aspects to the background of it all. The whole thing is genuinely bizarre.

You beat me to it! I agree with the caveat that there are a couple of things the authors say that didn't quite sit well with me (mostly the comment about feminists being aware of how females are portrayed in visual media, along with tallying underrepresentation in lead roles, is "a pointless exercise" - to paraphrase). BUT it was otherwise very eye opening to the origins of different critical theories.

We got here by secretive work from pressure groups going on behind the scenes. It has advanced under a Conservative government because its not a
left-right issue; its an authoritarian, anti democratic issue.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/

Trans by Helen Joyce is great

Gender a Wider Lens podcast

Irreversible Damage Abigail Shrier

Material Girls Kathleen Stock

There are also some great threads on here setting it out

Welcome to the realisation. It's difficult to go back once you've seen it.

Thanks all, I have read many of the gender ideology specific books and have a decent grasp of the last say 15 years specifically in gender . I am more interested in the philosophical underpinnings that have completely overturned how the left in particular think. Cynical theories sounds about right.

The Identity Trap goes right back to the 1950s and goes into some detail about Chomsky versus Foucault, which I am finding very enlightening.

Gender ideology is so insane I have been getting increasingly interested in how it has been enabled. The false parallels with the shitty treatment of LGB people just didn't explain it.

There has been a fundamental shift in thinking away from equality and the view that if we all pull together we can create a better world for everyone (my simple view of socialism) towards a more tribal view, that we need to view the world through the lens of inequities and power imbalances. That every individual has some invisible inequities score based on sex, gender, race, sexuality, and the way to create a better world is to very proactively try and redress these imbalances.

I can see why this is an attractive theory, but it is riven with problems. It totally makes sense now that people are making up categories of oppression such as non binary, so they can increase their inequity score.
It also explains how the left are no longer the defenders of free speech.
The most important thing is to redress inequities and power imbalances and if this means some things just can't be said, then so be it. I think this way of thinking really fits the bill of totalitarianism, but the current thinking would says that is OK as long as it is addressing the underlying inequities, it is a sacrifice worth making.

This theory is every bit as doomed to fail as communism.

Thanks for the recommendation of The Identity Trap, I shall add it to my ever expanding reading list.

I'm fascinated with the philosophy of it all (when I separate the philosophy from the depressing consequences anyway) - Cynical Theories will be right up your street. Once you've read it, come back for a discussion 🤓

Ooh, speaking of my reading list, "The Coddling of the American Mind" is on mine - that may also be of interest to you if you haven't already read it.

There has been a fundamental shift in thinking away from equality and the view that if we all pull together we can create a better world for everyone (my simple view of socialism) towards a more tribal view, that we need to view the world through the lens of inequities and power imbalances. That every individual has some invisible inequities score based on sex, gender, race, sexuality, and the way to create a better world is to very proactively try and redress these imbalances.

Well said. 👏Articulated much better than I could! All that communitaire stuff about socialism seems so old-fashioned these days, where the focus is now on solipsistic individualism. Were you a middle-class white male. with a depressingly low Inequity Index? Worry no more! Now you can be one the world's most oppressed, and bravest... 😜

I'd also recommend "Cynical Theories" by Pluckrose and Lindsay and also "The Coddling of the American mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathen Haidt.

Another book by Jonathan Haidt worth reading is "The righteous mind" which examines how people on the political left and right are divided by different values. (And suggests - shockingly - that those on the political left are far more intolerant of other values and beliefs than are those on the right. Where do we see that today...)

I'm looking forward to Sheila Jeffries' autobiography - because she has lived through the whole political shift you describe, and could see so clearly so early on (mid 80s?) where we'd end up.
Edited to add: and, not having time to read as many books as I'd like, I have enjoyed Holly Lawford Smith's "Feminist Heritics" youtube channel, which has some great book review/discussion.

Would strongly recommend both Trans by Helen Joyce and Gay Shame by Gareth Roberts.

Time to Think by Hannah Barnes is next on my 'To read' list.

You might try "The Madness of Crowds" by Douglas Murray.

How has the left become this warped?

Sorry to pick up on just one point wrong in your post that I otherwise agree with entirely, but gender ideology has come from extreme capitalist ideology. Not "the left".

America, the Tories, unfathomably big corporations like Facebook and Disney have pushed gender ideology to the extreme. These entities are not "left wing".

Years ago I would have believed it unthinkable that a woman who's job it is to take care of rape victims would be sacked by a man in a dress for saying same sex spaces were important to rape victims fgs.

You need to look into the Denton's Document.

Edie and Kit give a good rundown from a feminist perspective. This is a good primer on how this was all embedded into the general discourse.

And remember, they decided to try it on women in prison, getting men in there, because nobody cared about the women and they could formulate the arguments to the objections right at the start.

Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is a good look at fragility and victim status that seems to have taken hold.

UK transgender rights row intensifies as book fair is cancelled | Transgender | The Guardian was the event that started me thinking something was seriously wrong. I think this involved Helen Steele (Mc Libel case)

see also Rupert Reed, a green Party activist and philosopher who wrote a very reasonable piece questioning some of the ideas being put out by ideologically driven trans activists. He got thoroughly monstered and the piece disappeared of the internet

Rupert Read: Green party candidate apologises for offending transgender people | The Independent | The Independent

The aggressiveness of trans activists seemed to build up over the 20 - teens.
The left (and other politicians) thought they had found a way to signal themselves as being the good guys without any cost to themselves or anyone else. Women, after all, aren't real people!!
I think it took hold because (unconsciously) men's needs are still seen as more important than womens and because womens role is still seen as being to step aside and let men take charge

By that logic there are all kinds of things the left usually claims that actually come from the right.

There is a reason it's almost universally center right to right parties and news media that has given any pushback at all, while center left to left parties and media have embraced it and tried to enforce it. Pointing at Disney doesn't make that go away.

Apart from the UK, even most Communist parties in western countries have embraced GI.