Gender Ideology as Existential distraction - Look a Squirrel!

[Omlettes]

A wise Australian friend suggested to me a few years ago that perhaps all of it was a distraction from the existential crisis facing us via our planets health.

Obviously neither he or I are saying the effects of the distraction arent very very real, but that in effect its a collective squirrel.
A squirrel I would argue that springs from the same ancient masculine delusion in wanting to best and control nature, and best it, i.e. 'men make better women than women'
Even if you dont accept climate change is primarily man made then there is a little matter of the autointoxification of the planet through plastics and Forever chemicals, the wiping out of forests, polluting of all our water and the terrifying species extinction of all species, particularly insects.

In Australia the change in weather patterns became very obvious by the 90s.
And Australia has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world, with a HUNDRED species wiped out since colonisation. I went back during the bush fires of 2019, the devastation was incomprehensible, "Nearly three billion animals were killed or displaced during Australia's devastating bushfires of the past year, scientists say.
The findings meant it was one of "worst wildlife disasters in modern history", said the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which commissioned the report."

Anyway I thought again of his words as I read this.https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/27/indian-migrant-worker-death-heat-stress-italy

We are wasting so much time and energy on this gender absurdity! it makes me furious.
And lets not kid ourselves, appart from AGPs this is largely driven by the whim of spoilt middle class brats whose parents are too craven to say No to them.

I don't see what these two issues have to do with each other except - as you say - that energy wasted one could have been spent on the other.

The idea that the gender madness is some sort of intentional programme to distract people from environmental catastrophe seems frankly tin-foil-hat territory.

It has occurred to me that sterilising the next generation might be a form of population control.

Humanity needs to choose to limit it's numbers before environmental catastrophe and competition for resources does it for us.

tbf in many closed biological systems you see all sorts of negative feedback when overpopulation occurs and the planet is one big, finite, biological system.

(minus the junk we've thrown into space, helium escaping the atmosphere apparently, and plus the occasional rock that falls to earth)🙂

Richer nations are already doing pretty well at population limitation. Birth rates are well below 2 almost everywhere in the developed world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

I wonder how humanity's biomass compares to insects.

Oh goodness, I feared it was possible someone would misunderstand so obviously.
At no point am I suggested that this is a concious organised reaction, is that not obvious?
Have we become so literal that all we can see is organised conspiracies?
I'm talking about a collective unconcious reaction to a collective existential threat.

Tbc I am not in ANYWAY suggesting that gender ideology is 'designed' conciously either as a distraction or as a means of population control, that is clearly ludicrous.
I am responding emphatically because there is already a poster above you who is suggesting Im saying that.

The subtitle of your post is "Look - a squirrel!"
Who are you imagining is uttering this phrase, metaphorically speaking?

I agree that it's an existential distraction. I think it's more to do with the loss of a sense of faith, community and unified purpose. Like Nietche said, God is dead and we have killed him with our modern scientific minds and that's actually a terrible thing because now we have no reason to go on and no purpose.

A belief in trans provides a new faith in something non-material and spiritual (an inner 'gender identity'), a purpose (medical transition is the new journey to faith through transformation), community (like a church) and a shared enemy (terfs = infidels).

It's perfect really. You've got your sacred caste (famous trans people are like the new clerical class) and your saints (trans kid are the new joan of arc or frances of assissi).

You've got stigmata (mastectomy scars) and religious symbols (the flag).

You've got the call to leave your secular life and follow the faith (Go NC with your family = 'put down your fishing nets and follow me')

It's all there, a new faith for the faithless and unrooted and lonely

It would all be fine if TRA wasn't basically a deeply nihilistic death cult. So not fine at all really, give me church of england any day

All of us to a greater or lesser degree, collectively as a species.
But most especially the young who have jumped on it, with understandbly good reason.

But the young haven’t jumped on it.

They’ve been spoonfed/indoctrinated and taught to “be kind” “inclusive” etc. There’s a huge amount of money behind the marketing of Tran$ and institutional capture has been massively funded. There’s a huge amount of money in “climate” propaganda too. Funny that.

I tend to agree.

It's an interesting thought exercise (distraction!). Arthur C Clarke wrote 'the songs of distant earth' about a society that tried to live without religion and in the belief vacuum they created one.

At least that's how I remember it.

As for the op, I suppose it could be a displacement behaviour...like spending too long on mumsnet when you know you have other stuff to do 😁

I think that feeds into it yes, although after the Black Death in Europe there was a slide in Christianities popularity.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1541/religious-responses-to-the-black-death/

'In Europe, the perceived failure of God to answer these prayers contributed to the decline of the medieval Church's power and the eventual splintering of a unified Christian worldview during the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648 CE). In the East, Islam remained intact, more or less, owing to its insistence on the plague as a gift which bestowed martyrdom on the victims and transported them instantly to paradise as well as the view of the disease as simply another trial to endure such as famine or flood.'

Note we have just had a plague created by man as well.

Though tbf its the concept of man in the image of God controlling nature and woman as beast to be controlled and the division of body/mind that so saturates montheistic and particularly Christian religion that has got us here in the first place.

I guess that was a marketing win for Islam.

Interesting idea. I’ve often thought it is a “marker” belief, a sort of sentinel or flag which marks out those who will conform to any new belief which is hoisted upon society, and more importantly who won’t. Very useful to know who will accept anything they are told and who might start to question.

They absolutely did jump on it via tumbler reddit and then tik tok. That preceeded the marketing by some time. the medical profession was relatively slow to catch on.
Joyce talks about this in her interviews with Boyce.
But yes marketing has mainstreamed it.
We are all humans participating nonetheless.

@quantumbutterfly 'As for the op, I suppose it could be a displacement behaviour...like spending too long on mumsnet when you know you have other stuff to do 😁'
Are you directing some passive aggressiveness at me perchance? Does it apply to you as well?

Though tbf its the concept of man in the image of God controlling nature and woman as beast to be controlled and the division of body/mind that so saturates montheistic and particularly Christian religion that has got us here in the first place.

Hmmm I dunno about that, the story of Cain and Abel points strongly to a wariness and disapproval and fear of the agricultural revolution and the dangers of seeking to control nature. And of course story of Adam and Eve represents the agricultural revolution and Great Forgetting specifically as a fall from grace.

As to gender relations, there's a big difference between Jesus and Paul. Paul was the one who said women should obey their husbands. Jesus went out of his way to hang out with independent women who did not fit acceptable social gender roles. He first revealed his resurrected self to Mary Magdalene, that's a pretty major flex. The Islamic Hadiths are FAR more proscriptive on how women should behave their inferior worth to men, although they clearly did some canny retconning on the Plague issue.

I'm hesitant to draw a straight line between the black death and the protestant reformation as there were so, so many different factors at play, though. Indulgences were arguably the straw that broke the camel's back.

ooh interesting. Are they the same people vulnerable to hypnosis?

I took it personally, but in a good way, like that's the reminder I needed but am going to ignore.

not at all, feeling guilty about my mumsnet habit taking me from other tasks.

And yet Christianity is overflowing with the notion that God is the Apex, then man in his image, then the beasts of the field to be exploited including women, merely a rib of Adams.
The Church has been using religion to control the masses and the flow of revenue to the church for centuries, farming being the prime source of wealth with monastries surounded by farmland paying tithes

I think we are probably coming at this from different angles (I'm religious, you clearly are not) and this probably isn't the right thread for a discussing of the beauty and mystery or otherwise of faith (although I would mention that your last paragraph isn't really accurate for western Europe, because it's not 1492).

I agree that TRA is an existential distraction tho!

@GiveMeSpanakopita Tbf I dont think you can deduce that about me, but I dont mind, its to be expected on social media where nuance is murdered on a regular basis ;)

@Omlettes I've thought the same thing myself, that we are being distracted from bigger and ultimately more important issues - not that women's rights aren't important, obviously, but if we're all drowned by rising seas then there won't be any women left to worry about.