"Highly intelligent" but...

[bonfireoftheverities]

It's quite common to read about someone who is said to be very intelligent yet still fell for genderwoo. How do you reconcile smart people saying and believing such stupid things?

I think it makes so little sense, but has been enthusiastically taken up by the academic elite, that clever people think it must be worth supporting.

In fact, there are very erudite essays and books putting forward a convincing argument for trans ideology- the trouble is, they don't address the criticisms and none of it works in real life.

But it adds to their belief that only clever people get it and they rest of us are too thick to understand.

Smart is not necessarily multi dimensional. I work with academics who can do incredible things in their chosen domain, yet sometimes I do seriously worry about how they get home alone on public transport.

I also learned very early to treat all views outside of their expert domains as ‘enthusiastic amateur’ at best and weigh them carefully before agreeing.

I place them on the same keel as those who were supportive of PIE all those years back.

In my experience, they tend to be very kind, liberal people, from comfortable backgrounds, who work in institutions (NHS, Universities, Church of England etc..) so they are surrounded by likeminded people and are to a certain degree, protected from the harsh realities of daily life outside those institutions.

History is teeming with highly intelligent but deeply misogynistic people. Of course it’s possible to be both.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes thought that photographs of drawings of fairies were real. I have no idea how he could have thought so.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-55187973

Sorry for having an answer but intelligent people aren't intelligent about everything.

If you are really good at finding arguments to support your existing view point, you are more susceptible to confirmation bias.

Either they lied about it, or they have that particular kind of rigid academic intelligence that means they understand, and are easily won over by, quite complex, knottily written literary or social theory, but lack the intellectual flexibility to probe the theory for weak points, or to imagine the problems it might create when applied to practical situations/real people. I used to teach English literature at a Russell Group university and both my PhD cohort and the department I worked in were full of such people. I think one of the reasons people like this were especially drawn to gender woo is precisely that the Judith Butler-ish theory that started it all off is so badly written difficult to read, and so outlandish in its propositions, that self-regarding academic types saw the very fact that they had got through it and understood it as a mark of their superiority. Accepting and asserting its primacy over the obvious, brutish facts of biological sex felt to many like another mark of their capacity for higher thought and understanding. Couple that with the presentation of it as Gay Rights 2.0 and a defence of 'the most vulnerable group ever in the history of vulnerability' and adherence to gender woo became a badge of both moral and intellectual superiority.

Also, one of the strongest arguments from trans activists is that only trans people understand this issue and that if you don’t understand what they mean when they talk about gender woo, it’s because you’re not trans, so you can either be an ally or an oppressor.

The whole movement is build around believing people when they say they’re the opposite sex even if your eyes (and logic) deceive you, so the fact their gender claims are unfalsifiable is built into the ideology as a core tenet.

its like on the tv show billions when wendy said about chuck (legal) that he was a titan but in his arena of law, and when he dabbled in the finance arena which was bobby axelrods domain then chuck didnt have a chance..

The word “intelligent” doesn’t actually mean that the person is logical or clever. It just means that they can acquire and apply knowledge. Think of it as a “garbage in garbage out” kind of situation…

I have lots of experience with this, and I think for some it’s “being kind” (and they’re often a bit sanctimonious in other ways, too, and see it as part of an ethical “package’ they’ve bought into). These can be either the super-fashionable-leftwing types, OR the very religiously Christian love-everybody types. Either way, it’s a combination of virtue-signalling and desire to think of themselves as believing in the “right”, up to the minute, ideas. These are the ones most likely to know trans-identified or autistic friends or family, and especially to want to be liked by their own students and colleagues.

For some, especially in science disciplines, it’s just not being very good at thinking about the big picture, ie. they are great at one small thing that’s their particular field, but clueless about cultural issues or history and have little exposure to feminism. (These are the ones most likely to see it as simply a new version of gay rights and not really understand what all the fuss is about).

But pretty much all of them don’t really believe in any of it deep down.

I’m not sure he did actually believe the girls at all, as I understand that he had a photographer friend doctor (or ‘enhance’) the photos (I think Leeds uni did some research on it?), and he had beef with the sceptics and was desperate to prove them wrong.

The example of Arthur Conan Doyle is still incredibly relevant to this even if he didn’t genuinely believe the girls though, as it shows the lengths someone will go to to prove a point beyond all reason for petty or egotistical reasons. Which I’m sure is relevant in many cases of gender woo thought too.

The same can be said for an apparently intelligent woman who apparently used the name of the man who invented the evil Conversion Therapy as her pen name and apparently that doesn’t mean she hates the whole LGBT community.

Apparently.

Very much this. It's this plus, at a very basic core beliefs level, thinking women and girls- particularly working class women and girls - are not fully human and therefore any harms to them don't count.

A similar type of person looks the other way over grooming gangs too for the same reason.

Yes, and I think many people simply enjoy the intellectual challenge of arguing for such a seemingly outlandish position, especially when there’s so much praise to be had for doing so.

Fetishes come in many forms one of which is intellectual masturbation.

I made that up but I don't think I'm far from the truth.

It's Emperor's New Clothes, innit. It takes a lot to go against groupthink.

Intelligence, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, insight are different things and it's possible to have one or two of them in spades and be lacking in the others.

I'm not in the academic world any more, but I remember that it took great courage to say 'I don't understand that', it was safer to frown slightly and nod a lot instead of challenging the meaning of something that was complex to the point of obscurity.
The obscurity was taken as proof of its academic validity, so to complain about it was to place yourself outside the magic circle.

If you were, like me, someone who arrived at an academic job via a non-traditional route, and from a family background where nobody else had even been to uni, let alone taught in one, the pressure to conform was huge, so frowning and nodding slightly seemed like the best way to blend in...

I didn't blend in, I didn't get promoted, I wasn't one of the research stars, but I didn't mind because I actually liked interacting with students, unlike so many high-flying colleagues🙄

You are right. My interpretation was a little simple. However, one look should have told him instantly they were fake. There is an interesting remark at the end of the BBC piece.

Speaking to the BBC in 1983, Frances Griffiths said: "I never even thought of it being a fraud. It was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun.

"I can't understand to this day why people were taken in. They wanted to be taken in.

"People often say to me 'Don't you feel ashamed that you have made all these poor people look like fools? They believed in you.' But I do not, because they wanted to believe."

Gurwinder Bhogal is good on this question.

Somewhere I have saved his essay on it.
But for now, here is an interesting discussion with him on the podcast Beyond Gender:

open.spotify.com/episode/47fyFKGNqFhj5ffhuJiYtz?si=-3VfDc5kQweEEmOpeqC2oQb

Found it:

https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/why-smart-people-hold-stupid-beliefs

"What this means is that, while unintelligent people are more easily misled by other people, intelligent people are more easily misled by themselves. They’re better at convincing themselves of things they want to believe rather than things that are actually true. This is why intelligent people tend to have stronger ideological biases; being better at reasoning makes them better at rationalizing"

I think that intelligence is about book learning, and what an intelligent person knows is whatever was in the book they learnt.

Intelligence is not the same as common sense. There needs to be an ability to apply knowledge, reason and judge the outcome regarding situations.
Those who seemingly lack intelligence in the form of academic knowledge, can still have good judgment and assess situations practically.

Hence the comparison of certain viewpoints being likened to those who seem to have less intelligence (we’re all right wing bigots or Trump supporters if we don’t hold certain views)

Remind you of anything? Sure does! Mummy, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. But we already know this.