Transgenderism proves people will believe anything

[IwantToRetire]

While we sceptics may be constitutionally resistant to deranged popular dogma, we’re still adaptive. We may not believe just anything, but we can get used to anything.

So it’s vital to refresh our astonishment at the widespread adoption of a practice that 20 years ago would have been exclusively pursued by a few lost, misguided mental patients.

The fad for transgenderism is unbelievable and should stay that way. This movement gleefully defies biological reality. Sex is not in the mind but is written in our every cell.

From an article by Lionel Shriver at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/transgenderism-proves-people-will-believe-anything/

Can also be read at https://archive.is/sogJ2

I thought so too, but was surprised one day by news out of a DNA testing site for the general public. Don't remember if it was 23andMe or somebody else like that.

Apparently getting complaints from trans customers when their chromosomes didn't match their new identity was a thing.

Seriously. "Hey, you've made a mistake. I'm now a woman. What's with these results saying I have a Y chromosome?"

So I think it is possible, given enough galaxy-sized ignorance for backup, to believe biology changes when fantasy changes.

(I blame Karl Rove and his "we make our own reality" political BS. At the time, the left swanked around calling themselves the "reality-based community." Good times. /jk)

I think a man identifying as a woman challenging a DNA testing company for providing correct results that don't reflect his immersive roleplay is actually a dominance display. The goal would be to get an apologetic response, to have made them bend the knee in some way.

I think that for hardline activists they're sufficiently beyond facts that they're irrelevant. It's about using unchallengeable fictions to assert power. Or at least they were mostly unchallengeable until Maya Fostater won at appeal.

I think it can be extremely difficult to determine what younger people actually "believe" about the issue.

I suspect it's similar to an eight year old choosing to believe in Santa -they know it's false but it's more fun to keep up the pretence.

I suspect a lot of young trans people will be disappointed in years to come when what they assumed was a supportive peer group doesn't actually provide romantic partners.

The big difference with covid restrictions and climate change is that most people aren't in a position to make a scientific judgement on these things, so make a character judgement about the people proposing different theories.

On the other hand it is possible for most people to observe and experience the impact of sex.

Ancestry DNA displays users' self-selected gender rather than sex. That seems to be a new thing in the past few years, so maybe they got complaints. (TBF it doesn't really matter for Ancestry's test.)

I've got a new-ish match with an obviously female name but a blue male avatar on their profile. It must be either a deliberate choice or fat fingers. I'm afraid to ask. 🫣

I think, if you dont mind me saying so, this is total rubbish.

This is the sort of day time chat show, cliched thinking.

And the problem is too many people let others to their thinking for them.

I do not have an enourmous circle of friends, ie people I have more than a how are you today talk, but no one is anywhere near being that sort of simplistic if I think this way about that, then I think this way about the other..

Everyone goes on about how social media is making us stupid, but I think far more dangerous is the immense number of people who get invited, or are always on talk shows. They dont seem to realise they have been booked to appear because their mind set is a cliche in the hope they will get into a spat with someone also booked for having the opposite cliched mind.

A prime example is the newspaper reviews on Sky.

Dumbed down media has made many people think this is how you should think.

ie have a position but not having developed it themselves can then only defend that position by accusing other(s) of being wrong, or in the grip of some fanatic.

And sometimes make FWR threads pointless.

Although have to admit on Any Answers on Radio 4 today, among other callers where Jewish people who had very opposing positions. This is just one area where too often the media decides which is the Jewish position they will give a voice to and not any others. And they do this in other context, eg TW.

So although Any Answers is now so irritating because the presenter now thinks she needs to orchestra callers, instead just saying thanks for calling Ms GC and what would you like to say, it was good in that it allowed a range of Jewish voices and not just the ones the editorial team thought we should hear.

(I forgot to listen to Any Questions so never heard what GM said, which was probably good for my blood pressure.)

Of the social hysterias that have swept the West since about 2012 – #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Covid lockdowns, climate catastrophism, rabid vituperation against Israel

What a disparate group of causes Shriver has stuck together in one list!
Some of them have reached levels that might justify being called 'social hysteria'.

But others were spontaneous outpourings of public disgust at blatantly sexist and racist attitudes and actions, or attempts to curtail a lethal disease which was transmitted at close range, or scientific theories about the environment.

Some of them may have gone too far, they may have been taken up by the Omnicausers ['rent-a-mob' as I was accused of being a member of in my demo-ing youth!] but writing them all off as 'hysteria' casts a shadow over the rest of what LS writes.

There are plenty of people who can critique trans ideology without 'dissing' other issues like this, I'd rather give them my attention and respect than LS.

Nothing like reading someone’s opinion that you completely agree with, then you discover they are also a flat earther. Or agreeing with charlie kirk on gender issues and then I saw him lose his shit because someone doubted christianity.

Absolutely this.

The irony of people who claim that humans can't be neatly divided into male and female (because it's much more complex than that, apparently) simultaneously believing that humans can be neatly divided into "good people who agree with me about everything" and "bad people who disagree with me about everything".

Err, what.

Lionel Shriver is solid on this issue but I disagree with her about most other things. I also don't understand why, if you're going to change your name from Margaret to a man's name, you'd pick Lionel.

But isn’t it more accurate and clear-eyed to accept that even things we think are broadly in the right direction, or motivated by good intent, can be subject to social hysteria too?

Your post reads like one of the things we should be trying to avoid in ourselves, namely refusing to give ‘attention and respect’ to people who challenge the things we already ‘know’ to be true.

I have long suspected that Monbiot is an idiot. This just confirms it.

Re Lionel (indeed why choose Lionel out of the fabulous selection of male names?) she does glue some odd ideas together.

Lionel’s article is excellent and it’s patently obvious that she highlights these disparate issues because people are smeared if they dare to go against the grain and disagree with the general consensus

"This movement gleefully defies biological reality. Sex is not in the mind but is written in our every cell."

I'm not sure what's funnier, the fact that a Spectator article is being posted, that Shriver, the homophobe, 'anti-woke activist' and supporter of DeSantis, considers herself a "sceptic" or that she thinks she thinks trans people 'defy biological reality' whilst, in the next sentence, gets biology wrong 😂

FWIW, the vast majority of the sceptic community is supportive of trans people, though there are some crusties like Dawkins who identify as such.

I always wonder what happens to someone like this when finally something becomes too much and they can't hold it together.

Does it just blow everything up?

I used to really like Monbiot and think he was smat.

Then came his vegetarian apostasy and re-conversion.

Essentially, he became convinced that vegetarianism was not correct in the way he had thought after reading a book by a farmer talking about things like grazing and farm ecology.

A short time later, he had some sort of guilty fit, could not live with the idea that maybe he wasn't being pure enough, and went back to being a vegetarian because he felt better about it, less guilty. He is no way addressed any of the arguments that had originally convinced him, it was all about the feels.

Shortly after he was back to his aggressive ideological vegetarianism as if the whole thing had never happened. It became clear to me that it was nothing to do with reason, it was purely an emotionally driven leftist fundamentalism.

If he can treat one issue that way no doubt he can do it with others.

Same with my DS. He's grown up knowing I've been a lefty feminist all my life but can't get his head round that I won't go along with this TWAW bollocks. I ain't falling out with him about it though

I agree, and I didn't deny the existence of social hysteria.

I don't think that we have to keep engaging with opinions that we profoundly disagree with - I give 'attention and respect' in the first place to everything I read, I assess and critique and consider and evaluate. If the result is that I very strongly disagree with something, it shapes my view of the writer.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I think I am entitled to weigh ideas up in the light of my own personal judgments and values, and decide: that's enough, thanks but no thanks. Other readers will come to a different conclusion.

I think it's reasonable to decide to close a book, replace it on the shelf and move on. There are lots of other books for me to read and be challenged by - many of them still unread on my overloaded bookshelves

are you me ??

I'm just waiting for the day when the penny finally drops and we'll have to be graceful enough not to say 'I told you so'

I don’t plan to be all that gracious 😂

Rory Sutherland is great on why middle class, 'educated' types are much more susceptible to this nonsense. They have too much social status to lose.

x.com/thenorfolklion/status/1974166483803701734?s=46&t=OKyRO4eweTteo5FEt_J1MQ

And this is a big part of climate change scepticism. The environmentalists have swallowed an anti-science ideology which casts doubt on everything else they have to say.

This ^^

And bundling causes together is made even more messy thanks to social media etc. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine I was at a youth climate protest and one older CND gentleman was there who insisted that Russia was provoked solely because of NATO aggression. This shocked me. Later a student repeated the same argument to me and I realised it was a trope making the rounds on ‘left’ leaning social media. Probably seeded by Moscow who plays this game far more strategically.

Lionel Shriver has written some very good books and I agree with her on gender issues, not on very much else though.

Same with my DC. They are also lefties but we rarely speak on this one matter apart from me commenting factually on the physical harms of medication and surgery. It’s as if it’s impossible to support one ‘left’ cause and not every cause cleverly portrayed as being ’left’. Teaming the T with the LGB and focusing on young people was an ingenious strategy of TRAs (or Dentons).

I don’t fall out with mine over it either. The last convo we had was about men going in women’s toilets and he said “why are you talking about men though?! We are talking about trans WOMEN!” Bless him.