Gender Ideology - It's a Cult

GENDER IDEOLOGY -
IT'S A CULT


So, to follow on from what's up with cis, sis? I'm having a delve into the similarities between gender ideology and cults.

It's not to say that it uniformly and inevitably behaves in this way, but the unprecedented numbers of young people now seemingly absorbed into it, making their identities dependent on a complex and contradictory belief system, is striking. If we then acknowledge the numerous parallels with cult indoctrination, I absolutely think this is worth considering.

I'm pinching from the thought limiting rhetorical techniques of Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria For Thought Reform: This is a popular analysis of the factors involved in cult indoctrination that Our Duty cover extremely well.

The vulnerability of falling prey to cults tends to hinge on a feeling of lack of meaning in life; loneliness, low self esteem and confusion. These are all part of the human condition, and especially tormenting for adolescents.

Adolescents have an imprinted need to break free from their parents. The irony of joining a large group to be independent is normally lost on them. I think it's likely we all did it.

In an age of ever present social media with selfies taken with filters, ubiquitous pornography (which is increasingly degrading) sex and sexuality are even more intimidating than for previous generations.
Society has seen immediate affirmative models snapping into place at the mere utterance of being trans; parents told to conform, not challenge these identifications and being frequently kept out of the picture or even prosecuted for questioning. Children's names are changed in school with parents never told.

Alonside this, there is an omnipresent conversation on gender, signs, questionaires popping up all over the net to see if you might be trans and thoroughly dishonest reporting on feminists, puberty blockers, suicide and sports etc.
This is dangerous.

First problem though; there is no cult leader. How can it work without the charismatic figurehead?

It has to be something that has appeal and meaning to as broad a market as possible. In 1984, the saviour of Oceania was Big Brother. He was omnipresent and near omniscient for those within the party. No one saw his face but there were posters with his (alleged) likeness on every vertical surface. We don't have a face to put on the movement now, but a kind of compound image, made up of as many faces as you could ever want. Perhaps more similar to religion. It's your own personalised figment, you can change avatar at any stage - much like with Q, the secret messenger to the world telling followers of Trump's greatness. No accusations will stick to the trans demagogue because they seamlessly merge from one to another, never staying too long. The Alison Woolberts, Aimee Challenors and Eli Erlicks are rapidly replaced by new, shinier characters with clean records.

Out with the old. Claiming a New You. Controlling your words and environment. Milieu Control is what Robert Jay Lifton calls it. Milieu as in background, environment, atmosphere.



Replacing words and meanings of words are done so under the guise of sensitivity, but are nonetheless fought for tooth and nail and rigidly enforced.

The ecosystem of the words we use in conversation and our inner dialogue is our basic terrain, and first area to be weaponised by cults. If you're familiar with Orwell's 1984, this won't need too much explanation. Remember Syme? Syme worked for the Ministry of Truth:
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

The new language is meant to be neater, clearer, easier and more inclusive. But that's not what it's really about. It obscures and erases sex and replaces it with gender, the new fixation, supposedly to make life easier. What it actually does is create a new hierarchy and clique, and hyper-focuses on individual, personal identities over facts and society.

This is where it creeps in. At the thin end it's being kind, polite, diplomatic. At the thick end it's directly opposing critical thought.

Language control and adaptation sets up the apparatus for good-doctrine practice. It takes all the beer and bottle openers from the kitchen, floods the WiFi with child locks you can't bear ask to disable. It removes numbers from your phone and puts a bible by the bedside. It puts a flag outside the house and stares, gestures, gossips about those homes without sufficient patriotic signalling. It set designs your life.

'Thoughtcrime is death'.

It banishes the oldthink you to the past, with all the good things you collected in the dustbin, dismissed as if as worthless, shameful and tainted as the shellsuits, tanning booths and bowl-cuts which lie alongside them. The former you was ignorant of all this, wasn't it? The you before probably perpetuated harm. That's not your fault - but it's why we have to change the landscape, the language, the laws. You're a better person now, and you have this community, we have all these things to do...

Consuming your time, energy, thoughts

Your time is needed, which is quite a lifeline and compliment if you are lost and alone - which brings us to emphasising the saviour-like qualities of group - you become convinced of your prior loneliness, the mundanity, meaninglessness of your life. They create a dependence on the group by changing your behaviour in ever stranger, more obvious ways. Your demands increase and friends get tired of it, your new family applaud you. It's sacrificial and restorative.

Indentify the out-group / reinforce the in-group

You're one of us, we stand together. You can't take the T from the LGB(QIAS+) and you're obliged to defend that T if you're lesbian or gay (Stonewall mythology follows...).

You can merge with the group and feel part of the power as it rights injustice, being on the right side of history! It solidifies your identity. It means challenging the innate transphobia everywhere, don't let it slide. Listen out for these dogwhistles, be absolutist.

Draw lines between yourself, your side and the out-group. Be loud and proud doing so. Mobilise that righteousness.

The formation of an out-group and terms, slurs to call them, is integral.

Absolute Answers. Certainty in a Nuanced world. Alienation. The spectre of an embryonic, authentic you fighting to crack out of your 'assigned' shell, forced on you by a heternormative society.

Here is a deeply troubled young man, sounding suicidal. Look at the advice he is given

If you're honest, you would recognise what we're really talking about - it's your soul. Always there, defined. Immutable and true, just needing a voice.

You feel sure this is the right thing, faith becomes inextricably tied up what you claim to scientific fact, hence the outrage over claims that no, transwomen are not women, that you cannot change sex. That can't be logically countered, it's simply repeated or backed up with more circular argument. Your ability to think outside of the prescribed box is diminished.

Thought terminating clichès. It's comforting, leaves no exception, no debate. It's a mantra and my God these are powerful. Look at the conversations, the 'but trans women are women' 'trans lives matter!' 'acceptance without exception'. It's such a serious taboo, you can't interrogate it in any meaningful sense. And why would you? It's affirming, safe. Don't worry your pretty little gendered head with the details, just bookmark it. You'll pick up the snarky responses, stock phrases, hymns and prayers.

Dependence and identity, prophecies of what is to come.

Illusion of comfort and safety

Your time, words and environment are in shorter supply. This is cult behaviour - they make you feel safe only with them, they bombard you with horror stories cherry picked to hit you where it hurts, to take you on an emotional rollercoaster of triumph and tragedy. You are trauma bonded to the group, you know the outside is precarious. You need your allies.

Trump wished to 'erase' trans people. These TERFs 'deny [your] existence'. 'There were this many trans people murdered last year / it's TERF rhetoric what does it'.

Isolation from your loved ones


 

You are isolated, but for new friends and allies - in fact, you realise, you were always on the outside, alone, and only now you know what was really happening. You ditch your old habits, personality, associates and language voluntarily, but essentially it's a form of hazing and you have to do it. It's initiation rites, and that absolutist decision to accept nothing but full compliance (maybe after a short term of 'trying to get through to' - i.e. browbeat) from those around you leaves a bridge burnt down with angry resentment.



They didn't understand you, did they? They never did, you can't have mattered so much. The response to Trans Kids May Reject Their Family, Not the Other Way Around is telling. Someone counters the stereotype that people are always disowned by prejudiced family and the whole article is removed within three hours.


A presumably harmless example here of a person of apparently 16 yr old, you, rather than beibg asked for context or the details of the exchange, is instead met with multiple 'I am your father' comments. This is likely fairly anodyne but does point to a cultural norm








The Faith - Mystical Manipulation

There's inevitably a legendary quality - mysticism or worship within cults. It makes the banal feel special and momentus. For the North Korean, the message is Kim Jong Un is a genius. He has singlehandedly kept the country prosperous and noble since the death of his father. His father was walking at 3 weeks old, speaking at 8 weeks, and was born to a solar display of unparalleled magic, heralding the new leader. The Kim's are the only heirs.

You'd be killed for saying he's a strange, fat man raised as to be psychopathic as the worst systemic collusion could manage, or that North Korea's people have one of the bleakest lives on the planet. There really isn't a reason for all this militarisation, for spending trillions on nukes. The warmongering is infact a key part of isolation, control, deprivation and demands for allegiance.

Similarly, Donald Trump is also a brilliant man, if you're an employee, friend or fan. He is not an overweight, balding, serial sex offender. The emporer is in fact wearing the finest clothes.

There's more: trans lives are sacred. Deadnames have lethal power, uttering them can awake the old self, leaving it tormented, prowling the shadows, ready to accost, hijack, snatch the trans person only just out of their nosferato-like grasp. Trans people are, by any measure, weaker yet braver, more beautiful than the cis. It's a tight little (huge) club, and all the rainbows, tattoos, mantras, symbolism, days of remembrance/ visibility/ awareness/ education etc only enhance this in-group euphoria.

Gender is a magical element, transforming an ugly, average white man to an endangered species worthy of every right afforded anyone. It's a sacred belief, this movement literally saves souls. It reinforces the need to adhere to language control, rewarding use of in-group lingo, all signifying who you can and cannot trust.

Ancestry, ancient wisdom, eternal meaning

The frequently described dichotomy of western society as heternormative, cisnormative, colonialist, versus the wiser, more intuitive ways of native American's (two spirit) or eastern cultures with Hijras fulfils the need humans feel to find comfort in religious practice. The true you, restricted by such oppressive bullshit as biology, is your immortal soul. People knew all this before the violent enforcement of norms developed by the patriarchal white invader - biological sex is, after all, a white supremacist invention. You are part of an ancestral resurgence, whoever and wherever you are.

Money

The followers are the patients, as are their children. Careers based in the identity alone abound, from public speaking to awareness or diversity training and multiple other avenues - YouTuber, activist, advocate, mentor. The higher end of the charity sector is well paid and still seen as altruistic. There's no overt swindling, from what I can see, but the expectation of money is also ubiquitous in some quarters. Cashapp, Gofundme, paypal links everywhere. Someone needs surgery, hormones, a binder, rent or food money.

When you're lost, a community which 'knows you' is the only ground you need. Remember, they whisper incessantly, how broken and confused you were before. Remember that the world hates trans people. You / they are despised, mobbed, raped and murdered every day just for being true to your/themselves. You need us. 

Demands for purity / excommunication of heretics / love bombing

'You're either with us or against us' 'if you don't affirm, your child will hate you' 'better a live daughter than a dead son.' It crystallises a powerful in-group elitism, along with the language and the reverence of the above, forming a specialised language and extending the distance between the in-group and anyone and everyone else.

If your family don't unequivocally support your wish for puberty blockers, a mastectomy or neo-pronouns, they are probably toxic, dangerous to your mental health. Come here, little lost lamb, we are here to save you.

Having seen a kind, affirmative mother of a dysphoric child be ruthlessly demonised, threatened and reported to social services because she decided to have therapy before blockers (leading to this child desisting and now being a happy, regular, probably gay teen) I find it difficult to imagine anything else but brainwashed groupthink driving this.

Look at the swift blocking, waves of denouncing and disowning of friends and family that follows when someone utters the wrong thing. It's a huge, performative orgy of back slapping and self aggrandisement that fuses even tighter bonds. You are love bombed. It feels like you really are getting somewhere.

It also reinforces the victim narrative that gender ideology is built upon.

Gender ideology is the sainted spawn of Queer Theory, and QT is focused on the underdog, using not a normal scale of vulnerability but pariah status. Child molesters have been relentlessly defended by QT, seen as iconoclastic heroes cruelly punished by heteronormative culture. Being on the outside what it's all it's about.

Impurity is an element - ever present, probably with some level of malevolent intent that can sneak in under the consciousness of anyone. In other words, it is the devil, the communist, the Nazi. Keep working on it! Don't lose sight of the cause! Look to your allies and block those TERFs on sight; don't engage - they will hurt you. Block the doorways to meetings, threaten, slander, dox those who dare to speak out. No-platform Julie Bindel, abuse her at the same event a pornographer, specialising in 'non-consensual' (i.e. rape) porn walks by uncritised. You have to be sex positive - even when that 'sex' is the most ancient patriarchal abuse. No, you don't get to examine the hypocrisy.

Reincarnation and martyrs

Gender gives monsters like Synthia-China Blast more moral authority than a feminist concerned with the sympathy for a child rapist and murderer. Being trans can cleanse the worst child abuser, murderer, rapist of sin. They are reborn.

To be 'reborn' is a pretty major deal. Burn those baby photos, condemn your mother for keeping any. Erase your prior, erroneous existence.


They are antibodies, fighting the viruses of heresy and dissent. Minor martyrs. If you pick a fight everywhere, you can claim to be the never-ending victim - as long as people know that it was never your fault. Look at this 'success' - a mother of two returns to university to study law. In her final year she states, in an online discussion, that a trans woman fighting in mixed martial arts against biological women is dangerous. The discussion is muted, she is reported for transphobia. I imagine her fellow students feel triumphant over potentially destroying her future in law. This is the goal.
Confession
Own your privilege, be humble, trusting, practice your apologies and solemn duty to educate yourself. Confess you are cis or straight or white, recognise the privilege... then launch into others with a clean conscience. It's part of their bastardised version of intersectionality- cite those matryrs, mythologise them (Marsha P Johnson) suggest only you care for this group, then procede to use this supposed altruism as a platform to advance yourself. Any criticisms = "you're a white feminist / right wing / privileged" + some outgroup slur.

It's all a purity test, trials of dedication. There's a reason hazing is used in so many cliques, it really does leave you with the feeling of vested interest - the harsher it was, the greater the longevity and feeling of achievement. If you are not trans, this is an important opportunity to recognise. You can make a lot of social status by confessing your being 'cis' - but you'll need to confess and attack more, act as a human shield where possible.

It's a performance, ridding the conscience with carefully chosen, even competitively insightful sins. "Forgive me father, for I have sinned... this week I forgot to say grace - while being force-fed shit by the militia during my time as hostage replacement for the children..."
It gives the moral authority needed to lay in to others, and the internal group monitoring keeps all heresy at bay. Call yourself out, call out a friend! It only proves your dedication.

Sacred Science / we have evidence / only a fool could doubt...

Your truth is the only truth. Whether its knowing the Haley comet will herald a new era, and we must sacrifice ourselves to be part; whether it's from ancient texts or a more recent conspiracy theory about children being shipped out in furniture or raped in the non-existent basement of a pizza parlour - there is a definite, but obscured truth that we are united in exposing. We stand with the facts, which, coincidentally, perfectly align with our feelings.

Ever tried challenging even the most obvious trans bullshit on social media? Notice the response is filled with purportedly empirical evidence via journals that, on closer inspection, look a lot more like opinion pieces? Are they stuffed with logical fallacies like a victim of foie gras farming?

Your internal self perception overrides your biology; China-Blast's new identity overrides all that child rape and murder business. You have been reborn, forgiven and blessed.

Science backs them up, and sex isn't binary, they say. But still, transwomen have female brains. So, neuroscience has identified characteristics in brain anatomy or function that can speak of the true sex / gender of that person, but still, some girls have penises and some men menstruate and no, an anthropologist could never find your pelvis in a century's time and tell you which toilet you should use.

The simple, scripted replies to any and all challenges take over the brain, like a call centre worker can detach from their own thoughts and speech patterns and reel off complex contract conditions on autopilot. It gives an incredible sense of wraparound safety and security, it means you can walk away from any conversation saying you walked the horse to your emotional labour but you cannot make it think (like you), feeling vindicated all your arguments are sound. They have to be - they pop up everywhere, they give us the final word. There's consensus (among friends and allies) here, and if someone disputes it, disarm them with a laugh react and call them a bigot. And remember to block them.

Victim narrative

With faux concern and in public, they ask you have you self harmed? Have you experienced suicidal ideation? It's rare this is flat-out denied - the suggestion is always there, and it heightens your value and importance. It's the key threat to any reticent parent, and it's done so without any insight or thought of how dangerous it is. Suicidal thought is the mark of a true martyr and intensely validating in the hierarchy of suffering.

Stifling thought

Well, we've done a fair bit on language. In any subculture there's terms, slang, words which are preferred and words which are despised. The alphabetti crew are particularly into this and feel a bit more scientifically bolstered by all the acronyms. Just like science, or doctors on Casualty, innit? Think of Syme and his thought terminating word abolition.
It helps reinforce group solidarity, it enables the swift identifying and exclusion of non-believers, a minutiae of a battleground in which to obsess, fixate and correct. It's elitism, in-group coding, an esoteric sounding basis for pontificating and, if the phrases are vague or down to interpretation, it means you can really work those motte and Bailey arguments. Perhaps without even knowing.

I find it startlingly similar to the Brexit debate. After the referendum, half of the U.K.'s online cohort were confused and fearful and angry. what exactly is going to improve, they asked? And why? Why do this? The responses were almost without exception 'shut up, remoaner', 'Brexit means Brexit' a conspiracy theory about the Schengen treaty and of course, 'you lost'. And this was frustrating, for an infinite number of reasons. What did those rhetorical tools do, though?

They prevented meaningful exchange of information, keeping those defensive, (sometimes regretful, guilty and a little afraid) souls bound up in an identity. No one could example how, maybe, they had been conned. It dragged out and defined the different groups - we won't agree, you're a metropolitan elite / idiotic gammon. It kept them safe. What does 'Brexit means Brexit ' mean?
It signified an intractability of thought. It slammed the shutters down. It flagged to others that an intruder wrongthinker had been found. It enhanced their bond, they felt more righteous and misunderstood, like valiant underdogs... Criticism, questions, will not be tolerated.

It simplified an extraordinarily difficult, complex, unprecedented legal and political change into a chant of 'get it done'. Just don't get in the way, we're being led here. There's a plan, I don't know exactly what it is but stand aside. It very quickly became obvious to any remoaner that this was a futile attempt, and a division ripped through the country, through party lines.

So then, what does 'trans women are women' do, and why bring up this obvious contradiction in terms up everywhere? Why all the mantras like 'trans kids belong', 'my existence is not up for debate'?
Brexit wasn't a cult, but mass hysteria played its part, as well as some key thought terminating techniques and conflict bonding.

Prayers and mantras

These mantras and in-group words are almost synonymous with prayer. They reassure, they bond you together and they streamline the wiring of that brain, which is as powerful as intuitive knowledge. Closed, cyclical reasoning will lock you in all snugly. Brexit means Brexit, transwomen are women, God did it and it's a sin but you will be forgiven, if...
Doctrine Over Person / The group over the individual
This erases your own personal experience, all that pesky individual thought shit. It's just another little part of you to dispense with, again. You must reject analyses or beliefs which don't fit within the doctrine. Simply keeping these opinions quiet and in private will not suffice. The cognitive dissonance will tear at you, and private is an increasingly elusive state. So you're going to have to tolerate that gnawing discomfort of 'but, they can't be serious' or rethink the whole allegiance. As we know, there's no wiggle room for exceptions here, so you must reform these thoughts or step out of it altogether. But all your friends are here now, it's taken a lot of investment.


Solidarity with 'the community' is more important than your opinions. This community/ movement/ ideology has improved you, has it not? If you can't see that, check your privilege and remember sex workers in Brazil with none.
Existence, validation, humanity - this is inextricably weaved into the belief system and can be withdrawn from you at any time.
You have to be a part of the fellowship, or you're not worth speaking to, your soul will not be salvageable. Your whole being is supported, verified, saved for this 'community'; those on the outside are enemy, as either traitors (fallen members, detransitioners, Judases) or persecutors. The community comprise the victims and the rescuers. Those outside are deserving of no compassion, voice or platform, they're obstacles, quislings and near-demons. You can't be good, or you, except by being a part of the greater good. Gender, the quality that elevates the dull to spectacular, the guilty to innocent, is a force of unity and without it, or without a full respect of it, people are left somehow empty. It's why detransitioners can't have ever really been trans, they were intruders and now some kind of double agent. They, along with every single critic, are trying to remove your humanity and existence, and this means them and us and with us, or without a soul.

As discussed before here and many other places, any disagreement, any dissent, must be framed as an act of aggression. The spectres of villains - the traitors and defectors, will inspire far more vitriol than that of Karen White or Karen Lawson or Alison Woolbert. This is what matters here - the integrity and solidity of the group. The crimes of those outside of the group's remit pale in comparison, and if we really must condemn, they never were reallly trans anyway.

Soon I'll be examining gender ideology, its activism and its resemblance to fascism, but it's fair to say I could go on much longer listing / comparing. The consistencies here are striking and absolutely are concerning.

See you then