The Perfect Storm Inflicted Upon Girls by Transgender Ideology

During this conversation with Helen Joyce, Jordan Peterson explained by girls as so much more at risk of harm at the hands of those who peddle transgender ideology. I transcribed the following excerpt:

There's no difference between being self-conscious and being miserable, technically, but here's something else. Self-consciousness among females is much more associated with body dysmorphia. Now there's a bunch of reasons for that. We don't know all of them. But here's a couple. First of all, at puberty, women start to experience more negative emotion on average than men. And that is not true of boys and girls, but it does seem to kick in at puberty. And that's likely because you get size dimorphism developing. And so it's reasonable for women to be a little bit more timid about the physical environment than men. But also women are sexually vulnerable. And also, they have to care for infants. So being threat-sensitive, makes sense, okay? And in any case, those are three possible reasons, but it definitely kicks in at puberty.

Now, it also is the case that anxiety among women tends to take the form of bodily self-consciousness. And I think the reason for that is likely--this is a speculation, although the others are merely observable facts--it's likely because girls and women are judged more comprehensively on their physical appearance than men. So it makes sense that if they're going to be self-conscious, it's going to be more broadly focused. And that's particularly rough. Then the third contributing factor is girls hit puberty earlier than boys. So now what you have is a perfect storm there.

So now you have a girl. And she's feeling a lot more anxious and confused than she did before, because she hit puberty. Plus, her body is doing 50 weird things. Plus, she's getting all sorts of strange attention from adults that she never got before. Plus, she doesn't know how to fit in on the social front. And she's trying to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. And then you have people additionally torturing them about the fact that any deviation from the norm on the stereotypical front is actually an indication that she doesn't exist in the correct body while she doesn't really feel like she's in the correct body to begin with. So it's a perfect storm for young girls.

When Canada came out with its compelled pronoun law 2016, I talked to the Canadian Senate, I said, you idiots, in your legislation, you think you're going to free up kids? You're going to produce a psychogenic epidemic among young women, because they're preferentially susceptible to psychogenic epidemics, which is why we had a bulimia epidemic and an anorexia epidemic, all of which were spread by social media--and a cutting epidemic. And then there's a history of such epidemics going back 300 years: Freudian hysteria, which was very widespread in the Victorian times, although disappeared afterwards, or mutated, was also a psychogenic epidemic that preferentially affected young women.

So I just wanted to lay out some of the reasons why that's the case, higher levels of negative emotion, and more broadly focused self-consciousness. And so then you add to that a kind of unpopularity, because maybe a given girl isn't that sophisticated at manifesting--what would you call it? Socially acceptable feminine traits. It takes a fair bit of sophistication to be a well put-together woman and you're going to be pretty damned awkward at that if you're kind of a clunky tomboy when you're 12.

So now you're providing them with, first of all, a uni-dimensional reason why they're miserable. It's pretty damned convenient. And no wonder an adolescent wants that. It's like, do I have 50 problems? Or do I have one? And then you also entice them with the additional social status that they're going to receive by announcing that they're special, and having every bloody teacher in the entire world--plus the world at large--focus on that narcissistic grandiosity that goes along with the insistence of a special identity. And the only price you have to pay is enforced sterilization and surgical mutilation. Fine deal for our teenagers!

I think there are another couple of things about teenage girls that we don't pay as much attention to but the very fact of physical development in teenage girls means your body is sort of ballooning. You know, breasts here, hips here, bottom there. And you lose that sort of gender-neutral body that gives you so much freedom in childhood. And so what girls experience in puberty is moving from being a free kind of person into being an object because to some, her body is public property. And as you say, it's commented on. Everyone has a right to comment on it. She may, you know, she'll get comments in the street. She'll look all around her and become aware of the objectification of women throughout society.

Now, I think this is happening to boys much more that over the past decade in kind of, certainly objectification of the male body, and in some cases, kind of sexual objectification of men. And this generation are used to seeing those really exaggerated images of femininity so the feminine female heroes have huge breasts and tiny waist and-Kim Kardashian. And the male heroes have a ripped six pack . . . it's all about how you look. So it's happening more for men, and interestingly, boys experiences of things like anorexia have increased, but not as much as girls….

Continue ReadingThe Perfect Storm Inflicted Upon Girls by Transgender Ideology

About Stupidity and Related Concepts

I've sometimes written about Hannah Arendt's idea of the "banality of evil," the idea that the lack of thought can be far more dangerous than evil intentions. And see here. BTW, it turns out that Adolf Eichmann, Arendt's Exhibit 1, was not a good example of this alleged lack of evil intentions, based on recent revelations.*

Here's a related idea: the problem with stupidity. I am bit uneasy with that word, because it is often used as a pejorative and connotes willful ignorance, ignorance for which someone has made conscious choices to put themselves into that state of ignorance. I would have preferred to simply use "ignorance" to express the idea that someone lacks the necessary information to make decisions that further human flourishing. Another related idea is the Dunning-Kruger effect:

a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills.
But back to "stupidity." As described by Dr. Peter McCullough in a recent article, Dietrich Bonhoeffer discussed individual and social damage caused by stupidity. First, McCullough's description of Bonhoeffer:

In 1943, the Lutheran pastor and member of the German resistance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was arrested and incarcerated in Tegel Prison. There he meditated on the question of why the German people—in spite of their vast education, culture, and intellectual achievements—had fallen so far from reason and morality. He concluded that they, as a people, had been afflicted with collective stupidity (German: Dummheit).

He was not being flippant or sarcastic, and he made it clear that stupidity is not the opposite of native intellect. On the contrary, the events in Germany between 1933 and 1943 had shown him that perfectly intelligent people were, under the pressure of political power and propaganda, rendered stupid—that is, incapable of critical reasoning.

What follows are a few excerpts from Bonhoeffer's writings on stupidity:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than wickedness. Evil can be protested against, exposed, and, if necessary, it can be prevented by force. Evil always harbors the germ of self-destruction by inducing at least some uneasiness in people. We are defenseless against stupidity. Nothing can be done to oppose it, neither with protests nor with violence. Reasons cannot prevail. Facts that contradict one's prejudice simply don't need to be believed, and when they are inescapable, they can simply be brushed aside as meaningless, isolated cases.

In contrast to evil, the stupid person is completely satisfied with itself. When irritated, he becomes dangerous and may even go on the attack. More caution is therefore required when dealing with the stupid than with the wicked. Never try to convince the stupid with reasons; it's pointless and dangerous.

To understand how to deal with stupidity, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain: it is not essentially an intellectual, but a human defect. There are people who are intellectually agile who are stupid, while intellectually inept people may be anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in certain situations.

Continue ReadingAbout Stupidity and Related Concepts

NYT Finally Covers a Story that Many School Districts Hide “Gender Transitions” from Parents

Many school districts are assisting students to "transition to a different gender" and hiding it from the student's parents. I've been telling people this for more than a year, and many people I talk to are refusing to believe that this happens, even though I have drafted letters of concern to districts on this topic. People refuse to believe this because the legacy media has consciously refused to cover these stories . . . until now. The NYT has finally decided that it's OK to write about this outrageous practice. From the NYT today:

Jessica Bradshaw found out that her 15-year-old identified as transgender at school after she glimpsed a homework assignment with an unfamiliar name scrawled at the top.

When she asked about the name, the teenager acknowledged that, at his request, teachers and administrators at his high school in Southern California had for six months been letting him use the boy’s bathroom and calling him by male pronouns.

Mrs. Bradshaw was confused: Didn’t the school need her permission, or at least need to tell her?

It did not, a counselor later explained, because the student did not want his parents to know. District and state policies instructed the school to respect his wishes.

Note: In this article, the NYT claims that "conservative" parents who are upset by this practice, but this is intentionally misleading. If you doubt this, just go ask your Democrat-voting neighbors what they would think if their child's school district hid this information, secretly conducting what amounts to unlicensed therapy conducted by classroom teachers, which often leads to dangerous lifetime drugs and permanent surgery.

Continue ReadingNYT Finally Covers a Story that Many School Districts Hide “Gender Transitions” from Parents

Diagnosing Woke Ideologists

Josh Slouch lost a job he loved. In his current essay, he indicates that a Woke Mob came after him. He writes:

What was my sin? Had I hung a noose from the rearview mirror of my Prius? Did I assault a trans person? Did I don blackface and drop the n-bomb? No. It was more sinister than that. They discovered that I, a gay man, host a conservative podcast.

If you're wondering how a progressive gay liberal became a libertarian conservative, the story of that political transformation will be told on my Substack soon.

I'll be on the lookout for that forthcoming article. In the meantime, Josh has contemplated the types of people who joined the Woke Mob that cost him his job. Here's how he diagnoses them:
I believe part of the answer to this complicated question lies in the normalization of a type of psychology that drives domestic abuse known as Cluster B personality disorders. These include narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and anti-social personality disorder. The symptoms of these disorders are diverse and overlapping, and people with them engage in conflict, deception, abuse and mistreatment of others (almost always while claiming they themselves are victims).

These are more than “difficult people.” They are impossible, and often dangerous, people. A quick glossary of the Cluster B disorders. There is a lot of overlap in symptoms among them:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder—self-centered, vain, may be a braggart or may be the type that acts like a very special put-upon victim. The world revolves around them, and others are objects to be used, not people to love or respect.

Borderline Personality Disorder—extreme emotional instability, laughing one minute, crying or screaming the next. Borderlines fear abandonment but engineer conflicts with everyone around them until they fulfill their own fear of being rejected. Think “I hate you/don't leave me.”

Histrionic Personality Disorder—Big emotions about everything all the time. Life events are over-dramatized. Minor disagreements become relationship-shattering cataclysms. Histrionics are often sexually seductive and go beyond flirtation in acting out for attention.

Anti-social Personality Disorder—also known as “sociopathy” or “psychopathy.” An absence of conscience or empathy. Antisocials lead a parasitic life draining money and time from others. Many are criminals. Others stay within the law but torment their families and colleagues to get what they want.

Continue ReadingDiagnosing Woke Ideologists

Stealth Editing and Moral Purity

Stealth editing is happening on a regular basis. It should NEVER happen. Further, anyone who examines Matt Taibbi's positions on major political issues should immediately notice that he leans to the "Left," lining up well with the positions taken by most "Left" leaning people three years ago. But that is not good enough in this era of required genuflection to the dominant tribe and anal retentive moral purity. We can't have people who fail to line up perfectly with our tribe on ALL issues. If you are not perfectly with us, you are perfectly against us!

Continue ReadingStealth Editing and Moral Purity