TRIGGERnometry - Gender Identity: The Latest Social Contagion - Andrew Doyle

Starting point is 00:00:00 One of my shortest-lived jobs was as a teacher at a school for girls near Sloan Square in London. I resigned after just two weeks because the headmistress was a religious zealot who had objected to me teaching a text which featured a gay character. In my resignation letter, I explained that I wasn't prepared to work at a school which fostered such anti-deluvian attitudes. I stayed on to finish the term, but I was delighted when I eventually made my escape. I had previously worked at a boys' school, and I soon noticed that there were some broad differences that manifested in an all-female environment.

Starting point is 00:00:33 One of the most concerning was that many of the girls were engaged in what can only be described as competitive starvation. During lunch duties, I was warned to keep an eye out for pupils who had taken just a single lettuce leaf from the salad bar. If I saw any girl doing so, I was told I must immediately intercept her and demand that she return and fill her plate. My first teaching post had been at a mixed sex school

Starting point is 00:00:56 in which cutting one's own skin was the fashion. We even had a visiting expert telling us how to encourage these pupils to hold ice cubes in their hands until they felt shooting pains as a substitute for the razor. I remember at the time thinking this wasn't the best advice, but I was too green to raise an objection. Besides, this speaker had spent a considerable part of the session, reminiscing about a shepherd she had once counseled, who had over the course of many months on the hillside, used a sharp wire to whittle his penis so that it eventually became forked.

Starting point is 00:01:31 To this day, I'm none the wiser as to the purpose of this anecdote. But the shift from cutting to starvation was striking. At the former school, pupils were not refraining from food, and at the latter, there were very few who were injuring themselves with blades. It was almost as though only one form of self-harm could predominate at any given time. And when a small group started doing it, the trend spread. with remarkable rapidity. I hadn't seen an equivalent back when I was teaching boys. And I've since learned that social contagions are especially common among teenage girls and that there are

Starting point is 00:02:05 numerous historical precedence for this. I've written elsewhere about the Salem witch trials of 1692 in which a group of girls began seeing demons in the shadows and accusing members of their own community of being in league with the devil. Then there were the various dancing plagues of the middle ages, which seemed to impact young women in particular. In 1892, girls at a school in Germany began to involuntarily shake their hands whenever they performed writing exercises. And when I visited Sweden last year, I was told about a local village where during the medieval period, the girls all inexplicably began to limp. It's perfectly clear that the latest social contagion to take hold in the Western world is that of girls identifying out of their femaleness, either through claims that they are

Starting point is 00:02:49 trans or non-binary. Whereas in 2012 there were only 250 referrals, mostly boys, to the NHS's Gender Identity Development Service or JIDS. By 2021, the figure had risen to more than 5,000, mostly female, patients. Gender activists like to claim that this is simply the consequence of more people coming out as society becomes more tolerant. And at the same time, they insist that it's never been a worse time to be trans. Consistency is not their strong suit. Of course, there are no easy answers as to the explosion of this latest fad, but surely the proliferation of social media has something to do with it. Platforms such as TikTok are replete with activists explaining to teenagers that their feelings of confusion are probably evidence that

Starting point is 00:03:35 they have been born in the wrong body. For pubescent girls who are uncomfortable with their physiological changes, as well as sudden unwanted male sexual attention, the prospect of identifying out of womanhood makes complete sense. These online peddies. have some snake oil to sell. And while a limping epidemic in a medieval village would be unlikely to spread far, social contagions cannot be so confined in the digital age. Much of this is reminiscent of the recovered memory hysteria of the late 20th century, when therapist Cranks promoted the idea that most victims of sexual abuse had repressed their traumatic memories from childhood. It led to numerous cases of people imagining that they had been abused by parents and other family members,

Starting point is 00:04:18 and many lives were ruined as a result. One of the key texts in this movement was The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, which made the astonishing and unevidenced claim that, quote, if you are unable to remember any specific instances, but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did. A common feature of social contagions is that they depend upon the elevation of intuition over material reality. Just as innocent family members were accustomed, accused of sexual abuse because of feelings teased out by unscrupulous therapists. Many girls are now being

Starting point is 00:04:53 urged by online influencers to trust the evidence of their emotions and accept a misalignment between their body and their gendered soul. We're not talking here about the handful of children who suffer from gender dysphoria, but rather healthy children who have been swept up in a temporary craze. Activists have been quick to demonise the entire notion of social contagion as a transphobic talking point, but the evidence for it is now pretty much indisputable. The author of a recent review into pediatric gender treatment, Dame Hillary Cass, has recommended that schools stop the social transitioning of children. The Cass Interim Review had already pointed out that enabling pupils to adopt alternative names, pronouns and dress codes was, quote, not a neutral

Starting point is 00:05:37 act. And there is mounting evidence that such an approach consolidates a child's psychological conceptualization of herself as a member of the opposite sex. While social transitioning is seen as compassionate, in reality, it causes long-term harm. It would seem that teenage girls will always be prone to these social contagions, but some are more damaging than others. Whereas limping and dancing and trembling can be overcome, the lifelong impact of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery will not be so transient. Let's hope this particular hysteria soon, goes the way of all the others. If you enjoy this video, please do check out my substack, where all of these articles appear weeks in advance.

Starting point is 00:06:21 There's plenty of other material there too, so do check it out.

TRIGGERnometry - Gender Identity: The Latest Social Contagion - Andrew Doyle

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