Reading this essay has made me reconsider my Deist beliefs. Maybe YHWH does intervene in lives and in societies. There are daily reminders of how Amerika has sunk into a swamp of perversion and self-deception. Maybe Sodom and Gomorrah actually were destroyed by a god that could not stand disgusting behavior. It is no longer a question of whether the United States will fall: the only question is when.
Could be! Or it could be that the grammar of the cosmos is designed such that when you deviate too far from reality, reality breaks you. We just don't see the rules in the same way we see physical rules like "run too hard into a brick wall, get wrecked."
"Perhaps it’s delusion. But I’d put my money on good old-fashioned pathological egotism and suggestion of self and others. He’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to coerce others."
Modeling minds is a real bastard of a chore under ordinary circumstances. It's something we are trained (and train ourselves) to do almost from birth, but it remains a messy, fuzzy process. For someone like Jamie, I think the task approaches the impossible.
My best guess is that to be a "Jamie" is to be an observer standing in a hall of cracked and shattered mirrors, simultaneously confounded and intoxicated by every shard of himself he sees. This might be one way to imagine the condition of being for a borderline narcissist, if that's what we're dealing with. But I'm not yet satisfied that's the most useful language model.
"I find it amazing how effortlessly new converts seem to adopt the exact same pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting, as if they’ve “downloaded” a program in the Matrix."
I agree. And I think there are enough people who notice this rapid-deployment "programmable" aspect of being that it's worth considering as a real possibility. That's not to say that trauma and/or inherent narcissism doesn't play a part in it. But consider for a moment that the artists who brought "The Matrix" to the screen seem to themselves be classic examples of narcissistic autogynephiliacs (and nasty characters to boot). The question of if (and how) they are literally being programmed shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
In any case, this was a fascinating (and somewhat horrifying) topic and article, Harrison. Thanks.
"The question of if (and how) they are literally being programmed shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, IMO."
I hope you write about this more. ;)
"My best guess is that to be a "Jamie" is to be an observer standing in a hall of cracked and shattered mirrors, simultaneously confounded and intoxicated by every shard of himself he sees."
Is Quillette Claire still exhibiting her Aussie government plandemic lockdown tyranny denialism? Someone should do a Twitter feed analysis of her digital expressions of Stockholm Syndrome.
"I find it amazing how effortlessly new converts seem to adopt the exact same pattern of thinking.." Joost Meerloo calls this totalitarian thinking of the mass. The Ts of the alphabet people definitely adopt it. It does seem like simply downloading mind software.
From a trauma informed perspective it is obvious these are manifestations of the trauma, e.g. being dissociated from our bodies and hatred of our own bodies go hand-in-hand. Clearly, these behaviours and affectations should not be encouraged any more than anexoria or self-harm should be encouraged. Therapists that do encourage it should be struck off.
I find it interesting that you’re reviewing the review (and not the book). I haven’t yet read the book, but I plan to. Trans topics form a large part of what I write about. I did hear Shannon’s guest appearance on “Gender: A Wider Lens” podcast.
What struck me, to hear Shannon tell it, is how normal their lives were before this idea took over Jamie’s mind. And Shannon herself sounds emotionally healthy. You can make fun of them for being college-educated liberals who experimented sexually in their youth, grew their own vegetables, and occasionally waxed philosophic (although those would be kind of cheap shots to take at people who, before this mess, were just minding their own business and living functional lives), but really, they had full productive lives, both professionally and personally, with a wide range of hobbies and interests, before this obsession took over Jamie’s life and ruined it.
Yes, surely he bears responsibility for getting deep into a paraphilia and letting that obsession take over his life.
But what I find really sad is this -- our entire society participates in encouraging _this_ particular obsessive paraphilia, _these_ particular people’s harm.
Imagine an alcoholic. Surely he bears responsibility for getting his act together and getting sober. But imagine if every media outlet, every corporation, every nonprofit, every university and K-12 system, every friend and neighbor, every doctor, nurse, psychologist and social worker, was on board with “validating” and encouraging his alcoholism, instead of trying to get the alcoholic to come to his senses and make better choices.
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that it would be orders of magnitude harder to get out of that destructive, escalating, positive-feedback loop that was ruining your life, right?
So as much as I find people with personality disorders extremely unlikable and avoid them at all costs; and as much as I particularly loathe society’s self-righteous support of the trans delusion, as if it’s not a scourge and a behavioral addiction but rather our century’s foremost civil rights battle; I still feel compassion for Shannon and for Jamie, who has now had his genitals surgically removed, is divorced, and is alone and miserable with his unfulfilling obsessions and his online “friends” and whose life is well and truly messed up. Even if he snaps out of this and wants to get his life back, he’s never getting his penis back.
As much as society wants to portray “trans people” as being their authentic true selves and self-actualizing, that doesn’t seem to match reality.
To me this is a really sad story in which almost everyone in the West is complicit. Yet I’m reading a lot of contempt and blame here -- maybe you don’t intend that, and I’m misreading. Certainly Jamie bears responsibility for his bad choices. But these particular bad choices are cheerled and enabled by our entire culture at the moment, with no thought nor acknowledgment of the lives that are destroyed. The left and mainstream society are actively harming these people. The right seem to feel pleasure in watching these people suffer, as if they’re just wrong-thinking ignoramuses who are getting what they deserve.
But really? These are fellow humans. Who is going to help them? No one seems interested in that.
I feel sorry for the Jamies of the world, even if I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with them for five minutes.
Thanks for your perspective and critique, Dolly, and for the extra information on this case. I'll start at the end:
"But really? These are fellow humans. Who is going to help them? No one seems interested in that."
I was just having a conversation about this last night, but in the context of kids, and I took your position. As much as I critique transgenderism, I really think the kids are in the worst position, and I don't blame them. When it comes to adults, I think I'm a bit less compassionate. Maybe I shouldn't be. But if I appear contemptuous or blaming, I should clarify that I feel that more for ideology itself, and the specific actions taken under its influence. If those behaviors shade over into the abusive, I think that needs to be highlighted. It's difficult to always keep the lines clear, though.
For example, as you write, "The left and mainstream society are actively harming these people." But the left and society are made up of individuals, and I think many of them are like Jamie, people who in the past were just living their lives, but who became part of something that is now replicating the damage that was done to them and instilling it in even more.
With my current understanding, I think all we can do is acknowledge that both are true. Like with the child who is abused and acquires a more extreme form of personality disorder than they would have otherwise had as an adult. You can highlight the abuse and the tragedy of it. But as an adult, you can't ignore that through their actions they are doing the same thing.
When Lobaczewski wrote about transpersonification, he was originally trying to find the seeds for what the people he experienced eventually became. In the case of Jamie, as you say, without the crazy, he probably would have gone on to live an unobtrusive life without the self-destruction. But there was probably also something else that made him more susceptible than Shannon, for instance. I would hazard a guess that one way it manifested was in his "laziness" in the relationship--the "man child". Perhaps Shannon's openness with sexuality also made her assume they were more compatible in that department than they actually were.
So in that regard, I think a clinical look at a person's life history can help in analysis. But, I admit, that process should be more objectively clinical and less polemical.
Thanks for engaging with me on this, Harrison -- it's something I care a lot about.
I came to be concerned about trans issues almost by accident. My oldest child is old enough to have grown up before this was "a thing" at all. I saw firsthand that while of course some kids in any cohort are gender nonconforming, there weren't a bunch of kids my son's age believing they were in the wrong bodies and declaring they would kill themselves because they weren't being affirmed. This is was simply a problem that didn't exist.
Then my youngest child (unaffected by this craziness, thank goodness) grew up in the current environment where "trans kids" are considered quite common -- there are dozens in every school. We know so, so many people her age who are "trans" or "nonbinary" (and we knew zero my son's age, except a very few who latched onto it later, when it became popular).
But what I also noticed was: the typical "trans kid" is not functional or happy either before or after transition. They are typically not drawn from the ranks of the popular kids, or even the average kids who have friends and hobbies and do OK academically and do a sport. Somehow, this magical "gender issue" or "wrong body issue" seems to occur more often in the least popular, most vulnerable kids, the kids who have serious emotional problems, who have eating disorders, who self-harm, who lack social skills, who have chaotic home lives, who are struggling with their sexuality, etc. These are typically kids who ***already had some serious issues*** -- so how much clearer and more obvious can this be?
"Being trans" is an idiom of distress, and the adults in the room are acting as if it's not just a very real condition but actually the root cause of these kids' problems, instead of identifying or addressing any of the glaring problems these unfortunate kids often have.
What have we been doing with these vulnerable kids? We "affirm" things that aren't true, we sterilize and drug them, and we applaud both their self-harm and their self-rejection. What could possibly go wrong with this strategy?
So I, like you, have the most sympathy for the kids involved. Parents have one job with regard to their kids -- to protect them from serious dangers and equip them to participate in society -- and in many cases these parents are failing.
If your culture can convince you to harm your own children, what _can't_ it convince you to do?
Some of these parents are "true believers" and no doubt believe what they're told: that this is the latest, most advanced medical truth.
But for many, you can see the strain on their faces, the effects of chronic stress, where they understand they're expected to go along with this nonsense, and they do, but it's causing them a lot of pain to comply. On some level, they understand it's wrong.
It makes me think of the old Milgram experiments. The authority tells the subjects that it's imperative that the experiment continue, so they reluctantly administer what they believe is a dangerous shock to another person.
But to your own children?
So I feel a lot of urgency to figure out a way where all of us, those who see how crazy this is, speak out in a way that serves as a bucket of cold water in the faces of all who are enabling and promoting this harm. How do we do that?
Perhaps one step is to acknowledge that all these people, even the least appealing ones (the autogynephilic deeply self-absorbed / self-obsessed adults of the world who blow up their own lives as well as the lives of everyone who cares about them) are worth helping and saving from themselves.
That could be true even if one's only goal in so doing is to bring this ideology crashing down so that it stops harming the innocent victims -- the kids.
I do puzzle over this, though : People who are caught up in this ideology behave very much like people with personality disorders. They are self-obsessed and focused on their own needs and blind to others' needs. They are emotionally dysregulated. They believe things that go wrong in their lives are always the other person's fault, never theirs.
And people with this wiring rarely change, right? That's why certain things are classified as "personality" disorders -- they run deep.
But I've heard enough stories of trans people "snapping out of it" to make me think that perhaps personality disorder is not at the root all the time. Enough detransitioners, to hear their families describe them, didn't seem personality disordered before becoming wrapped up in the ideology, and they become a lot more self-reflective after they snap out of it. It's a really common trajectory, it seems like.
So I have started to view this more like an addiction, or a cult involvement.
If a cocaine addict gets clean/sober, he might behave totally differently afterward and have no wish to go back to the way he was. He might feel remorse for harmful things he did to loved ones that he had no problem with doing while under the influence. He might, like Jamie, spend the mortgage on his addiction, but once clean and sober, he wouldn't do such a thing.
Similarly, people who've been in cults have been described by family as "not the person we knew" --repeating talking points or slogans, displaying very rigid thinking, described as being "like a zombie" or "won't listen to reason" -- but then when they snap out of the belief system and get out of the cult, they are described by their families as being "themselves" again. Steve Hassan is a good example of this -- he was involved heavily in the Moonies, but then a serious car accident removed him from the situation long enough for him to reassess, and he's dedicated his life to helping people get out of cults.
There are stories of parents taking the phone and internet away from their kids, changing schools, not "affirming" their thinking, and they reassess.
Transitioned people often seem personality disordered when they're in the grip of the ideology -- and some no doubt were personality disordered before -- but there also seem to be a lot of people for whom this looks like personality-disordered behavior but is in fact a temporary condition.
Of course, as you allude to, there are probably people who are temperamentally more vulnerable to this than others. There was something in Jamie that drew him in, and allowed him to remain stuck. In some way, the self-involvement and self-focus was very appealing.
Similarly, there are probably people who are temperamentally skeptical cusses and who would be more likely to be skeptical of trans ideology even if "everyone" around them is endorsing it.
We are all somewhat at the mercy of our wiring. We gender skeptics don't deserve a gold star, any more than the Jamies deserve derision -- we are how we are. All of us are responsible for mitigating the effects of our own flaws, though. I think Jamie got in too deep to be able to see what he was doing. He just doesn't see it. That's my honest belief. He might as well be in the Moonies.
How this trans stuff takes hold of people's minds is somewhat a mystery. I think we need to understand the dynamics of this better so we learn how to help people who are caught up in it.
Thanks again, Harrison, for sharing your perspectives and listening to mine.
What an excellent comment! I think your observations are spot on.
"...there also seem to be a lot of people for whom this looks like personality-disordered behavior but is in fact a temporary condition."
This is part of Lobaczewski's description of transpersonification. For some it is permanent, because they were always personality disordered to begin with. For others, it is temporary - like "induced psychopathology." And he too would recommend compassionate care (not in the euphemistic sense) towards both groups. But he would be concerned about an accurate diagnosis - figuring out if it really is a personality disorder, or merely a temporary disorder. He would adjust his therapeutic approach depending.
We have an additional problem, however. Normally, the normal people would be in a position to exert some authority on the subject. But we're in a situation where the pathology is in a dominant position. Even people who are compassionate but firm can lose their kids, be cancelled, or run out of town. So what do we do in this situation, which allows those with the most extreme personality disorders almost total freedom to set the rules? Whatever the answer, I think it will have to have elements of both firmness and compassion, sometimes one more than the other, depending on the specific context.
“ But we're in a situation where the pathology is in a dominant position. Even people who are compassionate but firm can lose their kids, be cancelled, or run out of town. So what do we do in this situation, which allows those with the most extreme personality disorders almost total freedom to set the rules? “
That is exactly the problem. When I hear of yet another parent going to court or being cut out of their child’s life or having their child transitioned against their wishes -- and often this parent is the _only_ person trying to protect the child -- I feel sick inside.
I’ll have to look more into Lobaczewski's description of transpersonification. That’s very interesting stuff.
"If your culture can convince you to harm your own children, what _can't_ it convince you to do?"
Just came across all this. This comment is profound. I kind of want to tweet it. I think I just found and followed your X account, can I tweet and tag you?
I have been instructed that deeply disturbed people dramatize sexual "irregular practices" but I have seldom seen it spelled out as it is in this account..
Today we continue to excoriate public personalities who are caught being sexually promiscuous or abusive while celebrating the world of transgender men and women. This may one day catch up with us (if it hasn't already). These behaviors point to chronic conditions of fear or personality disorder. These conditions are also accompanied by crime or antisocial behaviors. Not only should we be cautious about letting such people into our personal, civic or business lives, but we run the risk of cultural collapse if we give such people too much power or influence. And there are individuals on this planet who yearn for such cultural collapses and actively work for them. I appreciate all efforts to make the general public more aware that such persons exist.
Kintsugi is my go-to comforting metaphor in trials & tribulations both intra- and inter- personal: if we manage to come out on the other side and heal properly, the remaining scars add rather than subtract 😊
Excellent! Your sacrifice (of drinking the poison for me and passing on the detoxified essence) reminded me of stories of how artic shaman would eat the toxic amanita and, after detoxifying to an extent, pass the magic visionary power on to their circle of initiates. Luckily for me, you were able to bestow this gift using your mind and words.
Reading this essay has made me reconsider my Deist beliefs. Maybe YHWH does intervene in lives and in societies. There are daily reminders of how Amerika has sunk into a swamp of perversion and self-deception. Maybe Sodom and Gomorrah actually were destroyed by a god that could not stand disgusting behavior. It is no longer a question of whether the United States will fall: the only question is when.
Could be! Or it could be that the grammar of the cosmos is designed such that when you deviate too far from reality, reality breaks you. We just don't see the rules in the same way we see physical rules like "run too hard into a brick wall, get wrecked."
"Perhaps it’s delusion. But I’d put my money on good old-fashioned pathological egotism and suggestion of self and others. He’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to coerce others."
Modeling minds is a real bastard of a chore under ordinary circumstances. It's something we are trained (and train ourselves) to do almost from birth, but it remains a messy, fuzzy process. For someone like Jamie, I think the task approaches the impossible.
My best guess is that to be a "Jamie" is to be an observer standing in a hall of cracked and shattered mirrors, simultaneously confounded and intoxicated by every shard of himself he sees. This might be one way to imagine the condition of being for a borderline narcissist, if that's what we're dealing with. But I'm not yet satisfied that's the most useful language model.
"I find it amazing how effortlessly new converts seem to adopt the exact same pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting, as if they’ve “downloaded” a program in the Matrix."
I agree. And I think there are enough people who notice this rapid-deployment "programmable" aspect of being that it's worth considering as a real possibility. That's not to say that trauma and/or inherent narcissism doesn't play a part in it. But consider for a moment that the artists who brought "The Matrix" to the screen seem to themselves be classic examples of narcissistic autogynephiliacs (and nasty characters to boot). The question of if (and how) they are literally being programmed shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
In any case, this was a fascinating (and somewhat horrifying) topic and article, Harrison. Thanks.
"The question of if (and how) they are literally being programmed shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, IMO."
I hope you write about this more. ;)
"My best guess is that to be a "Jamie" is to be an observer standing in a hall of cracked and shattered mirrors, simultaneously confounded and intoxicated by every shard of himself he sees."
Probably as close as we'll get!
Is Quillette Claire still exhibiting her Aussie government plandemic lockdown tyranny denialism? Someone should do a Twitter feed analysis of her digital expressions of Stockholm Syndrome.
"I find it amazing how effortlessly new converts seem to adopt the exact same pattern of thinking.." Joost Meerloo calls this totalitarian thinking of the mass. The Ts of the alphabet people definitely adopt it. It does seem like simply downloading mind software.
As far as I know, yeah, but can't be sure because she doesn't pop up in my feeds very often anymore. Oh, and Ukraine.
As Foucault put it half a century ago: we do not speak discourse, discourse speaks us.
This couple might have been better off to have had children. Maybe a bit of grounding in reality would have been helpful.
And I hear you about Quillette.
From a trauma informed perspective it is obvious these are manifestations of the trauma, e.g. being dissociated from our bodies and hatred of our own bodies go hand-in-hand. Clearly, these behaviours and affectations should not be encouraged any more than anexoria or self-harm should be encouraged. Therapists that do encourage it should be struck off.
I find it interesting that you’re reviewing the review (and not the book). I haven’t yet read the book, but I plan to. Trans topics form a large part of what I write about. I did hear Shannon’s guest appearance on “Gender: A Wider Lens” podcast.
What struck me, to hear Shannon tell it, is how normal their lives were before this idea took over Jamie’s mind. And Shannon herself sounds emotionally healthy. You can make fun of them for being college-educated liberals who experimented sexually in their youth, grew their own vegetables, and occasionally waxed philosophic (although those would be kind of cheap shots to take at people who, before this mess, were just minding their own business and living functional lives), but really, they had full productive lives, both professionally and personally, with a wide range of hobbies and interests, before this obsession took over Jamie’s life and ruined it.
Yes, surely he bears responsibility for getting deep into a paraphilia and letting that obsession take over his life.
But what I find really sad is this -- our entire society participates in encouraging _this_ particular obsessive paraphilia, _these_ particular people’s harm.
Imagine an alcoholic. Surely he bears responsibility for getting his act together and getting sober. But imagine if every media outlet, every corporation, every nonprofit, every university and K-12 system, every friend and neighbor, every doctor, nurse, psychologist and social worker, was on board with “validating” and encouraging his alcoholism, instead of trying to get the alcoholic to come to his senses and make better choices.
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that it would be orders of magnitude harder to get out of that destructive, escalating, positive-feedback loop that was ruining your life, right?
So as much as I find people with personality disorders extremely unlikable and avoid them at all costs; and as much as I particularly loathe society’s self-righteous support of the trans delusion, as if it’s not a scourge and a behavioral addiction but rather our century’s foremost civil rights battle; I still feel compassion for Shannon and for Jamie, who has now had his genitals surgically removed, is divorced, and is alone and miserable with his unfulfilling obsessions and his online “friends” and whose life is well and truly messed up. Even if he snaps out of this and wants to get his life back, he’s never getting his penis back.
As much as society wants to portray “trans people” as being their authentic true selves and self-actualizing, that doesn’t seem to match reality.
To me this is a really sad story in which almost everyone in the West is complicit. Yet I’m reading a lot of contempt and blame here -- maybe you don’t intend that, and I’m misreading. Certainly Jamie bears responsibility for his bad choices. But these particular bad choices are cheerled and enabled by our entire culture at the moment, with no thought nor acknowledgment of the lives that are destroyed. The left and mainstream society are actively harming these people. The right seem to feel pleasure in watching these people suffer, as if they’re just wrong-thinking ignoramuses who are getting what they deserve.
But really? These are fellow humans. Who is going to help them? No one seems interested in that.
I feel sorry for the Jamies of the world, even if I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with them for five minutes.
Thanks for your perspective and critique, Dolly, and for the extra information on this case. I'll start at the end:
"But really? These are fellow humans. Who is going to help them? No one seems interested in that."
I was just having a conversation about this last night, but in the context of kids, and I took your position. As much as I critique transgenderism, I really think the kids are in the worst position, and I don't blame them. When it comes to adults, I think I'm a bit less compassionate. Maybe I shouldn't be. But if I appear contemptuous or blaming, I should clarify that I feel that more for ideology itself, and the specific actions taken under its influence. If those behaviors shade over into the abusive, I think that needs to be highlighted. It's difficult to always keep the lines clear, though.
For example, as you write, "The left and mainstream society are actively harming these people." But the left and society are made up of individuals, and I think many of them are like Jamie, people who in the past were just living their lives, but who became part of something that is now replicating the damage that was done to them and instilling it in even more.
With my current understanding, I think all we can do is acknowledge that both are true. Like with the child who is abused and acquires a more extreme form of personality disorder than they would have otherwise had as an adult. You can highlight the abuse and the tragedy of it. But as an adult, you can't ignore that through their actions they are doing the same thing.
When Lobaczewski wrote about transpersonification, he was originally trying to find the seeds for what the people he experienced eventually became. In the case of Jamie, as you say, without the crazy, he probably would have gone on to live an unobtrusive life without the self-destruction. But there was probably also something else that made him more susceptible than Shannon, for instance. I would hazard a guess that one way it manifested was in his "laziness" in the relationship--the "man child". Perhaps Shannon's openness with sexuality also made her assume they were more compatible in that department than they actually were.
So in that regard, I think a clinical look at a person's life history can help in analysis. But, I admit, that process should be more objectively clinical and less polemical.
Thanks for engaging with me on this, Harrison -- it's something I care a lot about.
I came to be concerned about trans issues almost by accident. My oldest child is old enough to have grown up before this was "a thing" at all. I saw firsthand that while of course some kids in any cohort are gender nonconforming, there weren't a bunch of kids my son's age believing they were in the wrong bodies and declaring they would kill themselves because they weren't being affirmed. This is was simply a problem that didn't exist.
Then my youngest child (unaffected by this craziness, thank goodness) grew up in the current environment where "trans kids" are considered quite common -- there are dozens in every school. We know so, so many people her age who are "trans" or "nonbinary" (and we knew zero my son's age, except a very few who latched onto it later, when it became popular).
But what I also noticed was: the typical "trans kid" is not functional or happy either before or after transition. They are typically not drawn from the ranks of the popular kids, or even the average kids who have friends and hobbies and do OK academically and do a sport. Somehow, this magical "gender issue" or "wrong body issue" seems to occur more often in the least popular, most vulnerable kids, the kids who have serious emotional problems, who have eating disorders, who self-harm, who lack social skills, who have chaotic home lives, who are struggling with their sexuality, etc. These are typically kids who ***already had some serious issues*** -- so how much clearer and more obvious can this be?
"Being trans" is an idiom of distress, and the adults in the room are acting as if it's not just a very real condition but actually the root cause of these kids' problems, instead of identifying or addressing any of the glaring problems these unfortunate kids often have.
What have we been doing with these vulnerable kids? We "affirm" things that aren't true, we sterilize and drug them, and we applaud both their self-harm and their self-rejection. What could possibly go wrong with this strategy?
So I, like you, have the most sympathy for the kids involved. Parents have one job with regard to their kids -- to protect them from serious dangers and equip them to participate in society -- and in many cases these parents are failing.
If your culture can convince you to harm your own children, what _can't_ it convince you to do?
Some of these parents are "true believers" and no doubt believe what they're told: that this is the latest, most advanced medical truth.
But for many, you can see the strain on their faces, the effects of chronic stress, where they understand they're expected to go along with this nonsense, and they do, but it's causing them a lot of pain to comply. On some level, they understand it's wrong.
It makes me think of the old Milgram experiments. The authority tells the subjects that it's imperative that the experiment continue, so they reluctantly administer what they believe is a dangerous shock to another person.
But to your own children?
So I feel a lot of urgency to figure out a way where all of us, those who see how crazy this is, speak out in a way that serves as a bucket of cold water in the faces of all who are enabling and promoting this harm. How do we do that?
Perhaps one step is to acknowledge that all these people, even the least appealing ones (the autogynephilic deeply self-absorbed / self-obsessed adults of the world who blow up their own lives as well as the lives of everyone who cares about them) are worth helping and saving from themselves.
That could be true even if one's only goal in so doing is to bring this ideology crashing down so that it stops harming the innocent victims -- the kids.
I do puzzle over this, though : People who are caught up in this ideology behave very much like people with personality disorders. They are self-obsessed and focused on their own needs and blind to others' needs. They are emotionally dysregulated. They believe things that go wrong in their lives are always the other person's fault, never theirs.
And people with this wiring rarely change, right? That's why certain things are classified as "personality" disorders -- they run deep.
But I've heard enough stories of trans people "snapping out of it" to make me think that perhaps personality disorder is not at the root all the time. Enough detransitioners, to hear their families describe them, didn't seem personality disordered before becoming wrapped up in the ideology, and they become a lot more self-reflective after they snap out of it. It's a really common trajectory, it seems like.
So I have started to view this more like an addiction, or a cult involvement.
If a cocaine addict gets clean/sober, he might behave totally differently afterward and have no wish to go back to the way he was. He might feel remorse for harmful things he did to loved ones that he had no problem with doing while under the influence. He might, like Jamie, spend the mortgage on his addiction, but once clean and sober, he wouldn't do such a thing.
Similarly, people who've been in cults have been described by family as "not the person we knew" --repeating talking points or slogans, displaying very rigid thinking, described as being "like a zombie" or "won't listen to reason" -- but then when they snap out of the belief system and get out of the cult, they are described by their families as being "themselves" again. Steve Hassan is a good example of this -- he was involved heavily in the Moonies, but then a serious car accident removed him from the situation long enough for him to reassess, and he's dedicated his life to helping people get out of cults.
There are stories of parents taking the phone and internet away from their kids, changing schools, not "affirming" their thinking, and they reassess.
Transitioned people often seem personality disordered when they're in the grip of the ideology -- and some no doubt were personality disordered before -- but there also seem to be a lot of people for whom this looks like personality-disordered behavior but is in fact a temporary condition.
Of course, as you allude to, there are probably people who are temperamentally more vulnerable to this than others. There was something in Jamie that drew him in, and allowed him to remain stuck. In some way, the self-involvement and self-focus was very appealing.
Similarly, there are probably people who are temperamentally skeptical cusses and who would be more likely to be skeptical of trans ideology even if "everyone" around them is endorsing it.
We are all somewhat at the mercy of our wiring. We gender skeptics don't deserve a gold star, any more than the Jamies deserve derision -- we are how we are. All of us are responsible for mitigating the effects of our own flaws, though. I think Jamie got in too deep to be able to see what he was doing. He just doesn't see it. That's my honest belief. He might as well be in the Moonies.
How this trans stuff takes hold of people's minds is somewhat a mystery. I think we need to understand the dynamics of this better so we learn how to help people who are caught up in it.
Thanks again, Harrison, for sharing your perspectives and listening to mine.
What an excellent comment! I think your observations are spot on.
"...there also seem to be a lot of people for whom this looks like personality-disordered behavior but is in fact a temporary condition."
This is part of Lobaczewski's description of transpersonification. For some it is permanent, because they were always personality disordered to begin with. For others, it is temporary - like "induced psychopathology." And he too would recommend compassionate care (not in the euphemistic sense) towards both groups. But he would be concerned about an accurate diagnosis - figuring out if it really is a personality disorder, or merely a temporary disorder. He would adjust his therapeutic approach depending.
We have an additional problem, however. Normally, the normal people would be in a position to exert some authority on the subject. But we're in a situation where the pathology is in a dominant position. Even people who are compassionate but firm can lose their kids, be cancelled, or run out of town. So what do we do in this situation, which allows those with the most extreme personality disorders almost total freedom to set the rules? Whatever the answer, I think it will have to have elements of both firmness and compassion, sometimes one more than the other, depending on the specific context.
“ But we're in a situation where the pathology is in a dominant position. Even people who are compassionate but firm can lose their kids, be cancelled, or run out of town. So what do we do in this situation, which allows those with the most extreme personality disorders almost total freedom to set the rules? “
That is exactly the problem. When I hear of yet another parent going to court or being cut out of their child’s life or having their child transitioned against their wishes -- and often this parent is the _only_ person trying to protect the child -- I feel sick inside.
I’ll have to look more into Lobaczewski's description of transpersonification. That’s very interesting stuff.
Dolly, I've written a substack article inspired by your comment (and credited you). I have it scheduled for next week.
"If your culture can convince you to harm your own children, what _can't_ it convince you to do?"
Just came across all this. This comment is profound. I kind of want to tweet it. I think I just found and followed your X account, can I tweet and tag you?
Wow.
I would probably never read that book, either.
I have been instructed that deeply disturbed people dramatize sexual "irregular practices" but I have seldom seen it spelled out as it is in this account..
Today we continue to excoriate public personalities who are caught being sexually promiscuous or abusive while celebrating the world of transgender men and women. This may one day catch up with us (if it hasn't already). These behaviors point to chronic conditions of fear or personality disorder. These conditions are also accompanied by crime or antisocial behaviors. Not only should we be cautious about letting such people into our personal, civic or business lives, but we run the risk of cultural collapse if we give such people too much power or influence. And there are individuals on this planet who yearn for such cultural collapses and actively work for them. I appreciate all efforts to make the general public more aware that such persons exist.
Kintsugi is my go-to comforting metaphor in trials & tribulations both intra- and inter- personal: if we manage to come out on the other side and heal properly, the remaining scars add rather than subtract 😊
Excellent! Your sacrifice (of drinking the poison for me and passing on the detoxified essence) reminded me of stories of how artic shaman would eat the toxic amanita and, after detoxifying to an extent, pass the magic visionary power on to their circle of initiates. Luckily for me, you were able to bestow this gift using your mind and words.
Citing it today, in: https://heroesvsvillains.substack.com/p/evolution-or-devolution