Guest post: Only if you care about reality
Originally a comment by Laurent on No you’re not.
@YNNB,
It must be mentally exhausting.
Only if you care about reality. My guess is that it’s not mentally exhausting to trans identified folks as it is to naive “allies” or even more to gender critics. Gaslighting is not mentally exhausting to abusers, only to their victims.
If there’s one thing I remember quite well, it’s that becoming gender critical was such a relief. It stopped overloading my brain and confusing my own thoughts over very tedious dissonant details at every step. The transition was immediate and at first sight, so my guess is that the whole thing simply reflects the fact that a dramatic majority of people is simply willing to abuse others if that fits their own political agenda or gladly accept abuse as a socially correct tool.
This reflects what I’ve heard from other people who’ve escaped the cult.
Letting go of religious belief feels like this, too.
In some ways, yes, but in others, no. I find myself frequently questioning if somehow I’m wrong, especially when I see many people who express what get labeled “gender critical” views also express covid and anti-vaxx conspiracies, railing about “CRT” and “the Woke”, etc. If I disagree with pretty much everything else someone believes, am I wrong about the one belief we have in common?
It is also hard because I am surrounded by people who have “trans kids” or other family members. That is one of the things that made me peak, where were all the “trans kids” when we were growing up, and how is no one else questioning this? I’d see new names pop up on friends’ Facebook posts and be confused, then see pictures of daughters with short hair, or sons with long hair, and new names, or the confusing posts talking about “they” and realize now all their daughters were “nonbinary” or the boys were “genderfluid.” Then all their kids’ friends were also trans or nonbinary. The social contagion was obvious, but no one else was seeing it.
These aren’t stupid or evil people, they’re people I held in high esteem, how could they all be so wrong? I am not very open about being gender critical (real feminist gender critical, not Matt Walsh “gender critical”) because my social circle would collapse. Helen Joyce talks about the people who will be the last to accept that this has been a horrible mistake are the parents of “trans kids” because they will be unable to accept the harm they have caused their children. I once counted up all my HS and college friends with trans or NB kids and it was over 20. I live in a community where “gender identity” is being pushed in kindergarten and parents think it is great to have Gender Queer in our school library, and parents who have an issue with that must be bigots.
Sometimes I think I’m actually losing my mind.
Eava, I get that entirely. I spend a lot of time in the theatre community; they were early adopters of trans ideology, and I never see a play anymore without a trans or a they/them in it, or behind the scenes.