Prone to psychological and medical contagions
Carol Tavris at Skeptic (the Shermer one):
American culture is prone to psychological and medical contagions. An idea catches fire, seeming to be a plausible and important explanation of a familiar problem — depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sexual dissatisfaction. The idea outruns evidence. Experts emerge to treat people suffering from the problem, exploiting the most credulous. They open clinics. They give prestigious lectures and write books. They make fortunes. They blur the diverse possible origins of a person’s difficulties, attributing them all to the latest explanation.
Throughout the 1980s, the hot explanation was childhood sexual abuse: you have an eating disorder? Your father (or grandfather, or uncle, or close family friend) probably molested you. You don’t remember that? You repressed the memory. In the 1990s, it was Multiple Personality Disorder: your other personality remembers the bad stuff; let me give you a little sodium amytal to bring it out. In the 2000s, it was PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), said to apply to all traumatic experiences from war to an unwanted touch on the shoulder. Tearful sufferers tell horrific personal stories, and who could doubt them? Who wants to be accused of being misogynist, antifeminist, or simply cold and heartless?
There were also tributaries, like the Satanic Panic and UFOs/close encounters.
I am old enough to have lived through too many of these social contagions, seeing how they rise, generating more and more believers and patients while trampling skeptics and doubters; and how, over time, as patients’ symptoms worsen, as cases of family devastation escalate, as recanters begin telling their stories, we start hearing the other side — from researchers, practitioners, and intrepid journalists.
I hope we get to that hearing the other side part soon. The other side has been talking all along, but the hearing part is still way down the road.
Today, once again, the public is hearing only one side of an emotionally compelling issue: the transgender story. Once again, distinctions are ignored, this time between people for whom identification with the other sex began in early childhood and those whose rapid onset gender dysphoria started during adolescence. Yet the difference between the two groups is itself a fascinating and puzzling phenomenon. Historically and cross-culturally, it is not uncommon for some very young children, mostly boys, to reject their natal sex early on and grow up to be gay or to live in an official, socially accepted category, a “third sex,” such as berdache among Native Americans (the term is now “two-spirit”), hijra in India, muxe in southern Mexico. But the last decade has seen an explosion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is occurring mostly among adolescent girls who are unhappy with their bodies and their sexuality and are persuaded that this discomfort is a sign they might be transgender.
If only they could be persuaded that this discomfort is a sign that they might be feminists.
More later.
I remember the satanic panic when I was a child, and parents of some of my friends forbidding them from playing Dungeons & Dragons. Definitely the same flavor of social influencing as we’re seeing today with people suddenly deciding that they were “born into the wrong body”.
Carol Tavris. Good. I’ve got at least one book by her and have heard her speak several times. Always thought she was a clear thinker.
It’s been interesting over the last 5 years or so to watch the atheist/skeptic/humanist community I admired and followed for decades crack in two over the Transgender Issue. Who went where? Could it have been predicted? From my standpoint gender identity doctrine is pseudoscience, and I’m surprised that so many who followed the Satanic Panic, recovered memory, and multiple personality disorder crazes seem to think Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is “a hoax.” Srsly? Tavris noticed it, though.
Good.
Indeed. It’s been baffling me (and many others, including most people who comment here) for years how many skeptics accepted the claims as if they were obviously true, and shunned non-believers.
@Ophelia;
Yes, it’s that last bit that really astonishes me — treating skepticism over a new and controversial diagnostic framework — innate “gender identity” — as if it had been challenged for decades and established so well that it provides the underlying framework for much of biology and psychology, like a Gender version of the Theory of Evolution. I’m not just mistaken in being unconvinced — I’m pernicious, vicious, and want to see people die.
Tavris wrote:
Yes, that is a *very* big problem.
I, too, am baffled. These “skeptics” who have memorized all the logical fallacies, who have the diagnostic criteria for what constitutes a cult at their fingertips, who know what’s pernicious about controlling religions and have left them themselves or at least know many people who have done so, who calmly and persuasively counter pseudoscience and paranormal claims with evidence and reason (**cough** Matt Dillahunty **cough**)… These very same people answer anyone who even asks an honest question, like, how should we balance trans rights with women’s rights, with blind anger, hate and vitriol. They characterize us in dehumanizing terms, and many openly threaten us with violence.
If transgenderism is a simple, natural, reasonable thing, why can’t they make a straightforward case for it? And if it’s a delusion that could prompt us to find compassionate care and healing for the sufferers, why can’t they see that?
Baffled.
I’m with JK Rowling in that “Call yourself whatever you like…” etc. This is not an illiberal attitude. I draw the line at them having people believe that biology doesn’t matter, the attack on and undermining of women’s rights, and forcing us to go along with their bullshit agenda by using “preferred pronouns” and other forms of thought policing (not to mention bastardizing the English language). In my opinion, no atheist, skeptic, or feminist can truly be seen as such if they go along with this phony ‘ideology.’ It’s more than cognitive dissonance, it’s a disingenuous overindugence, and there are young people having their bodies irreversibly mutilated because of it. It is a modern day tragedy. People who go along with this are not skeptics, they are not atheists, and they sure as hell aren’t feminists. I don’t care how they self identify, they just aren’t.
An Aussie journalist I admire has popularised the term “crumb maiden” for women who will go along with male power, privelege and misogyny for the few crumbs that fall from the table.
Sadly, she outed herself today as a crumb maiden with this tweet:
https://twitter.com/AmyRemeikis/status/1487199651342479362?s=20&t=47nwB5eAWMgAs3k-PMSRjg
‘spose they can be atheists in the strictest sense, but not non-superstitious or irreligious…
Even before the trans craze took off It was obvious that all was not well with movement skepticism, though. It was really the MRAs and alt-righters who killed organized atheo-skepticism. If anything, the woke crowd just put it out of its misery. As I have previously written, I cut all ties to movement skepticism specifically because of the misogyny issue, but now I don’t even think the movement ever did very well on the science/critical thinking front. E.g. skeptics tended to let climate change deniers (some even considered “thought-leaders” within the movement) off the hook far too easily and enter false balance territory whenever the issue came up. Critical thinking may lead to non-belief in homeopahty and Bigfoot, but that doesn’t mean non-belief in homeopahty and Bigfoot leads to critical thinking. It doesn’t take critical thinking to reject ideas that don’t agree with your biases anyway. I no longer think skeptics arrive at their beliefs in very different ways than the so-called “true believers” it’s just that rooting for “team science” (as long as it doesn’t disagree with their ideological biases) confirms their particular tribal identity.
Bjarte @9 I think so, which means fewer actual skeptics overall. Just like disbelief in trans ideology *alone* doesn’t make one a skeptic. I think a combination of reasoning characteristics like thinking critically and being able to identify one’s own biases are just part of that.
Bjarte @9
I tend to agree. One of the things I found odd was how much time was invested in critically examining others thought and not much in examining one’s own.
The main problems seem to be that a lot of people identify as skeptic/rational and without doing the work that can result in them being less skeptical/rational. The reasoning seems to be:
1) I am a rational person
2) I belief A.
3) therefore believing A is rational.
Bjarte Foshaug #9 wrote:
Now this gets complicated, because the skeptics and atheists who were most upset over this issue also seem to have been the ones who were most likely to have jumped on board with trans ideology. There are several elements knitting the two together.
First, obviously, an emphasis on Social Justice. Both feminism and Trans Rights are focused on moral correction of cultural failings. Second, a tendency to allow this emphasis to override other considerations, including rational ones. An expert on, say, crop circles who was caught violating women’s consent boundaries wasn’t just someone who shouldn’t be invited to speak at the UFO convention; his scholarship was now suspect, and he shouldn’t be cited. He obviously didn’t know how to think.
This attitude then bled out into applying to politics and social issues in general. The underlying assumption is that people are all of a piece. If you can’t trust their judgment when it comes to how to handle racial inequality, why trust their judgment about anything else — including crop circles? This is particularly so if the crop circle expert explained the phenomenon within a wider framework of science, psychology, and the madness of crowds. Who is he or she to talk? The moral compass replaces science as the Candle in the Dark.It leads to truth.
I remember a post PZ made after one of the “MRA & alt-right” scandals in the skeptical movement. Because of this, he was no longer going to call himself a “skeptic.” Oh, he was still in favor of the skeptical process of evaluation, sure. But he no longer wanted to identify as a skeptic. It was forever tainted. I thought this position bizarre. For one thing, the movement was incredibly large, diverse, and long-standing, with some of those skeptics exposing those scandals and disagreeing with letting the Bad One remain in good standing. But, more than that, a “skeptic” WAS someone who applied the skeptical process of evaluation. The term has a meaning beyond the politics and personalities of what was actually a small fraction of organized skepticism, as well as from organized skepticism itself.
So I think Social Justice + a tendency towards wholesale condemnation across the board once violated are more indicative of what “killed” atheo-skepticism and ultimately lead to the Trans Divide. Compare skeptic GCs with skeptic TRAs. Those now in the first group were, on the whole, much less likely to have waged war against fellow skeptics based on character issues, or have quit in high dudgeon. “Sure, so-and-so is an asshole — but that doesn’t color how we judge them as a skeptic. Good talk. Have them back.” They’re more tolerant of that sort of diversity. The TRAs, on the other hand, focused on the social justice form of diversity and wanted the assholes AND their work shunned.
At least, that’s the way it seems to me. I attended every TAM, and many of the Skeptic Inquirer conventions, which allowed me to hobnob with some of the speakers and many of the attendees during meals, breaks, evenings, and parties, when we got to gossip about each other and what we thought was going on. Multiple views, of course — but I think I noticed differences in attitudes as much as differences in opinions leading to first one divide, then another. With overlap, of course.
Axxyaan @11 Which implies 4) Therefore I am rational because I believe A.
Dizzying logic. ;)
Sastra @ 12 –
Well, except most of us right here, for example.
Sastra @12 Even in the name of Social Justice, people who insist that ‘trans women are women’ as a tautology are not being skeptical. I am definitely one who thinks an inability to think skeptically about something that is so obviously not a tautology can’t be much of a skeptic generally.
@Ophelia;
Yes, I know. Which is why I included the qualifications — and explanation.
By being against what is tactically termed “Trans Rights,” we are on the same side as the misogynistic alt-right. We can deal with that, meaning we 1. don’t change our views 2. don’t keep quiet about our views and, possibly 3 are willing to work with religious conservatives if need be, or as strategy, to defend our views.
Skeptical TRAs see this association as damning.
We don’t. That might require special explanation, and a difference in an underlying understanding and approach to skepticism might be relevant here.
@twiliter
The phrase “Trans Women are Women” isn’t a tautology for the same reason “black women are women” isn’t a tautology. They’re not making a mistake in logic.
They’re guiding their skeptical analysis by the knowledge gained through their commitment to social justice.
If you are taught something through frequent repetition and reciting back, what you’ve learned is a taught-ology. (If it’s quite a stretch to the point of straining to believe, it’s a taut-ology.)
“Taught-ology” is excellent. A keeper.
You know, I have often thought this, that people see a list of responses to fallacies, but don’t actually take the time to understand them as much as learn them for rote recitation. Another example is “correlation doesn’t equal causation.” This is true, but that doesn’t mean that correlation has no value, either. Correlation is necessary for exploring causation. I’ve beat my head against the wall trying to explain why correlation needs to be established in order for a testable hypothesis can be generated.
#16 –
How often is this used among TRA skeptics as a “poisoning of the well” to dismiss gender skepticism?
The error we’ve made, I believe, is that the emergence of more mainstream secularism was the same thing as a reduction in religious thinking. Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case. There has been no wholesale rewiring of the Mark 1 human brain. We simply have replaced the repetitive indoctrination that religions provided with that provided by asshats on social media. The programming is the same. For a time, public education provided enough immersion in enlightenment thinking that our cognitive biases were directed at productive social issues which is one of the reasons reactionaries targeted that system for destruction. The Inquisition has given way to the Internetition. People are still reviled and any deviation from the equally revealed truth of the new orthodoxy makes one an apostate who deserves to burned on the web.
Of course the libertarian free speech adherents will argue that there is nothing to be done about any of this because of, you know, freedom, but since our notions of freedom are predicated on an outdated model of how actual brains function, we are pretty much screwed.
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Wasn’t it you, Sastra, who said in a recent comment that movement skepticism/atheism might be more of a reaction against particular modes of thinking or attitudes than a reach toward freethinking and skeptical enquiry?
I’ve been thinking along similar lines for a while. As a hypothesis, I think it explains quite a lot – by no means everything – about what happened to the movement through the course of elevatorgame/gamergate and gender identity extremism.
I think it describes my route to skepticism well. I grew up devouring pop science, but then started finding books (mostly with ‘quantum’ in the titles) that seemed to be making claims they couldn’t justify. Religion and other types of traditional woo just didn’t take hold in me and when there were glaring holes in these books (and they really did seem to glare at me, almost literally) I knew I needed a way to tell what’s real from what’s not. So I found my way into skepticism although I was never quite comfortable with it as a movement, as such.
But anyway, mine was a reaction against credulity, but I know many self-identified skeptics whose reaction was against religion, specifically. I’ve been wondering lately whether those ones are less likely to apply their skeptical toolkit properly elsewhere.