TRIGGERnometry - May 24, 2024


Gender Identity： The Latest Social Contagion - Andrew Doyle


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

173.6835

Word Count

1,283

Sentence Count

61

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the digital age, social contagions are more common among teenage girls than they were in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But what are they really about? And why do they seem to be particularly prevalent among them?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.700 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:22.660 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:00:27.120 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.
00:00:30.000 One of my shortest-lived jobs was as a teacher at a school for girls near Sloan Square in London.
00:00:37.100 I resigned after just two weeks because the headmistress was a religious zealot
00:00:41.020 who had objected to me teaching a text which featured a gay character.
00:00:45.260 In my resignation letter, I explained that I wasn't prepared to work at a school
00:00:48.640 which fostered such antediluvian attitudes.
00:00:51.840 I stayed on to finish the term, but I was delighted when I eventually made my escape.
00:00:55.920 I had previously worked at a boys' school, and I soon noticed that there were some broad differences
00:01:00.740 that manifested in an all-female environment.
00:01:04.120 One of the most concerning was that many of the girls were engaged in what can only be described
00:01:07.860 as competitive starvation.
00:01:10.260 During lunch duties, I was warned to keep an eye out for pupils who had taken just a single
00:01:15.220 lettuce leaf from the salad bar.
00:01:17.080 If I saw any girl doing so, I was told I must immediately intercept her and demand that she
00:01:22.340 return and fill her plate.
00:01:24.280 My first teaching post had been at a mixed-sex school, in which cutting one's own skin was
00:01:29.160 the fashion.
00:01:30.100 We even had a visiting expert telling us how to encourage these pupils to hold ice cubes
00:01:35.600 in their hands until they felt shooting pains as a substitute for the razor.
00:01:40.400 I remember at the time thinking this wasn't the best advice, but I was too green to raise an
00:01:45.300 objection.
00:01:46.320 Besides, this speaker had spent a considerable part of the session reminiscing about a shepherd
00:01:51.120 she had once counselled, who had over the course of many months on the hillside used
00:01:55.500 a sharp wire to whittle his penis so that it eventually became forked.
00:02:01.480 To this day, I'm none the wiser as to the purpose of this anecdote.
00:02:05.100 But the shift from cutting to starvation was striking.
00:02:08.200 At the former school, pupils were not refraining from food, and at the latter, there were very
00:02:13.740 few who were injuring themselves with blades.
00:02:16.620 It was almost as though only one form of self-harm could predominate at any given time.
00:02:21.480 And when a small group started doing it, the trend spread with remarkable rapidity.
00:02:26.780 I hadn't seen an equivalent back when I was teaching boys.
00:02:30.020 And I've since learned that social contagions are especially common among teenage girls,
00:02:34.580 and that there are numerous historical precedents for this.
00:02:37.300 I've written elsewhere about the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, in which a group of girls
00:02:42.400 began seeing demons in the shadows and accusing members of their own community of being in
00:02:46.780 league with the devil.
00:02:48.140 Then there were the various dancing plagues of the Middle Ages, which seemed to impact
00:02:52.400 young women in particular.
00:02:54.060 In 1892, girls at a school in Germany began to involuntarily shake their hands whenever they
00:02:59.440 performed writing exercises.
00:03:00.760 And when I visited Sweden last year, I was told about a local village where, during the
00:03:05.520 medieval period, the girls all inexplicably began to limp.
00:03:09.920 It's perfectly clear that the latest social contagion to take hold in the Western world is that
00:03:14.760 of girls identifying out of their femaleness, either through claims that they are trans or
00:03:20.640 non-binary.
00:03:21.260 Whereas in 2012, there were only 250 referrals, mostly boys, to the NHS's Gender Identity Development
00:03:28.600 Service, or JIDS, by 2021, the figure had risen to more than 5,000, mostly female, patients.
00:03:36.320 Gender activists like to claim that this is simply the consequence of more people coming
00:03:39.900 out as society becomes more tolerant.
00:03:42.820 And at the same time, they insist that it's never been a worse time to be trans.
00:03:47.580 Consistency is not their strong suit.
00:03:48.980 Of course, there are no easy answers as to the explosion of this latest fad, but surely
00:03:54.680 the proliferation of social media has something to do with it.
00:03:58.100 Platforms such as TikTok are replete with activists explaining to teenagers that their
00:04:03.040 feelings of confusion are probably evidence that they have been born in the wrong body.
00:04:07.860 For pubescent girls who are uncomfortable with their physiological changes, as well as sudden
00:04:12.140 unwanted male sexual attention, the prospect of identifying out of womanhood makes complete
00:04:17.680 sense.
00:04:18.200 These online peddlers have some snake oil to sell.
00:04:22.300 And while a limping epidemic in a medieval village would be unlikely to spread far, social
00:04:26.920 contagions cannot be so confined in the digital age.
00:04:30.820 Much of this is reminiscent of the recovered memory hysteria of the late 20th century, when
00:04:35.180 therapist Cranks promoted the idea that most victims of sexual abuse had repressed their
00:04:40.780 traumatic memories from childhood.
00:04:42.120 It led to numerous cases of people imagining that they had been abused by parents and other
00:04:47.800 family members, and many lives were ruined as a result.
00:04:50.840 One of the key texts in this movement was The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, which made
00:04:57.640 the astonishing and unevidenced claim that, quote, if you are unable to remember any specific
00:05:04.060 instances, but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did.
00:05:09.620 A common feature of social contagions is that they depend upon the elevation of intuition over material
00:05:15.620 reality. Just as innocent family members were accused of sexual abuse because of feelings teased out by
00:05:21.520 unscrupulous therapists, many girls are now being urged by online influencers to trust the evidence of
00:05:27.380 their emotions and accept a misalignment between their body and their gendered soul.
00:05:32.180 We're not talking here about the handful of children who suffer from gender dysphoria,
00:05:36.260 but rather healthy children who have been swept up in a temporary craze.
00:05:41.460 Activists have been quick to demonise the entire notion of social contagion as a transphobic talking
00:05:46.360 point, but the evidence for it is now pretty much indisputable. The author of a recent review into
00:05:51.580 paediatric gender treatment, Dame Hilary Cass, has recommended that schools stop the
00:05:56.620 social transitioning of children. The Cass interim review had already pointed out that
00:06:01.620 enabling pupils to adopt alternative names, pronouns and dress codes was, quote, not a neutral act.
00:06:08.540 And there is mounting evidence that such an approach consolidates a child's psychological
00:06:13.480 conceptualisation of herself as a member of the opposite sex. While social transitioning is seen
00:06:18.880 as compassionate, in reality it causes long-term harm. It would seem that teenage girls will always be
00:06:25.200 prone to these social contagions, but some are more damaging than others. Whereas limping and dancing
00:06:31.400 and trembling can be overcome, the lifelong impact of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery
00:06:38.320 will not be so transient. Let's hope this particular hysteria soon goes the way of all the others.
00:06:44.940 If you enjoyed this video, please do check out my sub stack, where all of these articles appear weeks
00:06:50.920 in advance. There's plenty of other material there too, so do check it out.
00:06:54.520 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto. The true
00:07:01.500 story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including
00:07:06.740 America, Forever in Blue Jeans and Sweet Caroline. Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical
00:07:13.140 mega hit is here, the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise. Now through June 7th, 2026 at the
00:07:19.920 Princess of Wales Theatre. Get tickets at Murbush.com.