Gender identity: the latest social contagion (video)
There is nothing new about teenage crazes, but this one is especially troubling.
I filmed a video of my recent Substack article about the rapid rise of girls identifying out of womanhood.
Recorded for the Triggernometry YouTube page, which you can explore here.
Do let me know your thoughts in the comments!
When I studied psychology, about 10 years ago, I came across a text by an evolutionary psychologist who I think explains the difference in male and female behaviouR. The theory is that women are hardwired to be competitive with each other in a way that does not accommodate also working with each other. From an evolutionary/social perspective, men have had to compete to be the head of the tribe, dog eat dog, best man left standing - however, in order to serve the needs of the tribe, to ensure its prosperity, its survival (and that of the children and elders within it) they have to be able to work together - to fight as armies to protect their land/peoples, to track and catch the buffalo, herd/farm the land. Leadership requires that they can operate within a community. For women, their Mo has for millennia to attract the most desirable mate - the one who is highest in the tribe because this is a testimony to his ability to protect his wife and children, but is also a testimony to his genetic provenance ( a strong, healthy make at the top of the tribe will likely produce the strongest children, ensuring their survival) . Consequently women are hardwired to compete against each other - to appear the most fertile, to attract the biggest dowries for their families, to be impregnated by the most virile and important male. This has served them well for centuries, when communities were small, before industrialisation, before women earned their place in the working world, back when producing as many children as possible and raising them into adulthood to support their parents/communities was the main driver. Now, the wiring to compete against each other is still there, but it is dysfunctional programming. The parameters within which it’s meant to operate are no longer valid... so where do we redirect this drive? How do we communicate what being woman is now that even having children is not valued, but constantly undermined, where if you have a career instead (or alongside) you are not applauded but criticised. Where older women are not valued but become ‘unseen’ or objects of ridicule (Mrs Browns Boys, for example, or the doo-lally menopausal woman trope that makes them an on object or derision). I think we need to look a the messages we send girls, culturally, in school, on SM and show them they are valued. And, of course, it would help if we didn’t allow men to wear the costume of womanhood or encourage conflicted, vulnerable girls to opt out of it under the tenets f gender ideology.
No surprise, coming from you, Andrew, that this is an excellent, concise review of social contagion, including a host of historical examples. Well done.