THE GENDER IDENTITY INDUSTRY IS A NARCISSISTIC ABUSER
April 6, 2022
The original version of this piece was published on my personal blog here. I’m republishing it here, as part of the launch of my new Substack. I will have a few more free posts this week, and will then move to posting subscription-only content, with the occasional free post.
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Introduction
Anyone who has been in an abusive domestic relationship can recognize the patterns (I am speaking here primarily about domestic relationships between consenting adults, not parent/child abusive relationships, which involve different dynamics). At first, we don’t realize that the relationship is abusive, because we don’t want to believe it. We want to think the person loves us and is simply flawed. Often, we feel stupid for remaining in a relationship that is harming us. I felt this way for years.
It was only when the abuse escalated to being physical that I finally realized that something was very wrong, and that I ought to have been trusting my intuition the entire time. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the whole situation, so I called a domestic abuse hotline. After I explained the situation, the hotline woman told me that while she couldn’t tell me what to do, the abuse was likely to escalate, and I needed to contemplate my options. I wailed, “How could this happen? I am a strong and independent woman! I am a second-wave feminist!” She said, “Don’t blame yourself. These guys are master manipulators.” She was right. After a few more months of awakening and planning, I got out.
Waking up to the reality of the gender identity industry is exactly like this kind of waking up. Because the entire enterprise of “gender identity” is one giant narcissistic abuser. Or, in the words of Graham Linehan, “[t]he fad of gender identity is an undistilled, misogynistic sadism.” And all of humanity is its targeted victim. Women and girls are the hardest hit; it has gotten so bad that in some countries, rape victims are now required to refer to our rapists as “she” in court. But in the end, none of us will be spared.
This post is not about how the sterilization and castration of children’s healthy bodies constitutes child abuse, though it certainly does. Instead, this post is about how the gender identity industry has been as successful as it has because it has gone about its business by lying, manipulating, and psychologically abusing all of society.
The Nature of Abuse
Our society’s relationship with the industry carries all of the hallmarks of abuse:
Exercising control (those who are even slightly critical of the industry are told that discussion is not permitted);
Separating victims from friends and family (most of us have lost friends and family members due to our criticism of the industry);
Name-calling (resorting to “TERF,” “fascist,” “Nazi,” etc.);
Threats of physical harm (we have all seen the threats that J.K. Rowling received when she dared to speak out in defense of women’s sex-based rights, and most of us have received similar threats).
Perhaps the most effective tool that the industry uses to abuse our society is gaslighting, which is defined as manipulating someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
I understand gaslighting because my ex used to do it to me. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at that time. But the relationship was plagued with episodes that I would refer to as “’Twilight Zone’ moments.” He would say things that sounded so counter to everything that I knew to be true that I felt like I was living in an episode of “Twilight Zone.” When I learned that there was a term for that phenomenon, light bulbs went off and everything made sense.
The industry’s gaslighting of society started with its insistence on the notion that words like “gender identity,” “transgender,” “trans woman,” “trans man,” “non-binary,” etc., have meanings that derive from material reality. They do not. And yet, at one point or another, most of us (not all) were willing to believe that they do. The industry’s success in getting society to accept these concepts seems astonishing, until we realize that it succeeded largely through gaslighting – any attempt to question these terms is met with such insults and manipulation that many of us started to question our own sanity.
However, the gaslighting didn’t stop there. The industry persisted, by telling everyone that not only are we all required to believe in the truth of gender identity, but we are also all required to think that everyone else believes it too. And the industry appeared to be right about this. Everyone else did seem to believe it too. And so many of us accepted the lies as truth. I view this as analogous to my ex telling me that because everyone else thought he was a good person, I must be wrong if I questioned any of his motives. He wasn’t wrong – everyone else did, in fact, seem to think that he was a good person. And so I was willing to believe that, in fact, I WAS wrong to question him.
The point here is that fully waking up from all of this can all be very difficult psychological work. I stopped accepting the claims of the gender ideologues about seven years ago. I just dropped any pretense that any of it made any sense and started getting more involved in radical feminist organizing and activism to push back against it in law and legislation. But still, even after I stopped accepting the claims of the gender ideologues, it took me years to see this assault on our society for what it is.
The Enablers
Like all narcissistic abusers, the industry has its enablers. Not every category of enabler described in this piece maps directly on to the arsenal of enablers that the industry dispatches to do its dirty work (because the piece is written mainly about individuals and families), but some parallels can perhaps be drawn.
The politicians. Most of us understand that in the U.S., the Democratic party has been selling out women and enabling the industry for several years (full disclosure: I initially wrote that piece and published it anonymously in The American Conservative, and later reprinted it on my own blog, here). I don’t give any Democrat who pushes the ideology a pass. But many of us were understandably devastated when President Biden came out swinging on the day of his inauguration by signing the Executive Order on Preventing and Combatting Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation. We knew it was coming, but many of us did not predict the speed or ferocity with which he would hit us. The situation at the U.S. federal level is, in fact, even worse than many of us realized when President Biden signed the order back in January. This situation isn’t limited to the U.S.; it’s global. I suggest that in the arsenal of the industry’s enablers, these politicians and lawmakers most closely resemble the sycophant.
The media, the academics and teachers, corporations, and civic institutions like the ACLU all seem to resemble apaths, as described in the piece. These institutions have no empathy whatsoever for the harms that they cause by inflicting the industry’s agenda on all of us. The mainstream media is owned by the industry, to the point of reporting male-perpetrated crimes as though they were committed by women. Academia and schools throughout the U.S. are complicit in teaching children and young people that “gender identity” is real, when everyone knows that it is not. Corporations, of course, constantly peddle the lie and normalize the industry for profit. Civic institutions throughout society insist that they are fighting for a civil rights movement, when what they are actually doing is simply pushing a dangerous agenda in order to line their pockets. None of these people care at all about the consequences of their actions.
Finally, there are the archetypal empaths – the people (including many women) who seem to honestly believe that they are doing the right thing, who appear naively to assume that the industry could not possibly be a narcissistic abuser because that would be counter to their underlying world view. These people do not believe that the industry is a narcissistic abuser because they do not want to believe that the industry is a narcissistic abuser. Just like I didn’t want to believe that my ex was. Deep down, these people know that they are lying.
Conclusion
Our society is just beginning to understand the depths of the depravity of this monster. It’s hard work, psychologically, to understand just how far the industry will go to destroy us. It was very hard for me to understand that I allowed myself to be in an abusive relationship for nearly 10 years. It is not fun to wake up to these kinds of realities.
Like all abusers, the industry will stop at nothing to accomplish its objectives. And, like all abusers, the industry doesn’t care who is harmed in the process.
But waking up and getting out feels great. Are you ready? Let’s go.