Covidphobia’s replacement is – Sexophobia!

I have been considering the successor of Covidphobia for a while and almost settled on Alarmist Environmentalism as the new phobic social contagion. Recently, I heard the Victorian Premier lash out at a journalist … and my mind was made up.

Sexophobia it is.

It was the tone of her delivery that amazed me. It also sent a shiver down my spine. The Premier sounded just like those other authoritarian rants from her predecessor during the pandemic where Victorians were effectively told ‘people are going to die if you don’t let me lock you up and stop you drinking outside or playing in the playground’. I understood then that this feigned certainty was a matter of a misdirected spirit wrapped up in the ignorance of mind.

In this case, the Premier’s delivery was dark, angrily throwing shade at those who questioned her about the supposed rate of suicide amongst young trans people. It was like a parrot stuck on a slogan. There was no reasoning that I found convincing. There was no offer to engage in discourse about the presented facts, sources, or understanding of the complexity of the issue.

No, apparently in Victoria, it’s some form of child endangerment if five-year-olds aren’t introduced to trans theory and gender identity.

Again, I shuddered.

During the pandemic, irrational fears about Covid were used to feed the hyperbole, misconstrue information, and ultimately deceive the public about risk to justify draconian restrictions. Here, it feels some sort of activist phobia toward biological sex is being used to ignore human reality.

Again, as health officials and bureaucrats resisted calls to reveal pandemic science or review their decisions, so too is the education system shying away from the perfectly legitimate philosophical scepticism of trans theory.

For example, I would like to ask the designers of this program for five-year-olds: ‘From where do our thoughts come?’

Ignoring this question indicates that something has changed recently in our thinking about our thinking. I know this, because in my initial psychology training (in the 1970s), anyone who could see physical reality and deny it was known as having ‘disordered thinking’. That is, their thinking was not in touch with what was visibly part of their world, including their own body.

It was this understanding that enabled us to help deal with the teenage social contagion of anorexia in the 1980s and 1990s (with which too many young women in particular still suffer). It was this that enabled us to differentiate between physical dependence and addictions during the same time. We came to understand that it was not ‘just the drug’ – it was what was being interpreted in the mind that was also critical.

But no, today we can have a male say that he is a woman born into the wrong body, and it is considered a rational statement. Why?

We have shifted our understanding of the priority of our internal ruminations, and to hell with checking with others to see if it is in line with reality. Philip Reiff, decades ago, called this the ‘triumph of the therapeutic’. Alisdair McIntrye explained the loss of the concept of virtues with the increase in emotivism. Charles Taylor saw the movement away from including the transcendent in our realities as the beckoning of the ‘secular age’, where we created a new social imaginary.

Sigmund Freud heralded sexuality as the central defining feature of our identity, and the post-modern social justice influencers have politicised his dreamings to an unimaginable extent, compared to 50 years ago.

In denying the sexual realities of human life, it is now considered rational to allow biological men, who have contradictory thoughts compared to their physical state, to be in women’s personal spaces. We have parliamentarians and some members of the judiciary declaring this is good because it is true.

Clearly, it is not good because it is not true, because it is not real. It is disordered because it is irrational. The Victorian Premier, in her outburst today, demonstrated the desperation of proving her ideas correct in the face of reasonable questioning.

The Premier said of those who criticised the program:

‘It’s disgraceful nonsense, this sort of ongoing attack on a program that is making a difference in kids’ lives just should be stopped … it’s disgraceful reporting, it’s hurtful. When you consider that transgender kids are 15 times more likely to kill thesmeslves … The Australian needs to stop this ongoing campaign because it’s hurtful and harmful.’

Such an aggressive response comes, I believe, from a fearful spirit. People in leadership who are fearful work to develop a strong persona, and that deaf strength means losing the capacity to hear others.

In not being able to hear others, such leaders cannot test out their own thinking. My personal concern is that, if not now, eventually leaders will believe these ideas are actually true, and there is nothing more dangerous in a leader than strong opinions based on ignorance.

From where do our thoughts come? In these instances, not from the rational mind. As Jonathan Haidt describes it (in The Happiness Hypothesis), it is often the intuitive non-thinking elephant that sets the direction, not the rational rider. In this case, the elephant is not only taking the sexophobics for a ride, but it is also trampling on those who want to stop, think, and re-engage with reality.

Please, oh please – can we have our leaders set the tone for some seriously good sceptical review of this? Oh wait, that should be the role of the Opposition…

In that case, maybe it will be the next generation who receive a more classical education who can reign in this terror? Let’s release them now to prepare.