Motivated Ignorance: The Secret to Understanding Transgenderism
The “la, la, la, I can’t hear you” method of pretending that facts don’t matter
Motivated ignorance can be thought of as a form of incentivized absence of knowledge. It can be understood as a self-protective non-knowing that frees people from reflecting on their choices (or refusing to choose) that we all make. It is also an example of not wanting to recognize facts and of deliberately choosing not to educate yourself.
An example of this for a woman is finding a lump in her breast and not going to the doctor in a vain attempt to not find out about what could be a serious, life changing diagnosis. It can also be a demonstration of unacknowledged privilege, such as a man ignoring the inherent sexism that is present in most corporate workplaces.
The “ignorance is bliss” approach
Keeping the general public in the dark about the real aims of the transgender/transhumanist agenda has been pivotal to its success. This was never accidental for obvious reasons. Joe and Jane Public were not going to support whacky concepts such as the ability to change your birth certificate to match some sort of ‘gendered soul’ and ‘women’ with beards and intact male genitalia watching their girls getting undressed in the public swimming pool women’s changing rooms.
In November 2019 Dentons, an international law firm that is backed by one of the world’s biggest charitable foundations, put out a report called Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth. As of April 2023, Dentons operated in 80+ countries and had 160+ offices so this had huge reach.
This is essentially a handbook for lobbying groups that want to remove parental consent over significant aspects of children’s lives in relation to “gender affirmation”. They offer a list of techniques designed to accomplish their agenda. Some of these are:
“Get ahead of the Government agenda.”
Dentons advises NGO advocacy campaigns they need to intervene in the legislative process and ideally before it has even started. So if trans groups lobby government prior to the introduction of self-ID legislation, they will have an outside influence that the public will be unaware of. As a form of ‘getting your retaliation in first’ this has proved to be stunningly successful in many countries.
“Tie your campaign to more popular reform.”
In several countries, changes to the law on sex self-ID were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as same sex marriage legislation. This provided a protective veil, especially in countries, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but questions around gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for (or the public had not even been introduced to this as a concept so didn’t understand what they were voting for).
“Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.”
According to the report, the countries that have been the most successful in advancing trans rights have been those who have succeeded in stopping the wider public learning about their proposals. Conversely, in countries that have had more exposure to the real purpose of the trans lobby have been less successful in meeting their goals.
Louis Brandeis was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. He was held to be “dangerous” because he was seen as incorruptible. One of his interests was transparency in public life and one of his famous quotes appeared in a 1913 Harper’s Weekly article: “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”.
The Dentons guide is a masterclass in how to keep issues in full shade and out of sight of anyone who may not be inclined to agree with their position.
The entire case for transgenderism is founded on motivated ignorance
The whole point of queer theory is to create chaos and change for its own sake and this can come from a place of loneliness and feeling stuck in your place in the social hierarchy. If you are living what you feel is an unfulfilled life, what better way of spicing this up than by creating a bit of distracting destruction? When status is measured by social media reach, burning down will get you more attention than building up and your status rises with each new “like”.
Identifying with a polarizing cause promotes making approval more important than truth and renders the believers to be impervious to any pesky facts or truths that don’t align with the groupthink dynamic. To change their minds would require that they change who they are, and they want to be that person (who is standing firm with the beliefs as they are). Staying ignorant, deliberately or unconsciously, is thus rational.
Any contradictory facts are ignored as this might, if acknowledged, threaten to impose personal and social identity costs for the uncertain benefits of accurate knowledge. They are willing to tolerate some authoritarianism to further their own political goals, while at the same time failing to recognize the validity of the ‘other side’.
Exerting coercive control over others to ease mental distress is not a human right and it isn’t even fit for purpose because a life built on lies is truly inauthentic. Weaving together a tapestry of resentment and victimhood makes truth irrelevant.
Because motivated ignorance is rightly understood as self-protective, it is natural to suppose that it is willful and in the case of highly educated health professionals, it makes me wonder what exactly they think they are protecting?
Power and profits anyone?
The duty to know has been gifted to those who have had the benefit of the amount of education needed to put letters behind your name, which makes championing the falsehoods of gender ideology all the more heinous. The question needs to be asked, does specific education in a particular field also impose an obligation to behave in an ethical manner? Willful, deliberate motivated ignorance provide benefits those who are privileged that are accrued at tremendous cost to those who live outside of the scope of privilege, and who experience a broad range of harms as a result. These harms curtail a person’s wellbeing. They shorten life expectancy, can take a tremendous toll on a person’s mental and physical health. Sometimes they are truly deadly as can be seen here:
Trans rights activists aren’t paying the price
Allies who claim to support “trans rights” without claiming this identity are really hedging their bets. They don’t have to take harmful drugs or have any surgery to be acceptable to the tiny proportion of the global population who identify as transgendered. All they have to do is bully those of us who believe that sex is real and they have accomplished their mission. The ability to feel virtuous beyond measure is theirs for the taking. The fact that this is built on a foundation of quicksand must be a great example of motivated ignorance.
Climbing over the bodies of others to reach some unspecified end goal of self-importance is, at the very least, a moral crime.
Happy TERFmas to me in reading this excellent piece. Thanks “Lucy”.
Good piece. I, too, believe that for most ‘trans’ allies, they think that being an ally is a no-cost virtue signal which keeps them in the vanguard of social change, or worth whatever cost they do see with ‘trans’ ideology to keep them safe from being cast out of their peer groups.