Jul 11, 2022·edited Jul 11, 2022Liked by Eliza Mondegreen
I work in the public health world in the SF Bay Area, so this stuff is pervasive. Removing relevant sex-based language has impacted study data and outreach materials, yet no one seems to care. There’s a serious “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” vibe.
It is interesting to me how these patterns seem especially common in organizations that mostly employ women. The social tools for enforcing conformity seem readymade for hacking by entry-ists. "Don't you want to be kind" doesn't have a totalitarian effect in male dominated organizations. In some ways, I think we are seeing the outcome of the gender degree gap at scale.
Every faith devolves into sects. Every sect becomes an orthodoxy. Dissenters leave, form a new sect, create a new orthodoxy. Welcome to the history of civilization.
When one subordinates one's self-respect to the hope of acceptance within an organization, your situation never gets better.
I have little sympathy for this, because I could never afford to lose a job, but I still knew what was an accommodation too far, even if it was pretty small, in the scheme of things, and I faced the terror of the paycheck abruptly halted with no cushion to back me up.
And boy oh boy, but women just thrive on policing other women. Middle-school hallways, we find 'em everywhere.
> A strange sort of arms race kicked off, where whoever could brainstorm the most byzantine ways someone could feel marginalized or excluded by anything we wrote or said—or (decreasingly) did—won by demonstrating a superior sensitivity. The belief that making something more complicated meant you’d contributed predated the identity panic. But doing so took on a new moral urgency. Action alerts that deployed phrases like “stand up for ___” sparked outcry from junior staffers on the harms of ableism. (“It’s a metaphor. Did you stand up when you read the email?” didn’t go over well.) The cause got lost.
This is exactly right. To me, it's downstream of the idea that caring is intrinsically valid. Humans since the dawn of time have known caring is invalid without productive action and it took a century of liberalism to erase this.
Check out Eliza's archived posts, she's eloquent and informative.
What I find with my fellow late boomer female cohort is a default on "being kind". Which comes, in part, from their watching the struggles of their own (now grown) gay children. They may or may not buy the ideology, but they don't see the costs--they are not going to be faced with an intact male roommate in the shelter, nursing home or prison, their children are too old to demand binders, or to face a male opponent at a high school track meet, so it's not hitting home for them.
Keep in mind that none of this overeducated navel-gazing and status-seeking outrage, the endless struggle sessions over proper descriptors (do we call a person paralyzed from the neck down a "quadriplegic" or "a person with quadriplegia"?), the diversity committees that turn out to be jobs programs for grievance studies grads, the Wokemon matchups pitting a queer math-challenged Native American versus a schizophrenic mixed race male who *personally identifies* as a three-headed lesbian, none of this stuff changes the way the economic pie is sliced.
This is an outstanding and vitally important piece. It also helps explain just how helpless many nonprofits became in the wake of the rise of Trump and the death of George Floyd. But those were merely sparks. The gasoline had been pooling for a while, and continues to do so. Sparks will inevitably occur again (Dobbs, President DeSantis, etc.), so the question is: what will it take to fireproof the nonprofit sector before it becomes entirely useless?
One of the weirdest things about the trans community is what kind of terrible stuff they'll let people get away with. The founders of the suicide hotline Trans Lifeline embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and got quietly shuffled out with no media attention, and I can think of several minor trans celebrities who got accused of sexual assault with little to no consequences (Laurelai Bailey, Andi Dier, Eli Erlick). Most of these people victimized other trans people but that didn't matter.
In a Sovereign Nations video with Michael O’Fallon, a player in the Southern Baptist Convention, James Lindsay made the point that any organization that lets critical theory in the door, even a traditionalist one like the SBC, is dooming itself.
Some of the particulars described in this post are unique to a socially progressive organization, but the dynamics of destruction are similar from mainstream Protestantism to the Federal government to socially progressive NGOs to Disney to local school boards. Once critical theory is in the door with a constituency and some measure of official approval, the organization is on a path to devour itself,
"...purity not efficacy, was the order of the day."
"We talked about upping our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Not everyone was fit for such a mission."
Samuel P. Huntington "In the Promise of Disharmony," may have put his finger on a key component of this purity dynamic in political movements when he stated: "In the United States ideological consensus is the source of political conflict, polarization occurs over moral issues rather than economic ones--it is precisely the central role of moral passion that distinguishes American politics
from the politics of most other nations"
The statement "we talked about upping our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion" in 2022 was duplicated in the 1960s--"we talked about upping our commitment to opposition to the Vietnam war," or "we talked about upping our commitment to Black power," or upping our commitment to women's liberation"-- all also ending with "not everyone was fit for such a mission."
What is the nature of this purity dynamic? Is it fundamentally a power move sociologically, is it ambition and ego on a psychological level-- or is it the internalization of deeply embedded cultural messages about equality, liberty and popular sovereignty or some combination of all of the above.
In the land of environmental organizations, the same dynamic is at play, and believe me, the men are as much a part of it as the women. (Commenters below fixate on women as movers & shakers for the demise underway.) Gender Ideology has inserted its ugly head into the heart of these groups, of nearly all socialist groups, of groups that are now feminist only in name, etc....and the upshot is horrible. See this comprehensive report on Gender Identity Ideology, especially later sections regarding impacts on organizations and organizing: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
Before the Gender madness, I had noticed a perhaps related disturbing trend on climate-type issues. Middle-aged or older people began declaring that we older folks need to sit down. Get out of the way. Let the youth lead. I objected, pointing out that both the fresh young faces and the withered experienced ones were needed. That young people need to hear from older folks about what was tried before, what was experienced. We have wisdom to share. That the propensity for blatant ageism (as opposed to subtle ageism) that has asserted itself in social justice organizing (and society as a whole) is NOT a good thing. Also, the situation we have today arises from what we elders did and did not do; throwing our hands in the air and telling young folk to figure it out is a cop-out.
My words were not heeded. Thus, on climate and other issues, there's this bizarre kowtowing to young people who are clueless about what went before, strategies for organizing, etc......a placing faith in them that is not deserved....and responsibility on them that should be shared by all. Don't know why I ended up writing about this, but it seems related to the abdication on the gender madness, which is falsely framed as young people brining the light of liberation as stodgy older people age and die off. (There are tons of young people in my gender critical circles, but their existence is ignored.)
There’s been a lot of these articles lately. That’s good; I’m glad dissent is breaking through.
Where does this end up, though? We all can think of plenty of solutions: Fire people who act like this seems the easiest and most certain of success. But ok, that’s not possible right now.
So what is going to happen to your organization? What is going to happen to the policies you’re organization advocates (used to advocate?) for? Basically why should I care?
All these articles bring us in to “now” but don’t speculate on the future. You’re in the best position to take a stab at what this is going to look like in six months, a year. Can you take a guess?
Jul 10, 2022·edited Jul 10, 2022Liked by Eliza Mondegreen
It would be interesting to read specific details about your experience: what kind of non-profit with what mission, what was your specific role in the org? How is your former org doing now? Have many older workers been forced out? Have donations dried up (or have new donations changed mission as with ACLU)?
How do we keep this from happening EVERYWHERE? I’ve heard people say “the pendulum will swing back”, but will it? I’m genuinely concerned it won’t, and I don’t like what that looks like.
I work in the public health world in the SF Bay Area, so this stuff is pervasive. Removing relevant sex-based language has impacted study data and outreach materials, yet no one seems to care. There’s a serious “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” vibe.
It is interesting to me how these patterns seem especially common in organizations that mostly employ women. The social tools for enforcing conformity seem readymade for hacking by entry-ists. "Don't you want to be kind" doesn't have a totalitarian effect in male dominated organizations. In some ways, I think we are seeing the outcome of the gender degree gap at scale.
Every faith devolves into sects. Every sect becomes an orthodoxy. Dissenters leave, form a new sect, create a new orthodoxy. Welcome to the history of civilization.
When one subordinates one's self-respect to the hope of acceptance within an organization, your situation never gets better.
I have little sympathy for this, because I could never afford to lose a job, but I still knew what was an accommodation too far, even if it was pretty small, in the scheme of things, and I faced the terror of the paycheck abruptly halted with no cushion to back me up.
And boy oh boy, but women just thrive on policing other women. Middle-school hallways, we find 'em everywhere.
> A strange sort of arms race kicked off, where whoever could brainstorm the most byzantine ways someone could feel marginalized or excluded by anything we wrote or said—or (decreasingly) did—won by demonstrating a superior sensitivity. The belief that making something more complicated meant you’d contributed predated the identity panic. But doing so took on a new moral urgency. Action alerts that deployed phrases like “stand up for ___” sparked outcry from junior staffers on the harms of ableism. (“It’s a metaphor. Did you stand up when you read the email?” didn’t go over well.) The cause got lost.
This is exactly right. To me, it's downstream of the idea that caring is intrinsically valid. Humans since the dawn of time have known caring is invalid without productive action and it took a century of liberalism to erase this.
Think about these processes as primate power-seeking, and it will make a bit more sense.
Check out Eliza's archived posts, she's eloquent and informative.
What I find with my fellow late boomer female cohort is a default on "being kind". Which comes, in part, from their watching the struggles of their own (now grown) gay children. They may or may not buy the ideology, but they don't see the costs--they are not going to be faced with an intact male roommate in the shelter, nursing home or prison, their children are too old to demand binders, or to face a male opponent at a high school track meet, so it's not hitting home for them.
Keep in mind that none of this overeducated navel-gazing and status-seeking outrage, the endless struggle sessions over proper descriptors (do we call a person paralyzed from the neck down a "quadriplegic" or "a person with quadriplegia"?), the diversity committees that turn out to be jobs programs for grievance studies grads, the Wokemon matchups pitting a queer math-challenged Native American versus a schizophrenic mixed race male who *personally identifies* as a three-headed lesbian, none of this stuff changes the way the economic pie is sliced.
This is an outstanding and vitally important piece. It also helps explain just how helpless many nonprofits became in the wake of the rise of Trump and the death of George Floyd. But those were merely sparks. The gasoline had been pooling for a while, and continues to do so. Sparks will inevitably occur again (Dobbs, President DeSantis, etc.), so the question is: what will it take to fireproof the nonprofit sector before it becomes entirely useless?
Excellent, Eliza. This is what I am always looking for, the stories of these extraordinary take-overs.
One of the weirdest things about the trans community is what kind of terrible stuff they'll let people get away with. The founders of the suicide hotline Trans Lifeline embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and got quietly shuffled out with no media attention, and I can think of several minor trans celebrities who got accused of sexual assault with little to no consequences (Laurelai Bailey, Andi Dier, Eli Erlick). Most of these people victimized other trans people but that didn't matter.
In a Sovereign Nations video with Michael O’Fallon, a player in the Southern Baptist Convention, James Lindsay made the point that any organization that lets critical theory in the door, even a traditionalist one like the SBC, is dooming itself.
Some of the particulars described in this post are unique to a socially progressive organization, but the dynamics of destruction are similar from mainstream Protestantism to the Federal government to socially progressive NGOs to Disney to local school boards. Once critical theory is in the door with a constituency and some measure of official approval, the organization is on a path to devour itself,
"...purity not efficacy, was the order of the day."
"We talked about upping our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Not everyone was fit for such a mission."
Samuel P. Huntington "In the Promise of Disharmony," may have put his finger on a key component of this purity dynamic in political movements when he stated: "In the United States ideological consensus is the source of political conflict, polarization occurs over moral issues rather than economic ones--it is precisely the central role of moral passion that distinguishes American politics
from the politics of most other nations"
The statement "we talked about upping our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion" in 2022 was duplicated in the 1960s--"we talked about upping our commitment to opposition to the Vietnam war," or "we talked about upping our commitment to Black power," or upping our commitment to women's liberation"-- all also ending with "not everyone was fit for such a mission."
What is the nature of this purity dynamic? Is it fundamentally a power move sociologically, is it ambition and ego on a psychological level-- or is it the internalization of deeply embedded cultural messages about equality, liberty and popular sovereignty or some combination of all of the above.
In the land of environmental organizations, the same dynamic is at play, and believe me, the men are as much a part of it as the women. (Commenters below fixate on women as movers & shakers for the demise underway.) Gender Ideology has inserted its ugly head into the heart of these groups, of nearly all socialist groups, of groups that are now feminist only in name, etc....and the upshot is horrible. See this comprehensive report on Gender Identity Ideology, especially later sections regarding impacts on organizations and organizing: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
Before the Gender madness, I had noticed a perhaps related disturbing trend on climate-type issues. Middle-aged or older people began declaring that we older folks need to sit down. Get out of the way. Let the youth lead. I objected, pointing out that both the fresh young faces and the withered experienced ones were needed. That young people need to hear from older folks about what was tried before, what was experienced. We have wisdom to share. That the propensity for blatant ageism (as opposed to subtle ageism) that has asserted itself in social justice organizing (and society as a whole) is NOT a good thing. Also, the situation we have today arises from what we elders did and did not do; throwing our hands in the air and telling young folk to figure it out is a cop-out.
My words were not heeded. Thus, on climate and other issues, there's this bizarre kowtowing to young people who are clueless about what went before, strategies for organizing, etc......a placing faith in them that is not deserved....and responsibility on them that should be shared by all. Don't know why I ended up writing about this, but it seems related to the abdication on the gender madness, which is falsely framed as young people brining the light of liberation as stodgy older people age and die off. (There are tons of young people in my gender critical circles, but their existence is ignored.)
There’s been a lot of these articles lately. That’s good; I’m glad dissent is breaking through.
Where does this end up, though? We all can think of plenty of solutions: Fire people who act like this seems the easiest and most certain of success. But ok, that’s not possible right now.
So what is going to happen to your organization? What is going to happen to the policies you’re organization advocates (used to advocate?) for? Basically why should I care?
All these articles bring us in to “now” but don’t speculate on the future. You’re in the best position to take a stab at what this is going to look like in six months, a year. Can you take a guess?
It would be interesting to read specific details about your experience: what kind of non-profit with what mission, what was your specific role in the org? How is your former org doing now? Have many older workers been forced out? Have donations dried up (or have new donations changed mission as with ACLU)?
How do we keep this from happening EVERYWHERE? I’ve heard people say “the pendulum will swing back”, but will it? I’m genuinely concerned it won’t, and I don’t like what that looks like.