Anatomy of a GC purity spiral, Part 1.

By Anonymous

I'd like to tell you a story. It’s a little bit … niche. It’s a journey documenting the lesser known side of a drama which has enveloped the radical feminist / gender critical camp, and a developing trend that really needs more examination.

I’ve heard and read some incredible things lately. It’s been a weird and depressing few weeks and I’m not convinced it’s about to improve.

Recently, under the guise of women's rights, things have been said and done with which I'm uncomfortable. Things that looked absolutely wrong - not only tactically or factually but just on an ethical level. Wrong. Petulant, cruel and at times self-destructive, really testing some within gender-critical circles and massively alienating to those looking in.

It centred around CAIS women.

CAIS: Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, is a condition where at the beginning of life, an XY foetus’ development as male stops dead due to a complete inability of the androgen receptors to respond. The gonads continue to fire androgen in ever more frequent rounds, but this is not recognised and thus aromatises into oestrogen. Those affected develop the physical characteristics and genitals of females, while the mullerian tract is dissolved – i.e. the uterus, fallopian tubes and cervix.

These people are observed, recorded and socialised as female. They appear to show synonymous rates of attraction to males as XX women, similar brain activity in response to sexual stimuli, and there have been no claims of male pattern violence. The testes are retained in the abdomen, never descending, and aside from what is frequently a shorter vaginal canal the condition would go unnoted if menstruation was not a thing, as it is failure to reach menarche that begins investigations.

The new inquisition—the hardliners questioning whether these women were women at all— was demanding answers. You couldn’t question them, though, without being told to fuck off, shut up, sit down. And the questions and accusations they felt compelled to share, in ever more loaded terms, increased exponentially in number until it became indistinguishable from the harassment campaigns that Claire Graham, Genspect, DSD Voices and others had faced from the transactivist side over the last five or six years. Campaigns that had done everything to silence them, and failed, as their voices continued to ring out from behind Twitter bans and severe restrictions around how honestly they could discuss their work.

Ordinary people trying to counter gender orthodoxy, in a culture where heretics are vilified out of professions, must play it safe and leave the impression that some doors are left open, just to get people through the first one. But they were damned for it. It wasn’t condemnatory enough.

It was suggested that those of us critical of an atmosphere of ever-increasing hostility, were, by using the term ‘purity spiral’ demanding women tolerate the intolerable, and doing it for the benefit of men, at that. A strange argument, accompanied by all-too familiar misogyny: telling us our judgement was clouded as we were clearly trying to impress men; using sexualised insults; creating an environment so hostile it silenced dissenting women, and instructing us to shove our objections in graphic, sexualised ways. The petulant cry-bullying was almost reminiscent of a certain protected class. I wondered how we, adults, got to this, and why a refusal to self-critique was being confused with strength.

Now I don’t want to to be a quisling, but I’m unconvinced this is all a successfully completed feminism.

Ultimately, under the barrage, some cracked a bit. Some lashed out having heard the same accusations and loaded questions again and again. This reaction to sustained harassment, which would normally evoke empathy, looked like gleeful sadism.

I don’t think many people are aware of all this. I’m sure there's cursory knowledge but, my god, the dominant narratives of a few loud voices are far from complete and honest.

Which is shit, because it doesn't represent us, in fact it’s just tailored around the worst stereotypes of those commonly abused as 'TERFs'.

It's something we need to address, because it's being done under the banner of our movement. We have enough battles as it is, and wasting energy, destroying morale on desperately irrelevant arguments that elevate those most likely to alienate the normies is a bad idea.

Meaning, it’s time to speak up, because our movement, our statement of fact over fantasy is being worn as armour to enable cathartic vengeance over the most irrelevant disputes.

When, in response to an attack a jovial reference to 'doffing about the head' is folk-lored into pathological intent, which is then endlessly invoked as a threat and fantasy; or women are cheerleading a man speaking to a longstanding gender-critical scientist, Emma Hilton, as if she was an idiotic, incompetent charlatan, there's a problem. Women were called cocksuckers, ‘fluffers’, ‘peen worshippers’, labelled as gagging for other women's abusive exes, and more, by those who considered themselves superior feminists. Again, this DIDN’T SEEM TO BE VERY FEMINIST TO ME.

I thought we reached peak stupid when slurs started being chucked at people with DSDs (Differences of Sex Development), but I was wrong. Pinning down the origin of angry claims has been trickier than stapling a blancmange to a desk. I've seen people in states of spitting fury shouting at each other in arguments over the varying depths of vaginas. One argument was that a woman with a DSD condition didn’t have a vagina but a ‘blind pouch’. It's been mesmerizingly deranged to those of us on the outside of the experience, painful and dehumanising to those within.

Topping off the whole shitshow – one woman, edgelord creator of a video supposedly meant to help vindicate one member of the circular firing squad, turned out to be a white supremacist. And this was after her side had accused others of using antisemitic imagery to attack them. Suddenly, accusations of racist tropes / bigotry lay in wait like trapdoor spiders, lunging at people in anodyne conversations. Any possible gotchas were used and reactions screenshot just to relive later. A sort of virtual happy-slapping.

They couldn't condemn the racist on their side any more than expressing 'disappointment' and a need to reflect, as if they were the palace press office dealing with another Prince Andrew outrage.

I see cliques not just forming but segregating. The affiliation with powerful personalities leads to blind loyalty. They're vehemently defended, no matter the truth. The rest of us just watched helplessly, wondering when it would be ok to change the subject.

Then we were told that the path to success is essentially to form an echo chamber. Defining us vs them by ever more stringent criteria, and the smaller ‘us’ got, the better. It was feminism refined, the wheat sorted from the chaff.. The result, not a broad people’s movement meant to dismantle the Gender State but a philosophical workout for the A-list. Most of us are out here trying to peak people - they're happy at the thought they've self cannibalised down to a support circle of impeccable congruence and sent the half-hearted packing.

Apparently too, the abuse of 'be kind' by TRAs means sympathy is weakness and it's wrong to complain about the utter contempt radiating off of others in sometimes toxic discourse: "Women are justifiably angry” I’m told, as if I’ve been insulated from the insults, attacks, the endless gaslighting of the activists, or the misrepresentation and betrayal of friends. But I haven't been spared, I just don't want the bad faith contortions of spoilt men's rights activists to distort my most fundamental responses to other human beings. I don't want them to change me.

Some of what follows here is unequivocally repulsive – it’s irrelevant how righteous you think your end game is. I don’t care – some things are inexcusable. Gender ideology impacts a huge range of people, probably everyone, and trying to impose criteria on participation in the fightback is not going to win it. Why would anyone want that?

It's a white-knuckle ride of internecine fuckery, and not a case of ‘both sides’. Any more dismissal that I'm just being played, having my female socialisation weaponised, anyone to suggest I calm down will be as well-received as a brick in a washing machine. I'm sick of that very fear of not being liked and being 'difficult' used within our discourse and spaces.

There's a spectacular fragility emerging. It makes me think of Magdalen Berns. She saw through bullshit like Jessica Fletcher with an endoscope, called it and kept moving. She never raked through the ashes, blowing on dying arguments, or demanded to be declared correct – she didn't particularly give a shit what anyone thought, she was talking for herself and thinking of others, not the other way round. She displayed insults like her most prized awards. Untrollable.

Running on the logic that nature abhors a vacuum, the speed with which other commentators rose to prominence in Magdalen's absence makes sense. We became so grateful for a figurehead, and we’re generally so used to being defensive of them it’s hard to manage reasonable expectation. This should be a big lesson to us all.

In spare rooms on mobile phones, with terrible sound quality and none of the ring-light frippery we're used to, we had a new movement of angry and inquisitive women. And we were hooked.

Hastily uploaded, raw and candid videos charged out, examining every conceivable facet of the bastard monolith big con that had dropped on society. It felt like we'd found representation that was incisive, passionate and fair. It’s hugely reassuring to believe everything is up for analysis and there are no sacred cows. That facts might finally come before feels.

The gruesome tragedy of 'trans affirmative' surgery, brought to you by the surgeons with Instagram fame and huge, bright white teeth was being exposed, and it was done with compassion for the victims with whom we'd normally be arguing. Finally, the bloated bullshit cartel was being torn to bits with expert precision.

In front of a printed screen, with portrait-angled phone and awful sound quality, was a new figurehead. And she was ace, immediately a hit and without doubt will be regarded as an important part of the public awakening.

Typical review at the time.

It was raw, unsophisticated, uploaded in staggering volume with a sneer and occasional protective sympathy, as she exposed gruesome tragedy bought to you by the surgical-appromiximators, pauses and side-eye glances when words failed. All in all, she tore the fuck out of the bloated bullshit cartel with expert precision.

In the midst of it, though, a denunciative mood took over and with it emerging suspicions of fellow GC factions. There were the beginnings of a civil war, and some appeared to be making their names with it. Relentless streams of videos with sensational titles were unleashed, like a terrible film franchise; tediously dragged out hit pieces, one after another. Sometimes several in one day.  

The tactics used by TRAs were being used, fishing expeditions and hostile probes implying guilt-by-association (or even re-tweet). For certain people, every act needed explanation, and condemnation or apologies were demanded. Being ‘affiliated with paedophile sympathisers’ was the new 'handmaiden'. Everywhere, small print was scoured for wrongthink and nonces. We weren't far from a gender critical version of InfoWars: How Genspect, Arron Kimberly and Glinner are Turning the Frogs Trans.

Endlessly dragging over statements, repeating everything twice, seeing suspicious phrases everywhere, it was exhausting. And if you had criticism but didn't turn up to their own personal colosseum you should just shut up. While the people involved are losing the patience of their followers fast now, this is very recent. There are fan bases harbouring individuals as zealous and faithful as Old Yeller himself. There's real adoration about, so it’s not easy to criticise it and escape with your mental stability intact. 

Nonetheless, in part 2, I will try.