Gender Contagion

In the early 1600s, contract markets for Dutch tulips exploded into a mania of speculation. Many lost their shirts investing in tulip futures, and humanity was provided an eponymous tale of caution.

That tale has yet to prove stronger than the get-rich-quick desires that exist in our lizard brains, and we've witnessed many examples of asset bubbles since. Some were created or exacerbated by government policy (see: the 2008 housing bubble, Japan in the 1980s, the stock market crash of 1929), others were simply people ignoring reality and risk (see: dot-com bubble, crypto bubble, Great Britain's mid-180ss Railway Mania).

These were money-based forms of social contagion, rooted in various human behavioral predilections, including the aforementioned get-rich-quich greed, "fear of missing out," and herd mentality.

Social contagion, alas, isn't limited to money. Consider the June Bug epidemic of 1962, where many workers in a factory exhibited similar symptoms despite there being no external cause, buying frenzies (see: pandemic and toilet paper) or any riot-turned-looting event.

Younger people, less seasoned as they are in the vagaries of life and made more susceptible to social pressures by their desire for acceptance, seem more susceptible to such mass hysterics.

Such contagion bubbles typically produce bad outcomes and never add up when viewed with the cold detachment and rationality of hindsight. Yet, they persist. The latest - the gender-redefinition craze that has emerged from trans-radicalism (itself the now dominant fringe of transgender acceptance movements) - has all the characteristics of social contagion and a growing bubble.

If it were only private money at risk, we could lament the fools suckered by their own emotions. But, it's not. It is instead a generational tragedy. The near-coercive gender transitioning of large numbers of teens is a horrific abandonment of responsibility and ethical behavior by people who have chosen agenda over all else.

That a few are waking up to the horror they're abetting is promising, but only a fart in a windstorm so far.

Many of these good-intentioned people have, in turn, have been played by Marxist societal transformers, who have figured out that this and other cultural wedge issues can be exploited in their war against capitalism and individual rights, and who have found fertile ground for their cynical manipulations. Thus, the bubble is inflated.

The activists manning transition clinics don't seem to much care about whether a particular teen is or isn’t actually according-to-Hoyle transgender, given the clearly superficial and slapdash assessments that precede the prescribing of chemicals and/or scheduling of surgery. One possible explanation for this, a compelling one in my view, is because transitioning as many as possible feeds a "strength in numbers" strategy. If the trans population figure can be inflated, there's that much more pressure on everyone else to accept the rest of the agenda: the pronouns, the alteration of the language, the elimination of the concept of biological gender, and even the gelding of God. Oh, and of course Other People's Money.

Classic ends justify the means mindset, and in as-classic collectivist world view, breaking a few eggs to make that omelet is acceptable. Though I think it far more likely, as in the case of whistleblower Jamie Reed, that these people have convinced themselves that every kid who walks through their doors is indeed ‘trapped in the wrong body.’ Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing, and it takes quite a bit of intellectual strength to wake up to and admit one’s complicity in too many cases of mis-transitioning minors.

Far easier to keep going along than to admit such a tragic error, especially when the world one lives in virtually demands the error be perpetuated. It must be as difficult as leaving Scientology or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or other groups that practice shunning (or, as the JWs call it, “disfellowship”). Hard enough to admit you’ve harmed children with misguided beliefs. Harder still to risk your entire world in doing so.

There are many culprits in this “gender contagion.” The press, the modern-day Manichaeans who think that anyone who even hints at questioning transgender orthodoxy is literally Hitler, the twitter-verse, and the Left’s bandwagoneers who support trans-activism because it’s what their team does. And, of course, the apologists, “fact-checkers,” and “debunkers” who deny the reality the whistleblowers are exposing.

Fortunately, countermovements can build their own momentum. Just as JK Rowling and Dave Chappelle are at the fore of rejecting cancel culture, progressives and “allies” who are brave enough to say “stop the insanity” can accrete more such dissidents and apostates to their ranks, and perhaps, just perhaps, some kids’ lives will not be ruined by zealots.