How to Talk to People who Aren't Listening

Wedge Strategies for Outreach (Essay Version)

At Sovereign Women Speak Conference 2023, I gave a presentation with this title so I am now going to put it in as a write-up. I will be posting the audio separately as soon as I've finished adjusting the levels.

For those who are phalloplasty-deep in trans ideology, they are involved in a toxic social group (aka a cult) that is part of a larger movement and networks of such entities. Unlike more established religions, Church of Trans allows people to self-ordain by “educating themselves.” They can then become an authority figure by learning the lingo and performing a competence that is not truly possible to attain in a logically incoherent ideology with conflicting factionalism based on unverifiable and non-falsifiable premises about such questions as “how many genders are there,” “what is a gender,” and “when does a person acquire a gender.”

With any toxic social group, the organizing principle is suspension of disbelief and an attempt to accept and internalize illogical and incoherent beliefs, as well as surrender of one’s critical faculties to the local cult leader and cult structure.

I experienced this when I was in pursuit of trans-substantiation, deferring to the judgment of characters like Julia Serano and Judith Butler, as well as social peers who looked more visibly queer, acted more confident (aggressive) in their knowledge, or had undergone more interventions than I had. I wanted to be like them and be respected as I felt they were, and changing my appearance and announcing my “subaltern” sexualities and gender identities was presented as the path forward.

I did not come up with this model of subtypes of cult members myself. I remember encountering it somewhere in my pursuit of understanding the phenomenon of Scientology many years ago. The Scientology critic to gender ideology critic pipeline is apparently real, as BillboardChris can attest. I unfortunately do not remember where I picked this up, so if someone knows please leave it in comments so I can properly attribute it. However, this is a very helpful model for sorting Church of Trans supporters into subgroups which have distinct properties that are relevant for outreach.

For people within the toxic social group, they can be divided into four groups:

1. Loyalists: These are the true believers who have no intention of leaving the group in the foreseeable future. This group will either avoid all discussion of the belief structure with out-group members, due to fear of sinning against the group structure or attracting the ire of the local cult leader, or simply due to disgust and condescension towards the unsaved masses. If you can get a loyalist to engage, you can expect them to jump around between a million talking points and become increasingly aggressive in their application of social pressure, including smearing you and your motivations, as you continue to not surrender to the cult structure. The only time I would recommend engaging a loyalist is if the discussion is public with an audience that may include mediators (see below) or people outside the cult structure (supporters) who are supportive in theory but not a participant nor particularly savvy to the situation at hand.

2. Overt Declarers: This group will behave like loyalists until they independently conclude that the cult structure is toxic and that they need to leave for their own benefit. At that point, they will announce their departure and leave without discussion. This group should be approached similar to the loyalists. If you are not careful, you will get sucked into a prolonged private email debate that will go nowhere and accomplish nothing unless you then publish and criticize it. If you anticipate doing this, it is better form to get permission to publish the exchange later, with or without their name. Though, that gentleman's agreement goes out the window if their communication begins to involve threats or other unlawful content.

3. Covert Declarers: This is the group I was in when I left the toxic social group. Like the Overt Declarers LH, I concluded independently the group structure was toxic and incoherent, and further that attempting to change the group would cost me socially. I still believed it was possible to maintain my relationships with people within the cult after I left and discarded my trans performativity and after I stopped purporting to embrace the incoherence and pursue queerness. It is not, because they do not trust you anymore because your detransition feels like a rejection of their beliefs, and they resolve this by concluding you are not trustworthy.

   I left the group by relocating emotionally to a group which tolerated my gender preoccupations and nonconformities, and did not have much interest in reinforcing them, yet had a great deal of interest in supporting and getting to know me as an individual who was expected to grow out of this phase. I realized in therapy that I had outgrown it, and after that I avoided the group dynamic and stopped performing transness. At the time, I did not have any sort of process of “coming out” as ex-trans. This all occurred in 2014/2015, around the time I first encountered the idea of non-trans people sharing their pronouns, which I disagreed with as a practice. I was nonbinary as a stepping stone. I did not talk about this experience with anyone until I got on Tiktok in 2021 and got called “cis” a bunch of times, which prompted me to reveal this part of my history. I did not medically desist until this year (2023) which has been its own journey (waa-tsssssch).

4. Mediators: This group is outgrowing the cult structure but they have not realized that the toxic group structure is self-perpetuating and self-protecting. They believe they are special and that their seemingly profound and secure friendships can survive apostasy. They believe they may be able to change the group structure and iron out incoherence, improving the cult. They aspire to make the cult into a church or a healthy friend group, in other words. At the same time they are trying to figure out which side of the incoherences they fall on, what is true, as they seek to un-surrender, to reclaim, their rational faculties, and as they pursue intellectual integrity and honesty.

   Mediators can be engaged publicly or privately as there is a reasonable chance that they will emerge from the cult if they feel supported by an outside group or person. Engaging with them is an opportunity to show them that people outside of the group are not wicked or hateful or unwilling to be curious and respectful. I would personally recommend engaging privately as true mediators are in a crisis of faith and this is a fragile time for them. If you are approached publicly by one, after some initial discussion, offer to pause and resume over email. “Let's keep in touch.” Adopt a stance of welcoming openness and project protectiveness. You care about them on a human level. You are here to help and explain within reason.

This video shows a mediator, a local cult leader (the person commanding to stop engaging), and people who are either loyalists, overt, or covert declaratives:

https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FBillboardChris%2Fstatus%2F1690056162639519749&widget=Tweet

If you do engage these groups for any reason, it is important to do something I first learned from an organization that treats behavioral disorders: adopt a ‘disconfirming’ stance. A disconfirming stance is a tack or standpoint which contradicts and refutes what you have discerned to be their model of reality. If their model is that you believe men must dress masculinely, a disconfirming stance may be to appreciate the effort and skill of a man who has put on a great deal of make-up, without agreeing that this makes him a woman in some way.

I understand that the idea of flattering a trans person may offend some readers, however the larger purpose of this stance is to communicate that you are interested in them as a person and the things they find to be important, even though you have boundaries surrounding reinforcing the cult belief structure. An individual within the cult has been trained and conditioned that people outside of the cult are all a certain way, and they have a very simplistic model of us for the same reason they fell victim to the cult in the first place, which is a simplistic model of themselves due to immaturity or some other vulnerability.

Flattery also reinforces the behavior of interacting with you, and can grease the wheels of their willingness to communicate with you about aspects of the cult structure they are experiencing (such as emotional abuse from the local cult leader) or ideological distress they have no one else to safely discuss with. If you cannot muster this genuine interest or concern, please do not force it. Only give what you can. For many on our side, there is recent trauma and loss associated with this cult. You may not be ready to be that person for anyone on the inside. You may never be ready. That's OK. This is merely a suggestion of a possibility open to some. We are not an inverse cult, and you have nothing to prove.

Another way to adopt a disconfirming stance is to adopt an attitude of curiosity via active listening. This involves asking open-ended questions about the person’s belief, and then responding by rephrasing in a positive or neutral way what they just said to you, without contradicting, judging, undermining, or rejecting it. This communicates to the person that you are interested in understanding, while at the same time, restating it to them and having them confirm it allows you to establish premises and reveal contradictions. When you encounter a direct contradiction in what they have agreed are fair summaries of their belief structure, it is much more difficult for them to accuse you of a strawman. You have already gotten them to agree to your summaries and restatements, and if you are dealing with a mediator especially, this will help them see that they are not wrong in feeling that this does not quite make sense.

I hope this summary has been helpful. Please leave any questions or feedback in comments below. And please check out the audio of this talk given at Sovereign Women Speak once it is uploaded to hear the feedback from the other workshop participants.