EPISODE 79 - Gender Identity: Literally False, Metaphorically True w/ Dr. Bret Alderman
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2022
- Quick Notes:
Bret Alderman is a writer and life coach who works with gender questioning teens and their parents. He received his PhD in Depth Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2012. His book Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language: A Jungian interpretation of the linguistic turn is an attempt to understand postmodernism, specifically its intense preoccupation with language, from a perspective informed by the work of Carl Jung. This work, in turn, has led him to an interest in Queer Theory and its relation to earlier, first generation postmodernist thinkers.
Bret’s insight into postmodernist and poststructuralist thinking provides a rich platform on which to get a grip of gender ideology. In this fascinating discussion he explains the “linguistic turn” and the Jungian concepts such as ideological possession and other important archetypes. Perhaps most importantly Bret tells us why a statement can be literally false and yet remain metaphorically true - and how we can best respond when this is happening.
Links
Bret Alderman:
Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language: A Jungian Interpretation of the Linguistic Turn
www.routledge.com/Symptom-Sym...
Bret’s website: www.aldermancoaching.com/
Judith Butler: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex www.routledge.com/Bodies-That...
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For more about our show: linktr.ee/WiderLensPod
Haven't listened yet, but just seeing your podcast appear each week is fast becoming my favorite Friday night ritual. Thank you from Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺 ♥
Is Melbourne as woke as it looks?
Wow, what an absolutely fascinating episode!! I was listening to this while doing some dishes, and it absolutely blew my mind! So much of the spiritual stuff, and need for initiation, I can especially VERY much relate to on a personal level... And I've been saying for such a long time now, that this is a new secular religion! Or a replacement religion!
Speaking as the kind of person who's definitely always felt a strong need for rituals, transitions, initiations, and that kind of "something more", that I could not always quite place..? I did the whole atheism thing, for some six years or so. Mainly due to the fact that I was rebelling against, and thoroughly disillusioned with, dogmatic mainstream religion. But.. it sure as hell left a VERY big void inside me! As there was something my spirit needed, that it just plain did not get from that! And, long story short..? I eventually found my way, and what worked for me. I did not return to dogmatic, organized religion. But I found my own personal spirituality, and relationship with the infinite, minus the dogma! Which feeds my soul FAR more than atheism ever could, or did! As atheism..? Is really just the absence of something that SOME people need! BUT..? I also respect that apparently, not everyone needs it. OR..? Perhaps they find it elsewhere, in something else that they find meaningful in life!
Anyway, to transfer that to this issue, us GCs are basically gender atheists. And when we remember that gender is the new replacement religion now, for so many young people who most likely feel the same kind of deep existential yearning, or spiritual need, as I always did..? It makes a lot of sense that they would cling on to the gender thing, as it's the ONLY outlet for that they know of, or resonate with! And if we try to take it from them..? It is going to leave a void! And.. that's not to say I don't think we should be trying to deprogram them from this stuff, at all. Because as we all know..? It is immensely, permanently, irreversibly harmful, for people who go down the medicalization path with it! BUT..? The thing is, we have to somehow replace it with something, or give them some other outlet for their existential yearnings, as a tradeoff! Right..? Or else it's going to be like: "they snatched this from me, and now I have NOTHING!" And I'm not sure what we should be replacing it with, exactly! I know spirituality, spiritual ceremony, etc, definitely worked for me! And I've had some REALLY formative psychedelic experiences, that really served as the kind of initiations I needed! But.. not necessarily saying those things are going to work for everyone, either! But we need to find SOMETHING.. Maybe some kids need to go on a physical journey, or a total change of scenery? Or find a really intense hobby, that they can pour their EVERYTHING into? And yes, really... I actually believe in trying to recreate religious rituals that matter! For people whose inclinations are similar to my own, who no longer buy the old religious narratives, yet actually NEED that!! I guess the New Age is in many ways trying to do this, in a positive.. And I wholeheartedly approve of a lot of that! (Not saying it's all perfect, though.)
Also, another VERY interesting thing? Speaking from my experience of being really active in the atheist community, back when I was going through my hardcore atheism phase? Is seeing just how much of an EXTREME hold gender ideology, and SJW ideology at large, all of a sudden took on so many high-profile atheists! Who said they were total skeptics! BUT..? It was as if they were missing something deeply fundamental, thus were super inclined to adopt this stuff as their new religion! Very interesting, and pretty puzzling, watching that happen.. As the way they were acting about it..? Was certainly anything BUT skeptical! And I also sincerely wonder, had I NOT found my current spirituality? If I may just personally also have adopted something instead of it! That could easily have been pretty sinister... So yeah, I think it's very important that we think about these things! And realize, if you want to take someone's religion from them, you HAVE TO in some way replace it with something that's either just as good, or better! That can serve the same function for them as what their religion, (however destructive and dysfunctional it might have been), used to serve for them.
..Late night thoughts!! :)
Seems to me, that there's assorted groups of people that are trying to re-engineer/utilise language & the definition(s) related to it - to mould/rebrand reality, into a version of reality that matches their narrative(s)/desires.
Does seem that we're increasingly living in a 2 + 2 = 5 world.
Well daid
Gender ideology is also very rooted in transhumanism which also is lead by Martine Rothblatt who founded a religion based on the idea of merging with technology called Terasem.
Animals have ritualised behaviours to avoid damaging conflict. Could that be the basis of some human cultural behaviour?
Darn! This interview ended all to soon. This guest captured my attention from the beginning gave me greater insight into the fundamentalist religious system of gender ideology.
Around 36:40 , Stella says the gender ideologues are the ones who want to argue for human uniqueness. But sometimes I see gender ideologues use the example of true intersexuality in other species to argue sex isn’t binary.
It’s interesting that in the past humans have imposed human gendered stereotypes onto animals eg male lions were masculine ie ‘providers’ so doing the hunting, when later observations showed it was actually the females that do the vast majority of the hunting. But then again Chimps used to be presented as being cute and gentle vegetarians when later they were observed to be quite violent omnivores.
Oh, fascinating point!
So like how transwomen are presented as sweet, innocent, and timid when the reality is they are often aggressive, authoritarian agps?
Thank you so much for discussing these difficult theoretical ideas and having an approachable conversation.
Loved this episode, been waiting to see Mr Alderman on here for a while. Worked with him in the past and hes an amazing therapist and life coach incredibly intelligent man. I love that you guys are keeping up talking about this new wave of gender ideology also, keep up the good work ladies 🤩💜
Thank you Scarlet! Hope you're well :)
Literally false indeed.
Good chat . Thanks !
44:00
Its hard to imagine that we already know the internet is problematic and not safe for young people to have unbridled access to, yet somehow almost every young kid is given a smart phone pretty early in their development and most of the time there is zero restrictions put on their usage of these smartphones or what content they access. Its like a twilight zone.
I imagine that you’ve heard that in Greystones, the Primary schools have come together to outlaw smart phones for students and because it’s become a rule for everyone, all the kids even if they are annoyed or reluctant, have bought into it because it’s the same for everybody. I personally think it should be extended to 15 or 16. From my own experience I did not provide a smart phone to my last child until the teen was 14, for reasons of safety that were particular to the kid and our circumstances and that, turned out to be damaging enough because what turned up in the kids feed was Isis and the worst imaginable of their crimes on video, the very worst that they did. I could not have known because I was not on social media then and still am not. And don’t forget, often kids won’t tell you what they’ve been exposed to. Number 1, kids can tend to want to protect their parents and number 2 they don’t want the phone to be taken from them or number 3, if they’ve been beaten up by bullies, they’ll make excuses because they know you’ll either stop them from going out or insist on bringing them and picking them up when they’re socialising. Mortifying for a teen. Mind you, I’ve done that regardless. I thought that it was the smart phone that destroyed the safety of the child’s own room. That it took away their one safe space. Boy was I naive. My 40 year old told me that a group of bullies that constantly wanted to fight her(outside of school) rang up a local radio station that the kids all listened to and said ugly things about her on it. She heard it in her bedroom in the late 90’s. A radio station. So, kids are kids and bullies have been bullied and some don’t go on to do the same but others do. What I do now is I feed books, from birth, as gifts to the new generations of children in my family so that story time becomes entrenched in the child parent relationships and a love of reading will in time become owned by the individual growing child. In my experience, that works because when the child takes over the reading themselves, reading provides a private space for that growing child which increases concentration and expands the tolerance required to wait for the story to unfold and reveal itself, usually with more complexity and at a much slower pace, in a very different process from tick-tock etc. If the love of reading is inculcated from the very start, the child will never lose it. It also helps to develop critical thinking and understanding of those points of view on other lives and worlds that one could never experience oneself. It expands the child’s mind where social media contracts. It puts the child on a solid footing of being themselves yet having the knowledge that they can visit other lives and experiences safely. And of course I mean that parents should see and agree to what they are reading until they are mature enough to make their own choices.
@@nonpareilstoryteller5920 not sure I’m really responding to your comment but it made me think about this. Many kids are just MEAN and AGGRESSIVE and like to dominate other kids, and they hurt other kids and they enjoy it and don’t feel bad about it, the reaction they get out of the victim child is fun and satisfying, they see the victim child as pathetic and worthy of being targeted. I found this to be the case. They have dark human impulses like adults do, but they’re less able to control and manage it, so they act out on it more. They also don’t face consequences like adults do, so it enables them to take risks like bullying other kids. An adult would have their life destroyed for this behavior. That’s part of being a kid and part of what you have to grow out of when you become an adult. I think they don’t fully comprehend the consequences of their behavior, they may not understand how much they’re impacting that kid, and also they don’t have the capacity to care much about it. They enjoy the process of targeting the kid, so they do it. I think they do it also to impress or make a show for each other. The social aspect of school is like a torturous years long status game and some kids learn how to rule the status game and some kids completely fail at it in that environment. You can’t get rid of bullying. It’s utterly delusional to think you can. You can’t change human nature. Kids display a more raw untamed immature view of human nature. Imagine concentrating a bunch of kids together with each other in an environment that is supposed to be about educating them, and it literally devolves into a chaotic social dynamic in which you have to spend half your time trying to stop them from intentionally trying to destroy each other. You can’t change human nature.
Kids are one way around their parents and a whole other way when alone or around other kids with no adults around. They definitely don’t show adults their true dark side imo, they don’t show adults things that will get them in trouble. Kids want freedom to do things they want to do, and many will be sneaky to skirt restrictions/getting in trouble.
NSW has banned phones in schools. I hope it helps but that leaves so many more hours in a day.
Sounds a bit like nature vs nurture
Language does not have the power to construct truths. Reality can be measured.
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