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Leftist doublethink: Gender roles

"Doublethink" is a term that was coined by George Orwell in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It has become a more generic term which, for example, Wikipedia defines as "a process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to one's own memories or sense of reality."

The modern far-leftist "social justice" ideology ticks many distinctive checkboxes of Orwell's books (not something that one should really strive for), and doublethink is one of the most prominent ones, and there are many, many examples of this.

One of them is the concept of "gender roles".

For years and years, even decades, the far leftist "social justice" ideology has asserted and enforced the notion that gender roles are not only "just a social construct", but a detrimental one, which we as a society should get rid of. They have this strong notion that historically, and for the longest time, people have been indoctrinated into becoming masculine men, and feminine women, by societal norms and indoctrination since early childhood, and "gender roles" are one of the primary tools for this, and thus should be removed from our society.

They argue that boys should be completely free to do typically "girly" things, like playing with dolls and dressing in a tutu, and girls should be completely free to do typically "boyish" things, like playing football and dress like boys, and that this should just be accepted as normal and require no intervention of any kind. We must change our concept of what's "girly" and "boyish", and in fact remove them from our culture and society. There's nothing "girly" about playing with dolls, or "boyish" about playing football. Both boys and girls should be free to do either one, and it doesn't define them.

Yet, at the same time, many of these far-leftist people engage in very blatant doublethink and are the strongest enforcers of gender roles. This is especially the case with certain parents in certain countries who are deeply indoctrinated into the "social justice" ideology.

When they see their boy casually trying something traditionally "girly", like dressing up in his sister's dress, or playing dolls, they don't think it as "something completely normal for a boy to do". Instead, they take it as a sign that their son is actually a girl. After all, why else would he be playing with dolls? Quite clearly that's something that only girls do, and thus their son is actually a girl!

This is a perfect example of Orwellian doublethink. The exact same thing is "normal for a boy to do" and "not normal for a boy to do, thus he must be a girl", depending on the situation. Or pretty much essentially at the same time. When speaking in general they assert that playing with dolls is completely normal for a boy and there's nothing "girly" about it, and when their own son does it, suddenly playing with dolls is extremely "girly" and thus their son must be a girl. Thus, ironically, social justice warriors are nowadays the strongest enforcers of gender roles, much more so than the average person. While at the same time claiming to be against gender roles.

And they are completely oblivious to the contradiction.

This is exactly was Orwell was writing about.

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