“In fact, nothing about the transgender denial of physical reality is new, and we already have language for it: gnostic dualism.
This ancient heresy has taken many forms over the millennia, from Manichaeism in the third century to Albigensianism in the 12th. The details have differed, but the main thrust has remained the same: a denial of the physical world, created by an evil god, in favor of the spirit, which constitutes our true selves and ultimate reality. Through this lens, the body transforms from an aspect of ourselves into a prison of pollution from which we must escape.”
This insight invites another comparison, namely with the cult – in my opinion, this is an appropriate term for it – known as Scientology. Let us go over some of the features Knowles identifies as belonging to the gnostic mindframe.
Firstly, there is “a denial of the physical world, created by an evil god.” Check. The famous South Park episode dealing with Scientology introduced the world to this shadowy religion’s myth about the evil interplanetary potentate Xenu. One former member of Scientology’s élite Sea Organization (“Sea Org”) summed the story up as follows:
“[There] was the Galactic Lord named Xenu, ruler of the Confederation of 76 planets, the evildoer who had ‘solved’ overpopulation 75 million years ago in this sector of the galaxy by electronically implanting millions of beings with false information and then packaging them and bringing them to Earth, making our planet the ultimate dump site for captive, mentally damaged and incapacitated spirits.”
In this teaching, mankind’s souls have been confined to this planet by a malicious ruler from outer space. That sounds fairly close to the “denial of the physical world, created by an evil god” that Knowles describes.
It should be added that knowledge of the Xenu story is reserved for the most high-level Scientologists. That same ex-member remarked: “I had already dedicated an entire decade of my life, from 1969 to 1979, to serving diligently, almost fanatically, in the Sea Org, without ever knowing of the existence of the Xenu story.” It is hard not to be reminded of the gender ideologues’ duplicitous tactics over the last several decades. As with Critical Race Theory, the movement’s secret heart was kept hidden from the general public, while the intentions to which it openly confessed were relatively anodyne. Readers likely recall a time not long ago when the standard talking point was merely that men who wish they were women should be treated as women to make them feel better about themselves. Once ground had been gained with this argument, the movement presented its true belief – its “Xenu story,” if you will – that men who wish they were women therefore are women. As late as 2019, a whole panel on Bill Maher’s show derided Dennis Prager for pointing out the spreading perception that “men can menstruate.” Even then, the notion that such an idea would ever be seriously advanced seemed preposterous.
To the gnostic, Knowles continues, “the spirit[…] constitutes our true selves and ultimate reality.” This is, as far as I can discern, a foundational belief in Scientology. As a website dedicated to teaching the religion puts it, “Reality is agreement of what is or what exists. Something that is real is something that we agree exists and can perceive. […]That which is real is real simply because it is agreed-upon and for no other reason.” “Reality is agreement” is a very common Scientology motto. Meanwhile, that the subjection of “ultimate reality” to “the spirit” is an integral part of gender ideology hardly requires demonstration. In his masterly documentary “What Is a Woman?”, Matt Walsh repeatedly encounters proponents of transgenderism who, when questioned about the intellectual basis for their beliefs, fall back behind the veil of denying that objective reality exists at all. As one reviewer commented, “ ‘Truth’ doesn’t exist for people who’ve bought into gender identity – except ‘your truth.’”
The final part to Knowles’s characterisation of gnosticism is that “the body transforms from an aspect of ourselves into a prison of pollution from which we must escape.” This is obviously a central concept in transgenderism, if not the basic attitude underlying it all. As early as 2008, psychiatrist Dr. Ray Blanchard was able to write of “[t]he popular description of male-to-female transsexuals as women trapped in men’s bodies” (p.434). The same mindset speaks from the lines of the famous Scientology ballad “The Road to Freedom,” which John Travolta and Frank Stallone helped to produce. This rather enjoyable song contains the following enigmatic lyrics:
“You don’t even have a form
You’re in a trap of senseless lies
Oh, it’s time to be reborn”
The individual, then, is supposedly a formless spirit who just happens to be contained in a physical body, and ensnared by “a trap of senseless lies” telling him that this body is an essential part of his true being. This motif, of course, is all but identical to gender ideology’s trope of the “social construction” of gender roles and gender identities “assigned at birth.” The exhortation that “it’s time to be reborn” even mirrors the transgenderist use of the word “deadnaming” to mean “referring to a person by the name he or she used before ‘transitioning’.”
The connection between Scientology and gnosticism has been noted by a number of informed observers, occasionally with the contention that the former is little more than a repackaged version of the latter. “Scientology is indeed a form of the gnosticism,” write Donald A. Westbrook and James R. Lewis. Jon Atack essentially agrees: “Scientology is a neo-gnostic system, which is to say that it teaches the attainment of insight through a series of stages.” Note that gender ideology, too, offers (some of) its adherents (supposed) insight into, and enlightenment about, their identities. Even the component of “a series of stages” is arguably present, as we have seen that the ideology presents certain relatively palatable claims (“the kind thing to do is to pretend that people belong to the sex to which they want to belong”) more publicly than others, which come out into the open when the movement has been emboldened by previous successes or through probing by someone like Matt Walsh (“men who want to be women therefore are women”; “objective reality does not exist”).
Instructively, even the tactics used by Scientology and the “trans cult” are similar. For instance, they both utilise a slew of pressure groups to bully society’s major institutions into bending the knee to them. Consider the doctors' association White Coats For Black Lives, whose stated purpose includes combatting “cisheteropatriarchy” – as one observer commented, “When ‘just what the doctor ordered’ means a lecture on the harms of the cisheteropatriarchy, it is clear medicine has strayed far from its professional purpose.” About Britain’s Tavistock gender-identity clinic, the National Review’s editorial board writes: “At the behest of activists, vulnerable patients were being fast-tracked into wildly experimental treatment, while clinicians (later whistle-blowers) who objected were being silenced.” On the situation in the United States, the authors continue:
“When Lisa Littman, a medical doctor and researcher at Brown University, first identified the phenomenon of ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’ (peer and social contagion among trans-identifying youth), she was smeared. Meanwhile, clinical activists are doing everything in their power to obscure the truth by propagating biased and methodologically bankrupt research.”
Scientology is infamous for employing methods of this sort. To re-gain tax exemption in the USA, according to one critic, the organisation sought “to exert maximum pressure against the IRS,” a project in whose course “Private detectives were employed to find out what ‘crimes’ IRS officials were guilty of in their private lives” and Scientology’s “Freedom magazine printed lurid allegations about ‘IRS crimes’.” The group has also been condemned for creating “hate websites” on its opponents.
Other cultish behaviour is also prevalent in the trans community as well as the world of Scientology. In his 1970 book “Scientology: The Now Religion,” journalist George Malko provides an early look at the practice known as “disconnection,” perhaps the most notorious concept that the popular imagination would come to associate with the titular creed.
“So strong is Scientology in attracting these kids that in some instances it has done more than simply alienate children from their parents,” writes Malko. “I met one family where the total, absolute involvement of the children resulted in such a cataclysmic break, such a destruction of all the bonds which had kept six people together and sustained them as a family that, in desperation, the mother had decided to get into Scientology” (p.5). The father, he adds, “no longer kn[e]w what it was that had taken his sons and daughters from him, but now he watched his wife struggle to conform to this new philosophical religion, struggling to make herself believe” (p.6).
Sound familiar? Naomi Shaefer Riley, reviewing Abigail Shrier’s monumental book on transgenderism entitled “Irreversible Damage,” writes that Shrier
“was contacted by families of some of the girls involved, many of them desperate […] to explain how their children […] suddenly became convinced they had been born into the wrong body[.]Indeed, if their parents didn’t go along with their demands, they would cut off their family, or even threaten suicide.”
“Disconnection,” known to Jehovah’s Witnesses as “disfellowshipping” and to cult watchers generally as “shunning,” is a common technique which cults use to maintain cohesion and punish dissent.
The commonalities sketched above are the surface of a deeper resemblance. Scientology was at its peak in terms of popularity and membership near the end of the last century: according to expert Tony Ortega, its “numbers peaked in the early ’90s with roughly 100,000 members worldwide, but membership has recently dipped to about 20,000.”
Although it may be hard to imagine now, this obscure religious movement was, at one point, the hot new craze among America’s youth. In the words of “Bob Thomas, a minister of the Church of Scientology” (p.7) to the aforementioned George Malko, “Scientology has the answers these kids are looking for, plus all the ingredients of novelty, freshness, and depth. It doesn't have the old pat answers, and it validates creativity” (p.8). That this is an apt explanation of much of gender ideology’s appeal to confused adolescents today is fairly evident.
The title of Malko’s book is itself indicative of the status this “fresh” philosophy held in American society at the dawn of the 1970s. It was “The Now Religion,” a trendy new worldview. Even to the author of this deeply critical work, it had the appearance of a vast behemoth of followers. “Scientology spokesmen now claim a worldwide church membership of 15,000,000,” he writes. “Figures for the United States vary, but it is said that Scientology enjoys a membership of 250,000 in California alone - Double the number of a year ago. As for income, the estimated weekly gross in this country is $1.4 million. And I think that these membership and weekly gross figures are modest” (p.3). While such claims may have seemed credible at the time, with all the hubbub, fear, and excitement surrounding the organisation, they appear comically exaggerated now – Scientology’s star has faded.
Today, we can hope that gender ideology, instead of heralding the collapse of all civilisation, will prove to have been merely another passing craze. After all, Scientology itself acknowledged shortly before George Malko’s exposé was published that it was not the first such viral trend. To quote again from the book,
“Official Scientology publications are emphasizing the big names. ‘That's the sign,’ it said in a recent issue of *The Auditor*, the monthly journal of Scientology. ‘Remember twenty years ago,’ it went on, ‘when artists were taking up psychoanalysis? It's always the beginning of the big win when celebrities - song-writers, actors, artists, writers, begin to take something up’” (p.7).
Hopefully, like Scientology, psychoanalysis, and a myriad of other worldviews whose claims simply did not hold up, transgenderism and gender ideology will soon be far in our civilisation’s rear-view mirror. Sadly, unlike those belief systems, this current plague will leave countless instances of sterilisation, mutilation, and other consequences fittingly described as “Irreversible Damage” in its wake.
There is another lesson to be learned here. A common theme in former Sea Org member Chris Shelton’s commentary on Scientology, as well as the expert assessments of other long-time observers of the group, is that most Scientologists are perfectly decent, kind people sincerely intent on making the world a better place. Indeed, that same Scientology song urges its audience to “help us free all mankind.” As one advertisement for the Sea Org put it, “[c]ompleting your basic training is more than just an accomplishment. It is your first step to bringing eternal freedom to man.” Likewise, most of those who presently promote gender ideology are motivated by misguided altruism. In bridging the ideological divide, in this as in other cases, Bias of Priene’s precept recommends itself: “Love your friend as if he were to become your enemy, and your enemy as if he were to become your friend.”
In all honesty, however, it must be admitted that Scientology as a belief system is far more rational, benign, and useful than gender ideology. At least some parts of it make sense, and some have made people better at times. History will be much less kind to its more popular counterpart.
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Find the author on Medium and Substack.