I cant believe I've never put this together, but TRA ideology
A) fits every definition of a conspiracy
B) fits every definition of a cult at the organisational level https://twitter.com/NightlingBug/status/1293179116531912705

Conspiracy ideation:
-Posits a small, hidden group is manipulating events ("TERFS are trying take away rights in gov")
-Positions the theorist as a skeptical thinker ("I'm critical of biological sex")
-Is paradoxically reinforced by lack of evidence ("Dissent is being silenced!")

Conspiracy ideation also almost always:
-Features a black-and-white moral conflict. ("TERFS are angry lesbians undermining trans rights!")
-Is centered in (often justified!) feelings of disenfranchisement. (In this case, the social stigma surrounding transitioning.)

Arguing with TRAs is *exactly* like arguing with flat-earthers and antivaxxers. There is no amount of evidence, expert consensus, or rhetorical logic that can dissuade them from their beliefs, because those beliefs come from a place of paranoia and self-aggrandizement.

Some defining features of a cult:
-They target the marginalized for conversion (for TRAs, often young teens)
-Charismatic, mythologized leaders who are above judgment (Riley J. Dennis)
-The cult espouses an "us vs. them" mentality of oppression by outside forces ("TERFs")

IMPORTANTLY:
-Members are encouraged to isolate themselves from loved ones they can't convert.
-Members are "love-bombed" to encourage them to rely on the cult as their only source of support (the praise Harry Potter stars received after speaking against JKR)

-Members are punished & ostracized for questioning the groupthink, withdrawing support they've become dependent on.
-Members who leave the cult suffer ongoing, targeted harassment by the cult.

See: Ava (g0th1ck)

It's an open secret that the TRA movement is fundamentally financed by liberal think tanks. And it's unthinkable that self-avowed rights activists would ally themselves with anti-sex based rights and anti-woman hate groups.

So a lot of the time, we say TR"A" is a smokescreen.

But I actually don't think TRAs are hatefully masquerading as activists. The TRA movement uses cult tactics to pivot vulnerable (and often traumatized) children from a benign liberalism towards racism and sexism. It uses their misogyny as a fulcrum.

I think my #1 takeaway is that it's TRULY pointless to debate TRAs with logic, or to point out their self-contradictions. Only addressing the underlying emotions of TRA ideation (the misogynistic disgust response, their injuries under social stigma will ever reach them, if that.

excuse the bits I left out/did incorrectly aha, she blocked me after my first tweet and I was walking home typing this out, so it was harder to assemble than it should have been!! I just thought her points were very universal in their application, and I was right apparently