The modern plethora of online “communities” seems, at first, like progress towards a more tolerant society. Yet, these groups promote the idea that they are separate from, and at odds with, the wider community. Members define themselves in opposition to the norm, and celebrate a spirit of combative intolerance of intolerance. They valorise antagonism and fearless confrontation, ignoring the fact that you don’t change the world by shouting at it. They feel solidarity in their mutual resentment of the wrongs done to them by others and in the support they can offer each other.
If, therefore, you are part of the “gender envy community”, your alienation from your biological gender will be reinforced by a network of like-minded people: Your People: Your tribe. This gender envy will become part of your identity as you begin to experience the world as such and as it responds to you as someone with that identity.
Online communities reinforce separate identities and so promote division.
It is no coincidence that this mind-set has been nurtured online. It is in big business’s interest to define and compartmentalise us, for marketing purposes. And social media was developed (if not invented) as a marketing tool, one that is now so powerful that it can create the categories, and thus the appetites and markets, it originally aimed to define and target.
Middle-aged Male Anorexic 