Erickson: Are Western Elites Suffering from a Mass Psychogenic Illness?

By Erick Erickson March 24, 2022 at 4:06pm

In June 1374, people across Europe broke out in spontaneous dance. What some scholars think was a medical condition, most believe was a mass psychogenic illness — an illness of the mind. People began to dance and the dancing spread. Some danced for days. Some had heart attacks or broke bones. Some danced until they died.

In Kinshasa, Tanzania, in 1962, schoolgirls began laughing hysterically. They could not stop. Dubbed the Tanganyika laughter epidemic, more than 1,000 people were affected.

At Le Roy Junior-Senior High School in New York in 2011, students suffered a wave of Tourette syndrome. Researchers never found a chemical or biological explanation. It was a mass psychogenic illness.

Now, with the advent of mass media and social media, much of the Western world is suffering from a psychogenic illness that particularly affects the elite.

A week ago, Lia Thomas won an NCAA swimming event, beating out a female Olympic silver medalist. Thomas is a male who has undergone “gender transition.”

Thomas competed rather unsuccessfully as a male athlete before deciding to become a very successful female athlete. The NCAA requires transitioning athletes to use hormone suppressants. But a male who goes through puberty and reaches adulthood is going to maintain muscular and skeletal development that surpasses most women, even if he uses hormone suppressants once in adulthood.

The website boysvswomen.com compares male high school athletes to female Olympians. The results speak for themselves. In track, high school boys consistently beat Olympic-level women. In swimming, too, the boys overwhelmingly best the women.

But Western elites demand we treat men as women if they insist. NBC News has run multiple pieces in the last week gushing that Thomas is good for women’s sports and that he is akin to Jackie Robinson.

ESPN’s biased coverage is notable because, in addition to championing Thomas and other transgender athletes at the expense of girls, it also allowed its broadcasters to hold a moment of silence in protest of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which opponents call the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The measure merely says schools have to wait until fourth grade to introduce concepts surrounding sex and gender to students. But ESPN thinks kindergarten is an appropriate time for kids to learn about sex.

During the protests for freedom in Hong Kong, ESPN would not cover the movement or the related NBA story because it was all deemed “political.”

Do men have an athletic advantage over women?

This is absurd. It is hard for me to believe that feminism has become so degraded that men can now beat women as women, but this is the world the elite demand we live in.

If I were to delve into this too much on social media, my accounts could be terminated. If I were to state on Twitter that Lia Thomas is a man, Twitter could suspend my account for “misgendering.”

Thomas is well and truly going through something. He deserves our empathy. But giving empathy cannot mean giving up the truth.

The truth is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Nor should we disembowel the English language for a group of people who make up less than 1 percent of the population.

The Western elite have traded reason for emotion. Claiming to be wise, they have become fools.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

Submit a Correction →