Many times when I talk about how I left the social justice woke cult, I have heard people who are in the middle, or maybe slightly woke-adjacent challenge the notion that it’s like a cult. “How can an adult be brainwashed?” they ask. “What’s cult-like about it?” Like all cults the Social Justice (Woke) one is very, very concerned with controlling language. Because in order to control a person you need to rewire the way they think. You need to brainwash them. And in order to rewire the way they think, you change their language, enforcing rigid bans on certain words, inventing new words, and redefining existing words.

They’ve gone the redefinition route with words like “racism,” “sexism,” “woman,” “fascism,” “harm,” etc.

They’ve created new terms & phrases like “cis,” “white privilege,” “mansplaining,” “toxic masculinity,” “white fragility,” “enby,” “non-binary,” “chest feeding,” “birthing person,” “cultural appropriation,” “microaggression,” etc.

And they’ve outright tried to make verboten other words and phrases like “biological sex.”

Below, you’ll see what a brainwashing looks like. This isn’t a fast process. It happens incrementally, with the person slowly accepting increasingly rigid and absurd language restrictions, until they are in a place completely separated from reality and totally under the control of the cult. What this process does, over time, is cause you to suspend critical thinking. It causes you to go to the cult for any and all approved language and thought. It causes you to put your mind in a prison and to consult cult leaders (local or national) for your approved language and received beliefs. It makes you into a zombie.

It is important to note that to even post in many of these groups, you must comply with the new language rules and identify yourself as “cis” etc before posting.

Below are six more screenshots from the same thread. Here we learn that “obese” is now verboten and one should use “super fat” instead. That “high functioning” is not allowed. For a 2nd time someone emphasizes that using “NB” for “non-binary” is not allowed, because it’s already claimed for “non-black.” And a mother shares that she calls her child “it” and gets annoyed when other parents won’t use “it” for her child’s pronoun.