Before I begin to unpack my perspective of this issue, the reader should be aware that I work with “gender” issues every day. Gender being the social expression of one’s internal interpretation of sex roles as conceptualised in the social sciences. It has limited validity or utility in other arenas. In my practice as a counsellor and coach, I am seeing a developmental error recurring in adolescents of the West, part of which I have previously addressed but will unpack further here. I spent 21 years being an entrepreneur then in midlife I studied psychology which provided me a lens on western mental health relative to traditional African values.
In Bantu cultures of South Africa, they have a tradition of Ubuntu, which many may have heard of; being the idea that we all exist through each other, that another’s suffering is everyone’s suffering. Other traditional cultures have similar traditions. Its core values include collectivism, empathy, shared responsibility, and prioritising community well-being over individual gain.
Sadly, Ubuntu is broadly being abandoned as developing nations enter the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR; refers to the current era of rapid technological advancement characterised by the convergence of physical, digital, and biological systems, fundamentally transforming industries, economies, and societies). If one analyses this phenomenon, the replacement of collectivism; one will gain insight into the existential crisis arresting the youth of western nations. After all, in psychology we make a distinction between individuation and individualism.
- Individuation, a developmental process -–where an individual integrates various aspects of their personality (conscious and unconscious) to become a unique, whole, and authentic Self. It’s about discovering one’s true, authentic identity by balancing internal drives, societal influences, and personal potential in harmony with others, often associated with traditional cultures.
- Individualism, a personal philosophy – prioritises the autonomy, rights, and self-interest of the individual over the collective. It emphasises personal freedom, self-id, and social status, often at others expense, associated with western liberalism.
Individuation: Aligns closely with Ubuntu’s “I am because we are,” as it emphasises finding one’s unique role within a community. Ubuntu’s communal ethos supports individuation by encouraging self-discovery through relationships, as seen in practices like collective dialogue or ancestor reverence. One’s identity is in relation to others; you have a role rather than an ‘identity’.
Individualism: Contrasts with Ubuntu, which critiques excessive self-focus. Individualism’s emphasis on personal gain clashes with Ubuntu’s communal values, undermining traditions that prioritise group well-being. For example, note Ubuntu’s role in fostering collective ethics, which individualism might challenge in consumer-driven contexts like western culture.
The 4IR amplifies individualism through personalised technologies (The Algorithm in social media, tailored ads, AI-driven recommendations), which deepen self-focused behaviours. This aligns with the consumer culture’s wide gender performance range but risks exacerbating inequalities, as noted in the 4IR’s potential to widen digital divides. We should see that individuation would allow us all to transcend the extreme gender roles amplified by consumer culture. By integrating their authentic selves, individuals might resist consumer-driven pressures to conform to binary or exaggerated gender norms, aligning with Ubuntu’s respect for human dignity. To even begin to grasp the pressure to conform to the western consumer driven extreme performative gender binary, parents and other stakeholders must amplify any pressure they themselves feel to conform, or the fear of being left out, by ten.
At this point you might need a clear example; notice that traditional cultures do not have many extreme, sexualised, performative icons that defy harmonious norms. They do not have a Kim Kardashian or an Andrew Tate, never mind drag queens or men assaulting women in sport or other products of mindless algorithms that feed off consumerism. Your children are being conditioned to conform to a radical, extreme, performative, consumer-based gender binary. Very little of the 4IR concerns itself with their self-actualisation or individuation, even though exceptions exist.
Q: Where does the pressure to have a gender identity come from?
With that in mind, the gender issue can be viewed as a manufactured crisis. I always use this rule of thumb, ‘follow the libido’ (broadly life energy, or the capacity to procreate). Modern media has allowed the most performative among us to mimic libido. Young minds are defenceless as they are primarily driven to conform to survive hopefully long enough to procreate. The Algorithm has figured out how to hack this developmental process. Individuation is subverted. If anyone doubts the power of large market driven systems to expose human vulnerability, I urge you to explore the origins of the advertising profession. I spent three years working in this industry many years ago, they have Professors, teams of marketing gurus and computers working on how to manufacture anxiety in you to compel you to spend money. Today, it is supercharged by AI. If you believe yourself immune, you may already be captured.
A: The pressure to have a gender identity is manufactured by opportunistic capitalism.
Of course there are other forces involved. They do really believe their identity is in existential crisis. But instead what we see is young males wanting to “pass”, often to appear alluring or at least acceptably feminine, delicate and harmless. This often achieves the aim of relief of socially acceptable growth expectations on the “dead name” persona. Anxiety is initially reduced. Sometimes, intimate connection with females is finally accessible, even though they slowly notice a more subtle final barrier that still limits true intimacy. A similar thing happens with the females. We all see the performative parody of masculinity presented by trans ‘men’ who look more like 90s boy band icons. One must just spend 5 minutes on the Reddit page “transpassing” where trans people obsess and ruminate over who is passing and who is not. Consumer culture materialises through these consumer-based, manufactured personas. There is nothing authentic about this.
Q: Where does the pressure to conform come from?
Let’s go deeper; why do they feel such a need to conform? Conformity is a developmental process. Adolescents have conflicting needs; to conform but also to stand out. This creates an unbearable tension for many of them. Meanwhile, modern consumer culture incessantly drives the message to conform, consume, repeat. Medicalising one’s identity achieves both. You are now a product, you consume, and you conform. We cannot ignore the need to be validated that also feeds the naïve ego. Medicalisation assuages this need by love bombing, celebrating and attending anyone who declares gender dysphoria. This also creates an incentive structure for the vulnerable ego, that of socially awkward youth who desperately need to escape the discomfort of developing late, failing to launch, or missing opportunities for growth. Since they feel incapable of meeting existing expectations, and their sex-based identity does not require further consumption, they feel invalid, or devalued. In this dystopian scenario, consumption equals status. Panic is initiated by the incessant messaging. The brain dives deeper into the Shadow to seek relief. There it finds the capacity to perform opposite sex traits, and it revives ego with this maladaptive solution. They feel relief, they truly believed they couldn’t go on in their sex-based gender roles, despite the west being more egalitarian than anywhere else.
The irony is, they have merely swopped the gender role they now need to conform to, but now they require exponentially more resources. They consume more; it costs them more of everything; money, friendships, opportunities and time. Massive sacrifices are excused under the banner of ‘being authentic’. But eventually, especially for those with strong social justice values, this becomes a source of gross cognitive dissonance. Guilt and shame begin to build. Finally, they are forced by some crisis to realise this, and many desist or detransition.
A: The pressure to conform comes from consumer based social pressure exerted upon the naïve ego.
A “naïve ego” might describe someone who:
- Lacks self-awareness: They identify solely with their conscious self-image, ignoring unconscious influences like repressed desires or instincts (Jung’s Shadow).
- Is overly trusting or simplistic: They take things at face value, unaware of hidden motives in themselves or others.
- Hasn’t integrated complexity: They haven’t undergone the individuation process Jung describes, where the ego reconciles with the unconscious to form a more balanced Self.
Everything is relative to something else. People do not conform unless they are under pressure, the pressure will be relative to their competence and self-esteem. With no self-esteem they seek extrinsic esteem. For many, they have had education and opportunities but never developed hope for a meaningful future. Again, incessant messaging and fear mongering leaves them hopeless and cynical. Relative to the “joy” promised for transitioning this deprived ego cannot resist and it submits to pressure, to procedures, beliefs, rituals and terminology to survive. At best, transition is a survival strategy in dystopian conditions.
Q: Is submission the answer?
Can we distinguish between conforming and submitting? Conformity is a natural part of social life and can be functional. However, conformity and submission are both potential obstacles to individuation, but submission is far more dangerous because it involves a profound loss of selfhood, engulfs the ego, disconnecting the individual from their inner centre and authentic growth. Detransitioners report discovering that being authentic does not require medicalisation, that it was exhausting meeting the requirements of a trans identity. Personally, as a young boy I awoke one day to realise being staunch Catholic was submission. I could not see myself in all the rituals and restrictions, it all felt coercive, driven by fear of “hell”. In adolescence I submitted to obsessive eating beliefs and suffered 7 years of anorexia, defiantly suppressing my Shadow, the Self and a healthy ego. Never underestimate our capacity to deflect, deny or delay self-actualisation. Jung warned that uncritical submission to external systems or ideologies can make one susceptible to being overcome by unconscious forces or archetypes, such as the collective shadow or anima/animus (feminine in man and masculine in females respectively). This results in fanaticism, loss of critical thinking, and self-destructive behaviour.
A: Submission does not resolve internal conflict.
Submission to external forces (extremes of social pressure, authority, ideology) suppresses self-realisation by prioritising external demands over inner exploration, leading to disconnection from the Self (wholeness) and potential psychological imbalances like repression of the shadow or loss of personal agency. Furthermore, from the perspective of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), submission undermines the core psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are essential for intrinsic motivation and well-being.
Where do we go from here?
Many people are analysing how and why so many people in western nations are hopeless, depressed or feel that life is meaningless. By adopting a global perspective and accommodating previously successful models of meaning-making like Ubuntu, or Taoism, Buddhism and other benevolent and harmonious concepts, we can counteract the teams of marketing gurus, paid social engineers and psychologists who seek to profit from our submission to the consumer god.
Sex change medicalisation has become a radical form of submission to trivial, meaningless and extreme gender binary standards manufactured by opportunistic faceless corporations and sociopaths. The recurring error I mentioned in the first paragraph is this; people who pursue sex change and adopt trans as an identity are not self-actualising, they are in fact submitting to manufactured social pressures that increase consumption in a culture that has lost its purpose and meaning.
True self-actualisation occurs when we expand relatedness with competency, when we see ourselves in the role we can play in our communities, in the contributions we can make however meagre they may be. You will find yourself in the hearts of others, not in the mirror.
Angelo Vincent Deboni is a registered professional counsellor who is based in Sweden.