As any ad pro will attest, emotional manipulation is the centerpiece of effective marketing. If the seller can get the prospective buyer to feel the proper feelings, critical analysis can be chucked aside.

People naturally crave fulfillment, wholeness, self-actualization; if an ad can package and brand itself to that end, the advertisers already won the war:

“Advertisements appeal to emotion rather than reason. Promotional material for a sleeping medication might show friends enjoying dinner together or a father engaged in family activities rather than focusing on the product itself. Ads are designed to remove thinking from the equation.”

The desired financial transaction then follows.

The ad industry in the US alone generated $138 billion in 2019. The profits for ad agencies increase steadily at a clip of $5-10 billion year after year.

Source: Statista

Businesses invest heavily in advertising because it works to draw customers in.

The auto industry appeals to a deep-seated desire for love.

Buy a Honda, win hearts, and find love.

The fast-food industry uses the same emotional appeal tactic.

Additive-laden industrial food preparations = happiness, childhood joy, familial harmony (at $2.79, a small price to pay)

Intimate human bonds are repackaged as commodities to be bought and sold on the open market.

Johnson and Johnson speaks the ‘language of love.’

And, of course, the gender industry – comprised of pharmaceutical corporations, for-profit hospitals, medical associations, etc. — appeals to the customer’s [read: potential patient’s] emotions.

In this way, compassion is weaponized into word-salads chock full of meaningless jargon intended to confuse the reader into conflating true empathy with bovine-like acceptance of the transgender movement writ large.

“Diversity,” “inclusion,” “acceptance,” “compassion,” “empathy” – using these rhetorical devices, the transgender movement (and the industry that backs it) lay the battle lines: on the one side, there are trans “allies” that exhibit love and compassion. On the other side of the fence are hateful, myopic bigots.

This framing permeates to the highest levels of power in American society. Urging Congress to pass the so-called “Equality Act” during his April 28^th State of the Union address, President Joe Biden took a page out the weaponized empathy playbook:

“To all the transgender Americans watching at home — especially the young people, who are so brave — I want you to know that your president has your back.”

This rhetorical tool trickles down into every facet of society, including into public schools where “transgender” is now a protected identity:

“A welcoming and supportive school where bullying and teasing is not permitted and children are actively taught to respect and celebrate difference is the ideal environment for all children. This is especially true for gender-variant and transgender children, who frequently are the targets of teasing and bullying. A child cannot feel emotionally safe, and will most likely experience problems in learning, if they regularly experience discrimination at school.”

If we accept this framing, opposing “gender transitions” for elementary school children is de facto bullying, whereas trans “advocates” become the heroes.

In reality, the inverse is true; proponents of sane education policy understand that promoting transgenderism among first-graders – too young to conceptualize gender in any meaningful, informed way — is an egregious, reprehensible abuse of authority.

The promoters of the trans agenda who hide behind empathy shields do untold harm in reality, evident in the heartbreaking stories of regret from so-called “de-transitioners” – those individuals who were subjected to the transgender propaganda in their youth and, sadly, followed through, only to regret their ill-informed choices later in life:

“I feel a little bit angry, more than a little bit, because other people who’ve been in this position went much further than me. I have lesbian friends who have no uterus, no ovaries, no breasts and are 21-years old. I’m angry that every single doctor and therapist we saw told us this was the one and only option.”

This is Wonderland; reality has been inverted by the new gender-constructivist totalitarians; the rhetorical game is rigged.

The High-Stakes Game of the Trans Industry’s Manipulation Tactics

The common-sense position of not performing irreversible gender reassignment “therapy” (puberty blockers and surgery) on impressionable youth loses over and over – before it even had a chance — because of the framing of the “trans” debate.

In 21^st-century US public discourse, criticism of the trans agenda is tantamount to transphobia itself. In the aforementioned inversion of reality, rejection of chemically-induced “gender transition” in children, becomes an attack on trans children themselves.

This dynamic played out recently with the Senate confirmation of Biden-appointed Health and Human Services (HHS) assistant secretary Rachel Levine, now the highest-ranking transgender government official in US history:

“While a bipartisan majority of senators voted with the best interests of our country in mind, a minority prioritized anti-trans hate over an honest review of Dr. Levine’s qualifications. Their vote to ride the extremist political winds of the moment will be judged in time, because history never looks fondly on those who vote on the side of bigotry.”

During the confirmation proceedings, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) questioned Levine on his position regarding transgender “reassignment surgery” for children:

“Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers, to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia. Like surgical mutilation, hormonal interruption of puberty can permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics…. Do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?”

Levine dodged the question despite multiple attempts at extraction from Sen. Paul. Instead of offering a substantive reply, Levine called genital mutilation of children a “very complex and nuanced field.”

Predictably, the corporate media characterized Paul’s questioning of Levine as “transphobic” and accused him of spreading “transphobic misinformation.”

Levine was never forced to publicly clarify their position on the ethics of child sex-change operations. Levine was subsequently confirmed to the post at HHS with the profound power to craft federal medical policy– thanks largely to weaponized empathy.

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Contact him via Armageddon Prose. Support his independent journalism at Patreon.