DD and the trans thing. She's really sucked in and not able to see an alternative view

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'Teenagers need to listen to reason and be open minded. Adults are allowed to make up their minds and not listen to other opinions. This attitude is why teenagers don't listen.'

^^ this

I'm a feminist who is purely after equality. Not ownership of womanhood whatever that may be. Trans women identifying as women take nothing away from me and my strengths and my identity.

Just saying, the OP wants her daughter to be open to discussion and alternative ideas. Everyone agrees she - OP's daughter - should be open to differing views, while many on the thread are absolutely sure that they are right and other views are wrong.

Teenagers need to listen to reason and be open minded. Adults are allowed to make up their minds and not listen to other opinions. This attitude is why teenagers don't listen.

None of that gets a rise out of me. I just don't see it as being relevant to any of the trans people I know who I believe are indicative of the general trans population. So why would I blame trans people for some of this extreme stuff. It's got no more to do with them than it has to me. And maybe this is the same feeling your children have. I personally think it's the right way to feel about trans people. This stuff is not their fault.

The trans movement is inherently anti feminist. Reifying gender identity as an innate characteristic and reducing woman to a feeling is inherently anti feminist. Proposing that male and female brains are inherently different is anti feminist. Denying male socialisation and male supremacy under patriarchy is anti feminist. The trans movement can't exist without those basic principles.

Just to add, I don't think the trans movement is anti feminist. I think some extreme trans activists are anti feminist. You can see there is a massive difference surely. But some of you seem determined to educate your children that it's the former.

I've seen no sign of bigotry in descriptions of what these young people are saying and thinking. The existence of a few bad trans people says nothing about trans people. The existence of a very complex and discriminatory fraction of trans activism also does not define trans people. If anything I think some of the 'grown ups' thoughts on trans people cuts far closer to the discrimination and bigotry you seem to think your children are in danger of walking into. They sound young, hopeful, open to others and willing to defend others and possibly have not yet come in contact with the darker side of SOME trans activists. Why not put your energy into helping them see the difference between normal trans people and their rights, and the bad actions of some very extreme people.

jaxing I would accept that their views have merit as much as I would accept them saying that black people are lesser than white people, or Jews weren't killed in the holocaust to have merit. I.e., not at all, because they are harmful bollocks.

I think you should let them figure out their own opinions. By all means give your own opinion but some of you are discussing ways to 'strategically' make them see the light. Are you really so unprepared to consider that THEIR alternative view to yours may have merit? May actually be perfectly decent ways to think?

I have nothing useful to add other than sympathy and fellow feeling. My DD almost divorced me over this issue, aged 16. It became The Subject we could not talk about, at all, because it had always ended in tears before.

I have no idea what her views are these days as I dare not dip my toe in the water, but I suspect via her FB posts, that she's less prone to shouting TERF at every feminist she meets, than she was.

It's a horrendous thing, that a young woman, brought up to think about gender politics, who identifies herself as a feminist, gets sucked into this morass of nonsense. Fucking hell - we can't even raise daughters to be feminists without having to fight the whole Transgender politics shite, these days.

Good luck with it, you have my heartfelt sympathy

If you use Twitter please do check out @LilyLilyMaynard but prepare to be shocked as she unapologetically tackles the issues head on and provides graphic imagery of what happens for example when young FtM use binders

There is a woman on Twitter called RemakingAdam whose DD identified as trans for 18 months but has now realised that she is not. Might be worth following her for advice.

ApplePaltrow21 has a good idea.

I agree with getting her to think about the rights of women, and how long they have been fought for. Once she realises that these rights are fairly newly won, she might feel a bit indignant about gender stereotyping. She might then ask her transgirl friends what they think of these rights. If they are 'really' female they will be as much up in arms as she is. If they are dismissive, it might give her pause to think. EG that rape within marriage wasn't considered a crime until 1991 - and it took 15 years of campaigning to reach that point)

(The other one that shocked me was a pub landlord could refuse to serve alcohol to a woman based on her sex until 1982!)

But I agree, she shouldn't mention it on the internet. It's a different world.

Show her Muscato's site.

That usually brings most sensible people instantly to peak trans.

Also, ask her what a woman is. What makes Danielle a woman? How is that defined?

Sometimes, basic questions are all it takes.

I'm glad I don't live in a middle class world. My DD is gobby about this issue and the idea that she'd get bullied for it is fanciful. No-one outside the middle class bubble, believes any of this shit. Seriously.

it never occurred to me people really believed there was a biological basis for transgender - but I suppose they could! especially if you didn't have too firm a grip on biology, which actually is quite a few people.

Most people of any age seem to hold beliefs about the trans issue that are entirely wrong. If you look at comments under articles on the subject in sites all over the media spectrum, it seems that most people think that people really can be "born in the wrong body", that transwomen are exclusively sexually attracted to men and that "being transgender" implies that you have had, or are about to have, hormone treatments plus surgery. None are true.

Perhaps you could discuss what people think as opposed to what you both can establish, by Googling, fex.

I'd agree with not encouraging her to stick her head above the parapet.
The bullying, both online and irl is horrendous.

My DD is 15 and has just started to switch on to the ideas of being gender critical. She's read up herself after reading something I had left open on the computer. She's now getting quite angry about it and i'm terrified that she will be bullied or targeted if she expresses her opinions.

I was rather gobsmacked by this, then realised that this is exactly the effect that current trans rhetoric has been trying to create. That trans is like a hidden intersex condition, a woman trapped in a mans body etc etc. The brain scan posts just go to further this misconception.

Yes, exactly Some. DD had presumed that, because trans people often talk about having a "female brain" trapped inside a male body, female brains must therefore be biologically different from male brains. And while I understood her logic, it worries me on all sorts of levels that she was making that assumption! After women have fought for equality for so long, it cannot be right that we now go back to the view that female brains and male brains are inherently different.

Having clarified that particular misunderstanding, I think dd is now thinking a bit more critically about some of the issues, but it's easy to see how the rhetoric can take hold.

I remain very uneasy about this whole area. I don't want individuals to suffer because of their gender identity, but there are much wider issues at stake here that we can't afford to neglect.

If you think she's open to discussion, I'd ask her what she thinks of sharing a shower at the gym with beardy Alex, where she thinks Davina Ayrton should serve their sentence for rape of an underage girl and how self identification laws allowed Christopher/Jessica Hanbrook access to 2 women's shelters where he sexually assaulted 3 women and 1 teenage girl.

"As we spoke further, it emerged that she had presumed that pre-surgery trans women were biologically different from men,..."
I was rather gobsmacked by this, then realised that this is exactly the effect that current trans rhetoric has been trying to create. That trans is like a hidden intersex condition, a woman trapped in a mans body etc etc. The brain scan posts just go to further this misconception.

Trans is trendy and edgy, boring ole lesbians ain't, seems to be the message. And even butch dykes are seen as just closeted transmen....................(when I was at school, just seeing a butch dyke other than the one in 'The Killing of Sister George' would have been a revelation. And frankly, butch dykes are still are rare as hens teeth in popular culture.)

You can't attack this head on: you have to be somewhat strategic.

I would start really hammering home that things like rape, the wage gap, child marriage and the global feminization of poverty are still unresolved yet the 4th wave feminist movement is obsessed with identity and individualism. Can you direct her attention to other issues? Talk about poverty and disability? Global poverty? Environmentalism? Social exclusion? Hell, talk about Trump and Brexit and the National Front. She can't "win" that argument with you because under the rules of intersectional feminism, dismissing those issues makes her a racist. The main goal here is to widen her perspective so she is more like to pick an identity with "meaning" that isn't related to "gender issues".

Also, point out that isn't it weird that things that involve fun stuff like dressing up, picking names and choosing clothes is more popular than activism, boycotts and rejecting consumption? When I was her age, I was raising money for charities and volunteering with anti-racism organizations. Whereas she's being taught that being "progressive" means going shopping with her trans friends and picking out lipsticks. So force her to see that it's meaningless by putting it in perspective. Stop criticizing the trans movement as not gender critical and criticize it as a self indulgent movement that doesn't care about real feminist issues. Talk to her about what it was like to be a woman before rights and how this generation isn't doing a damn thing to keep them or get any more.

It sounds counter productive but it'll (1) knock off some of the reflexive black and white pronouncements she's making and (2) make her think more critically about the movement itself.

The whole point of the trans movement is to shut down critique by name calling as "transphobic". If you go on the attack over the failings of the movement that liberals can't deny, she'll start to see it as flawed. And then later, you can introduce the gender critical viewpoint as one of many failings of the trans movement.

Also: why is the school so liberal?