Is a woman's gender/sex viewpoint mostly age-related?

Great post @BarrackerBarmer

I have always been a gender critical feminist since a child as I witnessed first hand the violent abuse and coercive control inflicted on my mother by my father.

My father was an alcoholic who, although a bit of a polymath and great at his chosen vocation, ended living in a caravan on a farm.

When my mother tried to take over the mortgage payments (as my father was incapable of paying them regularly) she was told at first she couldn't because she was female.

She did everything- DIY, working, paying the mortgage, renting out rooms to lodgers, bringing up her children. I knew all this men are innately better at x, y or z was bollocks.

So, although my analysis of what crap gender is started young it was as a result of somewhat precocious experience.

Even still, although I saw that the world was structured in favour of men as a young woman I still harboured the idea that I would overcome it because I was special!

Fundamentally, my view is that it is experience that makes you gender critical and that the older you get the more sexism and discrimination on the basis of your biology you experience.

It's age related to an extent because this new wave is coming from Social Media...the Social Justice Warriors on reddit, tumblr and youtube.

Watch this comment get deleted! I honestly wonder if it's a fetish for some of them. If so I just want to say, oh sweetheart, you know that there are men who wear makeup and so on who don't think they're women, right? Shag one of them instead, it's much more fun.

Yes, excellent post Barracker

And gradually I grew up, and realised that the illusion of equality doesn't outlast your twenties. And that the 'special girls' are just a handy tool for men to use to explain why most women are just a bit inferior, really.

Even I had a touch (or rather blindness?) about that really in my early 20s. Because yes, I always did outperform 'the boys', from primary school into early work (20s). But at the same time, I was also a proto-radfem. I think the key there is that the full reality of the discrimination does not really hit you unless you are deemed 'not worthy' (ie 'fat' 'ugly' generally 'unfuckable'). Whilst you are getting cookie crumbs, you think the whole discrimination thing is just a bit of a slight tilt, instead of an outrageous injustice system.

However, I cannot give YW a total free pass, swallowing the whole 'men can be women too'. Shit, that is a whole 'nother brain failure level.

I think age and motherhood were my main factors. I think being away from the university helps too - I’ve had conversations with old uni friends and my sister recently where we were able to talk about being women, and in turn how while trans-women have struggles of their own, they are emphatically not the same as living as a woman. Neither my uni friends or my sister are outward rad fems, Id say just normal women. One conversation prompted by talking about when she wanted to start a family, and having to find a new job first because her current employer makes it impossible for women to return from maternity leave, and another started by “oh so Debbie has new girlfriend... she’s trans and hasn’t started any therapy yet...” “so a straight guy calling themself a lesbian then... with a penis...” “yeah... and very obviously a man, like 6’4” with very masculine features...” “ah.”.

It makes me think that a lot of women very quickly get past the “well we can just be nice about it”, or are inwardly sceptical, especially when they consider their own experience of being a woman and how it’s impacted on their career etc.

Excellent post barracker

As well as the fact I've been lurking on the gender/sex debates for a couple of weeks now. It's helped me formulate the uneasy feeling I had into actual thoughts and reasoned arguments.

I agree @BarrackerBarmer
For me motherhood radicalised me.

Having a boy too, because I'm so determined he won't grow up perpetuating the patriarchy.

Fellow gender critical student here (although not at Cardiff).

To be honest, I was always more of the “gender is how people expect you to behave based on your sex” and ignored the trans stuff as arts students being arts students, like the trend to have your hair dyed a neon colour and tied back with a scarf when I started! Sciences are taught on a different campus to arts, and I’m a postgrad now so wasn’t really exposed to it.

Until I got involved with a clause that was meant to go into every society’s constitution and had no protection for sex-based characteristics, nor pregnancy/maternity. I took in an example re-written clause (written with help from a lawyer who specialises in discrimination cases). Being told that my version might miss things, but the original was “fine because gender covers all that” did not sit well with me.

It's definitely about life experience. And also I think about the fact that the approval of men matters more to younger women than to older ones.

A lot of Barracker's comment resonated with me. I think the only things that stopped me from going full Belle were a. having lived in a country where women have the legal status of children, which would radicalize most girls and b. my mother. Any time I started getting a bit smug I'd think, well, what about her? Even my father admits that she's much more intelligent and talented than him, and yet which of them has had the better career, and who gets more respect? And then at some point I realized what had really derailed her career, and it was having me. She could have carried on after getting married, but a child, and a husband whose job is about to move him to another country? Those are derails most women never recover from. So I watched her try to cope with the diminished, limited role assigned to her, and I learned that it's nothing to do with the individual woman, it's systemic (though I didn't learn the actual word till much later).

The guilt of knowing that it was your birth that firmly stuck your mother in a lifepath that she deserved better than is certainly one way to make a woman who'll never waver from the path of fighting for all women no matter what's thrown at her. Maybe the young women currently trying so hard to dismantle every protection their mothers and grandmothers fought for should ask their mothers about how they feel about their lives, what their dreams were and what crushed them. It might be illuminating.

@TheDishRanAwayWithTheSpoon
Sending you my solidarity sister! I can't imagine how rubbish it must be stuck in the middle of this whirlwind. You can say he here if you like - this is a safe space - we won't report you to the police. It can be quite liberating to say Transwomen are men!
looks around shiftily for MN moderators

We're not reducing WomanInGreen, don't worry.

What with all the threats, silencing, deletions and police questionings, we are going underground a little!

But the sheer numbers of women who know that biology matters are huge. It's easy to feel disheartened, but try not to. We are simply part of this particular era's version of stomping on women, just as generations of women before us faced their own generation's struggle. It will carry on into the next generation too, although for the life of me I can't imagine how things will evolve for them.

It's okay DJLippy it's a woman's 5 o clock shadow, just like it's a woman's penis

I can see this tranwoman as being very angry actually if I dared mention something that didnt tow the party line, I really really wouldn't want to risk it. And if she got angry then I'd probably lose a lot of friends, it's all a bit culty. The only ones id be able to keep would be the people who weren't feminists in the first place!

@TheDishRanAwayWithTheSpoon
Yes I bet you get called sexist if you mention his 5 o clock shadow as well don't you?

I am early 20s uni student and I am gender critical. However I do agree lots of people my age aren't.
I think the problem is that women my age are still so very desperate to appear nice and cool to others, mostly men. Or they want to appear liberal and accepting, still to men. They read a lot of things about feminism on sites like everyday feminism or buzzfeed but don't actually think outside the box about it and form their own ideas. I think it probably comes with time, there's so much peer pressure at uni to think a certain way and it's definitely about how you appear to the outside world. I also think social media has a lot to do with it as it's cultivating your image as an accepting person online.
There are definitey groups of 'liberal/tumblr' feminists who if you dared not tow the everday feminism line you would get burnt at the stake, actually you wouldnt you'd just be mentally put in the bad person pile along with the homophobes and the racists. It's all about outward appearance to eacb other though, like a competition of who can be the most accepting.
I find it sad because I used I think I had lots of friends who were feminists but actually I don't really have any. I go to Cardiff and the only reason I really got into the trans issue is because some of my friends were big into the attempted no platforming of Germaine Greer, I found out about it from them and was pretty shocked that they considered themselves feminists and didn't even want to hear GG speak!
I had a male friend at uni who was a bit of an arrogant prick (white, middle class, male) not many people liked him and he was very much desperate to be opressed and now she is trans! So finally can be the most oppressed and now everyone literally worships at her feet, all showing off to her about who is the most unbigotted but we all thought what a prick he was before! But now we can't even dislike her because it would be 'transphobic' ffs.

@BlytheByName

I am a goldmisths graduate and it took me ages to peak trans. I bet there's lots of things she's had questions about but universities are so toxic right now you have to be sooooooooooo careful with the way you speak. You don't want to be accused of bigotry so you just stay quiet. Hopefully when she get's out of uni she'll see things a bit more clearly. Try Magdalen Berns she's awesome - she peaked me.

I have become more of a feminist as I've got older. I think that you see the reality of your body. Gynecological problems, abortions, motherhood, these things really make you realise your body.

I do think things have gotten worse though. I am 34 and I was talking to my younger friend (23) about our sex lives and I got so upset for her. I don't think younger men priorotise their sexual needs at all. When I told her I was going to have sex with someone with an unwaxed vajay jay she was mortified - she couldn't believe I could countenance it.

Re having trans friends, I think this is a difference of language. Gender non-conformity is now being trans. I had loads of goth friends in the day and nobody thought they were the opposite sex because they wore eye liner. Similarly none of my lesbian friends Identified as non-binary or trans-masc. We were all pretty gender-sexually fluid but we didn't lable it much beyond 'bi' or 'bi-curious.'

I think this is where the upset comes from. They think we are attacking their friends, calling THEM TRA's ect.

I only have a couple of feminist friends in real life

We're struggling with other contacts who do buy into all this, wolf whistles are a compliment, girls should wear pink etc

It's one of the reasons were thinking about moving somewhere rural and doing home education, I think the pressure to fit in is appalling and some women I know would happily describe themselves as anti feminist

I love this board but increasingly I feel our numbers are reducing

More lived experience as a woman is surely part of it. More having listened to other people's viewpoints and experiences. Motherhood, and seeing other people try to impose gender stereotypes on our kids.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the younger generation are gender critical in reality though, just they're not the ones who get heard.

It seems that generally it is younger women who buy the "sex work is empowering" line, but often when it involves someone else, not themselves. I despair knowing that young women and girls go through this shit. They will wake up one day I hope, but us oldies need to continue to put ourselves out there to show there are alternatives, even if we may appear bitter and twisted and humourless.....

The openness thing has gone mad generally
So extrapolation to sex isn't hugely a surprise

“Open to trying someone you don’t feel attracted to “ How depressing is that? Life is short, why on earth would you try someone you don’t fancy ? I mean really, why ? Finding someone you think is gorgeous is one of the great joys of life, how soul destroying to feel you have to go through the motions with someone you have no attraction for . MADNESS.

I think it’s amount of time on their hands — it seems to be mainly arts/humanities students. Science students with full timetables might have dyed hair or a couple of piercings but that’s about as radical as it gets!

My daughters have a friend also at Goldsmiths, and say they have to be very diplomatic when talking about the cotton ceiling issue around that person. The message from the friend seems to be you should be open to trying someone you don't feel attracted to. They feel she's been brainwashed...
Terfulike, I hope your daughter hasn't drunk the koolaid.