Last night I was out with some lesbian friends who asked me to go to a Pride event. I said I wasn't sure I could because of the trans situation: while I was fully in support of the LGB element, I had my doubts about the T.
This sparked an open debate. It turns out that my lesbian friends, who both work for a right-on organisation where the majority of staff are women and they have unisex loos (though female staff continue to use one set of loos and the male staff the others, interestingly) have absolutely no idea of the self ID issue or, wait for it — the basic tenets of feminism. I used the phrase 'male privilege' and they looked blank and asked me why I thought men were privileged. When I pointed out to them that men control the world — business, politics, power, religion, the structures that we all live and work under — they said 'But our prime minister is a woman and in our organisation women earn the same as men doing the same job!' When I mentioned the difference between sex and gender they were confused. They think the two words mean the same.
Where would you start? What would you send them?