Gender Neutral students in The Times

To paraphrase Magdalen Berns, loads of us know we are women because of biology, and that's as far as it goes.
Poor kids having to worry about whether they are feminine enough to be a woman, masculine enough to be a man, or in-between enough to be non-binary.

Treat gender like an adjective - biological sex as a noun.

I like that.

Woman, man, girl, boy - all nouns

Being special is the new fitting in

conflating identity with sexual orientation.

It's also conflating biology with sexual orientation.

It has occurred to me recently that "I'm non-binary because I'm more special than you Stepfird wives" is the 2018 version of "the cool girl."

Well put Stark
It could work so much better if everyone accepted the many possible variations of gender but also accepted the underlying unchangeable fact of biological sex.

who have not been affected grrr

Two parts stand out to me;

“I was having a conversation with someone the other day who said outright, ‘If you have a vagina you are a woman.’ And you do get responses like, ‘Why can’t you just pick one side or the other?’ which is something bisexuals have been told for many years.”

Yet again conflating identity with sexual orientation.

The student said the response had been mostly “very positive” and “very freeing”, adding: “It’s really important to someone of my generation, being able to be yourself without being teased.

Find me a teenager throughout time or anybody for that matter who doesn't want to be themselves without being teased.

On a positive note there clearly are students who have been affected by this self absorbed nonsense!

Treat gender like an adjective - biological sex as a noun. The vast majority of services should have no relevance either way, marriage is no longer the preserve of heterosexual couples, pension ages have been equalised, discrimination is illegal. There might some inconvenience over pronouns.
But there are some areas of life where biology is extremely relevant - sport, medicine, crime, some religious cultures, etc etc. - and where your gender is irrelevant.

Actually I think the most important thing about the story is the numbers.
830 out of half a million.

99.8% of students don't buy into this stuff. Generation Sensible in practice outweighs Generation Snowflake ?

looking back at the Vogue cover shoot of Caitlyn Jenner

Back then I still thought that transgender meant transsexual and was very sympathetic.

I didn't read the article but saw the photos and surrounding publicity.

To me even then, it highlighted the sheer sexism of our society. I knew damn well that a 50 something woman posing in underwear wouldn't be praised as brave and stunning it would be mutton dressed as lamb.

I was also struck by men posting how hot Caitlyn was because y'know "fuckability" is very important criteria to defining who is a woman.

Oh, AC Grayling appears to be a huge disappointment, from that article. I thought he’d be a more critical thinker. Shame.
Indeed. Sure, sure, it should be easy to change 'gender' - and, as he says, change back. So long as it's clear that humans can't change sex and that changing 'gender' does not give rights to access single sex services (or awards, Bunce), that sex is what matters for medical records and formal identification purposes. There's no need to legally 'change gender'. Just allow people to put on whatever clothes they want, and use any (unearned) title Mr/Mx/Ms etc - might be a nuisance if software which currently checks the title field has to all be made to ignore it but surely an easier option overall than people having to legally change 'gender'?

I've just read the article. I'm going to interpret it as 829 gender critical students and Mx Non-binary. If they only ticked the "other" box, how's anyone to know different?

*now living, not no...

Now100 I suspect that I would have fallen for it too, hook line and sinker. As a pre teen I cut my hair short and insisted on being called by a boyish shortened version of my name. I definitely did not identify with womeny women (whatever that means...)
As a pp said, I am no living in suburbia with my 2 kids! I dread to think what rabbit hole I may have disappeared down if this current dialogue were about at the time.

We're all at the centre of our own drama story, but no-one else gives a shiny shit, is what I tell my teen DD when she is having a precious-blue-haired-snowflake moment.

Oh, AC Grayling appears to be a huge disappointment, from that article. I thought he’d be a more critical thinker. Shame.

Saying you are male when you are a woman doesn't stop periods does it? Saying you are female when you are a man doesn't mean that you will grow breasts and your willy will disappear.

So a woman who says she is male goes shopping. Hmm. Mens underwear dept or womans? Men's pants wont really fit or be comfortable will they BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO FIT A MAN'S BODY. And she won't find a manbra in there either.

Biologically.
Men are men.
Women are women.
There is no changing that.

You can change what people call you, what you look like, what people think of you / how you think and how you behave in society etc etc but you will always be either male or female.

I can completely see where she is coming from. It is hard being a teenager and working out where you fit in. If this ideology had been around 30 years ago I suspect I would have fallen for it completely.

Life didn't seem particularly sexist as a student, it only really hit me when I had children.

That's why I find all the trans stuff and blurring of what a woman is so scary; It's a very seductive ideology.

The only problem is that this new form of self expression has taken a very narcissistic turn. These young people want the rest of us to actually indulge their identity and to change the world to fit their new narrative.

Well put.

How many of us feel we 'belong' in a 'group of women'?

I have autism and have never felt that I belonged to any group. That said, I have no trouble with my identity: I am a woman aka adult human female.

Whenever I read this self-indulgent shite, I hear in my head the Ode to Joy, with the words "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me..."

Why are people so confused?

Sex - check inside your pants if you really don't know.
Gender - it's a social construct really. It differs over time and geography.

Twits.

Do you think AC Grayling is just trying not to put off students paying £18k for his university? Or is he actually serious?