Why some young women are so Woke

NeverSayFreelance

Why do I not see trans people as a threat to society, you mean? Because every trans person I know is perfectly lovely and not at all what this forum thinks they are.

So don’t know JY or R McK or Karen White then? Or are you just going to pretend they don’t exist or they “don’t speak for trans people” despite them - especially JY and R McK - making it very clear they speak for trans people?

The problem is that there is 'science' out there that supports it. Obviously, not 'real' science but it purports to be an advancement of the 'simplistic' (real) science we all know.

I think a lot of people have been very much under the impression that there is good settled science around the trans stuff. Much like they think there is around climate science. In both cases they don't really know though, they are going by what they seem to see in science journalism.

LordRudolphVII

Isn't it 0.01% of the population?

Maybe when it only included transsexuals who has SRS. The Stonewall trans umbrella includes almost everyone now.

This school has 76 children identifying as trans out of 1600 students...children between 11 and 16: www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1051523/Gender-identity-Brighton-school-gender-fluid-education-transgender

It’s probably not rare if you believe all the 'I just happened to run into a clichéd version of a trans woman in the changing room' stories on here but in the real world, yes, it's very rare.

Probably depends where you live. When I was younger I knew only a couple “old school transsexuals”. Where I live now - a city inundated with college and university students and people leaving more rural areas and families that aren’t friendly to LGB people, I come across a lot of trans people. From the barista at Starbucks in the morning to the client who “transed” last year.

We have a large transgender community here who puts out a “magazine” (I posted some pics from it the other day in here), who argued for a trans flag crosswalk (to be next to a Pride flag crosswalk), etc.

If I travel somewhere like San Francisco, etc, I run into a lot more.

Some of it is youth. Young people have always struggled to see nuance while also being idealistic. Now that tends to be elevated as being more progressive and future-directed, and even old peope talk about that as if it's obvious and true. Look at how many people make that kind of argument about Brexit - it shouldn't matter if you think it's a terrible idea, it's a stupid argument to say that the old think a particular way only because they are behind the times. Sometimes it's that they see patterns or remember how a certain idea started. There is a reason in most societies it's not the young making the significant social decisions.

Also though I think that education has changed, while paying lip service to what it calls critical thinking, it really teaching kids a series of orthodoxies they are meant to take as true without really questioning them. Basically it's a certain take on the isms and phobias - racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. There is very little sense of what lies behind those principles, beyond "tolerance". But tolerance is actually quite a difficult and complex idea that isn't what they want - they only want tolerance of what they like, not tolerance that might question it. So they don't explore those principles around equality, or freedom of thought, or any of it. The kids don't really even know how, usually. They get to university and find they are actually uncomfortable and upset if they have to read an author who does question those things.

They have been taught to toe the line, and not as problematic questions. And they generally don't even realise it.

She no longer mixes in LGBT circles, she liked the youth group but says main scene is either full of 15 year olds or people who are middle aged. She does talk on lesbian groups online still. It's been amazing how her talk of trans stuff has decreased since not being in that environment.

Of course you know better than all the (mostly) older lesbians who are gender critical.

My DD is woke, it is what she has grown up with, especially as a young lesbian in LGBT circles

She's a lesbian actually mixing in LGBT circles and yet you know better than her of course?

@LordRudolphVII

If it was 0.01 of the population, i.e. 1 in 10 000 of the population then nobody would care much. The trans umbrella has expanded so much that a huge number of people can claim to be trans women including fully bearded men with penises who have no intention of changing physically.

My DD is woke, it is what she has grown up with, especially as a young lesbian in LGBT circles. We have had a lot of chats about what is going on, and she can understand my gender critical POV sometimes but we mostly disagree.

I also wonder if it is a rejection of the stark pink and blue division of childhood. When I was a kid then kids colours were red, green, blue and yellow and there was not the same degree of segregation of toys, clothes, decor, baby equipment.

I played with primary colour lego, but now pastel coloured girl lego builds beauty salons, there is pink scrabble so you can spell words like pretty, pink globes so your little pink brain can learn where to go on holiday and pink monopoly for all you budding girly capitalists.

What does 'woke' mean? is it a new adjective? I thought it was a past tense verb?

Somebody on Twitter referred to those people defined so well by Justhadathought as the ‘woking class’. Tried to find the actual tweet for you but failed. I thought it was in the replies to the Craig Potter tweet (thanks EweSurname) but can’t see it now. Anyway, it made me smile.

Oh. I've read that before. Yeah, it didn't help last time I read it. It just made no difference.

I used to think like your daughter and I often now try and figure out why.

• playing nice, as mentioned above. It felt particularly important to commit to a kinder kind of political and social stance when the world around us seems to be getting less tolerant by the day. Kindness and inclusivity as core principles couldn't be wrong, could they? The problem was that this approach stops your critical thinking in its tracks. And it doesn't just stop it, it makes you feel bad about even privately having thoughts or concerns because that suggests you aren't maybe as kind as you want to be. So you don't think about it and you never admit to having concerns. You just write them off as "one off" "never going to happen" "demonisation" etc.

And because of this they don't ever dig deep enough or think hard enough about it to get to the point where they spot the problems. They don't see the point. They don't think they'll find anything that changes their mind, so they don't look. Plus, for a lot of them, it would be plain old fashioned social suicide and what young person doesn't care about that?*
*

• this updated type of inclusivity feels like it could be a natural progression of society. If you look back at the last 10/20/30/40 years you see steady change and greater acceptance of differences, in some respects anyway. For me and for many people I know, I think we just put it all down to continued progress and any resistance to this progress was a considered a side effect of increasing support for conservative right wing politics.

• mental health. There's a much greater understanding and awareness of mental health issues, especially among younger people. They talk about it a lot and in doing so they think they're contributing to reduction of stigma. Normalising it. All good, but what that also does is push the importance of personal subjective experience much higher up the list. It's not such a huge leap to get from mental health and acceptance of individual differences to acceptance of innate gender feels.

• dismissing older people. It's the same story no matter what generation you look at. Young ones think older ones just don't "get it". That they're stuck in their ways and restricted by limited experience etc.

Jane Clare Jones wrote a response to someobody who made similar arguments to your son. I think you'll find the above blog post very useful.

Thanks, I'll read it when I've got a minute!!

I know a couple of trans people to speak to in my town, and I have seen over the past couple of years around five 'feminine presenting' males just going about their business in town. I also know quite a few trans identifying young people, though I wonder if that is because I have had a trans identifying daughter and contact with CAMHS groups etc. I don't live in a big metropolis, nor a hidden backwater. I have wondered if I am in trans central without realizing it...

Hsat, there certainly are a number of threads started on FWR about cliche situations that, shall we say, do not have the ring of truth, and sadly that because the whole internet is a haven for oddballs to gain attention in various ways.

The T has gotten away with a great deal of immersion by simply attaching itself to the LGB

This^

I cannot see what the Ts actually have in common with the LGBs.

T is about sex (born in the wrong body).
LGB is about sexuality.
Seems to be quite a few parents in the US who would rather change their child’s sex than accept its sexuality.

I find it quite alarming to see people genuinely arguing that she's stupid for thinking this way because we put up with worse and she should be grateful the misogynistic behaviour isn't worse. Aren't you happy she wants something better for herself? The point is we shouldn't have had to put up with that crap and young women like your daughter aren't willing to either. The movement may have it's faults but it's a damn sight better than just putting up with it. We were the stupid ones.

Yet people on here allegedly run into them with a frequency that goes against any statistical likelihood. I wonder why?

These stories remind me of that one about the pink headband in Walmart. Where some bearded redneck in a camo jacket (of course) allegedly cuffed the blogger's son and called him a 'faggot' for wearing said pink headband.

I remember finding it odd that she complained nobody came to help her, but didn't want to report it to the police herself or have Wal-Mart analyse the footage. It then came out that she'd also claimed to have suffered no less than four kidnapping attempts on her life, narrowly missed being killed in 9/11, and and also avoided a plane crash on a flight she was supposed to be working on as an air hostess (which was later confirmed to be too small to actually require hostesses). 😂

I suspect there are a few similar characters on here....

Why do I not see trans people as a threat to society, you mean? Because every trans person I know is perfectly lovely and not at all what this forum thinks they are

You totally misunderstand........but you know that.

The issue is that the radical trans rights agenda undermines the rights to the privacy & dignity, and the single sex spaces and services for women. And perhaps, even more essentially, claiming that a man can be a woman just because he"feels' like one, is deeply offensive.

Nobody has an issue with civil rights, though.

I think it depends how old you are, what job you do and where you live.

Young person in Brighton - all the time but how trans some of those trans people will be will be debatable. Lots will be a load of young people of either gender dressed alike with quiffs and ear stretchers. Apparently looking individual. It makes me feel old and I mutter something about why can't they just be goths and DH glares at me.

Older person somewhere less trendy - almost never.

I've worked with one transman and one transwoman and both wore lovely, although I would say the transwoman was probably full on AGP.

Via work as a healthcare professional I've met more but still v few and pretty much all of them came across as having issues. And then I work in the male prison system where it is exactly as you expect if you have a passing acquaintance with this forum.

@lucasthecat I’m not going to get into all that, just the language you used makes it sound like you think she’s a fool, just like the classmates you mentioned

No, the majority view is one of naivety and lack of experience.

*Exactly.

I can only think of having encountered two, one who is my next door neighbour (although he may actually just be a crossdresser, I'm not sure).*

I've lived in London for 20 years and outside of LGBT areas and events have possibly seen one or two out and about. Yet people on here allegedly run into them with a frequency that goes against any statistical likelihood. I wonder why?

My 18 year old student, lesbian daughter described me as a terf when we had an argument on the trans topic earlier this year.

(Actually I'm a bit of a fence-sitter with little patience for anti-science but no time for a community which fawns over Caroline Farrow).

Today she admitted I was right all along . Think peak trans has very much been and gone.

Isn't it 0.01% of the population?

It's probably not rare if you believe all the 'I just happened to run into a clichéd version of a trans woman in the changing room' stories on here but in the real world, yes, it's very rare.

Exactly.

I can only think of having encountered two, one who is my next door neighbour (although he may actually just be a crossdresser, I'm not sure).

When I point out to him that, actually, it's just about the biology. And that most women don't 'feel like women' - that is just proof that we are c** and that only those whose gender is incongruous with their sex are aware of it.

Our non-experience of gender identity is evidence that we have a gender identity. Hmm, i see problems in the logic there.

janeclarejones.com/2019/06/04/a-dialogue-between-a-trans-woman-and-a-feminist-who-isnt-just-a-figment-of-the-trans-womans-mind/

Jane Clare Jones wrote a response to someobody who made similar arguments to your son. I think you'll find the above blog post very useful.

*It's pretty rare to meet trans people in day to day life

No it's not.*

It's probably not rare if you believe all the 'I just happened to run into a clichéd version of a trans woman in the changing room' stories on here but in the real world, yes, it's very rare.