How to talk to super-woke family?

Also - check your privilege can be a two-edged sword. It's one thing to remind people to listen, but that line gets used by TRAs a lot. Even people who have been oppressed can be wrong about things.

I think on the trans issue a lot of young people immediately swerve away from critical thinking as they feel that to question any of it is equivalent to being homophobic

From my perspective, this is part of the problem, why so many young people have learned this. Over and over they have seen people who might have a different view on sexual behaviour, or marriage equality, or even something like surrogacy for gay couples, be branded as homophobic. With no need to even consider why they might hold that view, the assumption is it must be bigotry. It's similar for racism though maybe less of a live issue for young people, anyone with an unusual viewpoint is seen as bigot without any need to really explore the ideas.

It should not be a surprise that they take the same approach with whatever the current political program says.

Yes, it's really the behaviour I would be concerned about. It may be notable that your daughter thought you were an idiot at a younger age, boys are often a little behind girls in maturity. He may well grow out of it.

But if it's making things unpleasant and he will be around, I think I would talk to him, maybe even a little sternly, about having respect for others in our behaviour. A good principle is if you can't talk about an issue respectfully, don't talk about it.

I think many young people have come to believe that anyone who holds certain views must be terrible, a bigot, and so on. And TBH I think that is the fault, largely, of the older generation which has been quite clear in saying that people who have particular views must be either bigots or morons. I still meet older people who think that way, it is like they have never grown up.

Two women- his mum and sister, are telling him something and he doesn’t want to listen, yet it is about women.
He’s only young so can be forgiven, but he really needs to learn to listen to what women are telling him is their experience, or he’ll be a misogynist.

Use clear language and question his beliefs if he brings up the issue.

Why do you believe women are male and female? When did you start to believe this? Would you date a male woman? Why don't you think I should be allowed same sex care, don't I deserve privacy and dignity in my old age? Why do you want women to lose rights, do you think they have too many?

Always state what you are for, not what you are against. I want women and girls to have representation without always including males. After MeToo I know women and girls need to retain strong boundaries. Always use sex where you mean sex. It's okay to disagree too, life innit

He is a young man trying to find his way in the patriarchy.
At the moment he is at the bottom of the man heap.
Kept down by the older men who are in charge.
He sees that his young female peer group has more power than he does, and they do.

But he will start ascending up the hierarchy right up until he is elderly, finding his place in the world.
And his female peers will slowly be sliding back.

I would be grateful that at least he is opinionated and interested in politics and womens issues etc etc. Encourage him to expand his reading (as should you) so you do not become tunnel visioned around issues.
Tell him you are happy to chat and debate as long as it doesnt get heated and personal. If he cannot stick to those rules then just say the topics are off limits.

I would stay away from the actual issues themselves but ask to have a chat with him about how to engage in healthy debate with other people.

Explain to him that it's not appropriate to flounce out of rooms over a difference of opinion and illustrate how to discuss things in a mature and educated manner.

Hopefully it'll hit home that he doesn't want to look like a petulant little kid and that he would rather get his point across in a mature manner.

I agree that its more the behaviour in the argument i.e. storming out that should be called out than his beliefs. The more you tell him he's wrong in what he believes the more he'll dig his heels in but flouncing off when he's disagreed with is not OK. I'm almost certain that he wouldnt do that at College when he's arguing so why does he think it's OK to do it at home. Does he think when he gets a job that he'll get to just walk off every time he's disagreed with or does he just think it's OK to do it to mum? Ive a sneaking suspicion he just thinks it's OK to do it to you because there arent consequences i.e. you wont laugh at him as Im sure his friends would if he flounced off and you wont sack him as would happen at work if he stormed off

and yes it is very oppressive when men storm off because we've been socialised to keep them happy :/

Sorty OP i find his flouncing hillarious.

At that age i had strong opinions, still do but not necessarily the same ones, but i argued my points. I loved a good debate and often played devils advocate. Could you not encourage some debating skilks? Explain that other people have different opinions and beliefs that it is ok to disagree with and its also ok to debate and learn from each other? That is afterall how compromises are made and a very important life skill. Lets face it employers are not going to take kindly to someone flouncing out everytime anyone disagrees.

Is that what woke means? I've got 2 DDs like that but never heard the term woke.

With people like this, I play dumb and ask them to explain the logic/ science to me...

This can be really effective. When DD told me about her PSHE talk that concluded TWAW I bit my tongue, just said mmmmmm, I take it this wasn't a biology teacher speaking?..... A pause for thought was all I was after, I got one plus a snigger. Just keep gently probing.

With people like this, I play dumb and ask them to explain the logic/ science to me...

They can’t bamboozle me with long words. I have a phd in science.

To be honest I'd find it difficult if family members had voted differently in the Referendum. (My mother was German, so it would involve the people nearest to me telling me that I didn't belong in the country that she had made her home.) Sometimes politics is deeply important on a personal level. At other timest it s more a matter of virtue signalling.

Another parent of a super-woke teen here.

I think their sense of self and their own identity (which is largely built around being super-woke) is still new and fragile. They're like foals, or baby giraffes taking their first steps on spindly, shaky legs, and when we challenge the views they've absorbed from their online tribes and college peer groups, it knocks them badly off balance, which is threatening and upsetting. My dd has stood in front of me, arguing that if she encountered a person with a beard and a penis in a women's toilet, she wouldn't assume that person was a man. And then she burst into tears and rushed out of the room, because she realised how flimsy that woke argument was when held up to scrutiny.

I think it's enough that they're aware that you disagree. I have long since given up trying to argue, or make them see sense, or pick holes in their logic, and instead focus on providing a basis of unobtrusive and constant common sense. My dd knows my beliefs are not subject to fashion, but are based on fact. My feeling is that our teenagers are far out there, exploring the extremes of who they are and what they believe, but will gradually be pulled back to reality as they have less need for tribal identity and find the confidence to be themselves.

You should address his behaviour of flouncing and anger over being disagreed with.

The ‘storming out’ response is actually an aggressive and almost violent one and he needs to learn better self-control.

Yes, "storming out" is a form of control used by emotionally abusive men.

Does he believe it is his 'human right' to have his genitals waxed by a woman?

Does he believe lesbians have to have PIV sex and if they don't they are oppressing and killing trans women?

If he answers 'no' to both these then he is GC.

FWIW, I feel completely unqualified to speak about people who experience gender dysphoria and its validity.

The subject matter of the argument is irrelevant
This isn’t a feminist issue. This is a parenting issue

it. But of course a (young) man storming out of the room when I disagree with him (right now he’s stormed off for a walk) cannot help but feel oppressive. As if I’m not allowed to have a different opinion than him

You need to see this as dealing with a shit way to argue and debate rather than what he’s arguing about

I think anyone outside a female hijabi/burkha culture has an argument of equal strength. So say a black Caribbean of Christian background mother was having this debate with her son of the same demographic, I wouldn't see her argument as holding much more clout than his.

So for me, unless the 2 of you are Muslims, you should be largely presenting TED talks and Youtibe videos from people who are to "battle".

Flouncing announces to everyone that your arguments are weak.

He flounces?! Ugh. I'm only 31 but I can't understand young people not standing their own ground. At his age I would argue my opinions until I was blue in the face.
Tell him that if he feels so strongly, to debate properly and stop storming off in a huff.

I remember telling one teenage super-woke relative that actually I have no issue with people who are really trans, I have an issue with people who are pretending or confused, and that seemed to get through to them a bit