Anyone else have a woke teen?

Totally agree:
The Slits, Poly Styrene, Marilyn, Boy George, Ian Dury, Girlschool, Marc Almond, Siouxsie Sioux, Pete Shelley, David Bowie, etc.

But in the past people presented in all sorts of gender non-conforming ways. The difference is that back then nobody thought this made them change sex. Surely that makes the past more progressive than now, where everyone is encouraged to fit into a 'box'
Very much this.
I had a conversation with my Grandad when I was 16 and knew everything. He smiled at my nonsense and gently pointed out that actually, although times change, people stay remarkably the same.
It was illuminating to my intense but naive self.
I've passed the same philosophy into my own DD. There have always been people who don't fit into the best box of the prevailing 'norm' and how that expresses changes accordingly. I definitely think growing up in the 1980's was a more expressive time for gender variance than it is now. Less open for sexuality though. Being publicly gay was probably harder than wearing makeup for men.

@SawingForTeens - good points, thanks. I'm learning from this board and discussing with DD.

She's adopted and can't get her head around the fact that she can't have the name of her birth mother (who relinquished her at 2 weeks old) removed from her birth certificate but trans people can have their sex changed on theirs!

No. I think it's a debt that I owe this board. I was able to preempt the woke tide before the teen years hit.

I asked DS if he would date someone who was trans. He said "no" because it's ...... weird. A good school friend of his is non-binary and he has people on his course at his uni who are trans and non-binary. He says nobody believes in any of it but they all go along with it.

I just asked him if he thought TWAW. He said "scientifically no." Mentally? "sure, why not, it does't affect me."

... I'm on it!

I think it is very important when discussing issues with teenagers to let them have their say, listen to them and discuss respectfully.

Firstly because they deserve that treatment and secondly because any other way is counterproductive.

I have known too many people whose adult children have taken a polar opposite stance to their parents perfectly reasonable opinions because they had said opinions forced down their throats.

I don't have DC of an age where I have come across any of this and in terms of people I know of my own age, I haven't met anyone who talks about any of this stuff so it's all new and extremely confusing to me. I really don't know what to think. I feel as though the young people/teenagers of today are far more confusing and mystifying to me than my age group were to our grandparents or even great grandparents. They found some of the clothes/music a bit shocking and some of them weren't comfortable with the idea of teenagers having boyfriends staying over, but that was the extent of it. I really don't know whether all these ideas everyone is talking about will become the norm and universally understood and accepted by everyone, or it will be something that drifts away in time.

One of his friends from his school has transitioned female to male and he says that this is because times are progressive now compared to when I was young- everyone is freer now to present how they really are.

But in the past people presented in all sorts of gender non-conforming ways. The difference is that back then nobody thought this made them change sex. Surely that makes the past more progressive than now, where everyone is encouraged to fit into a 'box'.

NamechangeforTransStuff I know it may seem cruel, but when the "Oh they can't go into the men's loo, they would be beaten up" card is played that is your cue to tell your DD that it's not women's problem to solve. I know your DD was just being sympathetic, but this is an oft used tactic.

See how we (women) instantly understand that men will be aggressive knobs, and instead of making the men change, we decide women simply have to budge up.

The Happy Hooker narrative.

Yes, that's the one. The glamorous world where attractive, intelligent young women are wined and dined, and earning £3k+ a week for a few hrs pleasant "work" with handsome, wealthy businessmen who are just too busy for a relationship. It's "empowering work for confident, self-assured women", as glossy magazines suggest.

Nobody talks about the overwhelming majority of women in "sex work" who are trading the only commodity they feel they have left to offer - their bodies- to men who view them as nothing more than a fuck hole to be bought for £20.

There is a video on YouTube which occasionally gets shared on Facebook, of a young, clearly vulnerable woman who has given oral sex to an old man (named as Mr Singh by locals) who then handed her £2. A £2 coin. The girl was crying, while a passer by filmed her asking the old man for the rest of her money. He then hits her with his walking stick. The comments make me lose faith in humanity, as the vast majority of them think it's "fucking hilarious 😂"
She's being called a crackhead, a junkie, a hooker...any judgement for the fact this 70ish year old man is overshadowed by the disgust at the girl selling herself.

"Sex work is Empowering"? How fucking offensive.

Mine went in a massive huff when I told him that every should live their lives as they see fit - wear what you want, have the hair you like etc etc - but I just don’t believe that transwomen are women. You’d think I’d punched a baby in the face the way he carried on.

DOESN’ T make any sense..

In the house, I ban the use of woke bullshit language such as ‘identity’ , ‘identify as’....I have made it clear that they are akin to swear words to me. I don’t want to be part of normalising this way of talking.....saying meaningless big words that are cobbled up in a complicated string, pretending to be a sentence, which actually does make any sense, either to the people hearing it and not even to the people who say it.

Dd knows I feel quite angry and passionate about this whole thing.

Also according to DD, Sex Work is Real Work.

The Happy Hooker narrative.
I have met a fair few prostitutes work wise. All of them have been some combination of drug users/homeless/mentally ill/learning difficulties/abuse survivors. The most vulnerable women living in tragic circumstances. These were not trafficked women, for whom it seems more clear cut. I struggle to recognise the empowerment I am hearing so much about these days.

I know these ideas have always been there, I remember nonsense in the 80s about prostitute collectives, but are the trans women fetishists driving this surge more recently?

2 GC teen boys, and one Woke teen girl.

DSS (19) is gay, has said explicitly he doesn't believe you can change sex, and wouldn't be interested in dating a transman as he is attracted to men, not a female impersonation of what she thinks being male is. He said he's never been near a vagina since he came out of his DM's, and has no intention in going back near one

DS (18) has Asperger's, and follows the literal truth that a human being can't change sex.

DD though, is as Woke as the day is long.
TWAW, and I'm just a narrow minded boomer (I'm 40!).
She threatened to leave home and move in with her DF because I wouldn't allow a boy to sleep over, because this boy "identifies as female and she's a lesbian", so it's an all-girl sleepover, and I'm just othering "her" by excluding him her.

Also according to DD, Sex Work is Real Work.
I asked DD, if the inside of a woman's body is her "place of work", shouldn't a client who refuses to pay only be prosecuted for theft, and not rape?
She also sees no problem with TW in Female sports. She has never been particularly athletic herself, so I don't think she can fully appreciate the hopelessness it feels to know however hard you train, you just cannot compete with the person who's had the benefit of a male puberty on their side.

DD age 20 used to be very woke: when she was 15, she had two female friends who each required different pronouns, xhe and they I recall. Thankfully neither did anything medical about it. At that time I was a happy liberal and went along with it, although I did say I was mystified about how the genderqueer one felt female and male on different days, as I always just felt 'me'.

Then I read Janice Turner and the scales fell from my eyes, and in DD's eyes I became a TERF incarnate. We had to agree not to talk about it.

Just before she went to university we met a very sweet quite fluttery male, wearing makeup and a bit of a girly top, but also wearing trousers so that gave me chance to talk with her calmly about gender issues, and AGP, and sow some seeds.

She is bi, and joined the LGBT society, at which she encountered some misogyny. A friend of hers said she was a lesbian but then started going out with a male computer science student who it turned out liked wearing her clothes during sex, and had brought one of his sister's bras with him...

Lesbian friend has now finished with her boyfriend (and got herself a girlfriend). And, just as I predicted to DD, lesbian's former boyfriend has since said he is trans. DD has also met other lesbians who've encountered the cotton ceiling.

Then came JKR, and we have just had a great Christmas, with DD coming across all the ridiculousness online, and sending me links, and having lots of chats. She is now fully GC, as is her boyfriend, and my only concern now is that it spills out exuberantly.

So based on my experience, hang on in there, and if you get chance to talk about it, do.

@leostar1994 - she put it on her Instagram and I saw it. We had a conversation where she explained it all very patronisingly to me. Apparently she has no interest in a sexual relationship with anyone but could be romantically involved with another person - so a woman with a penis or a man with a vagina or someone of cisgender. I asked about the non binary bit - I used to work with someone who was non binary and you really couldn’t tell if they were male or female. She ummed and ahhed about this and finally said that she probably wasn’t non binary. (So I think she just added this for added woke-ness, as she really is a very girly girl.)

Both DSs (late teens/early to mid 20s) are very firmly GC, though both take the proverbial about Mumsnet to wind me up. DS2’s ex GF was very woke, which was a bit tension inducing. DS1 is in a University department where identity politics/philosophy are a big thing so he has to bite his tongue. DS2’s University department is quite the opposite.

I have one DD(15) and we live in rural East Midlands where woke does not yet exist. However, last night we went for a meal in the nearest city and I realised the pony-tailed waitress who took our order was actually trans - they were stood behind me when taking our order so I hadn't really looked at them but noticed the deep voice and (later) the adam's apple. I mentioned this to DD as part of an ongoing discussion we've been having, and she said "but look at him, mum, he's so slight and feminine looking - he'd get beaten up if he went into the men's loos"

And she had a point. I'd feel threatened by a man self ID-ing as a woman coming into the woman's loos but God help that trans woman if she'd gone into a men's toilet in the city.

And DD isn't a "TERF" btw - she's not got the hang of trans/non binary pronouns (nor has most of the country) so was just speaking as she saw it.

I’m also an engineer in a male dominated industry. According to trans ideology, I’m either in the wrong body or in the wrong job, and mostly not very feminine in how I dress, so hopefully she could she through that bullshit.

Three teens - all gender critical and none of them woke. In fact, DS1 (17) is definitely anti-woke and enjoys poking fun at the insanity of it all.

I have a 14 yr old DD. Since last year when I myself delved into the trans rabbit whole, we’ve had chats and she is very clear the difference between sex and gender.
We have also emphasised the importance of critical thinking, and reality and facts, over naive wishful thinking.
She goes to an independent school, and I’ve had chats with the head and feel quite assured that the head is quite grounded and not one to just jump on the latest bandwagon. The Head Was telling me the story of a certain all girls ‘ school in London where their Head was proud to announce that they now have 14 trans pupils, as if it was some indication and achievement of how diverse and progressive they were, she was horrified as she told the story.

We will see how well inoculated she is as time goes and she goes to uni. I am so hoping that this will have blown over by then.

We talk about snowflakes and boomers. I’ve made it clear that she is not a woke snowflake type, in fact, I’ve said that I’m expecting her (and her cohort) to be the anti snowflakes and the resilient ones, critical thinking and not prone to being brainwashed.

We ve also had talks ( even before this trans cult) about how easily humans can be brainwashed, in the context of the cultural revolution in China. Not sure how much of that actually sank in though.

So. For me. Critical thinking and reality. Then fingers crossed.

For all your "woke" teens, this might prove a useful video

My 12yo DS is being educated in being GC - and in biology being real and gender being a load of made up stereotyping bollocks (something a whole bunch of people who SHOULD know better would do well to realise!)

It really comes to something when science books are labelled 'transphobic' for stating basic biological facts!

I know this is a little tongue in cheek, but I'm reminded of the Doctor Who Cybermen episode where everyone has a blue tooth type earpiece that downloads info into people's heads once a day, telling them what to think. Largescale mind control - seems that has happened somehow with this TRA cult!

My son believes that transwomen do differ from natal women but we fall out over the fact that there is an explosion in the numbers of children presenting as trans.
One of his friends from his school has transitioned female to male and he says that this is because times are progressive now compared to when I was young- everyone is freer now to present how they really are. When I suggest that it could be a social contagion and not a positive thing then he doesn't want to know and just thinks I'm being old fashioned. He's not been around enough to see doctor's get discredited such as the ritual child abuse scandals in the '80's. He just assumes that all the grown-ups know what they're doing.

young people supporting woke culture

are part of the societal enabling of harm to kids with ROGD. However, on the scale of culpability, I see cheerleading peers as pretty low on the ladder.