Anyone else have a woke teen?

I see it as a particularly middle class phenomenon

I've mentioned this before, but it's been noted by teachers where I live (Sydney) that trans ID's are prominent in some areas (high income, white, liberal) and not in others (lower income, more ethnically diverse/conservative).

We're actually in the latter demographic but liberal. However, ds was in an activity that is full of the first, and 'learned' trans identity through this cohort.

iamright

Glad you found it helpful!

No teens currently in situ.
DSD and I have talked about this and don't entirely agree or disagree. I think I've suggested a few perspectives she might not have considered. We haven't fallen out. But I don't think she is either woke or GC..
DD is younger and to be fair we've been talking about feminism and gender stereotypes from her being very young. She's hugely empathetic and quite GNC in many ways so I have been concious that she needs to be aware of these issues and think about them.
We've had a lot of conversations about various coming of age stuff. Trans and sexual orientation amongst those.
I think the aspect that has clarified her thinking is that if you follow the thinking that gender=clothing and behaviour, then you are defining people by harmful and reductive stereotypes.
She's comfortable with being female but also wants to wear trousers, have short hair, not wear makeup etc, unless she wants to and neither complying or not with that changes who she is.
She's pretty GC.

Janes. I am aiming for high boundaries, low conflict.

The best advice ever and my new mantra. Thanks

When I was young I felt confident and invincible

I also wanted to think the best of everyone, especially friends (loosely defined). I put myself at risk by sharing rooms at parties with men I hardly knew - in a group, not just two of us, but still I was lucky that nothing bad ever happened. I wised up through the experience of others, including a good friend who was raped by a colleague who offered to walk her home 'so that she would be safe' .

It hurts my heart that we are making girls and young women - already so vulnerable - even more unsafe.

When I was young I felt confident and invincible. I would not have minded sharing toilet facilities with males or male health professionals doing intimate procedures on me. This gradually changed over time. I began feel more vulnerable as a female, and treasured female spaces (dignity, privacy, safety, respect).
Having children changes things, with small people to Safeguard.

Young people can't imagine changing and aging, feeling differently about things.
They are not the ones to be making such decisions on behalf of all women.

I have a highly intelligent, articulate daughter in her final year at uni. She is firmly feminist in her outlook on life. And yet she sees me, her dad, as totally unsympathetic towards trans women because I don't think they have an automatic right to women's spaces. We have discussed it at length. She thinks that on this, as in so many other areas, I'm old and out of touch. I find it all quite ironic, but we don't fall out over it.

My three sons are gloriously gender critical and send me comedy memes whenever their friends share them with them. So complete agreement in this household as husband is on side as is brother and mother.

Safe Schools Alliance are crowd funding to challenge trans guidelines in schools. Info on their website

Agreed. There are the victims and potential victims who are essentially groomed TRAs, and then there are the supporters.

It's the supporters, young people supporting woke culture that I was mainly talking about above. I think this will pass, but it's true many children and young people are at risk.
I think that this will be the next big safeguarding scandal. Links can be made with the Rochdale and Rotherham CSE cases, adults/professionals not speaking up due to fear of offending minorities.

Shedquarters for me that’s the main issue. I wouldn’t care at all (and I doubt many of us on FWR would) if these kids were simply dressing differently or experimenting with makeup or whatever. It’s the terrifying speed at which medical interventions are pushed upon them, with no real unpicking of any side issues which may be present (abuse, trauma, autism, poor mental health). That’s what terrifies me. You cannot simply undo puberty blockers, double mastectomy and cross sex hormone treatments.

In truth they will change and mellow as they get older. Most people do. The young try on all sorts of ideas and lifestyles, it's normal enough.
They will get jobs, mix with a variety of different people, have relationships, maybe kids, homes etc.. Those things that seemed so important will be seen through different perspectives. You can't get that far in life being so certain and self-righteous.
Unfortunately this generation have the Internet and social media grafted on, distorting things somewhat. Time will tell about the long term effects of that.
I expect parents in the 60's were equally as horrified, however this generation seem to have outdone all others in finding new ways to be really annoying.

It's hard to see ourselves as parents how we used to view our own parents when we were young.

I am hoping not to have this with my 12 year old when he gets older. I am thinking it's not such an issue because we a working class family. Not sure how others feel, but I see it as a particularly middle class phenomenon.
That said, the erosion of women's rights effects us all, and I am going to fight it.
Even if your kids don't appreciate it now, you can be a good role model by fighting mysoginy and homophobia.
I feel more optimistic now. JK Rowling, Maya F and LGB Alliance seem to have changed the landscape somewhat.

“What I find so sad & frightening is that young women are being manipulated into giving up their rights before they are old enough to understand what they are losing.”

@XXcstatic that is so true!

I have a woke four year old who recently informed me 'not all boys have penises and not all girls have vaginas

That's awful! How do you cope with such fundamental disagreement with regards what gets said to your child?

@MrsSchadenfreude Feel free to not share if you don't want to, but, did they mention this casually to you or did they sit you down and have a conversation with you regarding how they identify?

Thousands of kids die from starvation each week. Thousands of kids die from disease each week. Thousands of adults die from war, famine, pestilence. Each week. And 'labels' are important? Really? Present this as a question.

Translation: special, likes to be liked, choosy

Mine is apparently non binary, pan romantic and asexual.

people in the peace movement were not very peaceful.....all the usual inter-personal conflicts and strife

A friend had some very bad experiences in Occupy London to the point where she and other women weren't safe and had to leave the camp.

Yes - by and large other people were adjudicating their boundaries for them or scolding them that they had to be kind about other people's MH problems even when they compromised their safety.

The fact that all our kids have trans friends is surely evidence that ROGD is real?

Like, I’m middle aged and artsy and have spent my whole adult life in cosmopolitan cities and have a wonderfully diverse set of acquaintances and thousands of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ across various social media and maybe 1-2 percent of those thousands of arty, lefty worldwide weirdos are trans.

Yet now there are trans kids in schools all over the western world? How is that not seen as weird as fuck, to even the most right on pro LGBTQ people?

Like, gay marriage (legal acceptance) didn’t massively increase the numbers of gay people (despite the fears of some religious types!) so how come increasing social acceptance is used as the explanation for all these trans kids, most of whom are born female?

They always say that you can’t make someone gay by educating them on gay issues, and I believe that, but I don’t think that holds with trans...

I think teaching people about ‘trans’ in school, in online spaces and in social groups is actually giving teenagers a kind of gender dysphoria, one that is only superficially like the other more established kinds of gender dysphoria.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I wonder if our kind, right on teens will ever realise that their kindness made their peers more vulnerable, not less?

I came across an excellent word to describe this new group of people, wokescolds.

My super woke 16-yr old lesbian DD2 has trans friends and GNC friends, and is fully down the rabbit hole. In a conversation with her and 18-yr-old DD1, she sort of partially admitted that maybe it's not completely transphobic for a straight man or lesbian to not want to sleep with a trans woman, and that you can't force people to date other people... I'm not sure she believed it, but she backed down and said 'you're right'. Pretty sure in reality she's now got me and DD1 pegged as T**Fs, don't care

My oldest daughter has thoroughly embraced queer culture and has a new definition of her sexuality every week. She and her slightly younger brother both struggle with relationships irl, but love to shock with their kinks and fluidities.
Interesting that they kept the fuck out of troubled teens trans experiment beyond support for pronouns.. But oh the strain of it all. I have found myself privately questioning the requirement on parents to love unconditionally.

All 4 of my DC are GC. Respectfully so, I hope.
We've discussed the difference between sex and gender and I think they have a good understanding of that.
My oldest DD's GCSE English oral exam was "Unfairness of Transwomen in Womens Sport". Most girls (and her teacher) agreed with her stance.

We had a bit of a spat about it which to be fair ended in her saying I'd got a point - she said it's just she knew lots of troubled trans people and wanted them to be happy. And that's where it always comes from I think for young people, so it's easy to buy into the narrative.

Part of the issue I've seen with teens is they don't understand that their version of "being kind" isn't. Telling people things that aren't true, accommodating them in ever way - in some cases some of it might be helpful, but in most of the cases we are seeing now this is making things worse for these individuals.
I think even many younger adults now are less aware of this, but with teens, they just don't have the experience and maturity to get it in many cases.