My daughter, just turned 16, had a very upsetting zoom call with her school friends last night. For reference out of the three others one friend is gay, one is lesbian. Dd is the youngest, two of them are 17.
Talk turned to Sam Smith and pronouns, and to trans ideology. Dds friends are very much in the TWAW camp. Dd is not. At one point one of her friends gave her a veiled threat, mentioning a girl who had been ostracised in school for having a racist boyfriend, eg likening dds views to racism and homophobia. ( i am NOT happy about this ) The same friend also criticised dd for not having her pronouns on her instagram bio .
Dd is a very kind, thoughtful and sensitive person, she is anxious and upset this morning. I have suggested she could send them all Magdalen’s Alex Drummond video, and Barracker’s article on pronouns - ( can anyone link me to that ? I had it bookmarked I thought but can’t find it) . To give them some idea of why she feels the way she does. It sounds a pretty depressing conversation, the totalitarianism dressed up as liberalism, the friend who is getting harassed by men in her job but thinks that sex doesn’t matter. They think that Keira winning her case was a bad thing. Dd is accepting of the differences of opinion and happy to debate, which makes it all even more upsetting and has made me quite cross on her behalf.
She did talk about her point of view, but felt that there were things she couldn’t say, eg when a friend insisted that TWAW, she didn’t contradict her, I think she is worried that she will be dropped by them, she is very fond of them and they are her closest friends in school.
How to help ?
Dd has a separate group of friends in another country, of whom several are lesbian, and all of them are very strongly TWAW, gendered souls etc, so much so that dd has never even mentioned her own opinions. I feel sad for her that there is this crushing of any other viewpoints, and that she is feeling that the only way to keep friends is to not speak up, and that she is akin to a racist for wanting single sex spaces preserved, for knowing that sex is real, that sexual attraction is real, and that this is a sexist and regressive agenda, not progression.
I was 16 in 1980, and honestly it feels like a better time. Most of my female friends had short hair, without being told that made them not girls, most of my male friends wore makeup. I read Spare Rib and felt hopeful for the future. ☹️