Matthew Paris in The Times

By breaking these bonds of shared female experience and access to female only spaces, the next generation will not only not know what they have lost but they will also have lost the ability to join together to fight for themselves as females.

They are now told that they are privileged and entitled to even consider themselves as humans who are different to males.

Beautifully put and important post, Michelle. I am not a particularly fearful person and but there is a special feeling of relaxation of being in a woman only space. It is a feeling of being able to let your guard down. It is a physiological response. This realization stood out to me in train carriages reserved for women in India but it applies here at home. You observation that young women today will never experience this, is a light bulb moment for me. Social engineering has is bent on removing single sex spaces. It is brainwashing them to reject something that might be of benefit to them, or at least enjoyable. For women, it means trying to manage the ingrained adrenaline response in even more places. This can't be healthy. I think that both sexes are entitled to single sex spaces. They can choose to use them or not.

My teens are both ‘queer’ as are all their friends. 17 and 18.

Neither has had a same sex relationship. DS has been with his GF for over a year but they are queer because she is non-binary.

DD says being straight in her circles is social suicide.

Yes, I was thinking of heterosexuals labelling themselves as "queer" and then safe in that identity not having to engage in any of that homosexual beastliness.

It's like heterosexual people are appropriating same-sex attraction as an identity. That reminds me of something.

I think the catch all of "queer" and LGBTQ is the problem here and this ever growing need some people have to attach themselves to a label other than boring "heterosexual".

As a bisexual woman at uni in the 00s, there was an understanding that we were welcome to come to gay nights, and that some lesbians may have been open to dating us, but that it wasn't our club. It was like being a guest rather than a resident and that was just fine, we respected that the primary purpose was to support gay students.

Now it seems that LGBTQ socs are stuffed with so many varieties of heterosexuality that there is no space or voice left for lesbians at all. Homosexual women have to declare themselves gay, queer, or pansexual and hope they can defend their boundaries from the only acceptable lesbians now - those with male bodies.

Not sure which stats are being quoted but there is an existing thread on it here. Dont believe how the media present information!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4176762-New-survey-from-US-on-LGBTQ-shows-young-women-less-likely-to-identify-as-lesbian-more-likely-to-say-bisexaul

I realised that when Stella Creasy was championing women to be included in 'hate speech' legislation, she was having cosy chats with Stonewall and it wasn't about LGB rights

Or females.

They are being bombarded with sex and the demand that they label themselves, declare an allegiance - and then stick to it loyally. They aren't 'permitted' to remain neutral, not yet ready for sexual feelings. They aren't given the time, space and safety to explore their developing sexuality.

Under the circumstances, I'd it any wonder that girls in particular chose to identify as gay (girls are safer) or bi (keeping options open)?

@MichelleofzeResistance thank you- I think gynophobia is a good word to use. Agree 100% about swims (think Hampstead Ladies Pond as an example) and the shutting down of expression because someone might be offended.

I'm going for the gynephobia too. I realised that when Stella Creasy was championing women to be included in 'hate speech' legislation, she was having cosy chats with Stonewall and it wasn't about LGB rights

The word misogyny has been co opted. Take a look at the scots govt committee on it for a start.

Gynephobia is specific to fear of, contempt for and prejudice against humans with female biology. And thats what we are talking about. There is indeed a line between transphobia and gynephobia, and neither side of the line should be any more acceptable than the other.

Gynephobia. Extreme gynephobia. We're going to have to do the 70s all over a bloody gain before we free the next generation of women from all this

I think we need to start using the words gynephobia and gynephobic everywhere. The word misogyny has zero effect anymore.

Sorry just realised MP stood for Matthew Paris!

Also OP, Matthew Paris is an ex-MP he left the Commons in 1986.

Yes Michelle we were privileged to have the support we did, and I feel sad that young women and girls now are buying into some of the shit , probably to keep feeling safe and protected when the reverse is true. We are here and through our daughters and granddaughters maybe can listen and influence in the background. Kudos to the mothers on here for being wonderfully supportive but questioning.

When I was asked why I wouldn't be 'kind' to a (hypothetical) child who was upset by their gender, calling them by a different name and referring to them as if they were a different sex, while they tried out living as the opposite sex, my reply was "How is it kind to lie to a child and pretend that they can have what will never be available to them?"

An excellent and useful point.

I am a lesbian by the way. A biologically female homosexual.

I'm lucky that I'm old enough to have grown up at a time when girls were taught to be accepting and proud of their bodies, to understand their rights to boundaries and to define themselves without predicating this on the opinions and demands of others, and where rebelling against attempts of patriarchy to control our bodies, our language, our freedoms, our sexual autonomy and our reproductive rights, was a proud, rebellious thing.

I'm old enough that when I was coming out there were many older women and friendly groups and role models, who supported me and encouraged me not to get bogged down in other people's right think and restrictive stereotypes. And to understand that feminism includes the freedom of believe that you and your life and your choices are your business. You do not have to be a good girl and stay in the boxes and limits other people impose on you. Their feelings and happiness is not your birthright to maintain for them. You are not born to be a support human because of an accident of biology.

What young girls have that kind of support or encouragement towards those freedoms of views now? Most of those womens groups still in existence have had to go underground and operate by invitation only. They aren't there advertised on noticeboards or newspapers like they once were.

I'm also old enough not to care about social pressure and old enough to deal with the same misogynist, homophobic nonsense with newly dressed up language when someone tries to pull it on me. In part because the changes of body that only women understand and the change in the unnoticed, subconscious social language gives me a freedom young women don't have.

These young women will never have women only groups or swims. They will never have refuges or shelters or anything at all where only women are, and women are free to be women. The knowledge they are allowed is controlled, strictly, with powerful punishment for transgression. They have come from schools where they have been taught, under threat of shunning or worse, that when you are uncomfortable and want to say no to someone who is more powerful than you, you cannot say why and your right to say no and your feelings can only be considered if the person you wish to say no to will not be upset, offended or seek redress against you. Probably better not to risk it.

Gynephobia. Extreme gynephobia. We're going to have to do the 70s all over a bloody gain before we free the next generation of women from all this.

Also part of the systematic removal of all women's labels and titles and re allocating them to transwomen, while leaving women..... .kind of this unnamable, untouchable, unseen caste not allowed to aspire to such things. Good women are supposed to embrace and further this proud stripping and unnaming and generalising of themselves and their bodies to benefit others. Which again is regressive beyond belief.

I am particularly struck by how every single one of the young women is gay or queer (never lesbian of course).

For a male person to say they are a lesbian is a cause of much celebration and support. For a female person to say they are a lesbian is now considered a declaration of heresy. It implies that you are standing on your right to know sex differences and to be homosexual by which you are declaring you believe a right to exclude all male people from your body and your bed.

Call the police/burn the witch/diaf etc etc exeunt all pursued by Dr Haddock.

The modern generation isn't modern at all, it's medieval in its intolerance of women.

It's like heterosexual people are appropriating same-sex attraction as an identity. That reminds me of something.

But we all know 50% of youth aren't gay. The issue now is that 'queer' now seems to mean straight!

By social pressure, classroom pressure, media pressure and, yes, through mere fashion, we are moulding soft clay, not discovering some great shard of internal granite children are born with. The younger the person, the softer the clay

And it's why infiltrating schools was the top priority. Teens first then move into primary schools. Create the confusion and questioning as young as possible.