My teen daughter has burst out crying and gone upstairs because we were discussing Maya Forstater

Oops - sorry, didn't mean to sound patronising and I apologise. You have the facts correct, of course.

I have had a couple of conversations with my sons (not teens yet) about this. One was around JKR when one of them said 'she has too much time all she does is talkabout transgender and bathrooms'. So I gently asked him what exactly he knew about what she had said. He didn't know much, and we had a conversation about single sex spaces and privacy. He is very clear that you can't change sex, but I am waiting for the peer pressure in the next few years.

I have also shown them this video from the Family Policy Institute of Washington 'Gender Identity: Can a 5'9, White Guy Be a 6'5, Chinese Woman?'. It is only 4 minutes and is a great conversation starter.

I am trying to teach them to be kind, but also to tell the truth. Navigating the nuances of that are difficult.

My father.

Visiting them soon and have decided to keep my beak shut. They know how I feel so not worth poking the hornets' nest.

He's just protecting my brother who is deep in to queer theory.

I won't relay the fury my DS expressed when I told him I would prefer that he didn't refer to me as a cis-woman.
What was clear from his response is that I know absolutely nothing. He calmed down eventually but, dear God, what a state we are in when he, as a man, tries to tell me how I should identify as a woman.

Perhaps get her to read about the Trans "women", who have been sent to female prisons and go on to rape female inmates with their male penis? It happens an awful lot. Ask her why the Transwoman's rights trump the rights of the other women in jail.

Or ask her how she'd feel if she was an athlete who could never achieve 1st place, because a 6ft 6 Trans woman was competing against her?

She will "get it" eventually.

I remember my DD's teen years. She thought I was ancient and unaccepting and "phobic" when I said that I would never date a bi-sexual man. I got lots of eye rolls for that one. Now she's almost 23, with a serious boyfriend, her opinion has somewhat changed.

Too many people, but mainly younger people are engaging in group think virtue signalling. All you can do is continue to challenge her and explain that refusal to engage with the opposite argument massively weakens her position on it, and devalues her view. You also need to explain the importance of feminism. She’ll come round at some point.

Although I am a bit surprised that a number of posters on this thread also believe that chromosomes can somehow lie on a spectrum!

Er.... no they really don’t! (Scientist here, although you really don’t have to be to know this surely!)

And that this knowledge, this truth, is absolutely nothing to do with discrimination of any kind? You know that, right?!

I hope she realises that studying philosophy, she will probably face a lot of ideologies that she doesn't believe in and she definitely won't be able to use tiktok to back up her claims 🙄🙄 she will be laughed out of the lecture hall. Sounds like she is very immature

It is hard for many teenagers as peers and influence are everything, social media is everything, and wokiness is crazy on some of these sites. We don’t see it as much as adults but our kids are in a strange world and if they don’t conform to it - they can be ostracized.

Sorry, OP, that last sentence wasn’t directed particularly at you-I do find there’s a tendency to think that teenagers don’t know anything until they’re mature enough to agree!!

I’ve mentioned this before on another thread, but I have a student who wanted to study some feminist theory, “but not old feminism, only the new intersectional feminism”. I said, okay, so what theorists have you been reading that you’d like to work on?

Kid said “oh, I haven’t read anything but I do watch a lot of YouTube videos”.

Me: 😐

(This is at a +RG university. I mean I’m only 20 years older than these kids, but I would have been fucking embarrassed as all hell to look so ignorant to my lecturers.)

Ah bless. My teenage daughter burst into tears when she tried to "inform" me that transgender women started the Stonewall riots and I replied that wasn't she ashamed to be colluding in the erasure of lesbians like herself. I think the cognitive dissonance nearly blew her head off, especially when I pointed out Storme DeLavarie was a BLACK lesbian.

Tik-Tok is basically the online version of the rumour mill that used to flourish behind the bike sheds when we were at school. It's just kids telling each other more and more elaborate stories to make themselves look important.

Don't they teach methodology and sources anymore?

She can't be quoting kids off tiktok ffs.

Op.

Is this the first time you’ve had this kind of conversation? I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong in their thinking - but if you’re quick to get your point across without listening to her views that can cause a lot of frustration and upset. You both need to have your say and agree to disagree for now - there is no need for debate.

I don’t discuss it with my teenage dd any more as we disagree - she’s drunk the TRA koolaid. It’s fucking annoying

My 14 yo told me I'm a transphobe and people like me are why gay people get persecuted when I asked her to define a woman
It is totally cognitive dissonance, you ask a question they can't answer without betraying a core belief (e.g. TWAW) and to deal with the discomfort they shout and run away. Hard though

I think it’s a generational thing to be honest. At least you have interesting discussions with your dd, although I wouldn’t expect my young adult kids to be on the same page as me all the time. They’re allowed their views and I mine, and sometimes, we learn something from listening to each other’s point of view. I wouldn’t dismiss her just because she’s a teenager.

"Annoying" is the nicest way to describe it really

I have one teen who's trans-identifying, another who has called me a bigot and finds my stance "disappointing" I restrain myself from telling her that I'm disappointed in her cognitive dissonance.

The trans-identifying teen is actually open and amenable to discussion and knows she can't change her sex, but she wants to do everything available to outwardly resemble a man. We carry on talking and discussing to support each other.

The other teen won't discuss this issue any more with me. I hope Maya's case yesterday will enable a more tolerant attitude from my teen, as my belief in biology is now "legitimate".

I think we are living in a ‘post truth’ era!

Tiktok is not the Go To place for facts and reality.

As parents it’s a really valuable lesson - a ‘teachable moment’ which is a bit of a cringy phrase. But social media can be extremely dangerous in spreading disinformation and emotional proganda - get her to watch the Social Network.

I think I'm going against the consensus in this thread, but I actually don't agree the OP is handling it well, because it sounds like you're being just as simplistic as your daughter is.

It may not be welcome in this forum to say it, but there's a real debate to be had here.

I consider myself a diehard feminist, and I hate seeing how this battle is being played out between women, who have been and are badly discriminated against, and transwomen who are at least as badly (and in many cases probably more) discriminated against. Surely, we have more in common than what divides us?

Some of the language that the OP is using ('brainwashed') suggests that the OP doesn't acknowledge any room for debate and I can understand how the daughter finds this frustrating. I too want 'to live in a world where transpeople are accepted for who they are' and I think this impulse of hers is coming from a kind and positive place.

I won't go more into this or into my own background as somebody who has heavily used women-only spaces of all kinds, but I think there are worse life philosophies than 'be kind' and 'be open and welcoming to people who we perceive as not like ourselves'.

And for @AnnaMagnani (good name!) who said: And no, there is never any evidence that any of them has ever met an actual transwoman in real life. It's all posh women with luxury beliefs

I work in a university, and I've met a number of transwomen, though work or in private life, over a period of twenty years. And I don't see myself or my colleagues in the description "posh women with luxury beliefs"! :)

So someting a court of law has decided is not right because someone said so on tiktok

i think she needs to grow up