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

What’s that line about when I was 17 I thought my father was an ignorant old fool, but when I was 22 I was surprised at how much he’d learned in just five years…?

I have this with my own uni students. They won’t last long in the actual workplace before reality starts to kick in, and then they’ll realise some of the daftness of all of this.

I am so dreading this. My DS is 8 and he asked me recently how would it even work for a person to change from a woman to a man. I explained that it doesn't biologically but that some people switch socially, sometimes with the help of medication and/or surgery. But that they all have varying degrees of success and can come with side-effects so it has to be very carefully considered. That some people are happier with the changes but that others can find they aren't so happy after all. Maybe because they didn't really want to change or maybe because they change isn't real enough for them. He said he said that made sense as he didn't think you could change and is glad he's happy to be a boy even if he is a bit sad that he won't be able to breastfeed.

I think that this is another one of those times in history where the whole of society is grappling with new concepts and having to work through new ideas. ...difficult for all of us but especially difficult for teens.

Had a similar conversation with DD after Caitlyn Jenner appeared on I'm a Celeb and DD was banging on about what a wonderful woman she is.

I have a DS the same as the OP's DD - heading off to Uni this autumn. DS though is studying biology and totally sees the disconnect between what he's being taught in school and the concept of sex being on some sort of a spectrum. But he wouldn't dare voice those thoughts apart from at home, he knows the wokeness pervades everything.

There's a really good segment on Tuesday's PM programme on R4, they had an academic on who talked about why people don't seem to be able to debate or reason any more. The short answer was "It's social media" which kind of makes sense when today's teenagers grew up with SM as the norm (as opposed to us 40-something relics who grew up in the Dark Ages ). It's worth a listen.

Of course, teenagers have always had causes, but for my generation it was all a bit more Save the Whales

Although I agree with your viewpoint, I also had a mother who wanted me to have the same opinions as her.
It is frustrating and upsetting as a teenager to have a mother who always thinks she is right and wants you to have the same views. Especially if she is more articulate than you.
Try and not be so focused on being right. Your daighter is not talking about taking hormones, it does not matter if she has a different view to you. Instead encourage critical thinking. And critical thinking does not mean agreeing with you.
It does mean giving her space to say what her views or what she has read and then maybe saying something like, that is interesting. I don't really agree with you, but I can see where you are coming from. Then don't say anything else unless she asks what you mean.
The way my mother was meant that when I was a young adult I found it hard to express any dissenting view in a group. Not something you want to encourage in a young woman.

She has a point op. I used to gender critical but I've looked into it a lot more.
You are not completely wrong.
She is not completely wrong.
But you're also going to push her away.

Be kind. Also being a teen is really hard.

My 13, 15 and 17 year olds are all GC. I'd like to take credit, but, what turned them was seeing the way their trans and NB peers behave. They don't want any of that drama in their lives. "It's just attention seeking, mum".

I'm delighted that my 13yo DS is full-on GC. I'm proud of him

Good for her

It is extremely annoying, takes all my patience sometimes not to have a massive fight with DD about it. Have already told DH (in jest!!) that I'm going to be horrendous when I'm old to pay her back for all the teenage angst I've dealt with. I'm going to tell everyone she once believed in changing sex and then I'm going to pee myself for fun

Oh god I was similarly insulted yesterday by my teenager (over a different but related thing). It’s the first time I’ve heard her with these views and it really stung. Nonsensical words and the undoing of decades of feminist work making a better place for women.

I could weep, I really could

Can’t even get my head around why she was upset. Chromosomes have nothing to do with transgender issues.

I think there needs to be a lot more education about the difference between “sex” and “gender”. And not from Tiktok.

It does seem generally, just from the teens I know, that girls are at the forefront of the whole self Id / choose your pronouns thing. Teen son and his pals call this lot the "They/Thems" and think it's all bollocks. They are quite unapologetic about it all too. One girl complained to a teacher my son was transpgobic because he said in PHSE he would only go out with a biological girl. The teacher said it wasn't though, just his preference. Generally boys don't tie themselves in knots worrying about offending people. Hmmm

I've had a lot of this with one of my teenage daughters. The older one is quite different and while we don't always agree on many things she is willing to engage in a robust discussion.

I don't think the difference is anything I've done, so much as a personality difference, the older takes after me and the younger her father (haha). But really, she is just far more inclined to black and white thinking and also has a very strong sense of empathy and justice. It's difficult for her to see that it can be ok for an issue to have more than one side, or to be sympathetic to people but also think they are wrong.

I do think though that there is a difference in this generation and it largely comes down to how they are educated. For all the talk of critical thinking and teaching kids how to engage rather than just facts bla bla bla, the effect of what they do is the exact opposite. It's a kind of indoctrination in a hierarchical model of thinking around identity issues, but it's not presented as a theory, it's the only paradigm they're given. And they don't have enough factual history or even science to raise questions about it.

They've also been taught that "diversity whatever that means is the ultimate good. There is a paragraph in a P.D. James novel where one of the policewomen, who attended a very rough school, remembers that the only spiritual or philosophical value they were taught there, in an attempt to keep order in the school, was ant-racism. Or what we might call tolerance. I think that's largely true, diversity and tolerance are the two controlling values they are taught, and so those are the lens through which all other information is viewed. Even science or what we might better call truth. A truth that doesn't align with those things, or what the individual thinks those things mean, cannot be true.

Those of us who are older maybe imagined that the primacy of truth was self-evident, but I think that unfortunately, it isn't.

Feel lucky mine are pretty right on, I think some attention seeking non-binary types at school gave a healthy dose of reality, they just smile and nod and come home to tell me about how ridiculous it is. I think there's a lot of pressure from their peers to outdo each other's wokeness and be the ultimately kind and inclusive individual, at the expense of critical thinking. Hopefully she will grow out of it and become a bit more robust at uni!