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

academic sources as well as various other article sources are pretty uniformly stating exactly what she said: sex is a spectrum

Stock deals with this early on and fairly comprehensively.

Of course, every taxonomy has a handful of borderline cases, doesn’t normally change the taxonomy.

Are those sex spectrum people the ones who make spregs? Do you need 2 spregs to make sprogs are is 1 spreg enough?

How many gametes are there, Errorcode? And how many reproductive roles are needed for the continuation of the human species? Do you think humans are a bipedal species, or does the existence of humans with no, one or three legs mean we are on a spectrum from zero to three legs?

the spectrum looks more like a camel's back

What utter nonsense, it would look more like a camel that got squashed carrying the Twin Towers on its back. "Spectrum" my arse.

I'd agree entirely that sexuality and gender, in terms of the feelings you have about yourself and your presentation to the world, are on a spectrum.

XY women with Swyer's syndrome are women. Individuals have female external genitalia, streak gonads so no functional eggs, but they do have a uterus. So, yes, with a donated egg they can in rare cases carry a pregnancy and give birth usually by C-section due to associated anatomical abnormalities.

I think I've read the article you're referring to and of course there are people who aren't delusional or communicate only via Tiktok who state that sex is a spectrum. I think they're wrong. Male and female refers to reproductive roles and no human has ever done both roles. Women with Swyer syndrome aren't 'women who are a bit male', they are women.

Errorcode except that model is not actually correct; it’s a fanciful one largely not subscribed to by actual biologists.

Sex characteristics might be on a spectrum; that doesn’t mean sex itself actually is, despite the existence of differences in sexual development (DSD/formerly intersex) conditions. A very few people have something other than XX or XY chromosomes; but what they all have is variant patterns of X and Y: but this in itself doesn’t make sex a spectrum!

I find it really sad that teenagers are being introduced to some very disputed ideas on social media, which they then cling to despite quite a lot of these being false or misleading. I’ve seen all sorts of charts of nonsense about sex and gender and sexuality floating around youth social media, presented with various degrees of apparently “scientific” veracity: that doesn’t make them actually true.

Young people need to be gently taught that social media and the internet is not where you get proper knowledge from unless you already know enough to know how to accurately interpret it, which requires years of study and academic work.

Ok Error so at what point does a person who is born XY become able to get pregnant and give birth? Or a person who is XX become able to produce sperm? I'm not talking about someone who is intersex. I'm talking about someone who is born with biological and chromosomal criteria to be within one of those "peaks" on your spectrum and states that they are now the opposite sex (not gender). Is it when they take enough hormones? When they have surgery?

Even were we to accept the premise that "sex is a spectrum", that in no way implies that biological sex isn't real, or that someone can move along said spectrum to change their sex through hormones and surgery. Same for sexual orientation - that is the thinking behind conversion therapy - if you work at it hard enough, or want it enough, you can move along the spectrum of sexual orientation and a gay person can become straight through therapy.

Apparently I can't edit my message...
anyway, it was in reply to the first reply.

It's so nice seeing parents put their pride before their kids' respect, trust and mental wellness. You don't throw an infantile tantrum of a power trip and "come down" on it, you talk it out like an actual adult; end of story. I don't care what the age.

I agree regarding Tiktok, though - a fine source if you're looking for opinions, but certainly NOT a good reference for facts. That said, she is actually correct on this one.
While I've been aware of this for a while, I decided to check Google just now to make sure I could point people toward it.
Sniffing around on Google very lightly just now led me to "the spectrum model of sex, gender and sexuality", and academic sources as well as various other article sources are pretty uniformly stating exactly what she said: sex is a spectrum. There's even talk about XY women getting pregnant - and I'm not talking about AMAB (assigned-male-at-birth) women, either... pretty sure that one hasn't been done yet, but don't quote me on that.

I'm not really sure I could dig it back up, but my introduction into the Spectrum Model was courtesy of a biologist who posted a rather expansive thread on the matter over on Twitter, and something that caught my eye was a graph they included showing that the spectrum looks more like a camel's back: what are recognized as "male" and "female" - even themselves including a broad spectrum of distinct patterns in sex-related biochemistry and neurochemistry - are ultimately just peaks in the spectrum, which valleys out in the middle and on the sides (don't ask me about the sides, I may have heard of super-polarized sexes or something, but if so that was a long time ago, probably on an episode of House, M.D. thus to be taken with a grain of salt, and ultimately I'm not well-versed enough to discuss whatever it is that lies on the periphery of that spectrum.).

The son replied that he didn't really have much of an opinion on the subject as it didn't affect him directly - and was something that had a far greater impact on others who were much more clued up on the subject in various ways and as such he was going to take a pass on the subject - and he was more generally more concerned about other issues.

For someone of his age, in the face of someone on the deliberate wind up, I thought this was a reply wise beyond his years. It was very refreshing.

Its depressing that kids seem to value voices of strangers they've never met on the internet over and above even listening to those they know and take up a view without exploring the subject from multiple viewpoints and informing themselves before forming an opinion of their own. Instead the default seems to be 'hang the person who isn't fully signed up to internet orthodoxy of opinion and doesn't repeat it verbatium'.

Just remind him that he has no skin in the game. His gamer pal is speaking from their own POV. And as I remind DS - you never know who you are speaking to online.

My teenage son believes TWAW and that I am a hater. His perspective is from the transwomen he talks to online when he is gaming (he began this when the pandemic began; before that he only talked to his school friends online).

I don't know any women like that. But men who marry women who do that are equally as culpable.

Trite male The reason that less dad's are the sahp has nothing to do with turn ons and everything to do with finance. Most men are bigger earners than their partners and so when it comes to maternity leave or career breaks the women takes the hit because it makes financial sense (and also biological sense if you breastfeed) I'd love DH to split the maternity but he earns double what I do despite us training at the same time in the same field. He got up the ladder quicker.
Believe me, the fact he can change a nappy and will take Ds for a morning when baby has been up all night isn't just a 'turn on' it's a godsend.

And women fancy lots of different types of men. Benedict Cumberbatch, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Killian Murphy. Furthermore, if there's over representation of beefy guys it's because directors, who are overwhelmingly male, seek them out.

There's also nothing wrong with fancying beefy guys anyway, apparently Jason Momoa is lovely in real life.

I have the reverse of this. My parents are TWAW and be kind and don't see women's concerns as valid. Thankfully my mother doesn't agree with no debate so we've had a civil conversation about it and my father and I have tacitly agreed not to discuss.

When I did talk about my endometriosis, the street harassment I've faced and threatening behaviour from men who refuse to take no for an answer in a nightclub I could see the cogs start to creak a little. Funnily enough I'm not as sympathetic to his feeling that sport doesn't matter and we should just have the best 'people' win etc etc.

I just don't understand why people who claim to be progressive, inclusive and compassionate don't seem to consider women as casualties in all this.

One thing that helped with my dd was to tell her that I was hurt by her willingness to assume the worst of me (phobic/mean etc) - with no evidence (I asked her to give me an example of when I had been nasty/discriminatory, yeah, she couldn't). Yet she was willing to assume the best of perfect strangers. I asked her why that was, what led her to have that view of me?

I also asked her if accusing her own mum was part of 'being kind.' I asked her if ~certain examples~ were being kind to women.

There was more to the conversation, but these points helped her realise that she had let a certain narrative take the place of her own thinking.

Sorry Bryony I didn’t mean to put down such a lot of words, I just feel like our kids are so so close to getting it and soon they will. And it will so positive for change for the future when they do.

Old and ignorant? You mean experienced and streetwise, not book-learned or indoctrinated?

My adult children know what I believe: they don't think the same, but they are at least open minded enough to see different opinions can be held at the same.t8me, and a lot depends on the situation of the person holding those views.

I hope this gets sorted between you and your daughter: age and wisdom helps, but getting a working ceasefire will do a lot.

So OP she just needs a few basic tools now and she’ll join more of the dots up herself later. You are not ‘transphobic’ you are happy to see ALL gender non conforming women doing what they like. if some of the women think they are actually male or NB then that’s fine and up to them.

Your daughter needs to know that ‘Gender identity’ is an optional personal belief system separate from, but informed by ‘gender’ ie changing cultural stereotypes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ imposed on both sexes for the purpose of male advantage.

All women gender non-conform in some ways because gender ie‘femininity’ is a virtually impossible standard for any woman to fulfil. This is because its so subjective, culturally shifting and internally radically inconsistent - the whole POINT of gender is it’s a hierarchical trap for women always running to keep up, in order to keep men on top, provided the men fulfil some basic obligations of ‘masculinity’.

So that’s why you agree strongly with your daughter with what she says about the bad old gender norms, that’s why absolutely loads of people of all ages and life experiences think gender is shit. In particular she needs to see that this includes you, one of the ‘old and ignorant’ women who have struggled against misogyny, in your life because of the restrictions and attacks misogyny it makes on you, will do on her, constantly does to all women.

Tell her it’s great that she cares about equality. It’s a great thing that we all need to care about! But the key thing is, equality is for EVERYONE or it’s not equality. That includes for her, you, all women, and every group however they are defined by others or wish to self describe around themselves in relation to any characteristic or belief they hold- not just around biological sex obviously. We are all entitled to have equality together.

And as your daughter has partially begun to see, we don’t have equality yet for very very many groups in society, including women, people of colour, people with disabilities, people who are same-sex attracted and many many more.

Sorting that mess out for the benefit of women, doesn’t include letting in men to women’s spaces and giving them women’s opportunities and doesn’t include not safeguarding girls and women. Because the really problem here has nothing to do with gender identity, it is with some MEN who are well documented to take advantage of any access to girls and women they can get.

However those men identify their gender identity (if they know or care about that stuff at all) is beside the point. Male pattern offending persists after gender identity transition but the key thing to know is in the first place that there IS such a thing as male-pattern offending.

You have sex-based solidarity with transmen and female ‘NB’ people as with any female person who in whatever way doesn’t perform gender to the shifting standards of the day, because we know society does in many ways punish them. Therefore safe zones of whatever kind just for women are essential.

If your daughter can grasp that then she’ll see for herself in time that ‘gender identity’ as it is currently being pushed at her, is a men’s sexual entitlement campaign built on some vacuous man-pleasing shifting sand. Importantly hopefully she will start to feel reassured and inspired that lifelong she herself can have the pleasure, inspiration (and if necessary refuge) of the company of other women.

She’ll come to see its OK to say it’s up to men to put their own fucking broken house in order, it’s not women’s job to do it for them. Men need to do the heavy lifting work for themselves around freeing themselves and their male peers from ‘masculinity’ gender norms. And crucially, that male violence isn’t women’s problem to solve. Making all women less safe doesn’t make some men more safe. That’s not how male violence works. The problem needs to be named and dealt with at source.