Talking to teens

@DrBlackbird To me it sounds like a good thing if your dd is looking for answers on social media as it means she isn't outright dismissing what you are saying.

To help circumnavigate social media algorithms, you could try regularly deleting the cache and history for all browsers on any device that your dd uses.

It's a shame we have celebrities also sucked up into this madness. Will these celebrities who have modified perfectly healthy bodies feel the same way in 3-7 years time? I suspect for the majority, the answer is going to be no.

It's heart breaking to see what's happening to these youngsters. Gender identity theory is toxic,

…he talks about the influence of TikTok on young people

My experience is that it’s not just TikTok but all bloody social media that feed the trans is beautiful algorithm. I cannot talk to my DD anymore because that just sends her back to SM to find more arguments in response to my questioning of TWAW. I’m so scared about her future but really don’t know how to break through the cult dogma.

It is frustrating beyond extreme that the likes of Mae Martin or Ash Harding and other narcissistic it’s all about me ‘celebrities’ post all their bloody post mastectomy photos on their Instagram accounts with thumbs up and all smiles. Fine, do what you like to your own bodies, but please get the F off the internet influencing young impressionable girls and teens and teaching them to hate their own bodies.

Completely agree with that assessment.  thanks @WhineyVaginey

@Delphinium20 loved your post on you & your daughters experience. So true the maturity comes with time & experience.
I think it was Helen Joyce said "it's painful to recognise & process that we are the sex that are (generally) physically weaker, which means we're the sex that gets raped more, beaten to death, then when(if) we have children, get sacked, career stymied & paid less".
All this after a pornified culture which promotes body hatred in young women - totally understandable why young women would step out of that if they could (we know they can't, we're in a place of madness that tells them to sidestep patriarchy rather than fight it).
But life comes at you fast when you're a woman, we learn, we change.

It's fascinating, isn't it, how completely sheltered some of the white grievance-seeking kids are.

Yes! Absolutely this too @Delphinium20

Different ethnic groups, but similar experience of my DD's friends who come from more patriarchal cultures. I think, however, it's less "this won't fly at home," and more that these girls know up front and personal the effects of deeply sexist attitudes because of their backgrounds. IME, they can recognize misogynistic behavior faster than their white Northern/western European descent counterparts. It's also probably galling to them to see white males claim oppression points.

I hope my story will bring hope. My oldest DD is recently graduated and soon to start college. We live in a very progressive, large city and her schooling was heavy on the gender unicorn, etc. (though she's old enough to have missed the captured sex ed my younger DD got). DD1 has been TWAW since age 11, crying at times because she feared her dinosaur mom would lose friends and jobs because I'm so "transphobic" (oddly, she wasn't worried her dad would lose out but that's cause she's smart about sexism).

I've been drip feeding her my thoughts for years, but primarily focused on general misogyny. She has countless friends with pronouns requirements, and gender identities. I always showed these kids lots of love, feeding them and trying to make them feel comfortable in our home.

Because she's been exposed to so many young people like this, the "getting to know trans people" plus hearing my feminism plus my progressives politics put her in some deep and painful cognitive dissonance. For years, we agreed to disagree.

About a year ago, a friend who wanted vir/vamp pronouns made her roll her eyes. Progress, I thought.

When she'd tell me about a new friend to meet up with, I'd always ask their sex. This used to annoy her but then one day she didn't get mad and said quietly, "you ask me that to know if it's a man because you'd give me different guidance, right? You just want to protect me from men who could hurt me."
She was starting to connect dots.

A family member her age is a male bodied transwoman (no surgery, just hormones). This person's mental health has always worried us. But this person's misogyny and lack of empathy for women started to piss her off. Yup, I thought. Even our loved ones can't escape it.

Then, this year, her maturing mind met Dylan Mulvaney. She had a massive peaking over the summer and now can't stop talking to friends about it, sadly losing one male friend in the process. I even got a "mom, you were right". I didn't gloat (damn, that was tough).

Once she started opening up to other 17, 18, 19 and 20somethings, a strange thing happened. All her mom's arguments (fine tuned on MN, thank you witches) started peaking other young women and she found a lot of her friends thought the same but were terrified to speak up. She found this latter example was particularly true for her less privileged friends, especially women from very patriarchal cultures, kids of immigrants and Black and Native Americans (we're in the states, so different social issues, but quite relevant when you consider intersectional feminism).

I can't tell you my relief, my pride and my renewed hope that this isn't a lost cause. Don't give up one the young ones. They will get there eventually. We don't appoint teenagers to government posts for a reason! They need time to mature. Once they do, they become ambassadors. Keep the hope!

In all seriousness, I think keep asking them questions is the way forward.

Don't let it become a massive argument.

I feel your pain at the teenage lack of respect, but they are meant to think their parents are stupid - it's part of breaking away to form an independent identity so try not to take it to heart.

Find anything that you have in common/can tolerate and keep doing it with them to build the positive side of your relationship. Stronger relationships make a better foundation for robust discussions! Good luck x

Evilbee reminds me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo - every other sentence starts with 'Like...'

(Sorry to derail)

Don’t know where the random they’re in my post came from. Should have been they, obv.

There were loads of erm... and ahhs..., when talking about gender identity in that You Tube clip. Was it because they are confused themselves? And/or realise deep down that they are waffling nonsense, but have to say it for the approval of others/not to be called a transphobe?

Critical thought was missing entirely, and overall , the brainwashing is clearly evident. 😯

I am watching that film now. Those girls at the beginning ! Ye gods I feel utter fury. Selling down the river other women whose lives they’re have no idea of. Two girls highly unlikely to ever end up in prison, happily supporting men being put in with female prisoners. Also the stupidity and lack of any critical thinking - how do people like this even get admitted to University?

I've just been watching university students talking about their beliefs. I am so sorry for any parents that have had to deal with this.

Interesting that the demographic of 'middle aged women' who find this baffling - perhaps correlates with a higher standard of education in the last century?? Surely it's a very basic fact, understanding human biology?? Are kids not taught this anymore??

You’re not your

Evilbee, getting the sense your not a parent? Parents generally want to help their young people develop critical thinking and questioning skills so they can develop their own opinions rather than encouraging them to just believe anything that comes along. I notice that posters have asked you to explain your opinions on several threads. You don’t seem to be willing (or able?) to do that

When you're a parent, the wellbeing of children matters - all children. There is no evidenced data about how many children grow out of confusion about their sex because trans activist groups shut down keeping data as transphobic.

But as the scandals about unethical medical experimentation on children at GIDs emerged & the levels of inappropriate influence that trans activists had on child healthcare was exposed, the whole place has been shut down. (The Cass Review's updates or the CQC's damning inspection of GIDs will update you).
Now the press are alert to what's happened & scandals continue to emerge of dodgy adults working in and with organisations like Mermaids, Educate & Celebrate & Stonewall seeking to talk to other people's children about sex and sexuality. So now responsible adults question and challenge - which is what should always happen in a society where safeguarding children from harm is a priority - even if it upsets those adults seeking to exploit children.

I mean it's dysphoria, not dysmorphia..and no the number of people post puberty who 'grow out of it' is very low single figure %age..but my question would be, why do you care? Like why would you let this be something to cause difficulties with your kids. It's bad enough when parents of trans young people make it so horrible that their relationship is ruined..but your kids aren't trans

Believe what you want to believe but just agree to disagree?!?

My daughter is 15 at an all girls school. None of her friends believe in gender ideology & I'm hugely grateful it isn't pushed in her school at all.

• I will caveat her friendship group are a mix of 2nd/ 3rd generation Indian, Pakistani, African, Jewish heritage - these girls come from socially conservative homes. There is NO WAY this bollox would fly at home.

She says the girls who go by they/them, he/him are white, middle class & massive grievance attention seekers who mostly get tipped-toed around & avoided.

..

If young people see their friends suffering, and their friends say that the nature of their suffering is their sexed body doesn't match their gendered soul/personality/mind, and it would help alleviate their suffering if their friends validated and recognised aspects of themselves in the most socially legitimised way possible (eg pronouns- public claims about recognising gender), I can see how it feels very important to any kind friend to do that. And I can see how those who refuse seem cold, uninterested, closed, and out of date from that perspective. I think gender dysphoria is such a horrid, complex problem, whatever it's particular causational mechanism it can't be solved through any denial of the reality of the suffering those afflicted. Young people seem to me to be frightened that their friends are in grave danger and great suffering, and unsettled that they can't rely on the adults around them to help in a way that feels safe. acknowledging that fear and hurt first seems a good way to begin any convo with them about the complexities of this. Young people do not seem stupid or brainwashed to me, but grappling with enormous complexities with no easy fixes. Just my tuppence. Though I may be coming from a slightly different position to most on this board...

I think you take the line as being a question of etiquette and manners. If a person identifies as trans their feelings are important and do matter - you just don't accept that their feelings automatically matter more than anyone else's feelings in all circumstances.

If a woman has been raped it may upset her rapist to hear her describe her experience in her own words, the alleged rapist's feelings do not automatically give him the legal or moral right to silence her or censor her words. He may genuinely feel he did nothing wrong, it is ok for her to disagree.

My ds when he was about 15 seemed to be going along with the general narrative of 'what's the problem if people want to identify differently'. I made a few comments but didn't make a big deal.

But over the years he has heard me discussing the issue with friends and family.

Recently, he made a comment about the whole issue and I asked him what he and his mates (aged around 18-19) thought.

He said that the boys all think it's nonsense but avoid saying much whilst the girls all appear to go along with it.

I’ve got two DDs; the eldest is firmly TWAM and the other (who’s had a bigger proportion of her friends ‘transition’ at her all girls school) is still drinking the ‘be kind’ Koolaid.

She tried to use the “I have several friends who are…” line yesterday, when the subject came up in the car (in relation to recent GRR in Scotland).

What seems to work best, with her, is pointing out that none of her ‘trans men’ or enby friends are clamouring to use the mens’ changing rooms or toilets when they’re away from school, and why she thinks that might be.