You’ve got to hand it to Gen Z!!

Indeed, Gen Z freaking out older generations is an odd interpretation of naive people letting themselves be manipulated by a combination of business interests and predatory misogynists - from those same older generations.

This would be a harmless youth rebellion if it was a fashion fad but as it involves mutilation surgery, is fuelled by commercial pornography and homophobia, and includes a cohort of decidedly NON gen z adult blokes demanding access to women’s single sex spaces (they may think they’re fifteen but transage hasn’t been quite accepted yet) it’s anything but. Christ, they don’t even have decent tunes.

I do feel sorry for them as an age cohort, having to deal with the fallout from Covid and the effects of lockdowns on their education, climate change, war, a greedy banking system, and in the UK, the resurgence of class structures and the catastrophic economic and societal effects of Brexit.

I'll sympathise wholeheartedly with any of them protesting, urge them to unionise, support them if I can. But I will not put up with silly ahistorical fantasies about 'gender'. Or any other guff about 'gender'

Teddy Boys wore Edwardian-style coats.

There was a string art nouveau influence on hippy fashions.

You’re saying this in response to a comment about Gen Z’s adoption of stereotypes.

You don’t seem to know the difference between stereotypes and aesthetics.

No wonder you don’t understand any of the points people are making!

2 points here.

Gen Z have the least sex and the most mental health issues so I'm more sad than outraged by them. (As Neil Brennan said Gen X shagged all over the place and we had AIDS to deal with.)

Just as most baby boomers weren't walking up and down the kings road in miniskirts smoking joints, most Gen Zers aren't blue-haired non-binary knee-taking students. My nephews and cousins' kids (early 20s) are all working adults with homes and careers (and the odd kid themselves) And, drugs/marriage aside, fairly socially conservative.

'the identities they have adopted'

I don't have an 'identity' any more than I have a 'gender'.

The pathetic little sheep who need those things should try breaking free.

Oh bless you. Have you actually met any lesbians or gay men?

Late 20th century stereotypes of gay men were all about showy-off muscles and lesbians were lipstick wearing glamour pusses (we're talking stereotypes, real people vary a lot). When did 'butch' start being a term applied to women, when I was a gel it was a word used for little boys?

I have no idea why you're talking about butch lesbians and camp gay men.

As for the second paragraph. That's your misunderstanding of what you think people are saying. No one here is even slightly suggesting that. Why do you think they are?

what's rebellious about being told you should present as a girl because you’re a boy that likes dresses and pink - and not arguing for individuality but going along with it?

We have already noticed that genderism is homophobic, you didn't need to confirm it.

Lots of them challenged and broke down the many and varied sex-role stereotypes that have existed over the centuries. Opting out of marriage and reproduction by going into convents and monasteries was a major method for a millennium and a half.

People didn't usually drug and maim themselves, though anorexia and cutting overlap a lot with genderism when it comes to female self-harm.

Yep I’m also very interested to know how telling boys who like dresses and pink that they’re actually girls rather than boys who don’t conform to the gender straight jacket imposed on them by society is smashing the gender binary??

Of course I'm not surprised that MadamAndTheAnts returns to snark rather than address the substantive points being made.

I'd be interested in a genuine attempt to explain how gender identity adherents think that they are challenging gender stereotypes rather than entrenching them further and further. I would also like to know whether they think any previous youth generation challenged and broke down gender stereotypes and norms?

Many youngsters who affiliated themselves with those fashionable self-defined 'rebel' groupings were indeed as sheep-like as today's genderists, but are not what the likes of Butler were writing about when inventing 'gender' as something human beings could have or be.

There’s a difference being influenced by and controlled by though.

LSD wasn’t intended as a recreational drug and it was as cheap as chips - it’s not like it made big pharma a load of dough or turned people who took it into lifelong medical patients.

Although some men got very wealthy through exploiting women Larry Flint was a baby boomer himself.

Gen Z adopting middle class granny's 'gender' stereotypes look excessively conformist, whatever sex they are. I wish they'd develop a little individual character and courage.

I found the reference to the 1950s wrt gender 'tradition' quite striking. Given that 'gender' as a function of anything other than grammar was only invented by academics in the 1960s, it was probably inevitable that they constructed the 'tradition' mainly based on the middle class western suburban structures of their 1950s childhoods. The stereotype never did apply to the vast mass of humanity.

All the (usually ill-informed, often very offensive) scrambling through anthropology, ethnography. and human biology since then has been one long intellectually dishonest attempt at self justification by the people who have built careers or businesses on that weak and shoddy foundation.

I think it’s heartbreaking they’ve been so misused myself, their youthful fervour, passion and idealism so corrupted and turned into a force to make the world a less safe, more hostile place for those who are truly vulnerable, all while they genuinely believe (some of them, at least) they’re doing the opposite.

Yes. I see all those young blue-haired and facially-pierced counter-protesters and I actually think “aw bless”. Seeing them do the Timewarp in Glasgow last week. I remember that feeling when I was a nipper. It’s so sad that they’ve fallen for this con. I completely get that when you are young, you simply haven’t had the time to experience and learn enough about how the world works and really see the bigger political picture, so you tend to fall in with simplistic ideas of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, etc, and are so vulnerable to manipulation.

This is why it is so dangerous this shit is being taught in schools.

Love that this plopper's post backfired and enabled so many knowledgeable and informed posts 😄
As usual.

Gen Z - the first generation to have their “youth rebellion” curated for them by middle aged

Flipping heck you're right. You're absolutely right.

It's bloody tragic.

Oh op, you're a card! Your (only) post has made me properly laugh.

That dazed article is very frustrating. Why not just speak to the people who are the subject of the piece? Speaking instead, in the usual cowardly way, to the ones who disagree only serves to produce this kind of nonsense:

“It would be oversimplifying it to say that TERF-y sentiments are expected because Southend is a working-class town,” Louis says. “But people are generally scared of change, especially change they don’t understand. So all the hatred comes from a place of the world moving forward, and deep down these people are scared that they’re getting left behind.”

That's not what's happening at all!