It's language isn't it

I think part of it is quite simply an age thing.

The older women get, the fewer fucks they have left to give. And they've lived 40 or 50 or 60 or more years as a woman, most of them have birthed children, they've pretty much all experienced sex discrimination, and the idea that any of that is something a male person can just "identify as" seems ludicrous to them.

Whereas girls and young women often haven't experienced all of those things yet, their lives haven't diverged so much from those of their male friends yet, and they worry a lot more about being liked, and being seen to be cool and progressive and kind.

Same. I suspect it's fairly niche, but I'm sure BlooDeBloop has seen it.

And it's something that I can understand, to be honest. If you are trying to eradicate sexism, disguising sex is certainly one way of doing it. And that's what I think a lot of transactivists end up thinking.

Which is why women constantly reiterating that sex is binary and it's perfectly obvious which sex is which, might come across to them as sexist and regressive in itself. They stop thinking about the premise before they get to the end.

Because of course, if everyone did disguise their sex, you would have less sexism. As no one would know who to target.

But the problem with that, quite apart from the fact that it is, by necessity, only something you could do for a few years before sex becomes obvious, is that it also just disguises sexism, it doesn't address it.

Which is why, to me, it's not feminist. It's trying to avoid sexism, rather than challenging it.

OP, I think that there are some people who think the way you suggest, but it's really a 12 year old way of thinking about the world. Old enough to be able to abstract a little, to be beyond the concrete thinking of childhood, but not old and experienced enough for really higher order thinking.

I also would say that the idea that somehow if we had real freedom from gender norms this would go away, is vary naive, on a few counts. One is that while I do think we've had some hardening of gender norms in the last two decades, the fact is there are tons of people who flout them, or just don't pay attention. If you walk down an average street in an average town, most men and women will be pretty regular, not thinking much about their clothes or hair or make-up, just doing their own thing.

It's always more fraught for teenagers because they are trying to build an integrated sense of self, and get used to themselves as adults, with adult bodies, having adult relations with other people, including those they are romantically interested in. They feel a lot of pressures, and aren't even sure what they really want. But that's the result of their place in life as much as anything. Everyone has to decide what is important to them and it's a process.

The idea that we could have some perfect gender neutral society, where the physical differences between the sexes, and other differences that come out of reproductive roles in different ways, weren't reflected in material culture, is just a pipe dream. And actually I don't think most people would even want that. Human beings are very interested in sex differences, especially at an age when they are looking for a partner. Attempts to enforce genderless societies are usually pretty unsuccessful. I don't think that's a realistic remedy.

But there is a deeper issue there. People who want to be, or believe themselves to be, the other sex, (even if they call it gender) are not just people who happen to like lipstick if they are men, or happen to dislike it if they are women, or anything like that. They are wanting to take on the appearance and social role, or recognition as belonging to, the other sex in some way. Wearing certain things and all the rest are just how they try and instantiate that - it really isn't the main point.

That quote sums it up! That's why Kellie-Jay is so important. She's not falling for any of the be kind bullshit and she's not being bullied. She is absolutely standing up and saying, no, I'm not budging for you! I'm not pandering to your hurty feelings (which I know are made up anyway) This is what's good for you and this is what's balanced and right! Firm but fair!

How did that pan out when the child started to experience puberty? It would be quite obvious then surely.
Most children are androgynous at a young age anyway.

Wellies54
Part of the problem is that all these are deeply narcissistic and focused only on their own perspective. Women's downfall has been that we are constantly trying to balance our own rights and feelings with the feelings of others. But when the other side shows absolutely NO regard for us and NO willingness to compromise, our feelings are simply getting steam rolled out of the way.

This is very true. It reminds me of this:

"Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man. You take a step towards him, he takes a step back. "Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man.

Women can never win here, and for many TRAs the only acceptable outcome is us giving up everything we have - language is just one part of it.

I don't but recall Cordelia Fine mentioning raising her child like this in her excellent book about the brain. I watched a program exploring it about a decade ago about it. I can't remember more details. It was quite the thing for a time. Very progressive. I think it gained ground in the Scandi countries first but don't quote me. As I said I knew some followers personally. Everyone was anti pink for some reason.

Until about 5 minutes ago everyone know what a woman was. It wasn’t up for debate or discussion. Hurt feelings or otherwise.

If I kick a brick wall really hard in bare feet it will hurt. It will hurt physically and maybe my feelings too. But that’s my responsibility.
No amount of language twisting, hurt feelings or any other feelings can change that.

Everyone still know what a woman is. Even those who say they are women, but are not. They can kick that wall as much as they want but they can’t change the fact it is a wall.

The thing is though, we don't usually pander to teenagers and their tantrums do we? Unless we're their exasperated parents.

In other circumstances people would just roll their eyes, tell them to grow up a bit and move on, just like we were told when we came out with self indulgent nonsense at that age. But nowadays they have social media to indulge their tantrums fully.

And yes, many of them are hurting, and looking for a way out of their distress, but actually I think us going along with their delusion is not helpful in the long run. We don't do this for any other manifestation of body dysmorphia - for example, anorexia. Can you imagine affirmation only from a clinician? Yes yes yes, you're still too fat, keep starving yourself....it's madness.

But with gender dysphoria the 'solution' is to be affirmed and placed on damaging hormones from a young age. They need to be protected from this, even though they don't fully understand why. It's cruel to be kind, and it's what a decent society should be doing to protect our young people.

Here is a link to video by a transman outraged at the medicalisation of children, it's brilliant.

https://twitter.com/NotScottNewgent/status/1634682798903635970?cxt=HHwWhMC90YfWx68tAAAA

I don't think men are less accepting.

I think transwomen would like us to think that is the case so that we let them into our spaces.

I think it's untrue to say no feminist back in the 90s would be denying sex. You might think it's illogical, but there were absolutely people who thought of themselves as feminists and for women's rights who were basically saying sex was a tiny think that made virtually no difference to anyone, and this was the reason we should support legal equality, believe women should be firefighters as often as men, that female action movie stars should be shown beating the crap out of male action movie stars, and so on. We have feminists now who think males can be women, so being realistic about reality or intellectually coherent is not necessarily a requirement of the label.

There was (is?) a section of feminism devoted to eradicating gender. They brought up their children with genderless names, clothes, read them books that were non-gender conforming, told them we can't know if someone is male or female unless we see their genitalia. They wouldn't tell outside people the sex of their child. The children grew up to define themselves.

Do you have any more info on this? I've been around the block several times and never heard of it outside of trans activist circles.

Eradicating gender stereotypes was exactly the same as denying sex or as close to it as was possible without getting laughed out of the room (oh how times have changed). They said the external genitalia were an anatomical feature with no less or more meaning than being tall or broad. Eradicating damaging gender stereotypes is indeed a manifesto every true feminist can agree upon. These feminists didn't stop there though. They wanted to make all the girls wear grey and boys wear sparkly tutus (never the other way around). I knew a girl who had literally been forbidden to wear pink and hair grips because 'gender stereotypes'. I mean ... 🤷‍♂️

I feel unclean now!

Shudders.

OP, I think your explanation of (some people’s) trans position is spot on, and I would add that many young men with these feelings also feel that they aren’t accepted as men by older men. There is immediate sexism that, when not accepted by men, their response is to bully what they see as the weaker sex-class to accept them. Hence why women’s acceptance of transwomen as women is their aim.
For these (mainly young) men, I absolutely agree with pp’s that men’s full acceptance of these gender non-conforming men as men is the key.

I am a woman, who really doesn’t do ‘feminine’ things like make up/heels/dresses. Consequently, I find any man’s assertion that he is a woman because he likes these things, to be deeply personally insulting. Maybe this is why women who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when sex-based stereotypes were less pervasive, are the group who has reacted quickest and most strongly to this sexist narrative. Well, that and safeguarding children and vulnerable adults!

Eradicating gender stereotypes is not the same thing as denying sex.

No feminist would be denying sex, because otherwise you could not identify which cohort is the victim of sexism.

Eradicating damaging gender stereotypes is a cornerstone of feminism.

Women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, and gender is the means by which it's done.

I'm having an uncomfortable awakening to the fact that some of this trans movement i.e. you are what you feel to be, started with the nineties/noughties feminists. There was (is?) a section of feminism devoted to eradicating gender. They brought up their children with genderless names, clothes, read them books that were non-gender conforming, told them we can't know if someone is male or female unless we see their genitalia. They wouldn't tell outside people the sex of their child. The children grew up to define themselves.

Not all of this movement was bad but it was done to excess and rode roughshod over the reality that there are differences between sexes, that sex matters and that we cannot ignore sex as though it were an inconvenient blemish.

Those feminists thought they were liberating the true inner selves of the next generation. They did it with the best of intentions. They couldn't have predicted it would lead us to where we are today. But here we are anyway.

I have been thinking this for some time.

There is a language element OP. I wouldn’t put it at the top of my list, but it is there. English, as a language, was already far more loosely gendered pre-pronounism etc. than many others where gender runs far deeper, with more gendered word endings, agreements and so on.

I don't think it's language, I think its a mental health problem. It doesn't matter what you give it will never be enough.

Formatting curses!

@liwoxac

Thanks for your thoughtful post and for giving me ^tergiversations" which I am now going to go and practice saying.