Are younger generations more regressive?

But when I came out in the late 90s, the acronym was still LGB, queer was a term of homophobic abuse. If someone said that masculine-looking lesbians were actually men, or that there was such a thing as a male lesbian, that would all be viewed as homophobic bollocks.

Back then there were lesbian bars, bookshops, quiz nights, discussion groups, social groups of all kinds and it was understood and accepted that they were single sex.

This puts me in mind of something that happens about two years ago. My older children's school - they were about 17 and 14 - put a new mask mandate in place, this was some time after the original one had been lifted. The kids were all quite upset about it.

I suggested they get kids together and have some kind of school protest. My dd's answer, "no, we can't do that, people will think we are anti-vaxxers."

Now, I was not giving them any kind of rhetoric against people who didn't want to be vaccinated, this was coming from their school environment in some way.

It just seemed so conformist to me. They were scared to be identified with a group that wasn't really even part of the issue they were concerned with.

I don't think being non-conformist really comes naturally to teens at all.

Pink was actually originally a "manly" colour, I believe. I have no idea why I know that, but it's something I've picked up in my reading somewhere.
It's ridiculous isn't it, that a bloody colour can be off-limits to some, or prescribed to others. It's just a colour - diluted red. Pink is apparently the "lbd" colour of India, for both sexes.
What a weird species we are.

Mine are teen Gen Z -I do think they like labels more.

They've also had "odd" messaging coming from Schools and wider society and peers. I think there may have been less time in their education for critical thinking and wider areas of study - and yes wider social history.

There's loss of nuance in debates going on in society - polarisation - and world is awash in alternative facts. We watches a program last night that was repeating a big USA companies PR about first to do a tech item which isn't true and we know because it's in our living memory but is rapidly becoming accepted fact. Trusted sources are harder to find and who to believe in situations in media can be difficult to work out.

Basically there a lot of noise - perhaps retreating to labels and even stereo types is helpful in some way to counter that.

I will say though DD2 year is starting to have more range of girl hair cuts than DD1 time 4 school years ahead when it was all long as possible hair.

I think things go in cycles (notwithstanding the current rise in extreme misogyny).

My parents raised me without any real belief that there were gendered activities - I knew that football was largely seen as a man's sport, for example, but my mum, grandmother etc were far more keen on attending matches etc then their male partners, I played football at school, etc.

Whereas my grandparents on the other side were firmly of the notion that "women are people who are like this, and men are like that" and that was simply nature's way - like today's fashionable view.

That generation did however think there was a difference between men and women. I can't work out if people who believe someone's feelings about their identity dictates their sex think there is a difference, or not. It would seem so, because of the emphasis placed on changing from one to the other, yet I've never seen an example given of any way in which woman-gender differs from man-gender.

i don’t know if they’re regressive but what’s wrong with pink? I would have thought it very old school (not in a good way) to think pink is any “lesser” than any other colour just because it’s perceived as girly. I am sometimes inclined to “power dressing” for conferences etc and my next dress I think will be pink - I see it as a bit of a statement that you can dress in traditionally “feminine” colours and still be powerful. Bit off topic I know!

It's time that we had a movement celebrating natural, healthy bodies (and I say that as someone with a serious disability who has had reconstructive surgery).

Having a healthy, working body is the greatest gift anyone can have in this life. Young people (as a group) need to learn to look after theirs and to not needlessly modify themselves when the risks are so damaging. You have one body and it's the only one you get for your entire life.

Nah that makes you the opposite of regressive imo. Believing in innate gender would make you regressive.

The younger people I know are definitely feeling more constrained by what used to be called "sterotypes" but now, it seems to be known as "identity".
I think the idea is that what used to be fought against (stereotypes) in my youth (80's teenager, gender benders, men with more makeup than me, non conforming clothing choice as a rebellion against the suits and ties of our parents) is now something that is fought FOR. Identity (stereotypes) is now sacred.
It's a puzzling turnaround, I have to admit.

I remember seeing the local paper in the late 90s and seeing the annual "school group photo" of all the kids going up to secondary, and it occuring to me that every girl, almost without exception, had long, centre parted hair. Where were the short haired girls?

I'm guessing at least some of those identikit "Rachel From Friends" lassies are now parents of teenagers themselves and may well be strengthening the "girls look like this, boys look like that" to their own kids without even realising it's happening. Something very odd happened whilst I wasn't paying attention. I've no idea what.

DadJoke Younger people are more likely to support minority rights, just as they did when gay people were more vilified and oppressed. There are always exceptions, of course, but time usually deals with the problem.

You're assuming that progress takes place from generation to generation in a positive, liberalising direction, with the younger generation invariably supporting the more vilified and oppressed.

I don't think history bears this out - I'm thinking of fascist youth groups in the 30s and the Red Guards in the 60s. And gay- and lesbian-bashing was usually carried out by young people - in my case the two worst attacks were by groups of young men in their teens.

Sure, younger generations take up causes, but that can be to the exclusion and detriment of others.
For example, pro-trans young people will go to almost any length - demonstrations, slogans, tins of soup, fists, iron bars, explosive devices - to support transgender rights.

In so doing the will go to almost any length - demonstrations, slogans, tins of soup, fists, iron bars, explosive devices - to attack women's rights.

So that's just a case of stepping on one group to support another, which isn't social progress in a broad sense. It's more fads and fashion than social justice.

The idea that demographics will ''weed out" anything that is not espoused by today's younger generations sounds like a recipe for a scary dystopian future, but I think that social movements tend to be more cyclical than wavey, and already the wave of trans extremism has begun to ebb.

It will probably be replaced with something that includes the upcycling of some of the social justice ideals and values that the older demographic, including us rights-hoarding dinosaurs, have been defending all this time.

Good health, happiness and a long life to you too!

To my mind, everyone has to be put in a box today. It's like the whole Generation stuff. When I was younger I don't think we knew or cared what Generation people were. Now it feels like it has to define you. Bizarre.

Maybe it's down to social media. It feels like people need to identify themselves as tropes rather than as individuals who happen to have certain interests or likes. Got to be labelled. It's very limiting and pointless.

I'm not sure how being wedded to very conservative ideas about gender, so much so that you feel it is better to demolish your body to fit the stereotype of pink and blue brains, is at all indicative to being favourable to minority rights?

To me, it seems the opposite of progress to be waiting and hoping for a tipping point when a highly conformist generation can lean into very conservative ideologies without an opposing voice to contend with.

That's a hell of a stretch - it's simple how demographics work.

I wish you all good health, happiness and a long life.

So nice to know that you joyfully await the deaths of everyone who disagrees with you ideologically. Very heartwarming of you to mention it to us. I feel really touched to know how you really feel about us all 💐

Yes, this is exactly what I see. They way they talk about current events makes it clear very quickly that they have no knowledge about what has come before, or what happens elsewhere.

It's very odd for a group that is consistently complaining that older people didn't learn about bad things in the past, or don't know about other cultures.

Even lack of literary experience seems a problem, they don't read older books so seem to have strange idea about how people who lived even 50 years ago thought.

So much today seems to revolve around identities and 'presentations' that can be purchased. It really does seem like the end point of capitalism and individualism combined. Everything is for sale; everything has a label; and these identities have to be 'advertised' in very conspicuous ways.

'Girly core' involves buying lots of punk stuff to wear and with which to decorate your bedroom......

Take Halloween as another example.it used to be that you'd have a few apples bobbing round in a baby's bathtub, or maybe hanging from a string - but now it is full on consumerism, with supermarkets full of outfits; candles; platic artefacts; make-up and other Halloween accoutrements.

I suppose it would be better if it were called CutesyCore or something. Maybe that already exists 🤔

You mean for everyone of the female sex?

Gender is presentation.

The trouble is that it's pretty white middle class as a movement. So who is "most marginalised" in a white middle class family? Probably someone gay or neurodivergent. "Most marginalised" in their worldview doesn't incorporate working class boys with lower academic attainment leaving school with no qualifications and feeling so unsafe in their lives that they carry knives every day. Nor does it include women victims of domestic abuse, or Muslim women brought from Pakistan to marry their cousin, unable to speak much English . Nor does it include people with learning disabilities.

At the end of the day gender ideology is so much about the intersection of oppression and class to me. Which doesn't mean that many of those caught up in the ideology are not indeed very vulnerable and marginalised; but to me the gender issues are a symptom of the marginalisation, not the cause of it.

The only exception to that are the very tiny numbers of "old school" children with gender dysphoria which begins in very early childhood in highly gender non confirming male children, who often go on to become very "feminine" gay men (or at least, they did, before gender ideology). I do think their vulnerability stems from their gender non conformity; whereas the new puberty-onset cohort, their gender non conformity stems from their vulnerability.

The - core is a young person on social media thing. If you’re a fan of anything, you can literally add core and make it sound more legitimate. They do this with TikTok too- CleanTok is for people who like cleaning videos etc

I agree with the regressiveness and I think that an ideal world would have no gender expectations. A male who liked pink could just say that they liked it without people assuming that his gf makes him live in a house with pink walls.

I try to avoid the 'young folk these days, don't know they're born' trope [don't understand it fully anyway, how can you not know you're born??] but..

I agree with TempestTost about the role of education.

I think the lack of knowledge of history, even fairly recent history, has blunted [some] young people's understanding of the present. I'm often shocked at how little younger people know about the past - for instance I've heard several young people mix up the [Irish] War of Independence and the Civil War, which as you can guess just from the names, were very very different events!

Another example is the ahistorical use of the word 'apartheid'. People who haven't learnt about the history of South Africa in the 20th century seem to think that 'apartheid' is just a useful word meaning 'discriminatory' or 'oppressive', which is to misappropriate the specific horrors of the actual apartheid regime in SA.

It's also obvious that a lot of young people haven't a clue about the history of women's rights and gay rights, and that's why any old guff about being kind to the most marginalised people in society can become an article of faith.

I suppose every generation thinks they know better than the old dinosaurs they are replacing, but in important areas younger people seem to know a lot less.
Not their fault, of course, so I'm not being judgmental about them as people.

I keep seeing shows where the kids are saying "I want to be my best self" or other crap stuff parroted from the internet. They don't need to think because the internet thinks for them. So yes, definitely more regressive.

Meanwhile, while girls are told to be kind, boys are seeing more and more violence at an earlier age. I was shocked to find a friend's 10 yr old is now regularly watching the same anime I watch as an adult and consider extremely violent with lots of sexualised images of girls. And so are his friends.

So increased violence with immature brains.

You could ask your friends how they'd feel if a "regular" man (i.e. balding, middle-aged with a beer belly, rather unattractive to them) used our toilets and changing rooms.

My daughter asks friends that and they're all horrified at the thought and instantly call Mr Regular a perve.

Funny, that. 'Cause there really isn't any difference.

By nature young people are at their most conservative, in the sense that they are very much inclined to feel social pressure around their views, and they are most heavily peer influenced.

It doesn't matter, IME, if the views around them are liberal or conservative or whatever in the political or economic sense. They are just not free thinkers, and they are inexperienced.

Why anyone ever thought society should follow the lead of the young I have no clue.

I think there are a number of things that make the current crop vulnerable to stupid ideologies. ne is the commercialization as mentioned above - sex differerntiation is good for consumerism.

One is their educations have been completely fucked up, they have largely been indoctrinated as social justice activists rather than thought to think about things. ANd they learn only the history that supports them having the correct views.

And then, they spend more time on assemblies about social fads than they do reading serious literature.

So - they are kind of open to any clever ideologist who tells them they have believe a certain things or they will be a bigot.

Younger people are more likely to support minority rights, just as they did when gay people were more vilified and oppressed. There are always exceptions, of course, but time usually deals with the problem.