How do we think Gen Alpha will approach gender ideology?

I wonder if there is an age thing rather than a generation thing going on with gen Alpha. My son was the most logical, science-minded, “colours are for everyone, people are stupid if they say only girls can wear pink” boy in primary. When he hit puberty, which he hated, all that logic went out the window in favour of an explanation (trans) for his discomfort that he could retro-fit onto his past (liking pink).

We didn’t affirm, school didn’t either, and post-puberty (and the other side of some horrendous years of worry) he seems to have desisted. But seriously, do not underestimate the chaos that goes on in a pubertal child’s brain.

The gen alphas I know find the whole thing ridiculous/cringy, and regard the older kids they know who are non-binary/trans as basically attention seeking weirdos.

Listening to them talk about it reminded me of being a young teen in the eighties and talking about my older (late teen) cousin who was posing as a tortured poet/artiste type, all big flouncy white shirts and tousled hair, he was such a pretentious arsehole (although I like him now).

Yep. We - women, mainly - knew and warned that the groups who would face the backlash were women, traditional transsexual people, and LGB people. And so it is. Although of course homophobia never went away anyway and was ingrained into trans 'rights' in the first place.

Rainbows are the most hijacked symbol there is - just enjoy the science of it, and stop attaching extra meaning. 😃

Children below 13 will generally just parrot their parents’ views on stuff like this.

My mid teen boys are very gender critical, but they say that the majority of girls that they know are far more ‘woke’ and accepting of trans.

It does vary a lot though.

As do most people (i hope). I was responding to the comments above about use of the word gay as a derogatory term and avoidance of rainbows.

I'm not anti gay, I fully support LGB rights, so do most of the young folk who find the constant transwashing tiresome.

My 14 yr old is very questioning. I can’t help but think the phrase “born in the wrong body” dominated and gaslit more than one generation into thinking that’s a possibility. I hope TWAW doesn’t have as much traction, it does after all sound a bit demanding and desperate.

The anti gay absolutely is. And don't get me wrong, it was very much predictable and predicted as a consequence of alphabet soup. Doesn't make it right.

It's not a return to bigotry.

Agree completely. Possibly this discussion belongs on that other thread but i think that because hormones are 'natural' (in both MHT and trans discourse), the fact they are given as exogenous drugs, with very real (and poorly understood) risks is ignored or downplayed. Hormones = safe and Drs = troublesome gatekeepers.

Anyway, yes data needed. Much data. Politically difficult to acquire but the efforts of the wonderful Dr Sullivan and Dr Gribble to clear up language must help.

Lack of evidence is rife through the whole thing. That's a real scandal. I read the other thread about testosterone in menopause with interest. So much we don't know or understand.

Hormones are weird. Feels like an experiment where we aren't collecting any data.

Whilst I am relieved to hear all this anecdotal evidence of gen A being less interested in previous, the analysies of the data - both by Twenge and Kaufmann - is not without issues (see BARpod episode 20/10). I got the impression that good data into gender identity trends is difficult to find.

Having said that, my own anecdotal data as a GP is that presentations from teenagers has fallen off. I do very much wonder whether Cass, and making treatment less medicalised, has changed things - expectations or presentation to medical services. Can't comment about wider identification though.

If the result of this is a return to bigotry I don't see it as a win.

Relieved that my gen alpha may be spared the angst of questioning their gender and potentially the rest of the TRA agenda (and i say 'their' because i dont like to give out personal info on my kids, including their sex). But not great for people who are anything other than heterosexual. And not really great then either because bigotry.

I have two gen alphas in the house. One at 13 is very socially astute and engaged in school life. She says it barely comes up now. She finds it a bit much and has an eye roll attitude to older GI adherents.

The younger is just in yr 7 and is less socially adept. Very much into nature etc. The attitude there is “it’s stupid” as he knows you can’t change sex as a mammal and all about mammalian procreation.

I know they’d both accept someone dressing outside stereotypical norms, it’s just they won’t take the dishonesty of someone claiming to be what they aren’t.

Interestingly I can't find any reference on mumsnet to 'social contagion' re: transgender identification prior to 2017. This is the earliest:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/lgbt_children/2891898-Another-teenage-girl-who-want-to-be-a-boy

But, a Google search shows at least one article using that term before 2017: Wall Street Journal, 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-transgender-battle-line-childhood-1451952794

So, it's not correct to say the concept was novel in 2017 and presumably it was being used in some circles long before.

I do get the impression that lot of the older teens are getting fed up with it too, and recognise it for what it is. Unfortunately schools still push the trans acceptance (aka encouragement, thanks to the SNP and the 'Greens') aspect, actually often to the detriment of LGB pupils.

My DD is 13 and Gen Alpha; and amongst her social group gender ideology is horrendously uncool. They all regard it as something quite cringe that the sixth-formers and a few “gender people” are obsessed with (and DD says that only the sixth-formers seem to put their pronouns on everything, whereas no-one in the lower school does). This makes me think that it’s increasingly a fad which is going to go out of fashion amongst the younger cohorts (despite taking a while to pass through some older ones).

University students still seem pretty captured, but much less obsessed with it than two or three years ago, when they were announcing their thoughts on gender at every opportunity and their pronouns in every email.

This. Suddenly feeling rather old 🤣

That's a decent piece, but,

They support the idea of a “social contagion”, first proposed back in 2017

back in 2017, I don't think I had a clue, but I can't believe the concept of social contagion wasn't talked about, here and elsewhere?

I've noticed my Gen Alpha's absolutely loathe rainbows or anything brightly coloured and striped that resembles one.

Ha! love this.
My gen alphas laugh at it. We often joke about they/them and call our pets that sometimes as the male pet seems maternal (calm down its a joke) and furries are the weirdest most ridiculous thing ever to the point dc will not wear an kind of teddy fleece type of cardigan as ewww people would think you're a furry. They had a furry at primary school who went to school with a cat tail sometimes.

My daughter is Gen Alpha and only 10 but was kind of 'exposed' to it via a slightly older friend when the older friend covered it at school a couple of years ago, so we've had some chats about it. She's quite relaxed about it to be honest but doesn't believe people actually change their sex. She's picked up on the stereotyping involved especially in girls who adopt a non-binary identity. She's got the simple part down but she's not had to navigate it in real life in a peer group so we'll see. So far this is nowhere in her school in terms of kids identifying as anything - it being a largely middle class thing holds up in my experience as it's just not coming up in the schools or nurseries my siblings and I are involved in. Also in my experience with her class and friendship groups loads of them seem to have this kind of serious, pragmatic and quite literal approach to many things which might be their age more than anything but I hope that kind of realistic grounding carries them though. Socially they remind me a lot of xennials. I know it's just generalisations and anecdotal though.

Some of the kids' parents are a different story to the kids though.

Edit: just to add on the back of pp, they don't seem to be homophobic. They do talk about whether they like boys, girls, both, neither and I've not heard of any issues around that.

I guess lawyers will be circling as there will be plenty of work for the foreseeable future.

What has always struck me is how so many adults including professionals do not understand that children differ cognitively to adults.

children have vague ideas about sexuality right up to teens and sometimes beyond.

Because they are not sexually motivated, they are socially motivated.

So many children have same sex love friendships, and also opposite sex love relationships.

Otherwise known as erm friendships.

then adults come along claiming we must address certain phobias early doors, and help Gay and Trans children avoid exclusion.

children are alerted to differences in themselves and others just by life experiences.

Wannging on at school about sexual preferences early doors has no benefit to children, it just puts in their head concepts beyond their understanding.

and as a matter of fact makes vulnerable children even more so.

pisses me off no end, my children are both adult and parents i told them about sex reproduction and sexuality when they asked about it and not before.

I hope that this bullshit has left the room before my grandchildren go to school and are made available to assuage the guilt or shame of adults.