Gender swap situation

[TenThousandYears]

I know you're all probably fed up hearing about this subject...I just need to vent.

DD has been friends with "Sally" for 10 years. (Both 14) Since nursery. In the last few months Sally has decided to change gender and now wants to be called " Ron"

DD just can't wrap her head around this. If she slips up, she gets nasty looks from "Ron" and so she's treading on eggshells.

Ron's brother still refers to Ron as Sally so DD is very confused by it all.

I'm on DDs side. Personally, I would hate to be in her shoes right now. I think if you meet someone and are introduced to them as whomever then that's easier to accept than having to change names and pronouns of someone you've been friends with for 10 years. On TV shows people just accept this straight away and move on but I'm not convinced that it's really that easy.

I also think 14 is a bit young for these changes but that's just my personal opinion.

Are me and my child horrible people for not being able to accept this right away?

Of course it's not. But that isn't the topic under discussion, so that's quite the irrelevant leap you've made there.

Nothing being made up at all. Simply commenting on how the pp was coming across imo.

If you have to resort to swiping at pps who weren't actually talking to you in the first place, I'd say you don't have much of a point yourself.

No. You completely fabricated things that weren't being said. And you know you did.

to drag us slightly back on topic: it is clear that despite clarity given by the SC ruling, and more and more companies (and schools) rolling back mixed sex toilets and spaces to single sex, we are still going to be faced with young people declaring a trans identity.

So what is key is how we handle this on 2 completely different levels. On a personal level i think they should be dealt with sympathetically, compasionately and with empathy. But also firmly, so that while their wishes (in some respects) will be followed, there are other red lines that will not be bent or broken. And that they also need to display sympathy and understanding with their friends and classmates who may have greater or fewer issues around names, pronouns etc etc.

But on a general level it must be made clear that we have single sex spaces, etc, and that those boundaries are not to be trampled on. Film yourself using the opposite sex facilities? expect a visit from the plod. Employment law in particular is very clear, and that must be made clear and kept in mind.

The genie is not going back in the bottle. Unfortunately.

@Tandora

Feeling like you are not quite the same as other people of your sex was, for women especially, experienced and understood differently at very different times.

In 1425, people believed “not feeling like a woman” was evidence of religious vocation — you were probably called to be a spiritual recluse or a nun.

In 1525, you might be likely to experience it as a medical issue: an excess of humours, maybe; or a bodily distemper. If your father was learned and wanted to teach you Latin, however, it might be evidence of your natural attunement to the humanist ideals of the new scholarship.

In 1625, if you didn’t feel like a woman and you moved in wealthy and courtly Protestant circles, you might be thought of as an unusually pious woman with a scholarly vocation; if you were unlucky and poor, people believed you were probably a witch.

In 1725, if you were unlucky, people might believe you had been possessed by a demon. If you were lucky and came from a wealthy court family, you might instead become a playwright or a poet.

In 1825, if you didn’t “feel like a woman” you would likely be thought of as mad; or, if you were rich and bohemian, you had an artistic sensibility.

In 1925, people believed that feeling “not like a woman” was the cause of homosexuality.

In 2025, people believe it makes you “trans”.

All of these are ways in which people fit their own “feelings” and experiences into the beliefs that are current at the time. But, importantly, they are all still belief systems, or ideologies, or cultural trends.

How will people interpret their feelings of disconnection or difference in 2125? One thing’s for sure: it won’t look the same as the current idea of “trans”, if one goes by historical precedent.

(Note that male ideas of sex and sexuality all across these time periods tended to be always much more about sex, particularly same-sex desire, sexual activity and sexual fetishes. Not until quite recently is there much evidence of men claiming they really are women — and, tellingly, this starts to appear roughly concurrently with women starting to achieve some degree of legal and financial rights. There was not much evidence at all that men liked the idea that they might really be women during the periods when women had no vote, little control over their lives, and little financial autonomy. Funny, that.)

Always focus on the behaviour not the identity. It's more important.

Its hard watching a simple question of how one teenager relates to another turned into a bun fight over how traumatized adult women are by the infinitesimally small number of gender nonconforming people.

This is such an enormously unimportant issue in my life and the lives of my two adult gay daughters. Its.just.not.a.problem. I could not care less about the gender identity of another person. This feels like arguing over whether someone else dyes their hair. It doesn’t affect me at all.

I can see (because Jesus Christ are the arguments repetitive) that it matters passionately to a sliver of mumsnet and, of course, to the evangelical far right in the US. But they are also phoning in bomb threats to the local children’s hospital and speaking in tongues outside the White House so I usually ignore them. Its here that I see the melding of a kind of green/feminist/crunchy/lesbian politics with a fetishization of the pure/victimized idealized feminine. Its a kind of purity politics that is usually found on the far right (protect our national or ethnic purity from alien invaders) and occasionally on the far left (protect the workers from the intelligentsia, protect the motherland from the enemy).

Its just a kid experimenting with their identity. Its just someone else’s child struggling to find themself. Either be a friend or don’t. Jesus stop wailing about compelled speech snd bathrooms. It is so unnecessary.

You must feel terribly holier-than-thou!

“It doesn’t affect me at all.” How nice for you!

Thank your lucky stars you don’t have a disabled female relative who needs intimate care; or a child who thinks it’s a good idea to have a mastectomy because she thinks if she fancies girls she “must be a boy”. Thank your lucky stars too that you’re not a woman in pain in hospital, or in prison, but stuck in close proximity to a man you can’t get away from; or a woman or girl who’s suffered sexual assault or rape seeking a female-only therapeutic space or crisis service.

It must be nice to dismiss other women’s lives, concerns and experiences so readily, from a position of great privilege. In any case, your points are not that relevant to the OP’s post. Her daughter is uncomfortable; but your advice is “either be a friend or don’t”. Yet the other child is not being so good a friend, is she, if she’s treating OP’s daughter meanly? What’s so special about “gender identity” that means one child gets a free pass to lord it over the others?

Spot on @marshmallowpuff.
It's interesting that so many objections are all about silencing. "Don't say this, don't speak about that, don't use this word, you can't mention that" ad infinitum.

Fortunately feminists are used to disapproval, to being told to be quiet. If you'd told me back in the day that I'd be arguing that girls shouldn't be subjected to boys watching them undress in school changing rooms, that girls should not be taught that they have no right to boundaries if a male requires access to them undressing. Or that a generation of children would be groomed into believing that sex change was desirable to cure their flawed pubertal bodies, I would never have believed that society could sink so low.Let alone that some would frame objections to this as an evangelical type of purity politics!

In fact, what's happening is that decent responsible adults are doing what all responsible adults do - safeguarding children from toxic beliefs that undermine their safety and wellbeing. And we won't stop.

Not holier than thou. Interesting choice of words though. I don’t really see how my stated beliefs lead to that as an accusation. I am not above or outside of the world. I just am not seeing myself or my sex as victimized by a tiny minority of non conformists.

In addition: What makes you think I don’t have a disabled female relative? Or use public facilities? Or that my girls didn’t attend school with trans kids? Or that I don’t know or treat trans people in my practice or encounter them in public? Of course I do. They just are perfectly ordinary people, some good and some bad.

OP's daughter would have plenty of reality, such as losing her whole friendship group, if she carried on calling the friend Sally and using 'she'.

“Perfectly ordinary” people do not get sexual thrills from putting on women’s underwear and forcing their way into women’s changing facilities, or from pretending to have periods, be pregnant, give birth, or breastfeed.

I think one of the main problems is that;

1. People have been indoctrinated to believe that trans women are not men. No questions asked.

2. People have been indoctrinated to believe that trans women are one homogenous vulnerable group.

3. People have been indoctrinated to believe that being trans involves some sort of internal physical change or natural brain difference which separates trans women from men.

None of these points are true.

If you can’t accept that a trans woman is actually a biological man then you probably can’t understand any safe guarding concerns people have in some situations.

If you believe that trans women are one vulnerable group and you deny the numbers of AGP men and cross dressers who use the trans umbrella to legitimize their sexual fetish then you won’t understand any safeguarding concerns.

If you believe and adult human male can become an adult human female just by saying so and changing their dress code then you won’t understand safe guarding concerns, Or indeed if you don’t believe adult human males can become adult human females but you still support them entering into single sex spaces then you can’t understand safe guarding concerns.

Dress how you want, calL yourself what you want but don’t increase risks and lower privacy and dignity for another vulnerable group called women.

@Tandora

Please explain how an adult human male lives as a women?
How does one live as a woman.

Define this please.

Not necessarily. Who the rest of the friendship group sided with would come down to which of the two girls was the most popular and where on their route through this trend the school culture lay. If the peer group is still in the midst of thinking trans is 'cool' and Sally is generally better liked, you'd probably be right. If they've tired of it, like many teens, or prefer OPs DD, they will side with her. I think the time when unconditional compliance could be coerced with threats of ostracisiation has passed.

i just am not seeing myself or my sex as victimized by a tiny minority of non conformists.

What you mean here is 'men I've decided to give special privileges to'.

Why does this one group of men merit these special privileges? No other 'tiny group' of non conformists or otherwise gets access to women's spaces, so why this one?

And as men are overwhelmingly responsible for violent and sexual crime, then of course women become less safe if you undermine safeguarding principles and let some men in. Why would anyone think that's an acceptable development?

How do you “live as a woman”?

What you mean here is 'men I've decided to give special privileges to'.

That is categorically not what that pp meant

Of course it is.

Why do you think one group of men should have access to women's spaces and services when no other men get this?

Women don't 'live as women'. We live our lives in bodies that are biologically geared to function in a particular way, and this influences certain aspects of our lives. Other people recognise us as women and treat us in a different way from the way men are treated. This influences the way we experience life. Living as a woman is a phrase coined by TW to describe their attempts to replicate these experiences. For most women, the phrase has nothing to do with our lives, as woman is the noun that describes us, not the verb to describe how we live.

It actually makes me sad the number of people on here who are encouraging OP to tell her DD to stop being friends with Ron whether they believe Ron is confused, mentally unwell or legitimately exploring gender.

Imagine how Ron will feel if suddenly he has no friends and he’s totally alienated when he’s also going through what must be a very exposing and mentally challenging situation (whether a phase or a delusion or whatever you think it is).

I would encourage your daughter to be as supportive as possible and to keep an open mind and not bully or alienate a 14 year old.

We live our lives in bodies that are biologically geared to function in a particular way, and this influences certain aspects of our lives.

yes true. But there is more than biology, and biology itself is diverse and complex.

Other people recognise us as women and treat us in a different way from the way men are treated.

Right. Absolutely. Exactly this. And we also recognise ourselves to be women and that influences how we interact with the world around us.

Living as a woman is a phrase coined by TW to describe their attempts to replicate these experiences

TW are not trying to replicate your experiences. They have no more interest in your experiences than you have in theirs.
TW simply want to live their lives within their own experience . In a manner that is comfortable, tolerable and authentic for them. This really isn’t about you- I promise.

If Ron/Sally is making the OP's child feel like she's 'walking on eggshells' for fear of getting new pronouns wrong - how is that a healthy and happy friendship for the OP's child?

All this 'be kind' stuff has only ever been a one way street.

TW can do all of that without trying to compel people to say they're actually women or give them access to women's spaces.

Thats where the problems occur.

If TW are not trying to replicate the experience of women and its a totally seperate experience, unrelated to that of women, then why isn't the phrase 'living as a transwoman' then? That makes a great deal more sense. A seperate group with their own needs, nothing to do with the needs and experience of women. I think most people could get behind that and join the push for seperate facilities and spaces and so on for a group of people who are completely different from women.