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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Is the trans movement mainly enforced by a certain generation?

74 replies

BornAgainFem · 31/12/2017 16:28

I'm 30. When I speak to my friends IRL about the infiltration of women's spaces and underlying misogyny in the transgender movement, most of them disagree with me or think I'm fixating on a non-issue.
Most the people who do agree with me are older than me (DM's generation/Julie Bindel/Germaine Greer et al).
My concern is that once that generation die out, noone will be fighting our corner.
The younger generation seem to be much more accepting and forceful of the whole gender trainwagon. Is it going to get a whole lot worse? How many of you on here are 30 and under?

OP posts:
BeyondAssignation · 31/12/2017 16:36

I'm 32. I think pregnancy and motherhood have a somewhat radicalising effect, so while younger women are more "accepting" now, they won't necessarily be the same as they realise the effect their biology has on their lives. Iyswim?

BeyondAssignation · 31/12/2017 16:38

Also I wonder if there is a bit of the "silent Tory" to it (though obviously not Tory!). People know that certain views will not go down well, so keep their opinions private. I know a few people younger than me who are RF-leaning, but they are quiet about it online.

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 17:00

Exactly my impression! I'm male in my late 40s. I was strongly pro trans until a year ago, but even so would never have asserted that transwomen are women, thought that discussion of female anatomy was transphobic, or believed that rapists could transfer to women's prisons.

But it seems that young people really believe the most extreme versions of transactivism--or at least are willing to assert it publicly. (I don't think in practice young heterosexual men are wanting to have sex with TIFs, nor is Owen Jones attracted to transmen.)

It goes along with these new special snowflake sexual orientations (demisexual, pansexual, aromatic) which also seem weirdly alien to me.

I grew up with Adam & the Ants, Boy George, and Quentin Crisp (BBC's Naked Civil Servant), and their subverting gender orthodoxy was liberating. By contrast, the current crop of TRAs seem to me like a deluded mysogynistic cult.

ALunerExplorer · 31/12/2017 17:07

"It goes along with these new special snowflake sexual orientations (demisexual, pansexual, aromatic) which also seem weirdly alien to me."

But they are not new - none of this is. None of this sprung up out of nowhere in the last 15/20 years. I'm 50+ - I remember my Grandparents and parents generation trying to act like sex outside of marriage was invented in the 60's.

All of these things have always existed: what evolves is understanding, knowledge, awareness, language.

TheSmallClangerWhistlesAgain · 31/12/2017 17:07

On the surface, it looks like it's being led by university-age and younger people, but I don't think it is - they are just the loudest ones. There are a few puppet masters involved.

guardianfree · 31/12/2017 17:18

Yes cromeyellow0
I also know that life experiences humbled my youthful arrogance. Working with women who had been raped, dealing with contraception and pregnancy, feminism and being a parent all contribute to my understanding of how vulnerable the young are to negative influences unless we equip them with strong anti twat radars. And how vulnerable women can be in different situations.

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 17:18

ALunerExplorer
'A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.'
Yes this has always existed. There has never been any discrimination against such people (has "demisexuality" ever been illegal?), indeed they are conforming to society's normative expectations.

What is new is the compulsive need to label oneself with a special Identity which everyone else has to respect or it is literal violence.

makeourfuture · 31/12/2017 17:24

special snowflake

I think this description of younger people is terrible.

There are those who have strong feelings on this issue. But there seems to be a more intense desire among many youths to examine closely social issues/problems/inequalities/structures...and I think there is nothing "snowflake" about that.

I think the decline of the west and with it diminishing living standards present this younger generation with unique and tough challenges.

DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus · 31/12/2017 17:32

Lunar medicating homosexual children, taking away women's rights, this isn't progress. The movement is homophobic and misogynistic at heart.

I think when people become parents their attitudes change. As a woman in the west this is when you really feel the vice like clamp of patriarchy, maybe for the first time.

ALunerExplorer · 31/12/2017 17:32

Exactly that. I have struggled to get my head around this whole 'the kids are revolting!' mentality I'm afraid.

DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus · 31/12/2017 17:34

This is presented as counter culture but it isn't at all is it. Since when did the state change laws to support a youth movement, nah, never happens. Someone wants biological sex eradicated and for women and girls, even children, to have zero boundaries.

ALunerExplorer · 31/12/2017 17:34

"What is new is the compulsive need to label oneself with a special Identity which everyone else has to respect..."

guardianfree · 31/12/2017 17:46

Agreed Damnde
Why this has had such traction I cannot understand.
Feminism, Black Lives, Gay liberation etc etc - all movements that have taken decades to impact on legislation - but this one - have anything you want. Drugs for children? Access to schools? Eradicate the meaning of women ? Yup - it's all yours.

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 17:47

Here's some good data. We can see that 2/3rds of young women are very comfortable with transwomen using women's refuges. It may surprise you that men are much less comfortable than women with transwomen using women's refuges. There are a lot of handmaidens out there.

Is the trans movement mainly enforced by a certain generation?
Amethyst975 · 31/12/2017 17:51

Is it worth pointing out that those figures were for 2016? It wasn’t really until this year that the full implications of self-id gender identity became publicly apparent. Do you think those figures will look similar at the start of 2018?

ALunerExplorer · 31/12/2017 17:51

There is a good deal of misrepresentation (especially recently) on how trans children are supported. We could explore that, but it might be considered off topic.

And no, women's rights are not being taken anywhere. There isn't a trans cult, like there wasn't a gay mafia.

whoputthecatout · 31/12/2017 17:52

Hmm. Wonder if those percentages would have been the same if the question had specified whether the transgender 'women' had had surgery or were, like the majority of transgender men still in possession of their male parts.

I think a lot of people confuse transgender with transexual.

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 17:53

ALunerExplorer

Demisexual is far more like Goth, Emo, or New Romantic than it is like lesbian or gay. No one has ever been persecuted for being demisexual, but they have been for being gay/lesbian/bisexual. When a kid proclaims he or she are demisexual, the parents will react with bemusement rather than horror.

It's quite harmless (unlike sterilising and mutilating children who don't conform to gender stereotypes), but I was using this as an example of the change in sensibilities across generations.

ALunerExplorer · 31/12/2017 17:55

Ah, the 'younger women these days have no thoughts of their own and are in sexual thrall to the patriarchy' malarkey again.

And believe when I tell you that every time you say stuff like that, their eyes only roll even further back than the previous thousands of times they get told that.

But please, do keep patronising them and re-enforcing to them all the really good reasons why they're standing on that side of the fence.

pigsknickers · 31/12/2017 18:00

Well bugger me, I've just discovered I'm demisexual. I'm a snowflake after all, hooray! (what a load of bollocks)

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 18:00

Wonder if those percentages would have been the same if the question had specified whether the transgender 'women' had had surgery or were, like the majority of transgender men still in possession of their male parts.

The wording was '[people who] have gone through all or part of a process (including thoughts or actions) to change the sex they were described as at birth to the gender they identify with, or intend to. This might include by changing their name, wearing different clothes, taking hormones or having gender reassignment surgery'.

But of course people are unlikely to have someone like Lily Madigan or Danielle Muscado in mind.

LangCleg · 31/12/2017 18:00

I'm early 50s so definitely a haggard old TERF and generally worthless to society, or whatever it is the MRA TIMs like to say!

Observing my kids and their friends (uni and just post-uni age), it seems to me that most of them think that the whole transgender thing is a load of baloney. But they don't take it seriously - it's their generation's version of mods vs rockers to them.

But, if you narrow it down to the ones who are politically active or engaged, these ones have mostly swallowed the entire pomo agenda, trans issues included, whole.

I think this is why it looks as though all the kids believe it - the ones who don't just aren't talking about it on social media. They're busy with fashion or football or whatever it is they are into.

I think the girls who are currently vociferious trans allies will have a rude awakening once they're in their thirties and trying to juggle kids and work and mature women's healthcare, or just trying to get their voices heard at all. I pity them for what is to come.

restbiterepeat · 31/12/2017 18:10

I'm 38. I went through uni reading a lot of queer theorist and post-feminists. I thought Germaine Greer was unnecessarily shitty to those who were trans. I couldn't see the harm. I couldn't see why it was necessary to police the boundaries of womanhood. Trans was carnival, destabilising, an opportunity to unravel gender and not just gender, sex too which was simply an extension of the masquerade of the dichotomy between men and women.

It's not just current youngster that were hoodwinked.

SophoclesTheFox · 31/12/2017 18:11

That's a really interesting table crome. I'm sure that had I been asked at 18-24 whether I was comfortable with a trans woman in a women's refuge, I too would have fallen over myself to affirm their right to be there.

In my forties I have a very different view, and as I don't have children, it's not that. But more a creeping realisation that when it comes to "equality", I was sold a pig in a poke at that age.

cromeyellow0 · 31/12/2017 18:18

Trans was carnival, destabilising, an opportunity to unravel gender and not just gender, sex too which was simply an extension of the masquerade of the dichotomy between men and women.

Exactly what I used to think. To be fair to us, I think it has become more misogynistic recently. It's attracting a lot of young people who are struggling with adolescence. I just don't think it's going to give them a solution.