My daughter perceives me as 'bigoted' re transgender issues.

[FunderAnna]

Two days ago I posted the following on Facebook

"A survey from employers asks 'What is my gender identity' and gives 4 possible answers.

1. Male (including female to male transmen)
2. Female (including male to female transwomen)
3. Non-binary (for example, androgyne) 4)Prefer not to say.

There is no option for me just to state that I am female."

Within minutes I got a Messenger response - including screenshot - of this post from my daughter saying she couldn't see why this was an issue and she'd like to understand at some point.

I messaged back saying yes we could discuss it at some later point and adding a bit of chat. I tried three times to send it and then realised she had blocked me.

Yesterday after I'd emailed her she said that my posting that had made her feel incredibly upset and that she perceived the post as 'bigoted'.

I think I'd find responses from feminist Mumsnetters quite helpful at this point. My daughter has just started her final term at university so it's best if I remain fairly calm about this one. We generally are close and get on well. As I only have a PAYG mobile, messaging each other by FB had worked well as a way of having the odd quick chat. Email feels more distant.

The current position of transgender advocates is that women's rights are anti trans.
There is a conflict in law between the protected groups.

My youngest DD spotted the title of this post and asked if I had written it. I suspected she felt this way, now I know. I think ultimately the time and care, past and present, that we give our daughters will prevail over a few years of youthful exploration. Good luck. I hope your situation resolves quickly.

H'm, you could have just put "female" and leave it at that for the sake of a quiet life but it seems like you and your daughter are both people who are willing to make a stand for the sake of a principle. Which is a Good Thing, except when it causes fights, in which case it's a Bad Thing.

I thought my parents were fools when I was 20, too. I believe the saying is that when you're 15 you think your father is a fool and when you're 21 you're amazed at how much the old fellow seems to have learnt - but I was a bit of a late developer.

Can't really offer much sage advice but I am the sort of person who's prepared to kick off publicly for the sake of a principle, too, so I sure as hell can't advise you to keep quiet. I suspect she'll come round. She sounds clever and feisty, like you. xx

My dd and I don't agree on gender issues but we would not block each other. I would be very worried that there was something else going on in her life.

I think she is apprehensive about exams and the future Bertrand. The uncertainty may be making her quite rigid in her views. A number of her friends are quite purist in their views - vegan etc - and some of the descriptions here about a kind of student zealousness/conviction, which tends to condemn other viewpoints have struck a chord with me. She hasn't blocked her Dad who will send her the odd What'sApp message. I'm going to leave it for a few days then email or send an old-fashioned card with a bit of general chat. (Her boyfriend may also be a source of information, though I wouldn't try contacting him unless we continued to feel things were going awry.)

Nope you're not a bigot (so sick of that word being overused these days - didn't it used to be 'so there' was the end of an argument).

OP it wasn't your post that was being noticed as new. The regulars on FC just took note of all the 'lovely' new posters piling in at the beginning.

My DC have trans friends. When I first noticed the TRA/MRA agenda, I explained to my kids the realities behind this movement, and showed them news articles etc to get them to understand the issue. They very quickly realized how dangerous this agenda actually is for their trans friends as well as their many gay friends, and this was before we even got into the damage it will do/is doing to women's rights.

Maybe once your daughter realizes that your concerns about women's rights does not mean that you don't want transpersons to have their rights too. It's just that these are two separate issues that should not be impacting the other.

Best of luck op

Hi FunderAnna

I think I can be helpful here because I've been in exactly the same situation with the roles reversed. I am the daughter. My sister identifies as non-binary. My mother is old school feminist and I USED to be fully trans-inclusive (transwomen are women).

I say used to be because my mother convinced me, through a few days of discussion where I was initially trying to convince her to be more chill and inclusive.

Learning how to have respectful discussions with people we disagree with is a dying skill. It's so much easier to just call them a bigot and block them.

Make sure your daughter knows that even though you two disagree on this topic you respect her, and her views, and will always love her, and hope she can return that.

If she's open to it, start a dialog on the issue, ask her why she believes what she believes, why is it bigoted to say that you simply are female not 'identifying' as one?

You can not convince someone without truly hearing what they're saying. If you go into it with your set of talking points the other person won't feel heard and respected and it won't be productive. Maybe we ARE being bigoted and not seeing it? Bigots usually don't believe that's what they're doing. There's a (small) chance she's right and we're all wrong.

I will say the key thing that got me flipped was her point that the whole IDEA of transgender (or gender identity) is based on sexism.
Old school sexism is that the sex of your body determines your personality - what you think and like and do. Transgenderism is the idea that your personality (what you think, like and do) determines the sex you should have been, or "really" are. It's exactly the same sexism just seen from the other direction. That's why we can't support the notion even if it would make some vulnerable people feel better about themselves.

You may not come to an agreement but hopefully at least she will understand where you are coming from and that it's not based in bigotry as she's been taught.

And if there's not real chance of a discussion then it can just be one of those topics where you agree to disagree and politely avoid talking about it, as so many families do with e.g. religion.

Really hope you and your daughter are talking again and hopefully in a calm way where you can see where each of you are coming from and of you can not that you can learn to accept that diffence in each other.

Our parents are our role models even when we are older and when they do something we would not do we feel let down by them and disappointment and we see them as perfect which ofbcourae they are not.

Thanks Blood. I think I'm just going to be 'normal' even though our normal means of communication, Messenger, is currently closed to me. Often after she goes back to university there's quite regular online chat for a day or two, then we both get on with our everyday lives a bit more. So I'll email - or possibly send an old-fashioned card with some general family chat. I'll also suggest she rings us up. This is something she does around once a week.

It’s not bigoted. I’m beginning to wince when I hear the word “gender” at the moment as I know I’m going to get back circular arguments and accusations of bigotry when I calmly mention biology.

I think your DD will unblock you and maybe have a tacit agreement that you’ll agree to disagree and not talk about this over the web, but rather face to face where you can discuss calmly. The fact that she blocked you and shit down debate immediately that you disagreed with her seems to be par for the course with young people at the moment.

Shut down not shit down.
Christ, even my autocucumber knows I swear more than shut.

I rather like the idea of 'shit down debate'. Well, when it happens I don't obviously - but I think it's rather an accurate phrase...

Not bigoted, the questions are stupid.

I work with a young woman (20 years my junior) and she thinks she's a champion for women's rights but it's the same strory, she'd hand over hard won rights to aggressive transactivists believing that not to do so is bigotted.

Not bigoted, but finals are horrible and she may not have the resources right now to deal with an extraneous (to her exams) issue?

Very tough for you though OP, and I do feel for you.

So I gues the answer is some folks will think you're bigoted and others will agree with you.

I suspect in ten years time when acceptance becomes more prevalent, everyone will think you're a bigot.

“Folks” being the interesting choice of word there (folks)

I am genuinely not sure how things are going to pan out socially.

If self-identification becomes the name of the game with gender recognition, and that overrides the provisions of the Equalities Act then there will be some quite widespread social changes.

I think people who currently take women-only/female only spaces for granted may feel unhappy when they start to disappear and that people who are biologically male take up places that had previously be reserved for women.

There is also some concern among members of the transgender community that the acceptance they currently enjoy may actually diminish if the current system for gender transition changes. So that measures intended to do away with discrimination actually end up being counter-productive.

A significant number or lesbians also feel that the LBGT community is privileging the interests of men, so there's a risk of increasing fragmentation there...

To me it's not at all clear how things are going to pan out.

I think another issue is that if there's an increase in people using hormone treatments to transition, the longterm consequences of this medication aren't terribly clear. It also seems likely that if it becomes easier for young people to access this kind of treatment that a proportion of them may later regret the choice they have made. Again detransitioning has complications - for example if someone who has taken male hormones then wishes to conceive a child.

OF course its not bigoted.

“Folks” being the interesting choice of word there (folks)

Why? I'm Scottish. It's a word we commonly use.

I struggle to know how to deal with this issue with one of my children. He explained to me that his generation view inclusivity as being the most important principle of all, and that therefore GC feminism is wrong because we are excluding transwomen from womanhood. I've tried to explain why I think that inclusivity isn't a panacea and why I believe what i do, but he doesn't hear me and keeps re-stating that if I would just accept that transwomen are women then there is no problem. We are unable to convince each other and it distresses us both to be so far apart on this issue as generally we agree on social and political issues, and he's resolved his distress at what he perceives to be my bigotry by adopting a kindly, patronising, 'well it's just your age, you don't mean to be cruel, but you just don't understand the modern world' attitude.

I sometimes feel I should just avoid discussing the issue with him at all, but it frustrates me that he doesn't see his male privilege in this and that he feels I can be dismissed as a geriatric bigot! If I'd posted what the OP did on Facebook he'd think it was evidence of my bigotry, but I don't think he would block me (I hope he wouldn't, anyway), I think he would ignore it.

In ten years time I fully expect (sadly) quite a few broken bodied detransitioners to be re shaping the debate towards the question of 'how did this madness happen'.

I think it is all very theoretical with the young - so if a theory attracts them they will go for it.

Inevitably my experience of the world has been shaped by things that only happened because I was biologically female. Some of these things were negative (Parental physical abuse. Something that happened after I left home which I only realised years later that was rape.) More positive stuff like giving birth and breastfeeding. But then even the positive stuff has complications. Taking time out of the workplace to do parenting and that having negative economic consequences.

It is quite hard to explain any of that to a 20 year old who, while being a feminist, genuinely believes you can make it all up as you go along.

persister how does your son feel about transmen, are they men? I don't know if you could ask this of your son but it's quite a revelation when you ask men who say 'transwomen are women' 'would you fuck one then?'. That may transgress the parent/child relationship. I was talking to a young gay male friend recently who had no idea of all this trans stuff. He said transmen had taken to frequenting the gay clubs he goes to, I asked how he felt about that. Didn't like it at all and all the gay guys ignore them.

AncientLights yes, he says transmen are men, everybody's identity is what they feel it is. And he says he would be very happy to have a sexual relationship with a transwoman but he's not wedded to the idea of being straight, anyway - he's always said he'd be open to a relationship with a man if he met one he was attracted to. It seems to me that the prioritisation of inclusivity over all other principles perhaps inevitably leads to bisexuality, in that if one is solely straight or gay that's exclusive by definition.