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.

Making assumptions about what other people believe and then refusing to hear them out is bigoted.

@CharlieParley

Charlie do you still have the story of Max. It might be helpful to post it here if you don't mind?

persister this is interesting for me in that you have a real person to talk to about this. I have no one real to talk to about this, one DD who used to be wildly political but now just rolls her eyes at me about anything remotely so. How far is inclusivity expected to extend now? Would your son open up his home, bed, fridge, bank account to all and sundry? Or is part of this that the young (no idea of your DS's age of course) have so little of their own in material terms, that they don't perceive 'inclusivity' as negative in anyway? I don't know if this makes sense. Are they seemingly boundary-less because they can be? I know how I feel about opening my home etc etc to all and sundry. Not happening.

I would also read it as bigoted too and would tell my mother the same.

How far is inclusivity expected to extend now?

I think that is what I worry about, particularly as the mother of a daughter. Because I think we should be telling our daughters that is okay to say, 'No, you might want to come into my space. You might say that you are just like me and my friends. But you are not just like me. There are plenty of places where we can be with each other. But you can't be in this space because it is mine and for other people who are just like me.' This might make other people feel sad. But if they're good people they will also understand that they cannot make friends or 'belong' by occupying other people's space.'

This might be the wrong metaphor, but it's as if everyone is saying 'Little Red Riding Hood you go into the forest and if you meet somebody who says they are your grandmother - even if they have really big eyes and big teeth and want to eat you up - then you must call them 'Grandma',. Because they have every right to just to walk into Grandma;s house and define themselves as your grandmother, and that's who they are. Oh and if some horrrible woman says, 'No I'm Red Riding Hood's grandmother, then she's a TERF and you have every right to gobble her up.'

My 16 and 17 year old daughters disagree with me completely on this issue. We no longer discuss it head on (they nearly had heart attacks when I said Transwomen are not women but are transwomen - dh was a bit shocked too).

It was pointless getting into arguments with them - as previous posters said, they simply want to be nice and accomodating to teenagers who are struggling - how can I win that argument (other than telling them that the pressure on women to be nice is there for a reason and it isn't to help the cause of women)? What I do instead is have discussions about the unique experience of being a woman - having periods, the political discourse about women, the Irish repeal the 8th campaign, etc etc. What I don't do is draw the conclusion that a woman or a girl's experience in life cannot simply be acquired.

I suspect there are a lot of us who are are finding this topic really difficult to discuss with our children

AncientLights he takes inclusivity to not so much mean being boundary-less in practical terms, so not to include having to share your home and your bank account, but to mean being accepting of someone's value and sense of themselves as an individual - so he would put trans inclusiveness in the same vein as being LGB inclusive, non-racist etc. In prioritising biological sex over gender identity he would see me therefore as hurtfully rejecting the individual's sense of themselves, and he genuinely can't see the value of the examples I put to him of the potential harm to and erasure of women, because he says the trans people he knows are gentle and non-threatening and the TAs must therefore be an aberration and a tiny minority and so are of no significance.

I find this such an infuriating argument that I have heard a few men say. Well it would only be a tiny minority of women who would be put in danger.

Apparently men’s feelings are more important than one women’s safety.

I’m beginning to feel as if i’ve time travelled back to the 60s and grumbling, “We fought a war for you.”

I honestly think some of our young see us as Alf Garnett uttering unspeakable comments about minorities . It’s all very bewildering.

I tell dd that Mark my words in 50 years’ time we’ll be a vegan nation and you’ll be faced with your own angry offspring giving you hell for having enjoyed McDonald’s back in the day.

We are being forcibly transitioned from sex segregated spaces to gender segregated spaces.
The unintended consequences will be dire. The intended consequences appear to be to drive women and girls out of the public sphere.

I don't know if my DDs views have changed since going to uni, but before that she seemed to be pretty much a gc feminist. Possibly because as a budding engineer she's been quite acutely aware (and rejecting of) gender stereotypes since she was about 6.

I think many of your currently 'woke' kids may get a rude awakening when they get out into the real world, at which point they may understand that it was them who did not yet understand the world.

"Critical thinking is not hate" - Debbie Hayton

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

Yes there is, it's right there

No, because those questions all are about 'gender identity'. 'Female' describes a sex.

Universities are bubbles of crazy 'magical' thinking nowadays... If it was my daughter I would ask her if she believes that lesbians should be pressurised into having sex with male bodied people, because if she does it's incredibly bigoted, homophobic and misogynistic of her. I would talk to her about gender stereotypes being pushed on children, and anyone exhibiting any type of non-conforming behaviour being labelled the opposite sex. I would tell her I am really surprised that after women's fight against these sterotypes, and after the LGB community's demands for recognition, young people would still hold such bigoted views as 'woman' being anyone with make up and long hair. I would also tell her that since the large majority of women do not identify with feminine qualities 100% I am now gender-queer and my pronouns are bim/bam/ boom.

OP The thing I find disturbing about this is her 'blocking' of you. Your her mother. She knows you aren't a horrible person yet one single indication you may not be fully on board with 'gender' leads to a shut down. I do think this is cult like behaviour. If I were you I would look for tips from parents who have experience of cults. I'm not saying she is in the kind of danger a full on cult would bring just that maybe their experience on how to keep communication open when faced with a wall might help. I hope this doesn't come across as an overreaction, I'm not suggesting she's 'joined a cult' in the standard sense.

I think many of your currently 'woke' kids may get a rude awakening when they get out into the real world, at which point they may understand that it was them who did not yet understand the world.

Possibly. Mine, however, is a son, and I do wonder if that means that he will not have that rude awakening. Nor will his earnestly inclusive male friends, who mean very well and have no grasp of the lived experience of women.

*you're. Hate that particular typo.

I think it's a bit weird too HopScotchy - but though we had an exchange of emails the next day, I think I need to let it all go and just be very very normal with her. (Fingers crossed.)

I think many of your currently 'woke' kids may get a rude awakening when they get out into the real world, at which point they may understand that it was them who did not yet understand the world.

The "woke" females will get a rude awakening. The "woke" males won't notice because the world is designed to promote them and make them succeed.

My girls are relatively protected - they are not out on the mean streets or forging their way in law firms run by big swinging dicks - they are in nice liberal private schools. And yet my dd1 had her arse groped on the way into a school assembly age 14. School is the kind of place where students stand up to make a presentation saying "Hi My Name is Julie and my preferred pronouns are she/her". Dean of students thought it was just one of those things and they did a generic "remember students to respect each other" announcement at assembly. DD still thinks it sucks. She has no idea how much worse it can be out there. I was hoping she wouldn't find out - that the world would be changing. Silly me.

I have had a frank conversation with my daughters about rape (the ulster rugby rape trial was a huge aid in this), about how men and society view women etc. They will listen to me on this. They do not see transwomen as a threat. I do - in its current trend - I never did before.

I made a joke to dd that in the GCSEs now the questions may go something like, "Julian has 30 marbles and loses 10. How many does Julia have now?"

Dd not amused.

Serious question, has any of this nonsense made it into the GCSE Biology syllabus? I expect it's seeping into the social sciences, but surely Biology is safe. Although after witnessing a very woke medical doctor chanting transwomen are women a day or so ago on Twitter, who knows?

But you were making a point of displaying a bigotted view. The only reason you would complain on social media about that survey question is to show that transwomen may consider themselves to be female but you do not accept that they are and don't want anyone else recognising them as female either. It wasn't part of a discussion. You put it on Facebook like you were on some kind of crusade over the issue and yet you and women in general are considered female so it is really none of your business whether someone else also wants to identify as female on a survey question.
The question was asking about gender. Sex is biological and determined by chromosomes. Gender has always been about self identity.
I would be embarrassed if my mother put something like that up on Facebook.

But you were making a point of displaying a bigotted view.

Except it wasn't a bigoted view, DoNotBe. It's exactly the opposite, a view which doesn't consider gender identity - an oppressive, sexist, homophobic, entirely subjective social construct - to be the basis on which any organisation should gather data on whether their employees are men or women.

But you were making a point of displaying a bigotted view.

The truth is not bigoted. Men are not women. Humans do not change sex.