Is a woman's gender/sex viewpoint mostly age-related?

[Terfulike]

Given the thread on BBC WhatsApp groups, is it an age issue? Is it related to young women having less experience of concrete sex-related experiences such as motherhood, rape, maternity leave impact on career etc. And how would these aspects be communicated to young women? (I'm 53 with 4 kids)

My dd ( 8 years old) asked if she was a toyboy today as she didn't like make up. I think a year ago I would have probably said yes but today I replied that 'she was a girl who just didn't like make up and girls can be into whatever they like (or don't like).
The conversation made me realise how much my views on gender had changed as like barracker above I always felt a little smug that i was one of those 'special girls' - 'not one of those girly girls'. Makes me think back and cringe at my silly younger self.

Growing up in the 70's and 80's means I can see how far society has come in fighting for women's rights (and remembering my mum and gran talk about their experiences). I think younger women just don't have that insight and don't understand how fragile our hard fought rights are.

these are separate things that potentially can^ affect your view point - things that I've seen affect view points and create women more attuned to feminism and radical feminism specifically. And mostly are age related, bar the last one.

Both daughters, age 20 and 24 are gender critical. They talk about it to their friends who are (privately) too.
When they were young teenagers they used to roll their eyes when I went on a feminist rant, but (and I say this with sadness because they experienced some atrocious behaviour) as soon as they'd had their first brushes with men in relationships they began to call themselves feminist and analyse what was coercive behaviour in a critical way.
They think and talk and argue about everything now. Not just feminism but politics, ethics, media.
But many of their peers don't.

They wouldn’t let me be a special girl or not as special as I wanted anyway. I spent my teens running round in combats, climbing mountains, shooting rifles, and generally out-performing the men in masculinity tests. At five feet nothing. I was absolutely determined to prove that there was nothing special about men’s stuff, and that women were more than capable of achieving the same results, given the chance. Then they stopped giving me the chance.
Nope. You’re female. No marines. Nope. You’re female. No front line. Nope. You’re female. No mountain rescue team. Nope. You’re female. You get to leave the table and let the men smoke cigars. Nope. You’re female. Nope. Nope. Nope. You can carry a shiny baton on parade, not a gun. And smile honey. You are too dour.
Oh, female? Yeah you have to run the babysitting service for staff. Wear heels for work (and a skirt, natch). What are you here for anyway? To get a husband? Oh go on, get up and perform with the belly dancers at the work lunch. For the boys.
I got even more pissed after childbirth. But largely yeah. It follows age and life experience.

Certainly I had a feminist viewpoint at 14, but it took until I had children, (relatively late), for me to truly see the lack of respect for women inherent in our society. I felt far more positive about how feminism was progressing when I was young. I am your age op, and now I feel so disheartened. I have daughters and this feels like a world that really hates females. In particular I’ve found events of the past year politically so shocking and twisted that it has change my view of everything.

I'm interested in what you said Blyth. My daughters are definitely feminist, which I encouraged. I've always been very onside with transexuals, but recently found out about all these ladyd""kbrains. My eldest daughter looked so shocked when I said I had peaktransed. She's a student at Goldsmiths. Dont know what to say to her next time she's home.

My daughters have a friend also at Goldsmiths, and say they have to be very diplomatic when talking about the cotton ceiling issue around that person. The message from the friend seems to be you should be open to trying someone you don't feel attracted to. They feel she's been brainwashed...
Terfulike, I hope your daughter hasn't drunk the koolaid.

I think it’s amount of time on their hands — it seems to be mainly arts/humanities students. Science students with full timetables might have dyed hair or a couple of piercings but that’s about as radical as it gets!

“Open to trying someone you don’t feel attracted to “ How depressing is that? Life is short, why on earth would you try someone you don’t fancy ? I mean really, why ? Finding someone you think is gorgeous is one of the great joys of life, how soul destroying to feel you have to go through the motions with someone you have no attraction for . MADNESS.

The openness thing has gone mad generally
So extrapolation to sex isn't hugely a surprise

It seems that generally it is younger women who buy the "sex work is empowering" line, but often when it involves someone else, not themselves. I despair knowing that young women and girls go through this shit. They will wake up one day I hope, but us oldies need to continue to put ourselves out there to show there are alternatives, even if we may appear bitter and twisted and humourless.....

More lived experience as a woman is surely part of it. More having listened to other people's viewpoints and experiences. Motherhood, and seeing other people try to impose gender stereotypes on our kids.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the younger generation are gender critical in reality though, just they're not the ones who get heard.

I only have a couple of feminist friends in real life

We're struggling with other contacts who do buy into all this, wolf whistles are a compliment, girls should wear pink etc

It's one of the reasons were thinking about moving somewhere rural and doing home education, I think the pressure to fit in is appalling and some women I know would happily describe themselves as anti feminist

I love this board but increasingly I feel our numbers are reducing

I have become more of a feminist as I've got older. I think that you see the reality of your body. Gynecological problems, abortions, motherhood, these things really make you realise your body.

I do think things have gotten worse though. I am 34 and I was talking to my younger friend (23) about our sex lives and I got so upset for her. I don't think younger men priorotise their sexual needs at all. When I told her I was going to have sex with someone with an unwaxed vajay jay she was mortified - she couldn't believe I could countenance it.

Re having trans friends, I think this is a difference of language. Gender non-conformity is now being trans. I had loads of goth friends in the day and nobody thought they were the opposite sex because they wore eye liner. Similarly none of my lesbian friends Identified as non-binary or trans-masc. We were all pretty gender-sexually fluid but we didn't lable it much beyond 'bi' or 'bi-curious.'

I think this is where the upset comes from. They think we are attacking their friends, calling THEM TRA's ect.

@BlytheByName

I am a goldmisths graduate and it took me ages to peak trans. I bet there's lots of things she's had questions about but universities are so toxic right now you have to be sooooooooooo careful with the way you speak. You don't want to be accused of bigotry so you just stay quiet. Hopefully when she get's out of uni she'll see things a bit more clearly. Try Magdalen Berns she's awesome - she peaked me.

I am early 20s uni student and I am gender critical. However I do agree lots of people my age aren't.
I think the problem is that women my age are still so very desperate to appear nice and cool to others, mostly men. Or they want to appear liberal and accepting, still to men. They read a lot of things about feminism on sites like everyday feminism or buzzfeed but don't actually think outside the box about it and form their own ideas. I think it probably comes with time, there's so much peer pressure at uni to think a certain way and it's definitely about how you appear to the outside world. I also think social media has a lot to do with it as it's cultivating your image as an accepting person online.
There are definitey groups of 'liberal/tumblr' feminists who if you dared not tow the everday feminism line you would get burnt at the stake, actually you wouldnt you'd just be mentally put in the bad person pile along with the homophobes and the racists. It's all about outward appearance to eacb other though, like a competition of who can be the most accepting.
I find it sad because I used I think I had lots of friends who were feminists but actually I don't really have any. I go to Cardiff and the only reason I really got into the trans issue is because some of my friends were big into the attempted no platforming of Germaine Greer, I found out about it from them and was pretty shocked that they considered themselves feminists and didn't even want to hear GG speak!
I had a male friend at uni who was a bit of an arrogant prick (white, middle class, male) not many people liked him and he was very much desperate to be opressed and now she is trans! So finally can be the most oppressed and now everyone literally worships at her feet, all showing off to her about who is the most unbigotted but we all thought what a prick he was before! But now we can't even dislike her because it would be 'transphobic' ffs.

@TheDishRanAwayWithTheSpoon
Yes I bet you get called sexist if you mention his 5 o clock shadow as well don't you?

I can see this tranwoman as being very angry actually if I dared mention something that didnt tow the party line, I really really wouldn't want to risk it. And if she got angry then I'd probably lose a lot of friends, it's all a bit culty. The only ones id be able to keep would be the people who weren't feminists in the first place!

It's okay DJLippy it's a woman's 5 o clock shadow, just like it's a woman's penis

We're not reducing WomanInGreen, don't worry.

What with all the threats, silencing, deletions and police questionings, we are going underground a little!

But the sheer numbers of women who know that biology matters are huge. It's easy to feel disheartened, but try not to. We are simply part of this particular era's version of stomping on women, just as generations of women before us faced their own generation's struggle. It will carry on into the next generation too, although for the life of me I can't imagine how things will evolve for them.

@TheDishRanAwayWithTheSpoon
Sending you my solidarity sister! I can't imagine how rubbish it must be stuck in the middle of this whirlwind. You can say he here if you like - this is a safe space - we won't report you to the police. It can be quite liberating to say Transwomen are men!
looks around shiftily for MN moderators

It's definitely about life experience. And also I think about the fact that the approval of men matters more to younger women than to older ones.

A lot of Barracker's comment resonated with me. I think the only things that stopped me from going full Belle were a. having lived in a country where women have the legal status of children, which would radicalize most girls and b. my mother. Any time I started getting a bit smug I'd think, well, what about her? Even my father admits that she's much more intelligent and talented than him, and yet which of them has had the better career, and who gets more respect? And then at some point I realized what had really derailed her career, and it was having me. She could have carried on after getting married, but a child, and a husband whose job is about to move him to another country? Those are derails most women never recover from. So I watched her try to cope with the diminished, limited role assigned to her, and I learned that it's nothing to do with the individual woman, it's systemic (though I didn't learn the actual word till much later).

The guilt of knowing that it was your birth that firmly stuck your mother in a lifepath that she deserved better than is certainly one way to make a woman who'll never waver from the path of fighting for all women no matter what's thrown at her. Maybe the young women currently trying so hard to dismantle every protection their mothers and grandmothers fought for should ask their mothers about how they feel about their lives, what their dreams were and what crushed them. It might be illuminating.

Fellow gender critical student here (although not at Cardiff).

To be honest, I was always more of the “gender is how people expect you to behave based on your sex” and ignored the trans stuff as arts students being arts students, like the trend to have your hair dyed a neon colour and tied back with a scarf when I started! Sciences are taught on a different campus to arts, and I’m a postgrad now so wasn’t really exposed to it.

Until I got involved with a clause that was meant to go into every society’s constitution and had no protection for sex-based characteristics, nor pregnancy/maternity. I took in an example re-written clause (written with help from a lawyer who specialises in discrimination cases). Being told that my version might miss things, but the original was “fine because gender covers all that” did not sit well with me.

I agree @BarrackerBarmer
For me motherhood radicalised me.

Having a boy too, because I'm so determined he won't grow up perpetuating the patriarchy.

As well as the fact I've been lurking on the gender/sex debates for a couple of weeks now. It's helped me formulate the uneasy feeling I had into actual thoughts and reasoned arguments.