Talked with trans-ally dd this evening.

[JellySlice]

Dd is 15, and knows that we have opposite opinions on trans issues. She saw my FPFW pack (which I had deliberately left open on the kitchen table) and asked me about it.

She listened carefully to what I had to say, asked questions, tried to present her viewpoint. I lost her when I explained that I don't think that I should have to lie because someone else wants to be different.

But during the conversation dd cried. Not sobbing, just a red face and wet eyes. And my heart broke for her. The rational part of her keeps getting glimpses of the Emperor's bare skin, but the female-socialised, compassionate, SM-influenced teenager can't cope with the contradictions. She has autistic traits, and once she believes something finds it very difficult to change her belief. Plus she's GNC and sees that as something she has in common with transpeople, rather than having her femaleness in common with women.

And my heart broke for her. She's trying to be a good, kind person. She's swallowed all the "you can be anything you want" and the "we should be inclusive of people who are different ", and now we telling her that that's wrong. And she cannot conceive of a world where she has no rights, and has no idea of what she stands to lose.

Oh and DD friend is traumatised because their dad killed themselves, not because of their identify issues.

My daughter is 15 too Jelly and GNC. To the poster surprised she's even heard about this stuff; two of my kid's female friends call themselves trans. The first lesson this year in their "personal/health-education/social" whatever it's called on sex+relationships had the teacher writing pan-sexual & sexual on the board and being told that society hasn't evolved enough to let everyone use the toilet of their choice. I'm surprised if anyone hasn't come across it!
I'm sorry she was upset Jelly. This area is so easy to portray as just being nice and not excluding anyone. I always point out that this ideology is regressive and actually reinforces gender stereotypes. The sex aspect and threat is difficult to put across to someone that age. I was aware sadly when I was young, my daughter isn't really and of course I hope she never is. I agree with posters saying that as she grows up she'll likely be able to see your point of view more, which is only saying that rights need to be balanced and weighed with care.

If anyone here is surprised how pervasively trans ideology has been absorbed into teen culture, they need to start paying attention, especially if you have a GNC child. Ime being scientific or logical is irrelevant.

It's everywhere among teenage girls, especially. All the social media aimed at them is absolutely saturated with it.

Helen Saxby explains why TWAW is a mantra used to close down debate:

The phrase ‘transwomen are women’ is naively understood to be simply a courtesy to a male trans person, a sign of allyship. If you don’t join in, because you stick to the definition of women which is biologically correct, you are nailing your colours to the mast and this is risky. There is a huge amount of abuse directed at women who refuse to do as they are told, and this fact demonstrates that the use of ‘transwomen are women’ is not as benign as it first seems. If you wish to be ‘nice’ to someone, that is your free choice, but if you are punished for NOT being ‘nice’ then it is no free choice at all and it begins to look more like bullying and coercion.

‘Transwomen are women’ as a slogan is nothing to do with being nice. It is a political mantra: it does not define its terms and it is used to shut down all dissent.

notthenewsinbriefs.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/turning-the-tide/

From one GNC autistic to another, I am so blooming glad I’m not growing up now. I would have followed the “rules”. I wasn’t just GNC, I had short hair, played with the boys, refused to wear dresses, loved all the “male” stuff. I was never going to marry or have children, I hated pink with a passion.

With hindsight I knew I didn’t fit in with the other girls, so rejected everything girly. I heard the message that pink was girly, so I hated pink.

If I had heard that all the things I liked meant that by the rules I was a boy, then I would have become a boy. I am sure of it.

The truth is that autistic people don’t take in these social messages about gender automatically. It’s a great freedom we have. We don’t automatically conform, so more of us are “visibly” GNC.

But here’s the thing, I started talking to other women, and none of them had this internal feeling of being a woman. Not one. My mum lived in jeans and never wore makeup. She was very much a woman.

Being feminine (girly) or masculine (boy-ey) is just personality.

Trans people don’t conform - and that’s a great thing. Except that it also creates the rule that not-confirming equals being the opposite sex. You can’t be a masculine girl or a feminine boy anymore. You have to be trans.

I hated my female body as a teen. I’m autistic! Of course I did! Female bodies come with constant change and I hate change.

As an adult I actually love being a woman. Not feminine, I’ll never be that, but being a woman and what that biology means.

I am also scared of men in certain spaces. I had an abusive relationship that I could only escape because I knew what I was going to was women only. I have always respected pronouns, but my PTSD and fear doesn’t. It is terrified of men and that means anyone born male including trans women. I needed safe spaces or I wouldn’t be here. Those spaces had to be biological women only. They had to be for my PTSD and my fear.

I guess the question is, for people like me, is it okay for me to have a space that is just biological women? Is it okay for trans women to have spaces that are just for them to discuss issues that only affect them, or to feel safe?

If you can understand that trans people might need their own spaces, can you understand that women might too?

Why is it wrong to say that biological sex is real? Being trans is absolutely fine! Completely fine! I don’t know why it’s seen as something to deny, a label to get rid of. Trans women don’t need to be women to be accepted. We don’t have to take from women to give to trans. We can create new spaces.

What you can’t do is give away my spaces. Because then you are taking away my freedom. I need female only spaces. I need to only ever be touched by female health professionals (ha! Touch is hard enough, but I’d never see a doctor if I couldn’t ask for a woman). I need to be able to only have a female rape counsellor. I need to be able to ask for someone with the same biology as me, because she has the same experiences as me, and I need that.

Please don’t let people take my autonomy away. My right to say no. My right to be safe.

Because that would have left me in a relationship with my abuser, and I would not be here anymore.

That’s my message to your daughter. It’s so hard. I have so much empathy, but I am not a bigot, I am an autistic woman who needs things to be logical and clear. I want everyone to be safe, but that includes me. I need to be safe too.

I'm sure my autistic daughter would be the same, she's a little young at the moment but once she's fixed on idea then that's it. It is frightening because she is more vulnerable she can be very niave & easily led.
To the posters saying their DD has autistic traits please explore a diagnosis for them, autism in women comes with a high mental health risks such as depression, anxiety & anorexia. My DD passes as neuro typical but women & girls present differently, something we may not be able to study properly if anyone can ID as female!

If being trans was just about it being OK to be obviously GNC I'd be all for it. It was when it become obvious that it was being framed as a solution to the not-actually-a-problem fact that many people don't conform to gender roles that I realized that I had no choice but to push back.

I've also reported Reanimated's offensive post.

I am autistic and know that it can be difficult to navigate the world of neurotypicals. However, my superpower (tada!) is critical thinking. And women are women and transwomen are not women. They are transwomen. And never the twain shall meet.

Ds1 is also pleased that he is not growing up now...he is only 19 but its changed so dramatically in the last few years that he feels that he may have been affected as a young teen

Lots of young people know children who identify as trans or non binary so as another poster said it would have struck me as strange to have teen children who dont know about it...they just might not talk about it

My children know my thoughts on the matter...but they dont know all my thoughts. by and large they agree with me but dd did explain to me that they have to have gender on forms instead of sex so transgender people could tick a box

I didnt push it as it wasn't appropriate to do so...but im guessing by that comment that she has no idea that there are apparently loads of different genders, not just the two

By appropriate i mean we were not physically in the right place to discuss it...not that i didnt think the subject was appropriate

If we must track "gender" why can't it be a supplemental category? So your sex is female or male and then you have the option to select a gender in the same way some forms might allow you to note your religious affiliation. And then we continue to segregate by sex, not by whether someone is CofE or Catholic.

My daughter and I have this disagreement often and I feel the same as you op. But we recently reached an understanding that is rooted in our core beliefs... Which are based on our experiences.

As an older woman I see the whole picture I know the politics, the history, my knowledge of what could happen.

She sees the individual in front of her. And not much more. She cares for her friends and wants them to be OK.

Teenagers are naturally self absorbed. It's a trait that protects them as they grow. The just have trouble seeing the whole picture.

It's individualism versus collectivism.

My daughter understood that I want to change the system for her safety. And I understand that she just wants to be a good friend and for her, so far, the system is fine.

I expect to meet more in the middle as she gets older.

Celebrate the fact your daughter is just trying yo do the right thing. But gently introduce the idea that there is more than what she sees in front of her.

All of us as parents should lead teenagers away from self absorption and to understand that they are part of a wider group with responsibilities. Many parents fail in this. Some kids never see the whole picture and remain essentially selfish.

Thats a good idea angry

The form just said male and female

I dont even think there was a 'rather not say' or 'other'

arranfan I read your link but this
I think we live in a bankrupt neoliberal patriarchal white supremacist environmentally suicidal clusterfuck of a society
Really put me off. So much so that I didn't take in the rest of it and certainly would never share it. I have fairly decent lefty credentials, recently gave up Labour membership, ex-union rep, still a union member, etc etc. But that's just a load of cobblers.
Most people would be put off by that kind of statement and it's very polarising. It's like the opposite of Hands Across the Aisle.
JellySlice there's a chance your child might be worried you won't accept her. I think you need to spend time putting distance between her (and other GNC kids) and people like Muscato/Huntley/White. Obviously none of my business, but I was a GNC kid and an out lesbian in my teenage years and lived in fear of being thrown out because of it. Also bear in mind a lot of the trans ideology encourages kids to write off their families!

and now we telling her that that's wrong.

So don't tell her it's wrong. She can have different feellngs and beliefs to you.

There is just so much scaremongering bullshit around this issue, which makes it even more upsetting for teenagers. And, yes, some of the bandwagon-jumpers are people whose main motivation is the opportunity for a bit of gleeful, bullying misogyny. There is a lot of blatant ignoring of the fact that the whole purpose of a gender division has always been to uphold men's oppression and exploitation of women.
But there is also a lot of nasty, bigoted nonsense about 'sexual deviancy', which is equally unhelpful to young people. Don't forget the campaign to fuck up the vote on choice in Ireland because those naughty Irish feminists refused to be sufficiently hateful to trans people...

I remember my parents, the church and older siblings all telling me what to think and often ended up feeling very conflicted and confused and even frightened. You may be right but tread carefully with the emotional state of your teenage dd; she’s not responsible for the atrocities committed to women in the past and she making her own way now. Leave her alone.

cliques wonderful clear post. I wish it could be handed out to every teenager.

As rememberatime says so much if this is about individualism vs collectivism and if we could just step back from the name-calling ‘hateful bigot denying my existence’ stuff it would be so much better for everyone.

My advice to your daughter is to read up about how equalities and human rights laws work generally.

It is a delicate, and often case by case balance of competing rights between different but equally important groups of people. So to move away from the trans issue for a moment.... there was a case of the religious marriage registrar, she had a strong Christian faith and she honestly believed that marriage could only be between men and women. When the law changed, to allow same sex marriage, she wanted to be able to not do same sex marriages. She was sacked after many years of work. The court were sympathetic to her because she had rights but so did same sex couples who would have faced longer delays getting married. Ultimately they sided with her employer.

In other cases the balance is different. In the British Airways case a religious employee ultimately won the right to wear a large cross on a chain over her uniform as an expression of her faith and contrary to their uniform rules. This is because BA could not really justify the ban. In a similar hospital case the staff member lost the right to wear a similar cross because there, the hospital could objectively justify on health and safety grounds why they banned them. So the courts are not dealing with one good person, one bad people. just competing rights which get weighed up.

In situations like the girl guides, the balance is between the rights of biological women and girls not to be subjected to policies which disadvantage them because of their sex (like losing their privacy, dignity and safety in places of undress or retaining the single sex character of the organisation) and the rights of trans gender people not to discriminated against on grounds of gender reassignment.

The trouble is that organisations like the Girl Guides, in devising policies, have listened to representatives of one group (the trans) but not to representatives of women groups (and certainly not to neutral lawyers).

So their Equality and Diversity policy on their website has loads to say on the rights of trans people and very little on sex (including nothing on sex discrimination, harassment or pregnancy/maternity). They did not do the necessary consultation, weighing up of competing factors etc. Hence the uproar and possible litigation to come.

It is this failure to understand the need to carefully weigh up competing and equally valid rights that has led to this mess. Self ID will compound the problem not least because the numbers of people able to claim thy are legally women will increase significantly so the potential for situations where rights of biological women and transgender women will clash will increase

If being trans was just about it being OK to be obviously GNC I'd be all for it. It was when it become obvious that it was being framed as a solution to the not-actually-a-problem fact that many people don't conform to gender roles that I realized that I had no choice but to push back.

This!

Jelly - why don't you see if your daughter would come along to a WPUK meeting with you? Or find out if there's a woman only group near you - reading group, spinning group, something like that? These spaces are positive and uplifting and rarely gender-conforming so they might provide her with a different yardstick than the endlessly negative, denouncing environment of SJW social media.

"Don't forget the campaign to fuck up the vote on choice in Ireland because those naughty Irish feminists refused to be sufficiently hateful to trans people..."

What 'campaign'?

Yeah. Transwomen have lots of abortions. In Ireland and elsewhere.

rolls eyes

On this I think it was you who was unable to accept your child's view, your post comes across as highly patronising, my heart broke for her, she's swallowed it all crap. She has a different view and that's acceptable.

And no we are not heading to a world where women have no rights. That's not what inclusion is, it's not about taking us back to having to ask our husbands for permission to get a job, or abortions being illegal, or whatever else you posted.

And if you used that argument with her, then I can see why she was upset. Because it was factually inaccurate, it was not the over dramatic patronising nonsense you have stated here.

I think you owe her an apology. She might only be 15, but her opinion is valid, and it seems on this she was the more accurate person.