Will society accept transwomen ARE women in future generations?

[interestingdebatetoday]

Today I debated with a young woman I adore. I'm in my 30's, her in her 20's. She attended uni in a very liberal city and has studied psychology. Definitely armed to hold an opinion.

We disagree currently on several of the current topics re trans. I personally hold what's probably the norm on the feminist boards of mumsnet in my views.

It made me wonder though - she claims not to feel women are really impacted, uses unisex bathrooms as a norm, and obviously has been socialised to not find an issue in accepting transwomen as women. Is it possible that actually society will progress in a way that her generation down simply won't have the issues which I feel exist when trying to include transwomen AS women?

Can women be educated/socialised to a place over time where several generations on - we will be the old women with outdated beliefs and the world simply isn't bothered about the things which we were?

It has to go one way or the other really doesn't it? Either a big u turn and the idea that transwomen ARE women becomes laughable and delusional is mainstream and acceptable (as many of us might feel on the boards) OR transwomen ARE women and we were the ones who were wrong

It made me wonder... I was really suprised tbh. 10 years later made a huge difference to whether we felt our rights were under attack...

Re my mum

I never said she was old enough to remember two world wars but her parents were and the aftermath of them were still very much in effect. so yeah she's a product of two world wars.

Beside the point though. Which was what constitutes an acceptable opinion changes over time with collective experience and understanding.

Hoping the segregation of woman become less pronounced not more and that the issues that mean this generation feel the need to segregate themselves are not present into the next.

Great. What are you doing to stop male violence?

Hoping the segregation of woman become less pronounced not more and that the issues that mean this generation feel the need to segregate themselves are not present into the next.

Nice idea. Completely unrealistic ... to achieve that utopia, it's not women who need to change their ideas as a starting point, it's men who need to change their behaviour.

By that measure I am a product of the Napoleonic wars. No, scratch that, rather by the fall of Rome, or... by the human who invented the wheel?

deepwatersolo

Indeed you are! you speak English not French or Latin and probably drive or use something with a wheel. We are all the products of history. But given the time between you and the Napoleonic wars, fall of Rome or early man, you probably don't feel the influence of those values quite as much as if you had grown up surrounded by people for whom they were a living memory or indeed actually living the ongoing social economic and political impact of those events

My dd and her friends are mid 20s, they didn't use the unisex (gender neutral) toilets at uni, preferring to use the single sex facilities even if it was a five minute walk away. They don't believe TWAW, so I don't believe the next generation will be any different (if anything I think they'll be less liberal). One of her gay male friends calls tw 'the fakes', as in pretending to be gay when they're straight.

WWI wasn‘t a living memory to your mum, though.

Beside the point though. Which was what constitutes an acceptable opinion changes over time with collective experience and understanding.

This is so backwards. You are saying women are the bigots for pointing out the inherent power imbalance between men and women and how it disadvantages them.

It's extraordinary.

The rules of misogyny are so uncannily accurate, it's scary.

Rule number one is women are responsible for men's actions.

You are blaming women, calling them bigoted, for objecting to the predatory/sexist behaviour of men.

Perhaps your children point out how sexist you are, which is why you get annoyed.

she's been groomed into accepting it, pure and simple.

My grandparents were of the WWI generation, my parents WWII ... they were decidedly anti-racist. The main lesson of WWII was surely that racial prejudice is an abomination.

Apologies havent RTWT. I don't think this will happen because it's not true. Trans women are trans women not women. I have 2 youngish children and we talk about it, they know that humans cannot change sex. We talk about gender being a social construct, I point out gender stereotyping. I hope they will pass this down to their children if they hae any.

Part of me wonders if a lot of the current trans trend in schools will die down if poeple just ignore it, it all seems very attention seeking to me.

Agreed, Errol.

Women will always know we are different from males. Perhaps the word "woman" will lose all meaning and we will instead have to use "biological females" or, when that is taken away, something else, but where women are free to speak our mind, we will find words to describe ourselves. Words other than "cis" or "menstruator" or whatever those who despise us might want to call us.

We will always know that males are not female, even if they force us to call them "women".

Ah, sorry, stupid mistake, I agreed with something ErrolTheDragon said on the first page. Please don't be confused.

'Transwomen are women' is literally an evolutionary dead end.

The way forwards, surely, is for society to accept that males can be as 'feminine' as they wish, that females can be as 'masculine' as they wish, that many of the existing ideas about what constitutes 'masculine' or 'feminine' are obsolete and unhelpful.

GreenEggs

I'm unclear about the link you are making between racism and two world wars. The Nazi ideal of a pure Aryan race was what the UK was fighting against. Racism was not a part of everyones life 50 or even 70 years ago.

My grandparents, born pre WW1, occasionally came out with some racist remarks, but I never heard any of that from my parents (born between the wars). So I would dispute that casual racism is in any way normal for people of that age or younger. I'm now a bit unclear about which generation your mother belongs to, that you think casual racism is 'totally acceptable to'.

acceptable opinion changes over time with collective experience and understanding

When women stop 'collectively experiencing' male violence, then we can come to an understanding. Anytime now would be lovely.

Aren't millennials generally more conservative than x-ers or boomers?
This youth=progressive=righteous trope is pretty boring.

Part of me wonders if a lot of the current trans trend in schools will die down if poeple just ignore it, it all seems very attention seeking to me.

Yeah and the response too. We probably already have pee and poo in front of "women with dicks" just most of the time i dont pay much attention to whose in a bathroom and whether they have an adams apple. I took me googling to work out where I recognised one of the experts on a tv show from, turns out she was one of my favourite male experts from a previous series. Wouldbt have had a clue if I hadn't googled.

The whole thing seems to have become a Mecca for catrophrosing and showboating.

Except when it comes to prisons and refuges. But by then the cause will be lost over toilets

But vulnerable women don’t just exist in prison or refugee camps. They are literally everywhere.

@Snarty: True.

Not that anyone cares about the vulnerable women in prisons or refugee camps to begin with.
I've read the most horrid things about refugee camps in Germany.

Wow this took off... home sick today and just catching up on thread

I used my friend as an example... because she's a woman who I do think "thinks" and I was suprised at our differences in opinion with the age gap but not so huge age gap (a decade or so)

1 of them was: we haven't walked in their shoes so we can't really understand and obviously she comes across far more empathetic than myself on that... I actually do feel huge sympathy for people who experience gender dysphoria and I think most women do... but it will never be currently accepted that we do because we also point out how the big push for acceptance is impacting on women like ourselves. One counter argument is that the suffragettes were fighting for women's rights but really only the rights of white women and black women weren't included. I might be wrong but I think this point was to say that the women fighting back are only fighting for natal women and not all women (which I think for her includes TW)

And then another thing I have no idea her personal thoughts but supposing there is a generation (or age group) that actually doesn't have a problem with viewing the bio male body and penis as female... could they actually not mind changing tampons, washing mooncups, etc in front of people with "female penises" ??? I can't imagine it myself.... but if you've grown up to accept that they simply ARE women, maybe you would?!

It always gets polarised that we are calling all TW and Tchildren predators when sharing concerns... I don't believe we mean that all, but we get that thrown back at us constantly

And then we get told that we might hold our views because of traumatic personal experiences... but women without these might feel differently... this upsets me the most I think (not something my friend said just my thoughts) because I think I didn't have to experience anything to feel this or that validly as a woman... will there really be in time women who do experience sexual violence yet ARE still comfortable with TW being accepted and treated AS women e.g. Lady penises not upsetting natal female survivors in changing rooms and shelters as they DO believe them to be females???

So, it's women holding their boundaries around single sex privacy, safety and dignity who are to blame for other women's privacy, safety and dignity being railroaded by men?

OldCrone

It's probably a bit more nuanced than that. I think there's lots of different forms of racism with what your listing been one extreme. I think you can be very anti some forms of racism but fall foul of others. "We fought two world wars not to ge ruled by Germany but now we actually agree to it". But that really isnt the pont of thus thread and with hindsight i regret mentioning her at all.

All through history there has been periods of seismic shifts of attitudes. Abolition of slavery wasn't welcomed by all and people of this generation still find it acceptable to say "It's Adam and eve not Adam and Steve". Bigotry is mostly defined by the side that wins the argument in the end.

Maybe ask your friend I& they would date a trans man ?

I don't think it's got anything to do with her or her generation being more empathetic - they're hardly showing themselves to be empathetic to women who do object to the obliteration of their safe spaces and language.

She has grown into an adult in a world saturated with violent, misogynistic porn, which has been normalised to a generation. This is the end result.