Why some young women are so Woke

[lucasthecat]

I am very gender critical - and the bollox of TWAW and the idea of a female penis makes my head spin. My eldest daughter totally disagrees and we have reached a mutual agreement not to discuss the topic. She is a physics graduate quite cool and has a busy social life. She has recently stopped working in a bar in a northern town after 18 months because of the non stop Pervy comments from blokes exacerbated by a leachorous boss. During her degree some of her male classmates constantly dismissed her as thick - but fit - because of how she looks ( she got a 2.1 with some distinctions) in her world the problems are traditional masculinity - the support she gets from LGBT friends and the Woke feel like the solution - I saw the world through her eyes in a way I hadn’t before - I still don’t believe TWAW etc - but it was a different conversation . I don’t think she is stupid or unquestioning - she is judging the world on her experience and at the moment the threat of Trans does not register compared to old school mysoginy

Oh. I've read that before. Yeah, it didn't help last time I read it. It just made no difference.

What does 'woke' mean? is it a new adjective? I thought it was a past tense verb?

Somebody on Twitter referred to those people defined so well by Justhadathought as the ‘woking class’. Tried to find the actual tweet for you but failed. I thought it was in the replies to the Craig Potter tweet (thanks EweSurname) but can’t see it now. Anyway, it made me smile.

@LordRudolphVII

If it was 0.01 of the population, i.e. 1 in 10 000 of the population then nobody would care much. The trans umbrella has expanded so much that a huge number of people can claim to be trans women including fully bearded men with penises who have no intention of changing physically.

My DD is woke, it is what she has grown up with, especially as a young lesbian in LGBT circles. We have had a lot of chats about what is going on, and she can understand my gender critical POV sometimes but we mostly disagree.

I also wonder if it is a rejection of the stark pink and blue division of childhood. When I was a kid then kids colours were red, green, blue and yellow and there was not the same degree of segregation of toys, clothes, decor, baby equipment.

I played with primary colour lego, but now pastel coloured girl lego builds beauty salons, there is pink scrabble so you can spell words like pretty, pink globes so your little pink brain can learn where to go on holiday and pink monopoly for all you budding girly capitalists.

My DD is woke, it is what she has grown up with, especially as a young lesbian in LGBT circles

She's a lesbian actually mixing in LGBT circles and yet you know better than her of course?

She no longer mixes in LGBT circles, she liked the youth group but says main scene is either full of 15 year olds or people who are middle aged. She does talk on lesbian groups online still. It's been amazing how her talk of trans stuff has decreased since not being in that environment.

Of course you know better than all the (mostly) older lesbians who are gender critical.

Some of it is youth. Young people have always struggled to see nuance while also being idealistic. Now that tends to be elevated as being more progressive and future-directed, and even old peope talk about that as if it's obvious and true. Look at how many people make that kind of argument about Brexit - it shouldn't matter if you think it's a terrible idea, it's a stupid argument to say that the old think a particular way only because they are behind the times. Sometimes it's that they see patterns or remember how a certain idea started. There is a reason in most societies it's not the young making the significant social decisions.

Also though I think that education has changed, while paying lip service to what it calls critical thinking, it really teaching kids a series of orthodoxies they are meant to take as true without really questioning them. Basically it's a certain take on the isms and phobias - racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. There is very little sense of what lies behind those principles, beyond "tolerance". But tolerance is actually quite a difficult and complex idea that isn't what they want - they only want tolerance of what they like, not tolerance that might question it. So they don't explore those principles around equality, or freedom of thought, or any of it. The kids don't really even know how, usually. They get to university and find they are actually uncomfortable and upset if they have to read an author who does question those things.

They have been taught to toe the line, and not as problematic questions. And they generally don't even realise it.

It’s probably not rare if you believe all the 'I just happened to run into a clichéd version of a trans woman in the changing room' stories on here but in the real world, yes, it's very rare.

Probably depends where you live. When I was younger I knew only a couple “old school transsexuals”. Where I live now - a city inundated with college and university students and people leaving more rural areas and families that aren’t friendly to LGB people, I come across a lot of trans people. From the barista at Starbucks in the morning to the client who “transed” last year.

We have a large transgender community here who puts out a “magazine” (I posted some pics from it the other day in here), who argued for a trans flag crosswalk (to be next to a Pride flag crosswalk), etc.

If I travel somewhere like San Francisco, etc, I run into a lot more.

LordRudolphVII

Isn't it 0.01% of the population?

Maybe when it only included transsexuals who has SRS. The Stonewall trans umbrella includes almost everyone now.

This school has 76 children identifying as trans out of 1600 students...children between 11 and 16: www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1051523/Gender-identity-Brighton-school-gender-fluid-education-transgender

The problem is that there is 'science' out there that supports it. Obviously, not 'real' science but it purports to be an advancement of the 'simplistic' (real) science we all know.

I think a lot of people have been very much under the impression that there is good settled science around the trans stuff. Much like they think there is around climate science. In both cases they don't really know though, they are going by what they seem to see in science journalism.

NeverSayFreelance

Why do I not see trans people as a threat to society, you mean? Because every trans person I know is perfectly lovely and not at all what this forum thinks they are.

So don’t know JY or R McK or Karen White then? Or are you just going to pretend they don’t exist or they “don’t speak for trans people” despite them - especially JY and R McK - making it very clear they speak for trans people?

@bandsandbeer

He has challenged sexist tropes at university (e.g. challenged a lecturer who apologised to the women on the course for using the word 'toolkit' as it excluded them as women - as 'tools' are a Man Thing) etc.

What?!!!! Seriously! We have multiple power tools in this household and they belong to me. I use them. I let DH borrow them if he asks nicely, he never asks. Same at my parents house. To suggest that tools are a man thing is EXTREMELY sexist IMO!

My 16yr old dd believe TWAW. Whereas I believe transwomen are TRANSwomen. A different group of people. Women, men, men who believe wholeheartedly that they are women (but are, sadly for their mental health, actually male).

She and I cannot talk about it. She thinks I am horribly transphobic because I don’t think trans rights should trump women’s. That’s our fundamental sticking point. I am hoping as she gets older and experiences a bit of the real world she will come round a bit but I will have to wait and see on that one. Like the OP, we have had to agree not to discuss it. It’s frustrating beyond belief.

She has some hopelessly simplistic views on feminism and what it means but I am very glad she is giving it some thought. Ds has a female friend whose goal is to marry someone rich and have babies. So at least dd is considering feminism!

@gingerkittycat - I can’t help but feel Lego Friends has set feminism back a good few years! It makes me rage. I had the Lego airport, it was awesome. My brother had the police station. There were always a fair few criminals trying to escape by plane. There was no pink. It never even occurred to us to segregate our Lego, we spent HOURS playing with Lego together. There was no boy Lego and girl Lego

What?!!!! Seriously! We have multiple power tools in this household and they belong to me. I use them. I let DH borrow them if he asks nicely, he never asks. Same at my parents house. To suggest that tools are a man thing is EXTREMELY sexist IMO!

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

It was the lecturer who apologised for using the term toolkit because it was sexist as women dont use tools and only applied to the men in the cohort.

My son challenged her and pointed out it was sexist to apologise because women do own/use tools.

Ironically, I think the thing that enables the belief that gender identity is more relevant than biological sex is huge amounts of privilege.

If you assume that health care will always be universally available and that gender reassignment treatment is always successful and that women's health needs are always met and that contraceptive services can never be withdrawn and that your country will always have a government that is fundamentally benign and that the law will always protect women from being at a physical disadvantage, then nobody needs to worry about the consequences of sex.

She will have to toughen up when she gets a job

The Jane Clare Jones link was an interesting read. And for a bit of levity, all the Self ID and creation of various new categories puts me in mind of this scene from Steve Martin’s 1991 film, LA Story.

@leckford - of course she will have to toughen up as all kids do. But in her experience of University and of 4 years of bar and restaurant work - she is toughening up against old school sexism and harassment from straight blokes - trans issues are not on her radar and if anything she sees them as allies against the ‘patriachy’ I see the TWAW etc as a far more insidious threat to women’s rights which is where we clash/disagree

Your daughter's experience is much like many of our own when we were younger.......and when many of us were allies to the LGB movement ( if not lesbians ourselves) and 'best friends' with gay men

I've been reflecting on the above fact for quite some months now...as a result of my awareness of the issues around the TRA agenda.

It has caused me to recall, with more clarity, and give name to those often experienced feelings of discomfort at some of what I witnessed, felt and experienced around gay male culture.

At the time, I just over-rode or ignored those feelings....I had gay best friends who were very much involved with the 'scene'. We were all part of this counter-cultural movement. Saw ourselves as progressive and anti- establishment. We seemed natural allies.

However, I never liked drag - found it insulting and demeaning; and i recognised the repulsion that many gay men felt towards women's bodies and women's sexuality.....the comments and the jokes.....

I also felt alienated by the aggressive and hyper-sexualised nature of the 'scene', and quite often the violence attached to it.....the promiscuity...

I'm now that most gay men love a diva....an over-the top drama queen - a kind of cultural fetish - but hadn't before noticed so clearly the real split in the perception of women. The diva on one hand, but then the total lack of interest or awareness of the issues of real, everyday women....everything is filtered through a gay male perspective.

I've woken up to just how disinterested many gay men are to women's issues; don't even recognise them; and are happy to throw women under the bus when it comes to signalling on trans rights. How seemingly intelligent men can come parrot nonsense about how identifying as a woman makes you one....

i feel really let down and angry...and this has been one of the most upsetting realisations. It has come to the point where I just don't want to know.....and am very aware that criticisms of gay male culture are forbidden, not allowed.......even though the mainstreaming of many of the more negative and seedy aspects of that culture are being being heavily pushed.

I know that most men love a diva

If you assume that health care will always be universally available and that gender reassignment treatment is always successful and that women's health needs are always met and that contraceptive services can never be withdrawn and that your country will always have a government that is fundamentally benign and that the law will always protect women from being at a physical disadvantage, then nobody needs to worry about the consequences of sex.

TBF I find feminism that way sometimes as well.

I think equality and real respect between men and women has to be something fundamental and intrinsic to our nature as sexed human beings, which means it has to be true throughout time. Not that it has always been observed or believed, but always has been true. But through most of our history contraception has not been particularly reliable, and women who had sex, which most people want to do sometimes at least, have had it. And there hasn't been things like DNA analysis to show who was the father, or a court or justice service to garnish wages of deadbeat dads or any of those things. The technology and social infrastructure did not exist. Most women and men's lives were different because pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding involved significant limits, because a lot of men's work was really physically demanding, and household work was also something that required a lot of time and attention. It might not just be the past either, who knows what the future brings.
But so often feminism seems to speak as if equality and respect in and of themselves cannot exist within those kinds of strictures, and denigrates those patterns of work and survival, and often many of the social practices that protected women to some extent within those societies. Often it seems that it can't even see that they did offer protection because of an assumption that they must be fundamentally sexist.
I don't think feminism will really be able to be mature unless it can adress and say something really useful about how a human society can function without the technological and social advances that make it possible for us to modify or neuter our biology. Which so far they haven't done - a fe claim it isn' possible which seems to imply equality is a human construct, others don't mention it and behave as if the current situation is normal.
And maybe that is what allows the trans ideology to flourish, this tendency to clam up about very fundamental differences about women and men, or worse a tendency to treat them as if their outcomes are necessarily bigoted.

And maybe that is what allows the trans ideology to flourish, this tendency to clam up about very fundamental differences about women and men, or worse a tendency to treat them as if their outcomes are necessarily bigoted

You're right. Trans ideology flourishes in a culture in which the differences between men and women, male and female are diminished or over-looked.

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable about the whole focus of the women's movement being on 'equal rights' - rather than on equal value. Aligned to this, for me, is the 'rejection' of menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth - whereby they are always seen as negatives, or as medical issues.

In wining civil rights I do think we have come to 'throw out the baby with the bath water' - in turning our backs and our respect on more traditional female roles and models of humanity. i understand how and why this has come to be; but do think we need to re-calibrate.

I don't think feminism will really be able to be mature unless it can adress and say something really useful about how a human society can function without the technological and social advances that make it possible for us to modify or neuter our biology

Some people will look to technology to do this. The idea of womb transplants, men becoming pregnant, or maybe even babies gestated, wholly, outside of a human body. But tom me this is the stuff of nightmare....and in direct contradiction to where we as a planetery system need to be going.

We need to be getting back, closer to nature and the earth - not further away from it. I fear, though, we are fighting a losing battle with that one, as we accelerate into a dystopian technological future.

planetary

My Dds are Gender critical to the point of they don't believe in a female penis . However i had a bit of a discussion with a younger woman in her early 20s who did biology as part of her degree but she is all for the female penis She has since come out as lesbian I wonder if she would date a transwoman with a penis ? I didn't want to fall out with her she is a lovely girl but it is very frustrating all this wokeness.

Juthadathought

Yes, your thoughts are very similar to mine about this. I do wonder if the technological solution will fail because of environmental and social collapse but that isn't really comforting. It is one reason I feel like this is important though: I have three daughters, and I would like them to be able to live in a society that respects them as women, even if all those technological solutions are no longer available.

And there seems to be something wrong about attempts to give women justice and respect that depend on them suppressing parts of their biology.

I don't know that this is a very common POV though.