Just had a blazing row with dd

[steppemum]

So, dd is gender non binary, has changed her name and want sot use them/they pronouns.
This is the end of a long process of about 4 years, she is 15.

I am supportive up to a point (she can call herself what she wants)
But I have gently pushed back against the theory behind it, as I am GC.

We have just had a blazing row. She said that 70% of the victims of DV were men.
From a 'very big and respected men's rights group' that have 'proved' that these are correct and that men's rights don't get any media attention, like the poor bloke who died in Australia at the hand of his wife and she didn't go to jail.

I'm afraid I flipped my lid. Lost my temper and gave a a full force lecture about feminism and the oppression of women. Gave a her a load of statistics about number of women killed every week by their partners, about women begging for help with stalkers who then kill them, about the 2 families in the UK killed since lock down began by the MEN, about how as a women she will face, discrimination, glass ceiling, physical danger, etc etc, because whether she likes it or not she is a WOMAN, and women have faced that since the beginning of time, and so no, my heart doesn't bleed for the poor menz. She said in divorce women always get the kids, so I mentioned all the single mums whose feckless partners bugger off and leave them with no money and no support holding the baby.
She gave me a load more fake statistics from her men's rights group. which she can't name.

I am so so fucking angry. I hate the fucking internet.

So, apart from my crap parenting, does anyone know the men's rights group she may be refering to, and can anyone counter these statistics with facts? Not just police report facts, (they are apparently all biased) but does anyone know how I can dig behind her facts to see where they come from?

She is 15-she is not a adult so therefore doesn’t have the experiences most adults have. She belives what she wants to believe and probably thinks it is correct with her whole heart, which is why she got so upset when you told her she is wrong.

You need a different tactic to this. I make my child aware that people believe different things and interpret things differently-
She can read what she likes on the internet and believe what she likes- the skill that is hard to develop is to identify you have read it and you believe it....but why? And what would you think of this if it was someone untrustworthy who told you this information...basically encourages them to think for themselves and see if they would have the same view themselves and not because they are being told to have that view.

When I was 18 I was in love with someone much older, everyone told me it was wrong and it wouldn’t last and he was using me. They was wrong and I believed nothing else. Now I’m a older adult with more life experiences I can see I was totally wrong and they was right, but at the time I wouldn’t be told.

We are always growing and adapting our views, thoughts and opinions.

I feel sorry for her. You don't sound like a very understanding or supportive mother. What does proving her wrong and winning the argument help? It won't change how she feels about her own gender. Explain why her statistics are wrong, but love her unconditionally and don't try to score points.

You don't sound like a very understanding or supportive mother

i bet you really enjoyed sticking the boot in there, didnt you.
nasty.

She’s 15 and she’s enjoying winding you up and watching you lose it. I’d ignore her

I feel sorry for her. You don't sound like a very understanding or supportive mother. What does proving her wrong and winning the argument help? It won't change how she feels about her own gender.

Have you considered your biases?
The issue is about prevelence of male-pattern abuse (sex based difference)

The Independent article by Glosswitch:

'Domestic abuse isn’t caused by coronavirus – we’ve been ignoring women for years
If being in lockdown has highlighted anything, it’s the intractability of harmful beliefs about men and women'
(extract)
You’d think they sprang from nowhere. Lockdown abusers, loving partners driven to violence by circumstances beyond their control. “A fairly close-knit family, just normal” are found slaughtered alongside the family dog; “a loving 44-year marriage” ends with a husband accused of killing his wife; “a very nice, but very quiet” family fail to survive the first weekend of isolation.

And we’re told there’ll be more to come.

Even as everything seems to be changing, some things never do. In normal times – remember those? – we’d speak of “isolated incidents”, of honest men who would slaughter women as if out of the blue. Today, we say that “quarantine pressure started to take its toll”.

If coronavirus has highlighted anything, it’s the intractability of harmful beliefs about men and women." (continues)

The cause of the current rise in abuse is not Covid-19; it’s the outcome of years of neglecting victims of “normal” abuse on the basis that it’s just that: normal.

Domestic abuse is not an invisible virus. It does not flourish because there is no known cure. It flourishes because we’ve been unwilling to tackle the root causes: inequality, misogyny, male entitlement, the erosion of social support networks. The “normal” times – the “before” times of two, perhaps three, weeks ago – should never have been accepted as such.

What today’s victims of violence live with, they have always been living with. Now we can see it up close, let’s not look away again."

www.independent.co.uk/voices/cornavirus-lockdown-uk-domestic-abuse-crisis-priti-patel-womens-refuge-a9441566.html

Current threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3452784-Coercive-Control-a-need-for-better-awareness

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3874632-Both-the-Welsh-and-Scottish-Governments-have-pledged-money-to-Womens-Aid-why-hasnt-Westminster-done-the-same

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3871824-utterly-heartbreaking-thread-by-rachel-moran

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3875889-donating-to-a-domestic-abuse-charity

Helmetbymidnight

Yes that was a nasty and pointless post.
Chicken maybe read Op's other posts before commenting, she does a lot for her child.

How are you doing @steppemum

It sounds that you have had a very tough time of it over the last 4 years and I can completely sympathise. The trans identifying young female in our wider family is very concerned about men, as she sees herself as one. The clothes, the binders, the disappearing photos, I can see how frustrating it is.

I got into a very similar argument with this teenager and it was the teenager who got really angry and was steaming!

It was all very sad and unpleasant and yet it made me realise a few things.

The child in my situation is scared!

Scared as trans identifying person of violence

Fearful for men (and trans men and trans women too) who they see as (accurately so, sometimes) the victims of violence.

I hope things are better and calmer now.

I completely refute that men are more often victims of violence from women, men, like women can be victims of men more often, and in a domestic situation women are usually a lot more vulnerable.

For some young people, the one in my family and maybe the one in your family too, steppemum, it is a case of playing the long game. The things that build connection and foster trust are long term the better things. I totally find it so hard.

It is not easy to parent a child who is questioning their gender, or questioning existing facts about the world, but maybe ask, what they are saying may tell you more about what they feel than what they actually think is factually accurate, IMHO.

Kit19 that quote is so helpful, thank you.

Oncewasblueandyellowtwo

"This from wikipedia:

In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men"

That item says... "In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence. However, men were more likely to inflict injury than women.[52]

I am wondering the 'violence' women are using which doesn't inflict injury.

52 Whitaker, Daniel (May 2007). "Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence". Am J Public Health. 97 (5): 941–947. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020. PMC 1854883. PMID 17395835.

I am going to take a look at that study sometime to see what it found out, but for the moment I just wanted to make the point that the second sentence there seems to qualify the first a bit.

As long as she isn't thinking of taking steroids/mutilating her healthy body in the name of being something she never can be I wouldn't worry too much. She's clearly confident, assertive and ready to learn from mistakes.

@steppemum

Can you discreetly encourage her to widen (/alter) her social circles? I'm always reminded of a friend, a psychology professor, telling me that parents are far less influential on their children than they think they are. Peers are a far greater influence. But parents are able to influence who is in that peer group- by the school the kid goes to, by the hobbies they encourage and pay for, by curfews and similar.

Maybe she can meet some people who are less into gender? (perhaps if they have some shared hobby or something).

Also maybe she can meet some people who defy gender stereotypes without feeling the need to change their pronouns. Some inspirational girls/women?

I don't know if the 70% figure comes from this study, "Am J Public Health. 2007 May; 97(5): 941–947.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020
PMCID: PMC1854883
PMID: 17395835
Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence
Daniel J. Whitaker, PhD, Tadesse Haileyesus, MS, Monica Swahn, PhD, and Linda S. Saltzman, PhD"

at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/

The study contains this phrase... "Among relationships with nonreciprocal violence, women were reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases (70.7%), as reported by both women (67.7%) and men (74.9%)."

The study had Participants asked questions and they responded themselves with their own answers.

Looking to the end of the study this all seems very relevant to me.

"Limitations
There are several limitations of this work. The first set centers around the measures of partner violence. All measures were assessed using only participant reports about their own perpetration of violence and that of their partners. The data are thus subject to all the biases and limitations inherent to this form of data collection, such as recall bias, social desirability bias, and reporting bias. Regarding reporting biases, there has been much discussion of whether there are differences in reported IPV by the gender of the reporter. A meta-analysis of the reliability of the conflict tactics scale concluded that there is evidence of underreporting by both genders, and that underreporting may be greater for men,34 for more severe acts of IPV.21 It would have been ideal to collect violence data from both partners, but those data were not collected from the full Add Health sample.

A second measurement issue pertains to the scope of violence measures. The 3 questions included in the Add Health study do not capture all forms of violence that occur between relationship partners, including many of the more severe forms of partner violence on the Conflict Tactics Scale (e.g., used a knife or gun, choked, or burned). Questions about emotional, verbal, psychological, or sexual aggression were also not included. Similarly, only a single item assessed injury to victims and it focused on injury frequency and excluded injury severity and whether medical attention was needed or sought. Thus, it is unclear whether the data presented here would be similar had the violence and injury assessment been more thorough or if different forms of violence had been measured and analyzed separately."

Anyway, not sure if that is helpful to the OP but it may be useful if people quote these statistics to look at the limitations.

The group is also specific:

"We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health"

apologies for cutting short the method (which indicates the specific nature of the data collected & analysed:

Methods. We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which contained information about partner violence and injury reported by 11 370 respondents on 18761 heterosexual relationships.

It's no bad thing for DD to have it pointed out that she isn't going to be able to identify out of her femaleness and the consequences of it. It's a hard and unpleasant lesson, but that's why it's so necessary.

"Among relationships with nonreciprocal violence, women were reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases (70.7%),

key thing here is "nonreciprocal violence." In most of these studies a woman being choked who pushes the man choking her away is committing "reciprocal violence." (In this particular study, given that they didn't measure choking, their statistics might even show that woman as an unprovoked aggressor against a man who didn't defend himself but surely the methodology can't be THAT bad?)

So that statistic basically shows that women are more likely to fight back instead of letting violence happen. This is obviously because the violence being inflicted on women is relatively much more severe, but the study didn't measure that, either, nothing to do with severity of injuries.

The term "reciprocal violence" is irritating. There is a significant difference between a small woman hitting a large man and a large man hitting a small woman. This is not to minimise DV perpetrated by women but those things are not "reciprocal". Let's stop talking about them as if they are.

Oh my gosh

I was the child in a DV relationship. I got beaten. I had a metal pole swing at my head. Which caused bleeding on the brain.

It was horrific. But I was too young to know. My mother. Who is a wonderful woman. Had no idea he beat me too. She would stand at my door. Holding him away. She didn't know he beat me secretly too.

When I was older. My auntie got into a DV relationship. He took the child away when he was 2. She didn't seee him again till he was 21. It was awful. They were married. He was named on the birth certificate. So when he took him. The police could t do anything. There's a lot more detail. But I'm not prepared to explain it.

I worry for some young woman. It's scary. How the internet shapes their views.

twoHopes I agree, "The term "reciprocal violence" is irritating. There is a significant difference between a small woman hitting a large man and a large man hitting a small woman."

The term 'reciprocal' is used in the study, but I agree it is a problematic term.

Hi everyone.
Thank you so much for all your support and positive comments.
I'm sorry I didn't come back.
It was dd's trun to cook on Friday, and she rather unexpectedly appeared at 5:30 and said 'are we cooking then?' so she and I cooked dinner together, the deal is they get to choose the music, so we spent a great time singing along to the soundtrack of 'Hamilton'
Then we were trying to have a family weekend.

She is a great kid. Truly a remarkble young woman and I am so proud of her.
We use her chosen new name. I am very grateful to her that she chose to use a nickname based on her name so that it was still related to the name we chose for her.
I try to respect the pronouns thing, but mostly I just avoid them, it is easier (saying they/them for singular sets my teeth on edge)

We have had good long talks in the past. She knows I am supportive of her, she knows we will back her with anything no matter what. But I have managed gently to ask enough questions over the years to challenge some of what she has read. At one point we did talk long and hard about sex changes. About how you can't actually change sex, you can choose to live your life as the opposite sex, but you can't change your DNA.

She has friends who at 15 are on testosterone. When she told me, I did quietly tell her that I thought that child's parents were not helping them and explained what the problems were with hormones etc, the medical issues, the long term consequences etc. (and before anyone asks, no it wasn't a lecture!) She understood. She supports her friends, but she gets why I think it is wrong.

Thank you for letting me rant. Thank you to those of you who got it. At every step in this journey, I have spent hours and hours researching and understanding the issues, I discovered the whole debate on the feminist boards on here and it was so helpful seeing the arguments expressed so clearly. I do that so that when the moments come, I can give her an informed alternative, not just 'that doesn't seem like a good idea darling'

Thanks for all the links etc, I will go away and have a read.

@steppemum good to hear from you again glad things are going well.

It's hard for kids with friend groups who are all totally bought into this stuff. They want to believe it because any other option means potential for a loss of those connections, I guess, and that's a powerful factor to overcome in any person never mind a teenager. Would it maybe help to draw some subtle parallels? Avoid direct criticism of the ideology but watch some documentaries about Scientology or similar to help her learn about coercive belief systems? Help build a toolkit of her own - enable her to recognise the dangers inherent in being discouraged from doing your own thinking etc. Just an idea.

Haven't read the whole thread, others may have posted this earlier.

Joan McAlpine MP discussing violence stats:

"Women are not “just as likely” to seriously offend. Scottish Court stats 2017-18 show males were perpetrators in 98.5% of sexual crime and 88% of non sexual violent crime. Other countries much the same #waronwomen"

Finding statistics on violence disaggregted by sex is surprisingly hard. Almost like nobody wants it mentioned. But if you look long enough, those same proportions are repeated in England, in the USA, etc etc etc.

And, certainly men have to deal with partner or family violence too. In those cases, just as with female victims, the perpetrators are almost always men.

Pretending women are equally at fault is a total myth. They don't have the build for it, or the brains floating in testosterone, or the social messaging telling them it's their right. I'll come back with links to studies once I get my act together. Jessica Eaton's site references mountains of good research.

MehitabelWhurl

Wow, glad I'm not yoru daughter.
15 year old, struggling with gender, I've posted about how this has been an ongoing thing for 4 years.

You post she is a 'silly silly girl'

Misguided over these statistics she may be, but she is very far from being a silly girl.
Removing all her phone and internet will cut her off from her friends and alienate her pretty damn quickly. Then communication stops.