Talking with teenage daughters

[Cakeytea]

Hi All,

This post ended up a bit of an outpouring. Summary at the bottom.

I am a lurker here and tend not to comment. I've been following and learning about the gender critical viewpoint for a while now and agree with many of the sentiments here although I am maybe more moderate than some. I tend not to get involved with debates with people in real life about this subject for a number of reasons but occasionally will meet someone with similar views and it is a pleasant surprise. My feminism is a mixed bag and I am quite ambivalent about a lot that goes on in all strains of feminism but someone once told me even if I don't think of myself as a feminist, I talk like one 🤣

I have three teenagers, 2dd's and a ds. I am subtly trying to guage their thoughts about transgenderism in school and their beliefs about trans rights and womens rights. My 17yr old dd is discovering feminism for herself. I try not to tell them what to think or really steer them on many things except general good manners and respect for others and I don't see this subject as an exception. (Although, tbf, I am quite vocal about dismantling the 'sex work is work' crap that I seemed to miss the birth of - I couldn't actually belive people argue this until I saw it with my own eyes!!!!)

However, the subject of JKR came up last night and the 17year old virtually spat out 'I don't want to be like her she's really problematic'. We have talked about cancel culture before and they are unlikely to boycott HP which they enjoy. I pointed out JKR was just sticking up for women and it wasn't transphobic but DD was having none of it. Younger daughter agreed. She spouted loads of stuff about tokenism in her writing and making Dumbledore gay to look liberal but not going far enough etc etc. I could literally hear her just parroting someone elses take!!!
Anyway, I dropped it. This isn't the first time, I tried a couple of days ago when something else came up. I asked her if there wasn't something in the GC argument for women's sports and against self ID but she couldn't see it. She was deeply uncomfortable and spouted the "just be kind" line and said the numbers are too small to make it important and 'it's hard enough for them already'.

A big part of what has peaked transed me is seeing two daughters of friends transitioning (just socially at present). Both are autistic, deeply unhappy, with severe mental health problems (although having PTSD myself and my own struggles I don't like how MH problems are often weaponised in this discussion). My point is transitioning hasn't helped them but children's mental health services are broken and virtually non existent. DS is autistic and struggles and it really makes me so unhappy that autism advocacy groups swallow the transgender thing unthinkingly. Although, I genuinely believe, like all social contagions (anorexia in my day) it will blow itself out relatively quickly.

I don't want to fight with my daughter, as I have said, I tend not to be political about much and let them be. But I do worry about her going to Uni soon. She is bright, articulate, alternative and wonderful but I worry about her doing a degree where she falls hard for post structuralist analysis and queer theory. I was in the middle of a degree in Anthropology myself when coronovirus stuck. A module on gender made me realise all is not right with the world and I still haven't worked out how to navigate it for myself. I am fairly left wing economically but feel so alienated by idpol I can't see the left recovering. When did class analysis stop being a thing? I feel like a dinosaur at Uni to the point that I might give up.

For those of you with teenagers, what are your boundaries for discussing stuff when it comes up?
Anyone with kids going to Uni to study English Lit (her current preferred subject) or a social science? What are your thoughts about the current state of affairs in academia? How do we at least give them access to counter arguments without looking like dinosaurs (in their eyes)?

Any academics here know how to navigate the craziness, ie idpol, post structural and pomo analysis gone too far (it had it's place but now seems to be, 'lets just dismantle (queer) everything because we can and it's fun', not because we gain anything by it.

Summary, a couple of discussions with teenage DD around womens rights/ trans rights have not gone well. We agreed to disagree. What do you do in your households? Anyone else worried about Uni for their children and choosing a Uni that isn't so woke all critical thinking is lost?

Well done for anyone who read the whole thing, I'm like pringles, once I pop I just can't stop 🤣

Watching with interest but thanks for starting this thread OP.

Mine is almost 12 and is already showing signs of "but mum we need to be nice to everyone" (She's an introvert (understatement!) so her world view and experience to date is not very wide).

I accept totally that for the first half of her life I probably drummed this into her as a mantra around general school, friendships and socialising. Not for a second did I see how this could come back to bite me on the arse

So yes, I need to start unravelling this.

I have no kids, but I think I'd be assembling a load of evidence (especially photographic and screenshots from Twitter) that an awful lot of the TW who want into women's facilities, etc are autogynephiles.

It is really worrying, I have a 12 year old too. We've always talked about being gay and different kinds of families, and about how you don't have to stick to a certain version of girl ness so I'm hoping I've laid a good foundation.

DD likes to embrace her weirdness rather than trying to fit in so I'm hoping she won't be dragged into the cult like thinking and can express that she is a girl who doesn't like dresses rather than thinking she might be a boy.

@CornedBeef451

It's is so tricky isn't it. We've gone through the whole gamut of sexuality and gender non conforming, and they are all confident and happy with their sex. I joked that she now thinks her parents are bigots and she was clear she doesn't think that, so she is free thinking enough to accept other points of view exist even if she doesn't agree with them.

Unfortunately I'm not sure the being confident with their quirkiness helps because queer culture thrives on how 'different and alternative' they are, sigh. At some point the tide will turn and queer will no longer be the cool indie scene but we have a wait on our hands.

This subject has impacted my relationship with my daughters. One is the epitomy of a wanabe woke priestess (the penny has not dropped for her yet that its only really the priests who count but hayho) she works for amnesty, you get the picture.
I sent them both to girl only secondary schools so they would miss out on the horendous misognystic bullying that I endured, and maybe this is one of the reasons they dont realise how badly men really hate women.
I brought them up tobe compassionate independant thinkers and struggle to forgive them for being so cowardly and thoughless and cruel in throwing women and girls under the bus.

OP, if you are worried about what your (impressionable? well-meaning? ever to please?) daughter will be exposed to at university, then go for a course that is a bit more empiricist, maybe history or politics instead of English literature. English literature degrees tend to produce highly articulate people who have a loose understanding of 'evidence'.

I would also ask challenging questions at university open days about 'ideological pluralism', 'academic freedom', 'methodological diversity', 'diverse range of views' and 'freedom of speech'. Universities are desperate for tuition fee money, and they know that parents do influence their children's decisions, so don't be shy.

Another question you could ask or research yourself regards university policies on sexual violence or harassment because this predominantly impacts female students.

I know you said daughter but I’ll just mention how i discuss the issue with the three of mine

Ds1 is 21, he completely sees where i am coming from and what the issues are, he agrees with me and i can discuss it with him with no problems

Ds2 has just turned 17, i can discuss it with him And he will go off and check/research stuff himself But he doesn’t quite see the unfairness of some of the issues so i do need to be prepared with facts and figures

I spoke to ds1 the other days and mentioned my unhappiness with feeling i need to caveat every comment i make and apparently I don’t need to caveat anything with him though i still feel i do with ds2

Right...sorry that was boring, but dd...oh man just forget about it!

She is 18, isnt used to her mummy being mean and thinks we should be kind and it doesn’t matter how i caveat my opinions she still just smiles and nods at me. She doesn’t get why i get annoyed about female toilets changing to multi sex and the mens being left alone for example and I don’t feel thats a very radical stance to take...its just dreadfully unfair

I really don’t know what to do...so i do nothing

Haven’t even mentioned the whole JKR business to her...and we are great fansof the films, she won’t have heard though, so i would be literally bringing it up just to talk about it with her

@Chiochan

😢 So sorry, i wish I had the answer. Our relationship is still good and I don't want anything to spoil that. I worry I am being a coward but may have to just keep my mouth shut, or go the drip feed route without really outing myself.

I think it's probably normal, developmentally speaking, to have a love-hate relationship with your mother in adolescence and to engage in behaviour that enables you to forge a separate sense of personhood. Which is why reasonable arguments are probably a hard sell. The toughest lessons we have to learn ourselves ...

@dayoftheclownfish

I think it's probably normal, developmentally speaking, to have a love-hate relationship with your mother in adolescence and to engage in behaviour that enables you to forge a separate sense of personhood. Which is why reasonable arguments are probably a hard sell. The toughest lessons we have to learn ourselves ...

Thank you, its easy to get lost in it and see it as something bigger than it maybe is. Thank You for your advice around Uni's. DD is taking history. She also talked about history of art, but with Mary Beard endorsing gender ideology I don't feel anywhere is free from at least some elements of crazy.

Is it worth exploring the 'kindness' aspect some more with them?

Yes, it's good to be kind, but kindness is at your discretion. Human rights imply an obligation.

For example parents give their children a place to live, pay for their expenses and put up with them, even when they're unpleasant to have around. They don't do this out of kindness; the children are their responsibility. The children are entitled to be in the house.

If you let your friend stay in your spare room for free during a rough patch, that's kindness. You don't have to. If she stays too long or starts to expect you to pay for all her food and do her laundry, you can ask her to leave. It may be 'unkind' of you but you have no legal obligation to her; your friend is not entitled to be in your house.

If you need to invoke 'kindness' it means you know that men aren't entitled to be in women's spaces. You already know they aren't the same.

TRAs are saying that men are entitled to be in women's spaces, regardless of whether women give permission, regardless of how they present, regardless of how they behave. Does that sound ok to your daughter?

Regarding universities, I believe Reading Uni recently mounted a defence of free speech when one of their staff was being bullied? Bristol Uni appears to be woke central as does my alma mater Sheffield Uni. Spiked magazine used to publish free speech rankings here:

www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/

I've been through the exactly this with two of my daughters. The third is a little bit older and totally gets my concerns. She's also in the workplace and has firsthand experience of how misogyny works in the real world.

But the other two - my god, it's been a rough ride. Over the last 2 years or so I've had a few fairly bruising discussions with them and it really has shaken our relationship. At the start I thought I must have missed something, or be unaware of some essential bit of background as I was totally shocked by how completely opposing their view was to mine, when they both called themselves feminists. So, like JKR, I went away and read and researched and looked into things, which made me all the more outraged by the lies and propaganda that younger women had been fed, and had swallowed wholesale.

Wiser women than I on here advised a 'stand back and leave them to it' approach. I remember one poster (and forgive me for not remembering which one) saying - their views are a little bit like their shoes or their hairstyles at that age, they almost want you not to like them, and it's a bit cruel to point out repeatedly how much you don't. I really took that on board, but at the same time I felt it was important to keep drip feeding them information. I pointed out inequality and misogyny whenever it cropped up. I talk to them a lot about the particular ways that women and girls are treated unfairly or face sex-specific obstacles. Drink spiking, date rape, casual sexual harrassment, being talked over or dismissed, period issues (one in particular suffers badly), having equal access to sports and fitness (one felt the boys at her school dominated too much), body shaming, victim blaming, how online culture affects girls etc etc. Pointing out the way that girls and women have different experiences of the world felt like providing dots that they could then join up themselves.

Fortunately, it has - to a large extent - worked. My advice is to read widely and keep yourself informed for any conversations that do crop up, but mainly to keep talking to your dds about the things that affect women specifically. It is very much an age-related thing, and their views do change as they get older. Also, to them, with friends going through the trauma of gender questioning, it's very personal. I made a breakthrough in understanding with my girls when we realised that they approached it on a personal emotional level, thinking about individuals they know and love, and I approached it as an ideology, with worst-case examples (Karen White etc) which is harmful to women as a class. I explained to them that my interest is in looking at the unintended consequences of a law that might be brought in with the best of motives, but could end up being harmful to trans people and women if we don't scrutinise it from all angles.

Ultimately I found it helpful to take the view that I needed to be right on top of this issue because my daughters aren't. (Yet.) They might be horrified by our 'hatefulness' now, but their 'kindness' is exactly why it's important to hold the line.

I approached mine the other day, we often discuss politics/moral dilemmas so it wasn’t a forced thing. On hearing JK Rowling she just went: mum, you and I do not discuss trans, ever. You don’t get it and I don’t like your opinions at all, let’s not fight.
Errrm, so what’s your opinion?

Cut a long story short, we should be nice to everyone. None of the worries I might have (toilets and changing rooms, detransitioning etc) are valid, according to her, I am referring to just 2% of the trans population.

We love a healthy debate, exploring arguments and teasing each other, but my teenager DD thinks my point of view is awful.

Oh dear, what a wall of text! Sorry!

Mine were/are very impressed by Malala. We've talked about her experience in many different contexts and one of them was would she be able to identify her way to school without getting shot?

You can only sow seeds of doubt and hope they will join them up sooner rather than later.

Some helpful stuff here, thanks. Absin, don't apologise, it was useful to hear

And yes I need to remember that hearing my opinions over the next few years will be taken in by her much the same as most things I say - with rebellion. Drip feed is a good bet,. Little but often.

Very reassuring to know I'm in excellent company though!

@AbsintheFriends

Oh dear, what a wall of text! Sorry!

@AbsintheFriends

You are an apologiser like me!! Don't apologise, its great that you answered. I am glad you are navigating it in a way that works for you. I agree that they see it as a personal/emotional issues where as we are offering a more structural analysis. The two don't always mesh well and it sometimes takes experience to appreciate more structural viewpoints.

My nearly 15 yo dd is quite gender non-conforming, very supportive of lgbt rights and has in the past year or so been very much on the case of anyone who she considers anti-lgbt. She knows I'm GC but I don't push it with her, because I'd be in danger of pushing her into more extreme views. She's very bright and incisive and I've been hoping she'll find her way eventually.

She's a huge Potter fan, but interestingly, although she's criticised JKR in the past for 'retrospectively making Dumbledore gay for woke points', dd has said nothing whatsoever about the current storm around Rowling. I'm wondering if she's read JKR's comments and actually seen the light a bit, but doesn't want to admit it!

@WhatAWonderfulDay

Mine were/are very impressed by Malala. We've talked about her experience in many different contexts and one of them was would she be able to identify her way to school without getting shot?

You can only sow seeds of doubt and hope they will join them up sooner rather than later.

Yes, good advice thank you. I have read her first book but my daughter hasn't, I will pass it on. I think exposure to other cultures/ countries might be critical. Much as the TRA's try to label us as white imperialists they are blind to their own ideology. The anthropological texts on gender don't say what they think it says and is almost all exampls of third/ other genders female to male representation is really very rare. Hmmmm, why would that be I wonder? And when Iran and other countries use gender reassignment to sanitise the gay population it undermines much of the ideology. As you say, being able to trans your way out of oppression is not a reality for most of the world. And they say we are the imperialists!!

Sorry, didn't spell/grammer check my last post!

And realised that my post was contradictory. Yes, you can trans your self out of oppression - if you are gay in a deeply homophobic country, but not a female in a patriarchal society! I would add a laugh emoji it is so ridiculous, but it is clearly anything but funny.

Cake

This ideology does get challenged, even within English Departments and with the Stonewall imprint everywhere.

Unfortunately, academics have been forced to tread carefully if they dissent or question or decide to engage in some critical thinking.

Watching with interest as my sister's not sure how to navigate my niece coming out hard on the TRA side and I've no idea what to advise except "she's fourteen, you remember what it's like being fourteen, she'll grow out of it."

With tongue slightly in cheek, for those whose daughters are complaining about there being no gay characters except a belated outing of Dumbledore - you could gently remind them that heteronormative thinking isn't very kind or inclusive, and that just because no one outright states that they're gay doesn't mean all the characters are straight, and that assuming everyone's straight until they say otherwise is dreadfully old-fashioned and regressive.

Trans issues are weirdly inflammatory.
I have and do talk about them with my DD but only when it's contextual.
I try and foster a curiosity to see both sides of an argument or debate before coming to a conclusion.
Funnily enough the 'be kind' mantra has never held sway for me or been held up as a banner. I'm more of a don't expect life to be fair type. Be respectful and behave with integrity but don't be afraid to have boundaries and assert them.
Many of the popular woke positioning sounds so reasonable and it's easy to swallow it without thinking too hard.
One example, my DD and I had a really interesting conversation around the concept of only 'punching up' when it came to humour. She was quite shocked when I disagreed (how can you disagree with such a reasonable position?) So we talked about free speech, prevailing discourse, how that can be changed and manipulated, hate speech, legal parameters, etc. All these are useful then when considering other polarising issues.