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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Just read Abigail Shrier’s Book

86 replies

Wandawomble · 07/11/2020 09:01

What an eye opener and very reflective of what I’m seeing with my kids in their schools and their friend groups.
Fantastic read and would highly recommend to anyone concerned about this. I got it as the audio book.

OP posts:
Winesalot · 15/11/2020 22:52

I am posting this link on a few threads, this article refers to steps the Swedish government has taken in regards to female teenagers.

genderreport.ca/the-swedish-u-turn-on-gender-transitioning/

And the comments had extra links.

Entirely relevant to anyone reading this book I would think.

Wandawomble · 16/11/2020 05:37

Entirely relevant and thanks for sharing. Brilliant news to see common sense starting to emerge in Sweden.

OP posts:
nepeta · 16/11/2020 13:01

I missed the deletion of a thread on this. But the basic problem is this: For a long time almost all known transgender (or transsexual as they were called in the past) individuals were male. Suddenly the majority of young people identifying that way are female. And this change is clearly something that should be addressed.

What changed? The usual argument trans activists give about the vast increases in the number of teens contacting gender clinics is that now it is safer to come out than it was in the past. But that does not explain why the coming out is so much more common from girls than from boys though there has also been an increase in the numbers of boys declaring trans identity.

Neither does this explain why the pattern of finding about one's possible transgender identity has changed so that we suddenly have many children declaring they are trans relatively late, say, in teen years when they showed no symptoms about this earlier in childhood. And it does not explain the formation of clusters of teens with many friends stating that they are trans or nonbinary roughly at the same time.

So something new is happening. What it is, exactly, is something research should address, but research into this topic is as popular as drinking bleach because of the horrible consequences to those who undertake it if they don't come up with answer which please activists.

In searching for those answers I certainly think that we should remember how teen years are a time which is quite difficult for many, how peers matter very much in how one sculpts different experimental identities, how undeveloped the brains of teens still are, and how social media probably has intensified the social contagion effect which has been reported in the past to apply to similar phenomena.

I can think of all sorts of reasons for why a teen girl, specifically, might want not to be a girl in most cultures.

Suddenly you have breasts and suddenly really old men (old from your point of view) start ogling you and even harassing you. Suddenly the boys find porn and start talking about you in that context. Then add to that possible homophobia for those who find their sexuality to be Lesbian, and how easy it would seem to fix by just changing to be a boy. And of course most of us would like to be treated as full human beings, not as walking stereotypes of women, and now the teens are told that this means identifying as at least nonbinary...

About Shrier's book: Because I have read a lot in this field I actually didn't learn an enormous amount from the book, though I was struck by the fact that so many of the young people transitioning talked about their sexual preferences and so on without ever having even dated anyone. Their social life was in cyberspace and in a sense did not include their physical bodies at all. In cyberspace, of course, you can identify however you wish as nobody can see you, so this may explain in part why some teens truly seem to believe that if they identify as trans men and like men then gay men must be attracted to them etc.

Aesopfable · 16/11/2020 13:16

Their social life was in cyberspace and in a sense did not include their physical bodies at all. In cyberspace, of course, you can identify however you wish as nobody can see you, so this may explain in part why some teens truly seem to believe that if they identify as trans men and like men then gay men must be attracted to them etc.

I agree about the impact of interacting in cyberspace. It seems many TRAs seem to think identities are like avatars - not linked to their physical self and can be changed at will. Your physical self has no impact in the virtual world they inhabit and this allows a freedom to be something other than they are. They want the same freedom in the real world and hate the fact that the real world is impacted by biology.

miri1985 · 16/11/2020 23:32

Was listening to a podcast from last week where they were discussing the target issue about Shier's book and one of the hosts mentioned that all of this was having a major Streisand effect and that the book was 51 out of all books on amazon. Looked it up and its not as popular on UK amazon (2,069) but on US amazon its currently 102 which is amazing, she must she shifting so many books because of all this

If you read the reviews a lot of people bought this because it was being supressed www.amazon.com/Irreversible-Damage-Transgender-Seducing-Daughters/dp/1684510317/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&s=books&keywords=shrier&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1605569479&sr=1-1

miri1985 · 17/11/2020 23:18

Wow, it went from 102 yesterday which was still excellent but its #12 on US amazon today. People really don't like being told what not to read!

Just read Abigail Shrier’s Book
PearPickingPorky · 18/11/2020 03:43

Their social life was in cyberspace and in a sense did not include their physical bodies at all. In cyberspace, of course, you can identify however you wish as nobody can see you, so this may explain in part why some teens truly seem to believe that if they identify as trans men and like men then gay men must be attracted to them etc.

Gosh, this is very interesting. Especially

Their social life was in cyberspace and in a sense did not include their physical bodies at all.

There definitely does seem to be a feeling that what you say you identify as is your online persona, and when the majority of your interaction is online then you can "be" that person (eg a boy if you're a female teenager, or a girl if you're a middle-aged male, etc). They get so attached to "being" what they're not that they then struggle to switch to real-life interactions with people who will perceive the reality of what is in front of them.

Igneococcus · 19/11/2020 06:32

Janice Turner talks about the book in her column today:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/80f5d4b8-29d6-11eb-b054-8dc1447a1be1?shareToken=607baf246ddc0ec0f352c6365a8e12e1

Whatwouldscullydo · 19/11/2020 07:37

I see one of the usual suspects is back. As incoherent as ever .

ChattyLion · 20/11/2020 00:12

it absolutely does seem to be white middle class girls primarily. Their oppression is invisible since it's not acceptable to point out that females are still oppressed. Maybe it's a relief to them be able to speak about being oppressed, even if they have to attribute it to something else?

This really resonated with me napody.
This whole phenomenon shows how misogyny is placing an often unbearable burden on girls. It’s frightening and depressing in equal measure.

Tootsweets23 · 20/11/2020 10:20

It absolutely does seem to be white middle class girls primarily. Their oppression is invisible since it's not acceptable to point out that females are still oppressed. Maybe it's a relief to them be able to speak about being oppressed, even if they have to attribute it to something else?

This really resonated with me too @ChattyLion and @napody.

I read this article recently - it is a moving piece about a woman born with a disability (her arm has a malformation) and then discovering in her teen years that she has a syndrome that means she can't have children.

In the piece though, she says "With everything that’s going on in the world, listing the ways the universe has wronged me felt like a petty endeavour; as a cis, white, middle-class woman, I felt like my voice was not what was needed at the moment."

She then goes on to say "People who fall under protected characteristics – race, creed, sexuality, disability – are under a greater threat than ever."

How poorly served young women are by the current dominant strain of feminism. Here is a woman with a physical disability that has caused her problems and resulted in her being treated pretty shittily at times by doctors and society - it is her sex combined with this disability that caused this treatment, not just the disability.

And yet she doesn't include her sex as being a protected characteristic, and indeed infers somehow that her "cis" womanhood is a form of privilege compared to others.

Plus she's had to come to terms with not being able to have children, and you can see how messed up her understanding of the gender critical position is: "Given my diagnosis at 15, much of the discourse around trans rights and what constitutes a “real woman” is personally painful. Excluding certain individuals because of anatomical difference feels regressive, cruel, fearful of the other. Growing up, I could not join in with my friends’ conversations about periods, birth control, the morning-after pill – something that caused me a great deal of shame, suffering and confusion. But is that all being a woman is? If trans women are not women, according to these rules, I’m not either; though if I’m not a woman, what exactly am I?"

It must have been so heart breaking to go through that, and then end up in a place of not feeling like a woman because of it. And basically suggests that her syndrome makes her a non-woman. How fucked up is that?

How has current identity politics convinced women to view themselves as privileged and not oppressed? It is the ultimate bait and switch.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/08/how-long-covid-forced-me-to-confront-my-past-and-my-identity

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