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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Help for teenage dd.

81 replies

SirVixofVixHall · 31/12/2020 13:56

My daughter, just turned 16, had a very upsetting zoom call with her school friends last night. For reference out of the three others one friend is gay, one is lesbian. Dd is the youngest, two of them are 17.
Talk turned to Sam Smith and pronouns, and to trans ideology. Dds friends are very much in the TWAW camp. Dd is not. At one point one of her friends gave her a veiled threat, mentioning a girl who had been ostracised in school for having a racist boyfriend, eg likening dds views to racism and homophobia. ( i am NOT happy about this ) The same friend also criticised dd for not having her pronouns on her instagram bio .
Dd is a very kind, thoughtful and sensitive person, she is anxious and upset this morning. I have suggested she could send them all Magdalen’s Alex Drummond video, and Barracker’s article on pronouns - ( can anyone link me to that ? I had it bookmarked I thought but can’t find it) . To give them some idea of why she feels the way she does. It sounds a pretty depressing conversation, the totalitarianism dressed up as liberalism, the friend who is getting harassed by men in her job but thinks that sex doesn’t matter. They think that Keira winning her case was a bad thing. Dd is accepting of the differences of opinion and happy to debate, which makes it all even more upsetting and has made me quite cross on her behalf.
She did talk about her point of view, but felt that there were things she couldn’t say, eg when a friend insisted that TWAW, she didn’t contradict her, I think she is worried that she will be dropped by them, she is very fond of them and they are her closest friends in school.
How to help ?

Dd has a separate group of friends in another country, of whom several are lesbian, and all of them are very strongly TWAW, gendered souls etc, so much so that dd has never even mentioned her own opinions. I feel sad for her that there is this crushing of any other viewpoints, and that she is feeling that the only way to keep friends is to not speak up, and that she is akin to a racist for wanting single sex spaces preserved, for knowing that sex is real, that sexual attraction is real, and that this is a sexist and regressive agenda, not progression.
I was 16 in 1980, and honestly it feels like a better time. Most of my female friends had short hair, without being told that made them not girls, most of my male friends wore makeup. I read Spare Rib and felt hopeful for the future. ☹️

OP posts:
Delphinium20 · 01/01/2021 19:56

@CatsCantCatchNewYear2

This business is reminiscent of being excommunicated in ye olden days because of thinking.
Yup. My thoughts exactly.
Delphinium20 · 01/01/2021 20:18

One of the them said to dd that transwomen faced double the harassment of women, as they were harassed as women, and also for being trans. So it is not a very logical argument !

When my DD used this argument on me it was one of the few times I lost my cool with her - we live in a country/city where Black and immigrant women (mostly Somali refugees or Hispanic from poor South American countries, many undocumented) demonstrably have many obstacles in life in addition to just existing as a female, including poverty, discrimination, cultural expectations, access to health care, domestic abuse, police harassment, high-quality education, employer exploitation, etc. So when DD was arguing that some American white male from an upper middle class family had it worse because "identity"...I had some harsh words.

That's one reason I find this narrative so maddening. It assumes one group (men) is the most oppressed, thus deserving of women and girls falling over themselves to accommodate all demands.

Delphinium20 · 01/01/2021 20:19

*low-quality education

What I should have said was, "limited access to high-quality education"

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 01/01/2021 20:29

I hope she listened (sounds like me on a rant).

Delphinium20 · 03/01/2021 06:50

@ThatIsNotMyUsername

I hope she listened (sounds like me on a rant).
Haha...I know! I just keep hoping that a nugget here or there will implant in her brain and one day she'll recall it in a light bulb moment.
AndNob · 04/01/2021 13:22

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