I had the most awful row with my teenagers yesterday

[JensonsAcolyte]

Both totally TWAW adherents.

DS is 18, his girlfriend is Non Binary and goes by a made up name (male Greek god). I am polite and go along with pronouns and use their chosen name.

For some reason Eddie Izzard came up at dinner time and I ‘misgendered’ them. DS really started laying into me about my bigotry so I played him the clip of Eddie saying Eddie has boy mode and girl mode and uses both sets of pronouns (I've tied myself in knots there as I don’t want to be deleted).

It came out in the conversation that DS believes, absolutely and 100%, that Izzard has changed sex. Actually changed sex. And that if DH came down for breakfast this morning and announced he was now a woman then DS would absolutely 100% believe that he had changed sex overnight.

DD was chiming in at this point and said that actually she would like to go by she/they as sometimes she identifies as ‘less female’. I was a bit irate by this point and I’m afraid I said that is navel gazing bollocks (oops).

Anyway it all got a bit shouty, and then DS dropped in that ‘some lesbians have genital preferences, and ultimately that’s transphobic but nobody’s trying to force anyone to have sex with anyone’ and I lost my shit a bit. I’d hoped this nonsense was confined to Twitter tbh and I hadn’t really seen it in the wild.

I told him he was a privileged, woke little shit. That lesbians my age have spent their entire lives having to justify their sexuality, being told they just haven’t met the right man, not to mention the sexual assaults and corrective rapes. And now are being told they are BIGOTS for not including penis. I was really angry. He then turned round and said the reason his girlfriend (and yes he calls them his girlfriend which is a whole nother eye roll) doesn’t like coming here is because I’m well known for being a Terf and she feels unsafe.

I’ve basically left it as saying I don’t adhere to your religion but that doesn’t make me hateful or phobic, we had a bit more of an argument where he tried to say it’s not a religion but actually I think I made that point quite clear. I don’t believe in God but that doesn’t mean I hate Christians, I don’t believe people can change sex but that doesn’t make me Transphobic.

I’ve woken up this morning and I just still feel sick about it all. He called me some dreadful things, bigot, hateful, dangerous. I said some things I regret, particularly about the arrant nonsense that is non binary, I’m usually a lot more measured than that to avoid offence but I was just so angry.

Is anyone else having this with their teens? I could do with a bit of solidarity, advice maybe or just a hand hold.

If your child said they were threatened by me, for merely being honest, then they are 100% not stepping foot in my home. It's a pathetic level of pandering, expecting adults to lie in their own homes.

I'm so sorry OP. Woke little shit is exactly right. I would have lost my rag too.

My teenagers thankfully haven't fallen for this shit, especially the older teen in university who has strong opinions. They are respectful of their friends' opinions and preferences and use their preferred pronouns always, but they recognise this as privileged, navel gazing bullshit. I come from a poor country though and they have exposure to it through regular trips from the time they were very young and they know the issues women face, so they know privilege when they see it.

If someone treat my child like that I'd go off my head

Treated your child like what.?

Do you believe your child has the right to be received in the homes of people they have insulted?

Seriously?

@ScreamingBeans

If someone treat my child like that I'd go off my head

Treated your child like what.?

Do you believe your child has the right to be received in the homes of people they have insulted?

Seriously?

Some of the suggestions, not OPs behaviour.

I have been clear in this thread that it's the kids well out of line.

Oh I see, yes, some of them are unhelpful I agree. Throwing him out for example. And some of them are just funny, I don't think they're meant to be taken seriously, but they made me guffaw.

If my child was rude in someone else's home, I'd fully understand that person not wanting them there anymore.

any not 'a'

I identified as a punk when I was a teenager. It caused just as much anguish in our household. My DF used to laugh at the outfits I went out in, as do I now I’m a grown up.
No doubt in 30 years from now it will be treated like any other teenage fad. And most of them will be sad old non-binary adults who are tolerated in the same way my generation of alternatives are today.
I now get why DF took such delight in ridicule our teenage causes, it is great fun.
However, I will not tolerate the statements made by these indoctrinated young wokes regarding biological sex. They are being taught all this twaddle in PSHE at school by some dubious “do gooders” who are cleverly omitting the actual biological facts. My intelligent ( she has an A level in biology) is convinced that if you chop off your genitals your chromosomes magically change.
I don’t think you are being unreasonable and your teenager needs to learn that you cannot change other peoples well informed opinion. But that is something that is the privilege of those who experience of life.

*intelligent neice

@BillMasen

Those that value being right and winning the argument over maintaining a relationship with their children can’t then be surprised when tat relationship is damaged in the future

This thread makes the stately homes one make a lot of sense

The stately homes thread is about adults who grew up in emotionally abusive homes. If you can't see the difference between those and a loving home where a mother loses her temper at being called a dangerous bigot, then I'm guessing you're someone who thinks feeling unsafe means being in the same room as someone with a different opinion.

It's not abusive to set boundaries for your children and to expect w modicum of respect.

I think this girlfriend needs to stand by her convictions; if she believes OPs home is a dangerous place for trans people, she mustn't go there.
You can't in one breath declare a person to be dangerous, and the next ask to come in their home and eat the food etc.

@Clymene some of the responses rather than the op tbh

I've not rtft, but my daughter is early teens and I can't even discuss the subject with her without her getting upset. She is always the one who brings it up. She has told me she is a lesbian which is not an issue whatsoever, but when I asked if she would date someone with a penis she said she would. It made me so sad.

She called me a Karen once and I handed her arse to her on a plate, so at least that's not happened since.

But I blame THE FUCKING INTERNET.

@BillMasen

Those that value being right and winning the argument over maintaining a relationship with their children can’t then be surprised when tat relationship is damaged in the future

This thread makes the stately homes one make a lot of sense

It really isn't anything like that on the stately homes thread. Come on. A woman and her adult son had a heated argument. The son insulted his mother and she got angry and said things too. The mother is obviously upset about it and feels bad about it.

I had a stately homes type of upbringing - for one I would have been terrified to say anything like that to my parents at that age and even when older if I did such a thing, I was left shaking and terrified. And it wouldn't have crossed my parents minds to have felt bad about shouting at me.

A one off incident is not the same at all - and doesn't have the effect of years of one-sided shouting and putdowns. And stop trying to make it seem like it is.

[quote allthecarrotcake]@ScreamingBeans

What's going on in that video- I can't work out what any of them are screaming about [/quote]
It's footage of a feminist meeting at the Bristol Jan Jar. A bunch of posh students turned up screaming about trans oppression and blocked women from going in. The young woman who screamed at Magdalen calling her a cunt because she didn't use the pronouns she'd chosen for herself (other people are supposed to magically know and obediently use them) struck me as spoilt beyond measure.

Children calling their mothers TERF, KAREN, TRANSPHOBE, BIGOT, NAZI, etc need a fucking good talking to. That level of disrespect is through the roof and it's intentional - the TRA's want kids to be separated emotionally from their parents - why?

Well, I think we can all guess why.

The Junior Spies in 1984 are brainwashed into looking for evidence of thoughtcrime in their parents.

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”

@AvocadoBathroom

Children calling their mothers TERF, KAREN, TRANSPHOBE, BIGOT, NAZI, etc need a fucking good talking to. That level of disrespect is through the roof and it's intentional - the TRA's want kids to be separated emotionally from their parents - why?

Well, I think we can all guess why.

How interesting that a young man so 'woke' uses misognystic slurs.

Right now I can say, thankfully, that my DD knows and shares my gender critical feminist views. She knows I am a TRF (and knows I prefer PRF and the reason why ). She is used to my ranting about the TRAs and when one female in her year came back to school identifying as trans she shared my sadness that the girl felt she needed to do that, and incredulity that she was now expected to call her a boy (along with “well she’s always been a little odd and attention seeking, she’s exactly the kind of person I would expect to do something like that”)

If in a few years she goes away to Uni and comes back blue haired, TWAW or a member of the alphabet soup, I will take the opportunity to trans myself. I’ve never been girly and I quite like the idea of becoming a bloke, demanding she calls me dad and never having to spend all day creating the perfect birthday cake (today) or helping out with revision (tonight) or reading through and critiquing English essays (Friday) again

@CrazyNeighbour

It came out in the conversation that DS believes, absolutely and 100%, that Izzard has changed sex. Actually changed sex. And that if DH came down for breakfast this morning and announced he was now a woman then DS would absolutely 100% believe that he had changed sex overnight.

Isn’t it “hilarious” that he knows right fucking well that if you, OP came downstairs claiming to be a man, that he would be able to see it, instantly, for the horseshit it was.

Yes, privileged little shit, and a misogynist to boot.

For the sake of the relationship, I would try to find a way through it. But the manipulative little Madam who is parasiting on the lives of gay men and women by claiming a queer identity, she would be getting very short shrift from me indeed.

This.

Exactly @Sugarygoodness.

I feel unsafe = my ideals were challenged and it hurt my feelings.

Women who are stalked feel unsafe. Women who are threatened with death and rape feel unsafe. Women who live with an abuser and are walking on eggshells 24/7 feel unsafe.

A few hurty feelings from having your worldview challenged or debated? Nah.