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.

I feel for you OP, and you're right, it is navel-gazing bollocks.

pretending they are oh just so silly and simple minded they can't manage to use a pronoun that looks different from whats in front of them, as it's just far too difficult for them.

Massive misrepresentation and gaslighting there, as per usual. GC feminists are the ones who have an argument underpinning their case and think about the issues instead of blindly accepting trans/woke commands about how everyone must think about sex and gender. I don’t like being commanded to use the wrong pronoun because it undermines meaning and our ability to describe reality - which in the case of which sex someone is is actually very important in several situations - and it makes me feel extremely uneasy, for good reasons.

Genderists would like it to be just “pretending to be simple minded”. So they wouldn’t have to actually rationally argue, defend and explain why this makes sense. And so they can just attack silly women and tell them to shut up. And pretend caring about women’s rights is just like being some confused old homophobe. It’s not.

@WindyPudding

pretending they are oh just so silly and simple minded they can't manage to use a pronoun that looks different from whats in front of them, as it's just far too difficult for them.

Massive misrepresentation and gaslighting there, as per usual. GC feminists are the ones who have an argument underpinning their case and think about the issues instead of blindly accepting trans/woke commands about how everyone must think about sex and gender. I don’t like being commanded to use the wrong pronoun because it undermines meaning and our ability to describe reality - which in the case of which sex someone is is actually very important in several situations - and it makes me feel extremely uneasy, for good reasons.

Genderists would like it to be just “pretending to be simple minded”. So they wouldn’t have to actually rationally argue, defend and explain why this makes sense. And so they can just attack silly women and tell them to shut up. And pretend caring about women’s rights is just like being some confused old homophobe. It’s not.

Mmmmm.

So there are never posts about just not understanding it and how they are scared to make mistakes because it's just so much to get their head round?

No offence but your DS sounds like a woke-ified robot

Of course “he” comes first to my mind when I see a male - that’s exactly why people slip up. That is what he/she pronouns are for - amazingly enough. Bossing someone around about “your” pronouns and what they have to use to describe you is not like your name, at all. Your name is something you tell people who know/interact with you, for them to use. Pronouns are for anyone to use based on what they see. Just going around telling people they have to say “she” when they see “he” is controlling and undermining and, Imo, used to claim victimhood when people mess up.

I think it is difficult for parents and siblings who have grown up with someone knowing what sex they are and then are supposed to use the opposite pronoun. That’s hard for them to get their head around and I agree people may post about that too, but that’s not “pretending to be silly” either.

Also since a lot of “trans” teens are just following a trend / peer pressure and ultimately change their mind, the pronoun change is temporary and not reality. So how do you know who’s “right”?

My husband and I decided to raise our boy as a feminist. This means we try not to use only male pronouns so we swap in she for his picture books which, of course, overwhelmingly feature he. This does take a lot more mental power than simply just reading the book, as you have to make sure you are being logical with it. i.e not calling a fully maned lion a she, not calling a milking cow he. So, yes, I would argue using non reality based pronouns is taxing and in no way faux confusion. My husband gets it wrong on occasion too so not down to lafybrain either.

And you decide someone else's reality, do you?

As much as they do in this case, ie not at all. Mother Nature has decided it.

I'm just incensed that your DS's girlfriend feels "unsafe" around you and your son called you "dangerous". Surely if they had to describe the feeling it would be something like uncomfortable or unrecognised or misunderstood. But no, these are all just not dramatic enough, so important words to express very particular things like danger, safe, invalidated are losing their meaning.

I spent years and years fully on board with trans rights. That meant using neo-pronouns, they for a known person of known sex who preferred that, and training myself to say she for someone who had been born male.

I'm actually very good at it. But it does take some cognitive effort and it takes more for the average person. And for some children on the autistic spectrum, and for some people who speak English as an additional language, it is an almost impossible demand. I believe this week is Worldwide Autism Awareness Week, but presumably not people with that type of autism. Inclusive? Yeah right!

Mine tried to tell me he knows how women feel as he has a mum and a girlfriend and had girls in his class at school and then tried to tell me what a terf was.

I suggested that he might therefore appreciate that women are at the bottom of the pile in this and that he should be supporting us in our sex based rights while respecting that some people want to represent themselves differently and it's not an either or situation.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

And you decide someone else's reality, do you?

As much as they do in this case, ie not at all. Mother Nature has decided it.

Yes, but this is a prime example of what I mean by faux misunderstanding.

Dragged in? Dragged in? Dragged in?

I am autistic and one of those children I mention is mine. I am so sorry you find the mention of a neurological variance that has shaped my entire life and shapes my peers' lives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week a bit tiresome to consider. Not.

And during World Autism Awareness Week too.

Doesn't that just say it all.

The audacity. You behave. Try sitting on your hands next time you want to post in such a disablist way.

@PotholeHellhole

Dragged in? Dragged in? Dragged in?

I am autistic and one of those children I mention is mine. I am so sorry you find the mention of a neurological variance that has shaped my entire life and shapes my peers' lives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week a bit tiresome to consider. Not.

And during World Autism Awareness Week too.

Doesn't that just say it all.

The audacity. You behave. Try sitting on your hands next time you want to post in such a disablist way.

I don't find it tiresome.

I am not being disablist in any shape or form.

In fact the opposite.

Any thread mentioning trans will link it to autism at some point , as if no autistic person ever is capable of individual thought. All autistic people are not the same as you will know.

I also never mentioned children.

I'll leave for a bit. I hear some are "sick fed up" of my children's existence.

I am not here to hear that, especially not paired with such deceitfulness as a claim I want to "eradicate" trans people because I would like abit of give and take extended to autistic children and adults like my own offspring.

And I get called deceitful. The audacity.

Yes, but this is a prime example of what I mean by faux misunderstanding.

Not really. There's nothing faux about my knowledge that humans can't change sex. People don't define the parts of reality that they can't change. We're not in a vacuum. You're demonstrating the weirdly individualist nature of gender identity ideology. An MTF trans person will always be a male.

As if we should eradicate trans just in case an autistic person gets it wrong.

She didn't say that, did she? Stop putting words into people's mouths.

But the lack of care for others is as ever quite striking.

Huge handhold. I had an "discussion" with my 30 year old son. Didn't end well, I'm a bigot apparently.

This was about 12 months ago, will never ever mention anything about it again to him. Not worth it.

He was brought up with non gender specific toys and clothes., until he was about 8 and wanted toys guns etc. The child of a staunch feminist single mother.

If he is so woke and believes some of the nonsense he spouted, there is no hope. I am devastated. :(

@Ereshkigalangcleg

As if we should eradicate trans just in case an autistic person gets it wrong.

She didn't say that, did she? Stop putting words into people's mouths.

You mean the poster who said I said her children shouldn't exist?

Pot kettle black.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

But the lack of care for others is as ever quite striking.

You mean your lack of care of a bloody use of a word which makes zero difference to you but big difference to someone else, but you don't think you should, because you're right?

eradicate trans

This right here sums the whole issue of debating pronouns or anything else. You can't really discuss anything properly if people just make issues up to argue with. I've been watching this happen for about 6/7 years now.

So it's just a hard no these days from me on the pronoun front and I don't need to give anyone an explanation particularly in the face of constant bold misrepresentation.

The idea it makes "zero difference" to the person being told to bastardise language is yet another example of this constant misrepresentation of the truth. Don't bother asking what difference it makes - plenty of people have already answered that sufficiently on this thread.