My teen daughter has burst out crying and gone upstairs because we were discussing Maya Forstater

[Bryonyshcmyony]

It came up on the news and I said something like surely its obvious that biological sex is real. Gender identity isn't the same as biological sex. She said people on tiktok say that there is a chromosomal spectrum. I said if someone has a chromosomal abnormality that's not proof that biological sex doesn't exist. Then she cried, said how frustrated I make her and just wants to live in a world where transpeople are accepted for who they are and its not her job to educate me as - and I quote - an ignorant old person.

I'm actually quite hurt. I don't want her to hate me! Obviously it's just a subject that is completely out of bounds. Anyone else faced similar?

Tiktok is not a reliable source of education for ignorant young people.

I suggest you and your daughter sit down together at a screen and do some research on intersex .

Very, very few transexuals have variant chromosomes, and even fewer are intersex.

🤣😂🤣 Sex on a spectrum. Chromosomes on a spectrum 😂🤣😂

I got a chromosome test on my son for downs Edwards and Patau's syndrome. It told me his sex as well. It says Male. It didn't say slightly male but leaning towards female 😂🤣😂🤣

I would cut your DD more slack, too. My children and their friends are all extremely pro trans rights and we can't just write off a generation as unthinking because of that.

For what it's worth, I wholly believe that one cannot change sex and cannot abide attempts to remove the word "woman" from the language. However, one can most certainly change gender and for me, the debate is rather more nuanced than Maya Forstater's words would indicate.

Have tried very hard to phrase that correctly because I know that there are some passionate views here!

Yep been there, just like TiltTopTable

Apparently I'm a bigot for simply believing in Biology and that biological women should have access to safe spaces just for biological women.

This from a DD who has an A level in Biology and has studied anatomy & physiology at uni.

I'm not going to ask her anything else. I'm not going to discuss it with her any more!

I did say I believe that some people want to change gender and that's fine. I said what happens if they change their sex from, say, female to male at their GPS. How do they then get calls for cervical smears and mammograms? She said oh I think they take health very seriously so wouldn't change their sex for that. Then I said so why are women losing their jobs for saying biological sex is real. Tears, screaming, shouting, flouncing.

Ask her if she has a friend who is wanting to "change sex". That could be why she takes it so personally.

@WinterIsGone

Ask her if she has a friend who is wanting to "change sex". That could be why she takes it so personally.

She has a friend who now identifies as they them. They have been to our house, I used their preferred pronouns, we had a nice chat in the garden about life generally. No criticism from me.

@IfNot

It does seem generally, just from the teens I know, that girls are at the forefront of the whole self Id / choose your pronouns thing. Teen son and his pals call this lot the "They/Thems" and think it's all bollocks. They are quite unapologetic about it all too. One girl complained to a teacher my son was transpgobic because he said in PHSE he would only go out with a biological girl. The teacher said it wasn't though, just his preference. Generally boys don't tie themselves in knots worrying about offending people. Hmmm

I think the notion that your physical bodily reality is something you can just magically float away from is something that's far more attractive to teenage girls in the current selfie and mainstream porn/harassment/abuse culture. If she's off to university soon and living in a city on her own, in halls or a shared house she really needs to wise up quickly.

You are not old OP. Your daughter is rude.

Well if your philosophy is "be kind", where does that end? "Being kind" when women's rights are threatened has real downsides for women. There is a clash of rights here, no matter how much some people pretend there isn't, and real people are being harassed, threatened (JKR), arrested (Marion MIllar) losing jobs (Maya), scholarships (Selina Soule), sports participation, their dignity and safety (see: Karen White in prison etc).

I hate seeing how this battle is being played out

You and me both. But the trans side isn't campaigning for third spaces or separate accommodation, they are trying to take ours even when they are legally protected by the Equality Act, AND make us bow through fear, social pressure and intimidation to say or let go unchallenged things which we do not believe are true - like that the definition of women includes anyone who says they are or feel like or "live as" a woman, however fleetingly that may be, and however rankly stereotypically they define such things. The result of that definitional change is rampant and has implications for every single place in law and policy where the word "woman" is used.

I will happily use someone's chosen name and acknowledge they have changed their gender - not their sex. I don't think transpeople should be discriminated against for jobs, housing, study, travel, in access to justice or services. But I will not accept changing the definition of "women" to the extent than women's rights and discrimination against women which is on the basis of our biology can no longer be defined or protected.

@Bryonyshcmyony

She's come down and made me a coffee. I'm still smarting over the old and ignorant comment but hiding it well. I feel a bit sorry for myself and wish I hadn't bothered trying to chat to them about current affairs etc

'Lived experience' is now an absolute keyword in drama, in storytelling, in casting, film and TV. If someone is cast who does not have 'lived experience' then productions are liable to be heavily criticised, even boycotted, especially by the young. Can you ask her why she doesn't therefore value or want to listen to your 'lived experience' as a woman, or JKR's 'lived experience' described in her essay, and which I think very much informs Harry Potter's story?

I think the issue is if you don't capitulate fully you are the enemy. No nuance. Perhaps it Is social media. It must be.

@SmokedDuck

I've had a lot of this with one of my teenage daughters. The older one is quite different and while we don't always agree on many things she is willing to engage in a robust discussion.

I don't think the difference is anything I've done, so much as a personality difference, the older takes after me and the younger her father (haha). But really, she is just far more inclined to black and white thinking and also has a very strong sense of empathy and justice. It's difficult for her to see that it can be ok for an issue to have more than one side, or to be sympathetic to people but also think they are wrong.

I do think though that there is a difference in this generation and it largely comes down to how they are educated. For all the talk of critical thinking and teaching kids how to engage rather than just facts bla bla bla, the effect of what they do is the exact opposite. It's a kind of indoctrination in a hierarchical model of thinking around identity issues, but it's not presented as a theory, it's the only paradigm they're given. And they don't have enough factual history or even science to raise questions about it.

They've also been taught that "diversity whatever that means is the ultimate good. There is a paragraph in a P.D. James novel where one of the policewomen, who attended a very rough school, remembers that the only spiritual or philosophical value they were taught there, in an attempt to keep order in the school, was ant-racism. Or what we might call tolerance. I think that's largely true, diversity and tolerance are the two controlling values they are taught, and so those are the lens through which all other information is viewed. Even science or what we might better call truth. A truth that doesn't align with those things, or what the individual thinks those things mean, cannot be true.

Those of us who are older maybe imagined that the primacy of truth was self-evident, but I think that unfortunately, it isn't.

Completely agree with all of this.

Students these days are really only taught one point of view, certainly on this type of issue, and that is very much guided by the over-arching principle of tolerance. And I am so on board with tolerance and respect for everyone, but I do feel that the infringement of the trans movement on women's rights is the issue, rather than acceptance and tolerance of trans people themselves.

I just feel like they are 2 totally separate issues and not sure why they've been conflated? Being supportive of people's right to live as trans doesn't mean you also automatically have to be on-board with referring to biological women as 'menstruators' or 'birthing parents' or you're a bigot. There doesn't seem to be the same issue with infringement on language around men or male brand adverts now talking about 'shavers' or 'penis owners' to feel more inclusive.

Well if your philosophy is "be kind", where does that end?

That's easy! "Be kind" is telling women what they need to, not what the speaker needs to do.

What makes things difficult is that platforms like TikTok ban gender critical creators so it's really difficult to get contra messages to young people who get most of their 'information' from them.
We really do need some snappy, well made gender critical content to share with our young people. I showed DS some of Magdalen's funnier videos but the longer and more serious ones are beyond his concentration span.

She said people on tiktok say that there is a chromosomal spectrum.

I'd find this really hard to ignore or placate tbh. A spectrum has a very specific scientific meaning (a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without steps, across a continuum). Basically, if it is something you can count (like apples) is CANNOT exist on a spectrum. If is it something you measure (the weight of an apple) it can exist on a spectrum. Chromosomes are things which can be counted.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs. Nobody is entitled to their own facts.

I think you did the right thing OP. You aren’t “being kind” by engaging with this matter anything other than critically. You are completely right that this sort of wish fulfillment would place her in a poor position at university.

The workplace is even tougher - in the next few years England will be revising a lot of workplace policies and Maya’s result will have to integrated and respected in that process.

As a generation older who sometimes encounters junior staff in their twenties, they really lack good reasoning and logic skills. And you can see their absolute frustration and sometimes anger that this what employers want. It’s as if they feel they were lied to.

I think there is a lot of fear. I certainly know there are issues I don't want to talk about with some friends, because I'm worried that my views, though they exist, are uninformed, I'm not certain I'm right and I'm afraid of getting labelled. Israel/Palestine would be one of those.

Asking a kid to deal with the process of learning that they don't agree with everything their mum says, that they may agree with some bits of it but if they told their friends those bits they'd lose their connections to the approved circle- that's terrifying.

I find myself going back to Deborah Tannen's 'you just don't understand' about the different ways that men and women (DEFINITELY gender not sex words in this case) use conversation. Women use it to make connections. What you know, when you know it, what you approve and what you disapprove are all tools to keep you in your place in the network. You share problems as currency in your friendships. You don't 'get above yourself' or try to establish hierarchy in conversation, the male gender does that. Ostracism is used as a sanction to exclude from connection.

I don't discuss this much with my son because I actually don't want to over influence him. We have young women in our circle who are transitioning, I have my own thoughts about it and I mention it briefly without dwelling on it. If he ever asks me my thoughts or tells me what he thinks, we can have the conversation.

My teen DD is similar.

They cry because they cannot reconcile facts with the cult like acceptance that is demanded in schools and peer groups.

It’s so difficult for them .

Oooof. She has it coming. I really DID read philosophy at an RG uni and can state with some confidence that her views will be dissected and examined and regardless of what she thinks she thinks, she will leave being very sure of them!!!

My child and I were discussing this too. Can you reframe it - the case is really about freedom of expression and whether believing something and expressing that belief is acceptable in law - the answer is that it is acceptable but ceases to be so at the point at which such expression is used to bully and harass others in a deliberate and antagonistic way. So for example, it is no different to a situation where for example a Muslim employee says in a discussion in the workplace that the only god is Allah. The law does not restrict that expression of belief but nor does it restrict an atheist colleague saying they disagree or a Hindu colleague talking about their beliefs which are different. It would be different if the other employees discriminated or subjected theMuslim colleague to some detriment because they disagreed with his belief. In law one belief is not prioritised over another. Their is no right not to be offended. There are good public policy reasons not to shut down debate.

I asked her what the evidence for this was. She could not come up with anything better than 'everyone knows she is'. I asked her to read JKR's letter and then tell me whether she is transphobic and if so why. She just wouldn't engage with it.

Yes I had this with DD 14 but she did at least read the letter although she made no comment.

She knows my views, I know hers, we don't really discuss it. All I've said is I don't understand her generation's obsession with having a label (we fought against all that in the 80s) but so long as she doesn't expect me to support her to irreversibly alter her body she can label herself what she likes. (I think it's currently non binary)

I do find it bizarre that so many girls seem to support this shit. Didn't a report the other day find that nearly 9 in ten girls have been sexually harassed in schools by boys or been pestered for nude pics and yet still they're fine giving up their safe spaces such as single sex toilets? It's as if they're being groomed from an early age to accept that being treated like shit is part of being a woman.

I'd have been the same at that age. They're the ones listening to all the sob stories on SM about how hard trans people have it. We're the ones on MN seeing all the abuse trans people give those who want to silence biological reality. I think the best way is to show that you aren't transphobic. Actively sympathise when you hear a trans person is going through difficulties (I'm sure you do anyway) show her it's not being trans per se that you have a problem with but some of the ideologies that come with it that impact on women and children.

My teen DDs are very woke and we cannot have any discussions about these issues or even conversations which may end up potentially related.
It is totally frustrating but like pp I assume they'll wake up at some stage.