Are younger teens and pre-teens rejecting gender woo?

[bellinisurge]

Saw someone on Twitter say this. My own early teen, who loves to disagree with me for the hell of it has started critiquing gender woo by herself. "I used to say stuff to wind you up, Mum. But it's just so ridiculous, isn't it". A classmate changes pronouns a few times a week and shouts at you if you misgender them apparently. Teen getting fed up of it.

My 15 year old and most of his friends are thankfully the same. I'm proud of him and them for acknowledging the ridiculousness of it all.

My 16 yo and 14yo are both of the view that it’s a lot of nonsense.

Before anyone shouts at me, teen is completely chilled about lesbians and gay men, bisexual and gender nonconforming people. She just finds all the rest of the alphabet stuff tedious and self absorbed. Her words.

12 and 13 year old boys very much agree with me (for now) but friends’ girls much more on board. I’m in the Netherlands, though reports from friends in the U.K. confirm similar experiences.

Same bellinisurge - very tolerant of LGB and gender non-conformity but find the TQ+ a bit “much”.

I have DD15 and DD13 and they are both v sceptical about the whole subject and we discuss it at some length. It's actually one area where they do agree with me as it's become a bit of a joke that every week someone at school decides they are non-binary. Usually, and interestingly to my mind, these are the girls who were really "girly" growing up. Furthermore their declarations don't seem to change their outward appearance in any way. My eldest DD has already been advised by so-called friends to "educate " herself having misgendered someone who seems to change gender as often as underwear. Unfortunately she says she would now rather not talk to people in case she's accused of this again. Sadly they both feel that they can't share their views for fear of being labelled trans phobic. It would be interesting to know how many people of their age actually agree with all the gender ideology or those who, like my DDs choose to stay under the radar for fear of being isolated from their peers.

My 16 y.o. DD is totally gender critical. Worked out for herself that the trans ideology is profoundly anti-women.

I work with several teenage apprentices - including one lesbian and one gay man - and all of them are utterly, scathing dismissive about trans ideology.

They are almost aggressive in their sheer disdain....It's interesting to see.

• scathingly

This is such a heartening thread. My niece in her early 20s is fully, totally on board with gender woo. This gives me some hope that things may be different by the time my children get older.

Gives me a bit of hope. I am concerned about the backlash against LGB people when this implodes.

These are heartening reports. Maybe one day woman will once again encompass 'any female adult human, regardless of personality' (and same for man/male too).

@Bellinisurge - I hope that people will understand that many of the LGB (and QT possibly?) community have not been the drivers of this ideology. My daughters are fully accepting and inclusive of gay and lesbian people and actually they also have a Transgender teacher who is one of their favourite teachers at school. I hope I am raising them to be compassionate and thoughtful people. To my mind we can be inclusive without denying biology and steamrolling over women's rights, and that forms the basis of many of our discussions.

My DS (17) thinks it’s all total nonsense. He very much believes that everyone should present however they like - he’s a bit quirky himself - but they can’t change sex.

We’ve chatted a bit about the issues the whole ideology raises. He says he’d feel uncomfortable sharing a toilet with a trans boy particularly if they stood at the urinals (and presumable used a she-wee), this has yet to happen at college though. Interestingly the trans boys at college (there are several) don’t want to use the boys facilities but the trans girl (there is one) doing a sports subject does wish to use the female changing facilities, so far the college have resisted. He’s quite level headed and understands that that his discomfort at sharing facilities with a trans boy would be for vastly different reasons to a woman’s discomfort at having to share female facilities with trans women.

I’m unable to find anything on the college website with regards to stonewall which is heartening and a bit of Internet stalking tells me the college principal loves JKR .

I wonder whether there's going to be a break in attitudes among the young between those who learned about the gender identity ideology as part of the whole LGBTQQIAAP+ package, and so realise they have to go along with it in order not to be "hateful", and the younger ones for whom it's their lived experience of it playing out at school and in their friendship groups and them having to deal with fragile and aggressive attention seekers.

My DD14 finds all the labels and pronouns very tedious but generally keeps her opinions to herself amongst friends. But she reckons even silence on this issue is perceived...she hasn't been challenged yet but some of her closest friends are very in thrall and it's not something she wants to fall out over. But if pushed I doubt she would pretend.

Hmm, I dunno. Have a young pre-teen and it’s firmly the in-thing right now to be anti-JKR, gender non-conforming and everyone pronouned up the yin-yang. I tread carefully. Hopefully as PPs say the irritating flip-flopping over gender woo will shed some light as their maturity develops. Fingers crossed.

FrauleinSchweiger I agree that fair minded, reasonable people have been hijacked by extremists exploitation. This increasingly bizarre addition of various letters looks like an attempt to co-opt people into the cult. Anyone who is gender non-conforming, maybe not that into a sexual relationship at all or just not that bothered is dragged under the umbrella as being "a marginalised identity" to pad out the numbers. It used to be called "your personality " and nobody tried to exploit you for having it.

Each rising cohort likes to carve its own space and differeantiate from the lot that came before. Remember when 'gay' was a derogatory adjective for anything deemed worthy and virtuous, a reaction to top-down moralising.

There are apparently two girls in my daughter's scout group who change their pronouns regularly. My daughter and all the others thing they are loony and attention seeking.

3 teens here- all gc to varying degrees of articulacy.
its the 20-35 yr olds who are totally lost to the ideology ime.

My 14 yo DD likes to show me the ridiculous pronoun combinations people use on Twitter from time to time. She’s fully GC, as are both her older brothers. But I’m sure that’s just from having heated discussions with me about it - not that any of them were onboard with it but they did think I was somehow out of line for my strong opinions until I showed them photos and articles to demonstrate that I’m not a “hateful bigot” for excluding male people from my feminism.

I imagine those whose parents are not as critical have been suckered into it for the time being.

Good to hear that children are starting to see what's happening here.
It'll be the peer group narcissistic performances that will eventually erode the patience and tolerance of others. To date the bullying and intimidation keeps most of them silent. But it never takes long for the overreach to kick in. Different pronouns each day week, continual accusations of alleged transphobia for wrong think/speak, dramatic pronouncements and the eternal self involved performances and eventually the grounded kids will walk away. It'll take a while as there are too many self invested adults who are being allowed to interfere in schools and promote the madness. But these levels of self absorption and coercive control of others can't be sustained and most kids with balanced views will eventually move on.

[quote FrauleinSchweiger]@Bellinisurge - I hope that people will understand that many of the LGB (and QT possibly?) community have not been the drivers of this ideology. My daughters are fully accepting and inclusive of gay and lesbian people and actually they also have a Transgender teacher who is one of their favourite teachers at school. I hope I am raising them to be compassionate and thoughtful people. To my mind we can be inclusive without denying biology and steamrolling over women's rights, and that forms the basis of many of our discussions.[/quote]
Oh definately.

Some of the most outspoken critics of gender wang are trans sexuals, lesbians, increasingly gay men and liberal universalists.

This is not just a feminist battle and certainly not (how do they put it) just "the white cisheteronormative middle classes".

If common sense does triumph and Gen Z really are seeing through the Woo. I too hope that the excesses of this movement haven't destroyed the implicit understanding and tolerance that has previously existed (certainly in my lifetime and circles) towards trans women in womens spaces.

I suspect and hope not. I doubt there will be much of a backlash.

I think (if it doesn't subsume everything) it will just fade away like previous social contagions and we can get on with the business of building a fairer world gradually through bottom up principles, concensus and sane debate.

I have 16 and 12 year old sons. Neither of them have ever mentioned anything regarding gender to me. They don’t mention friends who are gender fluid or trans or non binary or any of it. And one has a few friends on the autistic spectrum (he is being assessed himself) which seem to represent a higher proportion of people with gender issues. It just doesn’t seem to be a thing that is in their worlds or on their radar.