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.

"I blame social media, reality tv and drag shows in tv..."

I would also blame Tony Blair and the idea that 50% ought to be in higher education.

Yep

We now have lots of midwits who think their celever than the average bear

True. I’m not sure what the stats were when I was first a student but it certainly wasn’t every man, woman and dog. For this I also blame American ‘frat house’ films...

Far from expanding opportunities for the less advantaged, the expansion of HE has overwhelmingly been colonised by the nice-but-dim kids of the sharp-elbowed middle classes.

@KittenKong

True. I’m not sure what the stats were when I was first a student but it certainly wasn’t every man, woman and dog. For this I also blame American ‘frat house’ films...

It was about 10% In My Day. (Late 70's)

But there were also vocational colleges for teaching, business admin etc.

I definitely think there are demographic differences with this. The people I would guess are most likely to go along with it are young, white middle-class girls. Boys, working-class young people, probably black and Asian people, are more likely to be sceptical. Perhaps a lot won't admit to it publicly, but they will express their reservations privately.

I also think we might reach a tipping point. Say one child in a class of 30 comes out as trans, their friends might be accepting. When it's 8 or 10 the rest of them sense a trend and realise it's getting a bit ridiculous.

My DD is in her 20s. She peaked at university because of a fellow student. Their identity changed daily, sometimes multiple times a day and woe betide anyone who didn't get their pronouns right. People were expected to just know how they identified at any given time. It was all about the drama.

In the 80s tou just changed your outfits. One day you’d dress like boy George, maybe bananarama, try out a safari look, or Toni Basil... all homemade because we didn’t have cheap throwaway clothing.

NB We didn’t actually believe we were a 1950s cheerleader, or a big game Hunter... it was FUN.

@IvyTwines2
Yes no surprise that our Arts Educated nephew is fully on board the Gender Woo train and so 'liberal' that he won't even listen to an alternative view.... The groupthink is so strong that he'd probably be terrified to challenge it anyway. One of these days I am going to have the sex/gender conversation with him when we are alone to see where we get to.

I am glad to see a tide turning though. We are London - parts of which are Woo central (not on a par with Brighton obvs) - and I work in TV & Film (also Wootastic) and i would say that the most engaged are the 20-25 group who are nearly 100 percent on board with pronouns, shared changing rooms and all manner of bollocky shite. Older colleagues = 50/50 Younger (mostly friends kids) = 50/50

Oh this is giving me hope!

As a teacher, I have to deal with transitioning students, seemingly increasingly, year on year. In particular it saddens me to see young girls buy into rigid gender stereotypes by feeling that the way to deal with differences, or feelings about sexuality, is by changing their pronouns and names. DP (also a concerned teacher) and I are keeping a very close eye on his 13 year old niece, who along with her friends appears to be blindly and vocally buying into gender-woo.

I always treat a young person that says they're transitioning with kindness, fairness and compassion. However we both believe very strongly in avoiding too much affirmation - yet can't talk about this issue in school, except in front of a select few colleagues.

It's good to hear that some peers are taking a critical view, as this doesn't necessarily tally with what we as teachers have seen. Despite teaching a subject where this issue should be open for discussion, GC students are silent (though perhaps not always amongst peers) and it's made worse by the fact that such views are frowned upon by many well-meaning staff who believe that being GC means you can't be inclusive.

I hope that we, the adults in the room, can be more vocal about how to safeguard our young people in this area, and so it's encouraging to read that some preteens and young teens are also seeing the issue in a critically minded, analytical way.

I haven't had any in-depth discussions with my teen cousins on this, but I do know that they laugh along when family are talking about being trans Korean or trans squid or something and definitely don't get upset with anyone. They don't have pronouns on their accounts either.

Also, I work in schools, and while I can't really get involved, students do have debates about this in the classroom. There's usually someone saying there's only 2 genders and someone else saying 'you can't say that' but not having a reason why. If they ask me what I think, I have to remain neutral, or move discussion back to maths or whatever. But there are certainly teens that are not on board with it all. Some just because it's a fun way for cocky young lads to wind a room up.... but still!

My teens are scathingly sceptical of life in general and that includes the gender stuff. They'll use neutral (although not opposite) pronouns for a quiet life but do think it's all a bit of a fantasy.

I think this is more of a worldview issue with them though. These kids have been decoding messages and media from multiple sources since they were very small and they are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about things. They're actually more sceptical than I am! I mean they'll perceive motives that I haven't thought of. Very savvy generation in my view. They combine the gen X " whatever nevermind" of their parents with the quick meme sassy internet backchat. I think they're awesome!

Oh and they are definitely sceptical about the bathroom issue, mostly because of a genuinely disturbed individual in their school who had previously self-described as both a necrophiliac and an incel who then decided he was a girl. The school accommodated ofc as schools have to but all of the kids could see that it was wrong. It was like the teachers were driving the woke bus and not listening to the kids, while all the time the kids felt awkward for not being more progressive. Very odd situation really.

My son is 24 and uni educated and thinks it's a massive joke. So do his friends, apparently. My son is the kind of kid that never believed in Santa even though we used to do the whole christmas thing.

That's both depressing and funny KittenKong
Good to hear about so many of the young eye rolling at the extremes of this. The tragedy is for those teenagers who get so totally enmeshed in it that they head for drugs and surgery before they've matured.

It was like the teachers were driving the woke bus and not listening to the kids,

I'm a teacher and related to other teachers so can say this

A huge amount of teachers, esp primary, live in a bubble of school and then unwinding when they can, not engaging in any political stuff, don't read papers etc. If they do it's the guardian. Many full timers in primary are millennial women, they don't join unions, don't strike, senior leadership teams can now be anyone under 35 or 30 in some places. Loads of older teachers I know retired early or left the profession in the last few years.

I'm being horribly stereotypical and equally know a fair few who aren't at all this of course. I have a bunch of colleagues over 40, part time as have kids, and their ability to be critical thinkers and sensible is fantastic; it's just that we are all completely squashed by juggling paperwork and stress and young kids or teens.

(I'm liberally spraying magnesium spray in anticipation of the next un critically thought up, paper work inducing pointless Ofsted pleasing pile of crap to be presented to us at work next week. Gender woo is another example of really stupid stuff happening in many schools right now.)

My 14 year old says they are told they are discriminatory if they try and question the trans agenda at school PSHE lessons.

DD14 goes to a school that isn't very woke. Pupils are very keen on social justice, the environment etc, but this issue hasn't gained much traction.
She is experiencing, and understanding, that not all of her teachers are right about everything though which is shifting her view over authority. One particular teacher infuriates her, he describes himself as a feminist (!) but then is probably the worst offender amongst her teachers for unconscious bias. Calls all the girls 'sweetheart' and not the boys, calls the boys up first to present work and generally rewards pushy behaviour, etc..
I think the double whammy for GC kids will be coming up against teachers who have bought into this and fail to see they should be more neutral.

I also think we might reach a tipping point. Say one child in a class of 30 comes out as trans, their friends might be accepting. When it's 8 or 10 the rest of them sense a trend and realise it's getting a bit ridiculous

Dd (19) is very accepting of twaw, non binary etc

She worked in a summer holiday club for a few weeks and told me the first day that there were 3/4 non binary teens in her group

About two weeks later she came home a bit angry because another child had ‘come out’ as non binary and dd felt she was making it up for attention

I did try and explain that

A) the child just might not have realised they were non binary til they’d met other non binary children

B) everyone is non binary so its just a matter of who says it first, the first few will be believed but the last ones wont

C) maybe it just doesn’t exist full stop

But she disagreed completely, some of those children are non binary and the others arent…She’s not quite there…but she’s so close

A huge amount of teachers, esp primary, live in a bubble of school and then unwinding when they can, not engaging in any political stuff, don't read papers etc. If they do it's the guardian. Many full timers in primary are millennial women, they don't join unions, don't strike, senior leadership teams can now be anyone under 35 or 30 in some places.

I know you acknowledged the stereotype but even taking out the fact that we are a pretty unionised staff, with under 35 GC members of SLT (eg: me) included, our most non-GC colleagues are about 35-50. Sometimes they are part time women but more often the most non-GC are male. I have wondered if it is something to do with how in our school, more girls are identifying as male, and so right now there are few implications. Our students are kind and largely compliant, and so will use any new name without question; they enjoy campaigning for social issues; and the trans boys will use the couple of private, single toilets around the school and change in separate areas of the school. Therefore for your average teacher, it doesn't appear to be much of an issue.

For those reasons, our school has been able to hold off on the toilets issue, but I wonder if we're not going to be able to do so much longer and I am very prepared to be vocal about it when we have to, especially now we have more (older) boys identifying as female.

So it's heartening to read that many young people are not buying into this. It's a shame that looking at this forum it seems to be boys that are more GC, as girls need to be comfortable vocalising their criticism, but it's a real start and, as I said in my previous post, shows the vocal cries of the "Miss, you can't say that there's two sexes, that's discrimination!" aren't representative.

I really hope that this is a zeitgeisty generational form of socially facilitated, externally pressured self- harm that will pass. I hope that even when in future this phenomenon is seen as anachronistic and very hard to understand (because you would have to have lived in the social context pressure-cooker that brought it about, to really ‘get’ why it took off as something anyone would identify with and act upon) that proper professional decently-funded NHS emotional and medical support will be built in for the people that have been harmed by all this.
It’s plain that for some of them it could be a lifetime’s work to reconcile themselves to the impact this movement could have had on themselves emotionally and physically, and impacts for their families and their relationships.

Meanwhile the increasingly widespread female experience of having to clear male piss off the newly unisex toilets at school or college before being able to use them (and/or feeling forced to avoid such toilets completely) is definitely doing the work of conveying that biological sex is real and single sex spaces are important, among young people I know.

@bellinisurge

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.

Your teen sounds refreshingly sensible and outward looking @bellinisurge.

I really hope the tide is turning among teens. My 15 and 13 year old girls have completely fallen for all the gender rubbish and eldest claims to be male now. Younger one has several friends who have adopted other names, go by 'they/them.' Older one has a girlfriend who is now apparently they/them as well. And yet if I suggest it's socially contagious she would be outraged and angry.

Really hope that my teens come to see this for the nonsense it is.

Dd (11) is very sensible about all. To quote her "a stallion can't become a mare even if it wants to".