Help needed in discussions with teen DS

[sydenhamhiller]

Hi all, grateful for any help in constructing my argument in discussions with my DS (18).

I have just had big argument with DS who called me transphobic. I am so hurt: am just giving a little bit of back story - and let me know what you think?

I an white English, heterosexual.
I grew up in Asia and Europe, came to Uni in Scotland at 19. Lived abroad for another 2 years.

I have lived in London ever since, married with 3 kids. Have gay friends, bi sexual friends. It’s not really been anything we’ve even considered being an ‘issue’ of course.

A toddler group friend’s child, that I have known all my life, came out as transgendered 3 years ago at age 15. So happy they could live as their authentic self. I - of course- use their new names and pronouns, in birthday and Xmas cards for example, and when referring to them at home. As is only right - am not looking for ticker tape parade, just setting scene.

This young person has just posted on social media that they have got engaged. I am slightly taken aback - and was explaining to my daughter that it is because they are only just 18, in y13 - not because of gender/ sexuality, I would feel same way if DS got engaged to his girlfriend.

DS came down and said, well yeah but you are transphobic. I said no, don’t be offensive. I really think everyone should be allowed to live their best life as long as they are not hurting anyone, but I am concerned about self identifying, and encroaching on safe female only spaces.

DS scoffed and said, but yeah, how often does that happen? And how does it affect you? I mentioned the male prisoners identifying as women and then going on to commit sex crimes on female inmates. DS said ‘yeah, but that’s just a few cases’.

I am not armed to debate this with him, and feel so insulted that he would say this? He says I am like white people in the 1960s who didn’t really realise they were being racist, and I will look back in 20 years and see my bigotry for what it is.

I am ridiculously upset by this conversation.

They also benefit from being reminded that TWANW because every human being ever born grew inside the body of a woman...including them and all their 'friends'....if women were not 'adult human females' no one would even exist...so our sex based rights are worthy of respect and then some...

One of the things that made my super trans-ally teens pause and think was Lucy McDonagh's experience at the Deptford Project. Link here - it's a long piece, but scroll down to the second half for the relevant bit. It might make your DS realise that his perspective, though very well-intentioned, is a narrow and privileged one, and that identity politics is a middle-class white kids' game.

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/

(Some key extracts)
But during a discussion with Goldsmiths students about a community housing project, things blew up. Mcdonagh was verbally attacked by students after rejecting the new language being imposed on her community, called a “white cis woman,” then a “bitch and a “cunt.” A young male student tagged her in a post online arguing that the Women’s March should not allow women to focus on “the vagina” as it was “transphobic.” When Mcdonagh asked how he was defining “woman,” the man responded, “Anyone who says they are.”
This is when, she says, it all fell into place. “That’s what ‘self-identify’ means: anyone can say they are anyone… So, rich, privileged people can claim to be marginalized.” Beyond that, she asks, “How can we keep working class women safe if anyone can be a women legally?”
Mcdonagh became more troubled when “a middle class teenage boy identifying as women [was] given a woman’s officer position in the Labour Party” and when she observed a woman she knew suspended from the party for “refusing to say that a male person with a penis is a woman.”
As a lifelong Labour voter, Mcdonagh says she will never vote Labour again on account of the party’s decision to adopt gender identity policies without consultation.
She tells me there is “a very real lack of understanding about female victims of abuse, their need for sex-segregated spaces, and their need to be protected from predatory men.” But it has become impossible to debate or even discuss these issues. “Suddenly (mainly) white middle class students were shouting down and abusing working class women for expressing concern,” she says. “These people were bullying real victims into [submitting to] their ideology — women who have spent their lives being forced to accept situations they don’t want.”
Mcdonagh says she doesn’t believe that “a rich white boy” can “understand the needs of a working class ex-care system woman, raped and abused for decades by many different men — a woman living in a world that won’t ever feel safe again and who is bringing up children in a community that is suffering [due to] poverty, abuse, and trauma.”