In addition I personally believe that teaching this to teenage girls is adding to the current mental health crisis in that group and driving some of the motivation to transition.
if we keep telling girls that life is shit for women and then a TRA swoops in at school or online and says ‘don’t worry about all that oppression stuff, becoming a woman is optional, you can just be a boy instead, or non-binary, your mum is stupid to accept oppression, you can be clever and opt out’ we a) can’t really blame our daughters for wanting what looks like a functional solution (transition to male) for an unsolvable problem (the never ending oppression of women and girls) and b) we really do have to have a good hard look at our own contribution to their desperation for a solution.
Yes, women and men are different because we are mammals, no, that doesn’t mean women are lesser, but yes it means women need some additional protections such a refuges, and maternity protections in the workplace and access to a fair welfare safety net, because we can’t identify out of being (on average) smaller and less strong, nor being the half of the species that births babies, or gets left holding said babies. We are also more likely to become disabled as we get older (although boys are more likely to be born with disabilities) and to live long enough to become vulnerable due to infirmity.
Much of this reduces our earning power whilst also increasing our lifetime bare necessity costs for health and social care, housing etc.
Making a rational case for the inequalities to be understood and mitigated by families, communities, workplaces and society as a whole does not need to involve scaring girls until they cannot face being women.
My life would’ve been very different if I were male, but I really don’t think it would’ve been better. So many men of similar age (mid 40s to mid 50s) are suffering from depression and alcoholism, many are workaholics stuck on an earnings treadmill to pay the bills with not much quality of life and not great relationships with their children. If they are divorced then loneliness is a massive factor that middle aged and up women are far better at solving than their male counterparts. One of my neighbours recently took his own life, he fits the statistics perfectly.
I’m not saying this to start a ‘what about the menz’ conversation, this is FWR and it’s not our responsibility to fix broken men, nor mother adults, I just want to point out that the ‘all women are oppressed and all men are oppressors’ narrative may actually be harming the girls we say we want to help.
Our girls need to know that being a woman has it’s difficulties, but actually, on the whole, it’s pretty fucking great, and being a man is often a miserable experience.
The grass isn’t greener on the oppressor side of the fence.
and that no, sex work isn’t work, it’s rape and human trafficking, and that nude photos aren’t empowering, and to make a sharp exit from any man who pings your nonce radar, and tell at least one other woman about him.