What is it about teen girls and young women that makes them (us) highly susceptible to fandom, wokism and gender ideology?

[Ravensclawdropout]

I was watching another excellent interview with Helena, the 23 yr old American distransitioner and she described all the online culture that sucked her in incrementally over about 3 years until she decided she was a transboy.

I have noticed here in the USA that the woke ideological agenda that is particularly disconnected with reality is most enthusiastically promoted by young females.

I don't want to have a conversation that is all about "yes well boys are obsessed with gaming too" yes, I know that. I am particularly interested in the female psychology that finds this stuff so appealing and addictive, because unless we address this head on and can communicate differently with young women, the numbers of young women graduating with a militant sense of needing to implement this Ideology will drown out older women.

I think it’s the be kind, be inclusive, don’t offend, don’t upset.
Im not 100% sure where it comes from but somehow it’s being a really strong theme that not including people (even in unscientific ways) is a BAD way to be.
I grew up in the 80s. Anorexia was a big issue. Now we have the current problem. We didn’t agree with anorexics that they should be thinner. Yet somehow we agree with young girls that they can be boys.
I also think becoming a woman is not that pleasant - either from the reaction of men to your changing body and the unpleasantness of periods etc. Girls now can avoid that. After all it’s their body and they can do as they choose with it.
Those are my random thoughts.

not entirely sure what you mean by ‘fandom’ but I presume you are talking about an online culture that does not objectify or sexualise young women or suggest they need poker straight long hair and perfect skin and whatever other pressures young women are under? And mainstream culture offers Love Island and being beach body ready?
I think the question is really what kind of reality does mainstream culture offer young women that they feel the need to opt out.

Social media. Peer pressure.

Higher levels of empathy.

They're not.

A desire to 'belong'? Finding one's tribe. Boys do it with football and obscure band allegiance. .

Wish I knew, Raven. I think I've noticed an element of wanting to be the 'cool girls', and popular with boys. Wanting to look progressive, without stopping to examine what they're progressing towards.

And it doesn't surprise me when a girl doesn't want to become a woman. I felt much the same, back when becoming a woman looked like a life sentence of boring household drudgery. We've made such genuine progress in the decades since then. Yet now children are growing up steeped in misogynistic internet pornography. No wonder womanhood, once again, looks unappealing to teenage girls.

I'm sure others here have more up-to-date thoughts on this.

Evolutionary psychology. An expert will probably be along in a moment but I saw Brett Weinstein (after the Evergreen fiasco, before he became an anti-vaxxer and a bit dodgy) explaining something about this. Something along the lines that because young women in particular have been vulnerable throughout history (rape, kidnap, forced marriage etc, which is why so many societies keep women locked up until they're married) they have learned to group together, be empathetic, not stand out, prove they're kind and attractive to young men and others as a sort of learned appeasing behaviour. For thousands of years women have been kidnapped by marauders and taken as slaves/ workers and had to learn to fit in and get on if they wanted themselves and their children to survive.

In small villages being pleasant and being liked was survival strategy: you'd survive if there was a famine or your husband died if people like you and gave you food/ money/ married you. It was the 'difficult', unclubbable, uncontrollable women who were denounced as witches and thrown out of their communities. Persuading yourself that you've fallen in love with your kidnapper, persuading yourself that black is white even though you know it isn't, learning not to say what you think but smile and go along with things — these are the adaptive survival mechanisms that many people still carry.

Of course most of us in Sex and Gender are here because we don't have this predisposition and are difficult women!

It comes from being recognised as female from birth, and therefore raised as support humans in the family to the males in the family.

For example: me aged 10, my brother aged 12.

On Saturday mornings, our dad took brother to rugby training, followed by lunch in rugby club, and all the males staying around for a few pints after that.

Me and my Mum? Cleaning, dusting and hoovering the house, doing the laundry. Just the two of us.

And then preparing a meal for The Return Of The Males.

The over sexualisation of women in general. Looking online for clothes with DD, all the images to sell clothes are of pouting, posing half dressed girls/women. DD hates it all. No wonder that she and many others want to disassociate with what society tells her a woman is.

I hated that both my parents regarded me as their cleaner, and not anyone who could spend a Saturday morning doing something more interesting than hoovering,

Girls seem to be first fodder for anything men choose to do. Women like us are needed to defend girls as humans in their own right. Not people to be used as domestic servants; or children who need to have their breasts chopped off in order to fit into society. That;s just warped.

JustGotToKeepOnKeepingOn

Yes, the oversexualisation of girls too. It is abuse, so common, that people can't see it.

Mother of early-teen daughters here. I agree with the poster who said high levels of empathy. I also think empathy is encouraged through school clubs, which is not a bad thing in itself, but can encourage involved activism - in my school days, there was an Amnesty International club, Greenpeace club, CND, Palestine, and I was at an all-girls school: there was a competitive element as to who could care the most and write the most letters/raise the most sponsorship to show just how much they cared.

We raise girls to be society's support humans, we reward them for caring and empathising. Then we present an over-sexualised picture of what girlhood is supposed to be, that is actually very scary for a lot of girls. So they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. That it seems 'more' now is probably down to the influence of social media, which I do think cuts across both girls and boys. Societally, we are going to regret letting that particular genie out of the bottle.

Thanks everyone, from your comments I think we are mostly speaking from the experiences of our own generation. The Fandom I am talking about for example is not the safe place of interests that aren't sexualized. Online Fandom is people (mostly girls/young women) absolutely obsessed with their interest, where they talk and scroll about it nonstop. Its out of Fandom that girlfriends of famous men that young girls crush on are sent thousands of hate messages and even death threats.

Its out of Fandom that girls get obsessed with gay porn and project sexual male porn fantasies onto their favorite stars and characters. Male pornographic romance stories are written by women for women. That's part of why so many teen girls have bizarre fantasies as trans men/trans masc of future relationships with men which bear no basis in reality of actual male sexuality.

I tell you this as a result of reading, watching and talking with a bunch of destransitioners who explain how they got into such a strange headspace.

Interesting discussion. Is there also something about the nature of social media and the impact of the like button tied up with this? There's increasing evidence that social media has a significant impact on teenage wellbeing and mental health. Presumably the means of communicating via Only Fandom - alone, via your phone, available 24 hours, even in the home , bedroom, places where previous generations would have been "safe" from external influence or more subject to the influence of the family are no longer. Only Fandom can dominate a child's thinking / life almost 24 / 7 ?

Some of it comes down to young people being the centre of their own worlds. They see themselves as the most important person on the planet, often don't get that validation in real life, so turn to online groups for that validation. They then become mixed up in weird stuff where the more extreme their contribution, the more praise and validation they receive.

I see it as being similar to the astrology obsession some teen girls get - it gives them a power of sorts at a time in their lives when they are changing which is out of their control and everyone expects something from them (behaviour/appearance/social circle/school grades etc) that they also can't or find it hard to control.

Another question that could be asked is: what makes these empathetic, "be kind", inclusive young women and girls turn so viciously on any girl who doesn't conform to their idealogy?
Because I think fear is one of the reasons why they're so susceptible.

Some of it comes down to young people being the centre of their own worlds. They see themselves as the most important person on the planet, often don't get that validation in real life, so turn to online groups for that validation. They then become mixed up in weird stuff where the more extreme their contribution, the more praise and validation they receive.

Yes I agree with that, and it's easy for bad actors to manipulate them.

If you read my contribution about evolutionary psychology upthread you'll find it explains why. Non-conforming women (and men to a some extent) are dangerous. In a small community, being friends with a 'difficult' woman could have you, too, being identified as a witch/ bringing bad luck on the place. So you had to shun people loudly and publicly to protect yourself. The louder and more dramatically you shunned them, the safer you were.

That's why there are women screaming at lesbians in Pride parades to go f**k themselves and accusing them of being transphobic. Because just watching quietly could be mistaken for approval.

Yes, definitely, patti.

Teem girls’s obsessions have been the case for decades - the hysteria and fainting at the mere sight of the Beatles in the 60s, the wave of anorexia in the 80s and self harm in the 90s. I can remember my own obsession with Duran Duran back in the day - scouring every piece of information I could find about them. And I wasn’t nearly as obsessive as others I knows who made pilgrimages to their houses.

nowadays it’s amplified 100 times more by social media. As and when the trans issues passes, in the next decade another trend may arise

Female socialisation.

Be kind
Be nice
Put your own wants and needs last
Put men first
Don't make a fuss
Don't be a 'karen'

I know many teenage girls who are so far away from that list! Many teenage girls are incredibly self centred and don't have the social awareness or outward looking personality to understand parroting 'be kind' ain't the same as living it. As to putting their own wants and needs last - Ha!