Arguments with daughters

[sunshinesupermum]

I have two daughters, aged 37 and 41. They are both fully supportive of trans issues and I am of course, in their eyes, a TERF. I'd like help in refuting their ideas next time the subject is raised before it becomes a Brexit type issue and we stop talking to each other! Sorry if this is too long but I really appreciate some help.
Examples from yesterday's Wattsapp messages:
DD2: You probably know transwomen who are not out who see and are hurt (on Twitter) and alienated by your views.
Me: Highly doubtful I know a single transperson IRL which obv means I cannot walk in their shoes. They have all the rights the rest of us have but women are losing theirs. Women's rights come first for me every time.
DD: I haven't lost any rights and neither have you. And you have no idea who is or who is not trans. Luckily my generation and younger for the most part have progressive (views) that don't align with the old guard of feminists who are obsessed with the idea of men breaking into changing rooms to spy on their saggy old bodies! You don't care about women's safety. Only Cis women's safety. My rights and your rights are not being erased because of transwomen.
Me: I agree this is generally a generational issue. Incidentally, older women are concerned that men are illicitly watching girls/young women in changing rooms. Incidentally, mixed (then known as unisex) changing rooms were introduced in the late 1960s but soon fell out of favour!
DD: Laughably shortsighted to scapegoat (transwomen). Perhaps they should introduce special toilets only for transphobic cis women rather than try to segregate transwomen quietly going about their lives. You don't care about women's safety.
Me: I care about all women's safety. Unless he has his genitalia removed no male person can be a female one.
There was more of the same bilge but this is this gist.

You can't change their views OP and you probably shouldn't try. Focus on what you can do to help support women. Have you signed the Equality Act petition over on petitions, for example?

Probably too late for this now but I've found the best way to manage these conversations is to talk about it in the way that I used to think. I was a be kind, mildly twaw, type of person with some concerns and questions because not everything fully added up. Because that's what the vast majority of people are. If you come at it in an argumentative manner, you're most likely to make them put up their barriers. If you just ask the questions that you used to ask yourself, you're quite likely to be asking the questions that they themselves know lead to uncomfortable answers and have occasionally gnawed at the back of their mind too. Putting it as a question and leaving them to answer you, to articulate their own thought processes is how to make people examine the sides of this that they instinctively don't want to even think about.

God they are not very pleasant about other women who might need rights are they?

I'd change the subject. It's not worth it.

the old guard of feminists who are obsessed with the idea of men breaking into changing rooms to spy on their saggy old bodies!

woooow. if this is real, I feel very sorry for you having two 40 year old adult daughters who have the personalities of spiteful 14 year old male incels.

I'm sorry, but no one who's right in the head talks that way. if it was a 14 year old boy there might be some chance for him to become a redeemable human being - though the odds would be against it. But a 40 year old? It's beyond belief.

Except for gay men to be able to love who they loved and go about their everyday day life impacted on no one else in any way. So -

Womens places on shortlists not taken away,
Womens places in sport not taken away,
Womens safe space in prison and away from convicted sex offenders not taken away.

It is in no way comparable to gay men and that's such a lazy argument

Have they got children themselves?

Hmm I'm 38 so I suspect if their bodies are anything like mine they're getting rather saggy themselves!

I'd drop the toilet stuff, if you haven't experienced male violence directly then it can be tricky to see why women feel vulnerable. Are they rather sheltered?

If you're going to debate then I'd talk about the effects on children, the reasons why so many young girls think they have to identify out of being female, the issues gender ideology raises about homosexuality and the cotton ceiling.

I got through to my teenagers with 'Do you think I should be forced to spend the night on a hospital word with an obvious male in the next bed?'

But then one of mine has serious health issues, so I think she and then others could actually relate to that.

Agree.
This is horrifying.

They do realise even very elderly women are raped, right? That being the victim of a sexual predator has nothing to do with how attractive you are by Hollywood beauty standards?

That said, leave it. Today’s BekindTransSympathiser is tomorrow’s Tervern Sister. They might not care about older women but they might have a Wtf is going on moment when they realise how many ‘transboys’ there are in some UK schools (a third of the approx 150 female students in my teen’s school year have nb/tranboy identities. Only 1 of approx 150 transgirl though)

I did chuckle at threatening to leave your estate to the LGBA tho’

I'm 33 and not overly saggy 😉 and I am definitely in your corner. It's not about being progressive it is about being a realist

Saggy old bodies?

Is this for real?!

They sound very rude and for almost middle aged women themselves , they sound like teens. Are they mothers themselves?
I would leave them to think whatever they want to and not try and change their minds but equally they should not try and change yours

I thought they'd be teenagers but 37 and 41? Do they not remember the relatively recent times before the onslaught of genderism? How can they believe any of this is organic? Do they not think critically?

I don't talk to my daughters about this issue. They know what I believe and they know why. I see no point at all in trying to change their minds by arguing with them. They certainly won't change my mind by arguing with me. But mine are younger - in university - and it is probably fairly essential that there is something they disagree with me on. We talk around the issue though - both were angry at the constant use of "pregnant people" when the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade. So I think they will get there by themselves.

I absolutely would not accept anyone - including my daughters - calling me a cis woman. And if a child of mine used the phrase "saggy old bodies" I would be desperately disappointed that I had reared such an offensive person.

I’m 36 and a TERF.

What I’ve noticed about my peers is that the ones who are like me have experienced DV/rape/etc and ferociously protect women only spaces due to this.

The others are privileged, have had no traumatic life events and float around on a cloud of fucking ignorance.

Not to mention my lesbian friends who have been verbally and in one case, so severely physically attacked for refusing to date a man dressed as a woman that she was hospitalised for a month, are also TERFs.

I thought your daughters were going to be teens/20s. I wouldn’t engage with their sexist/ageist rants. They sound too far down the rabbit hole.

If you do want to present something for them to think about:
The Cass report;
Current investigation into Mermaids by the Charity Commission;
Current revised NHS guidelines that are at consultation stage, including the advice that trans for most children/teens is a phase, and not to rush to affirm/medicalise;
Eddie Izzard: 60 year old male who previously claimed to be a heterosexual male transvestite, now claiming to alternate between girl and boy mode, and openly using womens toilets at public events;
Whistleblowers from the Tavistock clinic;
Recent case of female solicitor who had an operation cancelled at a private hospital because she’d requested female only after care;
Male prisoners identifying as women, moved to women’s prisons with often horrific results. A huge number of terrible cases have been recorded in the US.

There’s a thread on here called something like “Things that never happen…..” which details how men in womens spaces have adversely affected womens lives.

Subscribe (free) to Graham Linehan. Daily information about how womens rights are being threatened by trans ideology.

Maybe JK Rowling’s essay explaining her original foray into the apparent erasure of the word women. Not a transphobic word in it.

Maya Forstarter. As a result of her legal challenge to her employers, being gender critical is now a protected characteristic in the Equality Act.

Julie Bindel is also amazing on the whole trans/womens rights issue.

If you want to engage one last time I would select some of the above in written form. Give it to them and say this is why I believe the trans ideology is a threat to the hard won rights of biological women, who had to fight for those rights due to their sex based oppression.I would then refuse to discuss it. Every time they bring it up say I’ve shown you why I feel as I do, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.

I really feel for you. It’s almost cult like.

Your dds' views seem much younger - they have drunk the coolaid and aren't questioning one bit of it.

My dd is in her early 20s and she and I have very different views on this topic. We have agreed not to discuss it. But she has never been so casually ageist when we did used to speak about.

I'd ostentatiously spend all their inheritance on artisanal gin.

Do your daughters have children themselves?

The comment on 'saggy bodies' is hateful. How can they accuse you of not caring about 'all women' when they talk to you like this? They don't seem to care about your feelings. Nice touch to oh-so-subtly imply that you'll die soon, being of the 'old guard'.

Is Eddie Izzard a woman to them? And isn't it much more cruel to lie to someone about how they are perceived rather than say the truth?

The TRA ship is sinking. They can either acknowledge that and reflect a bit on the nonsense they've signed up to, or they can egg each other on, indulge in a bit more moral panic and blame their poor old mum for all the terrible transphobia in this horrid world. Seems to me a mature person would choose the first option but hey ho. I'm in the same age cohort and feel vaguely embarrassed on their behalf.

😂🤣

this is excellent advice, if you are going to have those conversations
most of started out with 'be kind' and slowly moved to 'hang on a minute...'
also, they need to save face don't they, and arguing doesn't allow this

Your post reads as if you are looking forward to the argument. They dig graves 6 feet deep. How far into the grave do you want to take it?