You’ve got to hand it to Gen Z!!

[MadamAndTheAnts]

I know the whole transgender thing causes a lot of debate on Mumsnet. I’m not looking to stir that up here. But, regardless of where you stand, I think we all have to hand it to Gen Z for managing to freak out older generations so effectively.

Boomers spooked the Silent Generation with their love of rock n roll and the counterculture of the 60s.

Gen X framed the Boomers with acid house and rave.

Millennials were kinda lame as ‘hipster’ was little more than irony and beards.

Millennials and Gex thought they’d seen it all and were cool and tolerant.

But then came Gen Z who decided to disrupt the traditional thinking around gender. And all hell has broken loose. Gen X who thought of themselves as seriously tolerant have been massively freaked out!!!!

You have to hand it to Gen Z!!!

Lily Savage didn't invent drag, it has a very long tradition indeed.

Just the first one I thought of … to illustrate that men have been imitating womenhood for a lot longer than these kids

Not remotely freaked out.

Deeply concerned, yes. At the massive amounts of mental and physical ill health, unhappiness, emotional immaturity, issues with coping with boundaries from others and setting boundaries for themselves, compassion for others, independence of thought....

I could go on and on.

I suspect we'll be picking up the pieces of this large group - incidentally from several generations - for generations to come. As well as a society managing the tactics and strategies that writers and speakers such as David Irving introduced to the world, along with those many, many ethical issues. Boundaries. So much of this is people struggling with boundaries, looking for boundaries, having needs that drive them to break boundaries.

"But then came Gen Z who decided to disrupt the traditional thinking around gender. And all hell has broken loose. Gen X who thought of themselves as seriously tolerant have been massively freaked"

Disrupt? Not really. Reify, more like. Feminists - across the generations you mentioned - sought to tear gender stereotypes apart and get rid of them, helping end misogyny and homophobia.

Trans activists came along and said that was transphobic and that gender (ie sex based stereotypes) is actually innate in everyone. Politicians and big corporations saw this new "progressive" movement was super for the patriarchy so happily backed it.

I think it's unfair of you to pin in all on gen Z though. These regressive (and homophobic and misogynist) ideas about gender stereotypes have been around a hell of a long time. And the idea that you could"fix" a feminine presenting gay man by turning him into a "woman" is decades old. Older if you look at other highly gendered (as in with strong stereotypes for each sex) societies with 3rd gender categories.

Yes, MrsTerry.
That’s the analogy that sprang to mind. The demonising of The Four Olds and the cancelling and shaming and destruction of anything that opposed the movement. Driven by children and young adults, whilst older adults either complied or hid.

deadwildroses.com/2019/10/07/handy-venn-diagrams-the-radical-feminist-position-on-gender/

This is a really handy diagram for those new to feminism or from the US, who've been told that feminists want traditional gender roles. You'll see that religious conservatives and trans rights activists have just as much in common as anyone else.

Gender is the system which opresses us. Sex is our bodies, no more or less.

Whatever the cohort of the majority of trans activists, they are certainly not disrupting traditional thinking on gender but bringing that traditional thinking (from roughly 1950s) back with full force, from hair length and wearing dresses and makeup to acting submissive and girly.

But in a sense I can see the rebellion aspect of that, as many of their parents and grandparents were among those actually disrupting traditional thinking on gender, so if you want to rebel against them you revert to retrogressive values. Too bad that this is dreadful for what they would call vulva people.

The problem with youthful rebellions is that many of them hurt the youth rebelling much more in the longer run than their parents, because the young don't have better weapons available for them than what they do to themselves and how they act and which drugs they take and what kind of sex they have etc. So I liked the eras where the rebellion was mostly about music and wearing outfits which told the group you belonged to but differed from older people's outfit, as none of that would hurt the rebel in the longer run.

Drugs are much worse, and medical body modifications may be the same or even worse.

And it was Mai whipping it on. A man at the time in his 70s.

Plus ca change.

Mao obviously!

Well, I was only replying in the context of western youth movements in recent history - but yes, yes indeedy! Parallels aplenty.

Oh op, you're a card! Your (only) post has made me properly laugh.

That dazed article is very frustrating. Why not just speak to the people who are the subject of the piece? Speaking instead, in the usual cowardly way, to the ones who disagree only serves to produce this kind of nonsense:

“It would be oversimplifying it to say that TERF-y sentiments are expected because Southend is a working-class town,” Louis says. “But people are generally scared of change, especially change they don’t understand. So all the hatred comes from a place of the world moving forward, and deep down these people are scared that they’re getting left behind.”

That's not what's happening at all!

Gen Z - the first generation to have their “youth rebellion” curated for them by middle aged

Flipping heck you're right. You're absolutely right.

It's bloody tragic.

Love that this plopper's post backfired and enabled so many knowledgeable and informed posts 😄
As usual.

I think it’s heartbreaking they’ve been so misused myself, their youthful fervour, passion and idealism so corrupted and turned into a force to make the world a less safe, more hostile place for those who are truly vulnerable, all while they genuinely believe (some of them, at least) they’re doing the opposite.

Yes. I see all those young blue-haired and facially-pierced counter-protesters and I actually think “aw bless”. Seeing them do the Timewarp in Glasgow last week. I remember that feeling when I was a nipper. It’s so sad that they’ve fallen for this con. I completely get that when you are young, you simply haven’t had the time to experience and learn enough about how the world works and really see the bigger political picture, so you tend to fall in with simplistic ideas of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, etc, and are so vulnerable to manipulation.

This is why it is so dangerous this shit is being taught in schools.

I found the reference to the 1950s wrt gender 'tradition' quite striking. Given that 'gender' as a function of anything other than grammar was only invented by academics in the 1960s, it was probably inevitable that they constructed the 'tradition' mainly based on the middle class western suburban structures of their 1950s childhoods. The stereotype never did apply to the vast mass of humanity.

All the (usually ill-informed, often very offensive) scrambling through anthropology, ethnography. and human biology since then has been one long intellectually dishonest attempt at self justification by the people who have built careers or businesses on that weak and shoddy foundation.

Gen Z adopting middle class granny's 'gender' stereotypes look excessively conformist, whatever sex they are. I wish they'd develop a little individual character and courage.

The comments about this gender-focussed youth rebellion being the first in history to have been in part shaped by ‘top down’ forces (big pharma, legislation, academic thinkers etc.) are historically way off the mark.

The era of “free love”, for instance, was in part facilitated by the invention of the contraception pill, the legalisation of abortion, the decriminalisation of homosexuality. LSD was first created by an an employee of a large corporate pharmaceutical company. The older beat writers were influential. Then there was Vietnam etc.

History not this forum’s strong point.

Teddy Boys wore Edwardian-style coats.

There was a string art nouveau influence on hippy fashions.

etc etc.

There’s a difference being influenced by and controlled by though.

LSD wasn’t intended as a recreational drug and it was as cheap as chips - it’s not like it made big pharma a load of dough or turned people who took it into lifelong medical patients.

Although some men got very wealthy through exploiting women Larry Flint was a baby boomer himself.

Many youngsters who affiliated themselves with those fashionable self-defined 'rebel' groupings were indeed as sheep-like as today's genderists, but are not what the likes of Butler were writing about when inventing 'gender' as something human beings could have or be.

Of course I'm not surprised that MadamAndTheAnts returns to snark rather than address the substantive points being made.

I'd be interested in a genuine attempt to explain how gender identity adherents think that they are challenging gender stereotypes rather than entrenching them further and further. I would also like to know whether they think any previous youth generation challenged and broke down gender stereotypes and norms?

Yep I’m also very interested to know how telling boys who like dresses and pink that they’re actually girls rather than boys who don’t conform to the gender straight jacket imposed on them by society is smashing the gender binary??

Lots of them challenged and broke down the many and varied sex-role stereotypes that have existed over the centuries. Opting out of marriage and reproduction by going into convents and monasteries was a major method for a millennium and a half.

People didn't usually drug and maim themselves, though anorexia and cutting overlap a lot with genderism when it comes to female self-harm.

It’s quite rebellious though, no, that young queer people dint all want to present late 20th-century style butch dungaree wearing lesbians or camp gay men.

So many posters think the identities they have adopted should be the definitive and only options, when their own identities and presentation are recent phenomena themselves.

We have already noticed that genderism is homophobic, you didn't need to confirm it.