Anyone else hearing of backlash against trans ideology among their teens?

[KnittingDiva]

My 14 year old DS has been telling me that among his age group now there is no tolerance for Trans/NB TikTok influencers and that they are being ridiculed etc..

This is a very different attitude than when my older two (17 and 19) were at that age and it was the start of that trend and they would have been overtly respectful on that issue (would have avoided it mostly but not ridicule).

It seems it is now seen as being an 'older' person trying to be cool with the kids and a bit creepy.

Anyone else noticed this change or is it just here (Rep of Ireland)?

Exactly this.

Nothing to kill off a trend like the older generation being into it. And hallelujah to that.

The 12/ 13 year olds at DS' mixed-sex arty and progressive school in the Netherlands very much take the mickey and find the whole thing ridiculous. Woke and Trans are bandied around as insults.
Non-binary pupils (all older) are seen as confused and/ or attention-seeking.
He's also active in several UK based online gaming groups and it's pretty much the same story.

My eldest (22) is totally down the gender ideology garden path. He’s autistic and spends a lot of time doing online RPG gaming and talking about anime. He’s not gender questioning himself but he’s immersed in the ideology and inflexible
in his thinking. That can be generalised beyond gender ideology. DS1 tends to grab the wrong end of the stick (or the wrong stick entirely) and refuse to let go. He’s exactly the sort of young adult voter the SNP want to groom (except he’s not pro-independence 🤣).

his younger brother and his friends (aged 13-14) are not impressed at all. They view all the trans stuff as something the blue haired anime people (their own description) are in to. The see it as a bit niche and ridiculous.

Or, where they discuss specific trans-identifying kids, they’re skeptical and clearly see it as attention seeking behaviour from kids with serious problems. Notably the conversation
I recently overheard was about how they couldn’t keep up with the kid’s many pronoun and name changes and how annoying it all was.

Teen fashions come and go - and which self-respecting teenager wants to be in thrall to the current fashion amongst 20-somethings? So that makes sense. I notice in the Guardian today that the Goth fashion is coming back, so perhaps that will replace the trans fashion. Let's hope so.

I also think that, with the invention of a non-binary identity, trans ideology pushed things too far. A lot of people feel an instinctive sympathy towards the narrative that some men are born in a woman's body, or vice versa, but the idea that some people are "non-binary" is self-evidently silly.

When I left teaching in 2010 'trans' just wasn't a thing at all....now my daughter is teaching and it is everywhere; but she says many of the pupils have a bit of a "roll their eyes" attitude towards the whole pronouns business; and when she attempts to, quietly, challenge any of the nonsense she has seen being relayed by other staff, pupils apparently joke with her that " you are going to get yourself cancelled, Miss".

My husband's 16 year old niece says there are numerous trans and non binary individuals at her school, but that she finds it all very much about "attention seeking".

One 14 year old girl my daughter has heard of, in another school, came back to school after lockdown and declared she was now trans and wanted to be known by the name of 'Gizmo' 😆

God, yes, I hope so. But it's going to take a long time for any of our friends' and families' poor little bearded transmen to recover from this. How do you face having probably put a wrecking ball through your health and relationships at the age of 20?

A friend I've avoided raising it with after a cool reception a few years back has woken up. Such a relief, because she'd always been very sensible...

I had a cat called Gizmo, Gizmo Smallpiece, but that's probably a coincidence. Probably

Yes. My 16 year old is a realist so has never gone along with it just keeps quiet. A girl she is mildly friends with I think is trans but is “bloody annoying” so they have drifted. Due to personality rather than anything else. My 14 year old is a fervent “be kind” but she’s not really thought about it and never really mentions it too distracted by friendships and vintage clothes buying!

On a more serious note, one of my daughter's teacher training schools ( an all girls' school) had a lunch-time LGBT club. It was run by a young MTF gay man who the girls were expected to call 'Miss". According to my daughter there were a number of quite vulnerable girls attending this lunch-time club, and they were being encouraged to consider whether their distress might be due to them "really being trans".Behind their back, and to my daughter, this teacher referred to some of the girls as " little slags". Nice!

It's too late for the young person I know who's been taking testosterone for a while now. Deeper voice, presumably different hair growth (I've not seen them).

Cool name.......for a cat!

One 14 year old girl my daughter has heard of, in another school, came back to school after lockdown and declared she was now trans and wanted to be known by the name of 'Gizmo'

I’ve heard of a class in a local comp who responded to a NB identifying classmate’s outlandish new name by insisting they all be referred to by their gamer tags and Instagram nicknames. If ‘trans rights are human rights’ then obvs all humans should have the right to be called weird names by the teaching staff and keeping it secret from
their parents!

This is the really tragic thing about it.

Adults have seriously failed to protect vulnerable young people from this ideology and the longer-term consequences.

It’s ridiculous that this ideology has been promoted as ‘kindness’ and ‘the right side of history’.

14/15 year old teens wouldn’t ridicule but don’t think it is cool - they think the trans and woke movement is “passé’. They are all into 90s skating and snowboarding stuff and I am more worried that that generation is now embracing the old fashioned misogyny of the 90s.

It has become not an infrequent sight for me to see young bearded women walking around. I passed by another a few days ago. She was quite slightly built and very 'feminine looking' ( definitely a girl ) but with a dark beard. It was such a bizarre sight, almost like the bearded ladies you used to get as travelling circuses and freak shows. It is disturbing how common this has become, and how medically negligent.

Where is the SLT in all this?

What of their obligations in relation to safeguarding and treating people
with basic respect?

They wouldn’t let someone set up a club to encourage anorexia or terrorist activity. But we’re all supposed to applaud a transwoman who thinks of teenage girls as ‘slags’ running a grooming club for gender ideology.

Tbh, the education system has serious questions to answer in all this.

Talking of gamer tags, I get the distinct feeling that some young men who go on to identify as trans model themselves on their favourite female avatars.I'm thinking of one specific case that I'm familiar with, but I suspect that gaming/cos-play/fantasy is at the root of many MTF transitioners.

This is so fascinating, and I'm sure one day it will be the subject of a PhD thesis, or several.

One of the oddities of this, compared to other teen crazes, is that the adults are so on board with it. So teachers and other figures of authority are enforcing daft pronouns and endorsing the pretence that boys can be girls and vice versa. Surely that was always going to create a backlash sooner or later? I wonder what teachers do when they find children refusing to go along with it.

I totally agree. If it had not been a training school for her she may well have approached someone in the SLT to raise concerns, but she sensed that some mebers of the SLT were on board with the whole thing.

It is a very ethnically diverse girls' school in an area of economic deprivation and some of the girls attending had issues relating to trauma, unstable home life, etcBy the time she was due to leave for another placement she had been made aware that a few parents had made complaints about this particular teacher.

A recent 'condition' which seemed to have taken off on tik-tok during lock-down and which has captured many girls is 'Tourette's'. Girls are definitely susceptible to social contagion.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teenage-girls-suffer-explosion-of-tics-in-lockdown-0s3rnl2nm

Like others, I’m so worried for those who got caught up in it and had the surgery and took the hormones. I would never be anything other than kind, but kindness doesn't really help much when people wake up to the damage they have inflicted upon themselves. Never mind the collateral damage. I of my adult Children has fallen out with me because of my transphobia, which amounted to not buying a binder for an asthmatic underweight Care experienced 14 year old, who is now at 19, I hope,past it all.

This whole ideology needs to roundly mocked and ridiculed because it is ridiculous. I’ve noticed a lot more stand up comedy is taking the piss now - maybe people are getting bolder?

This!
It's major safeguarding issue and the fact that senior staff have ignored, or worse, sanctioned is unbelievable.
The stories of grooming and abuse that will emerge from these groups will be off the scale as children mature and understand the reality of what actually happened.

DS 15 is solidly GC and thinks all the trans stuff is ridiculous. DS 11 is completely unaware of it. Both at all boys schools, no trans kids AFAIK. DNiece 15 at all girls school is solidly TWAW and has lots of non-binary (female) friends. She cut her long hair off last year and we were all worried she was going to come out as NB, but has so far limited herself to lecturing us TERFy oldies. We're waiting for her to grow out of this tedious phase.