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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Help with DD

55 replies

Dignorantonio · 01/03/2023 11:10

Dd22 has been away at Uni. We knew she was a bit TWAW but only realised how brainwashed she’s been this weekend. Proper militant TRA. Crying when we tried to broach it with her. No understanding of GC arguments - just that we are all TERFs and bigots.

We might be able to persuade her to read or watch one or two things that could help her see though tbh I think she’s too far gone.

Anyone have any links to articles or videos that cover the main issues in one piece?

honestky was quite disturbing, she’s a bright girl and behaving like a religious fanatic.

OP posts:
lifeturnsonadime · 01/03/2023 11:13

Can you just try to stay off topic for a bit? If she's getting that upset you might well further entrench her views by putting information her way rights now.

It's really difficult my son is GC but my 13 year old daughter thinks JKR is a transphobe. There is no convincing her otherwise at the moment. Any time I broach it with her she becomes further entrenched.

Dignorantonio · 01/03/2023 11:28

Yeah I do wonder if it might just harden her views. Sorry you’re going through this too.

She was so misinformed though. Throwing out made up stats and inaccurate history.

OP posts:
piedbeauty · 01/03/2023 11:29

Why is she crying? Why so invested? Who's she been spending time with at uni?

Accesscode · 01/03/2023 11:30

Rather than putting her back up about it, your right/she's wrong, could you try to frame it as an exchange of views? (I appreciate you will feel strongly about this, but so does she). Offer you will read and consider some books/articles programs that she recommends if she will do the same for information that you recommend? (and at least that way she is exposed to this) And then back away and try not to make it a problem between you. Give her the resources but don't expect her to change her mind straight away, that might well come some weeks/months or even years down the line. If you can keep the communication open and respectful that will help her see her way through.

senua · 01/03/2023 11:32

Anyone have any links to articles or videos that cover the main issues in one piece?
Go the other way round. Ask her to explain her thinking, her logic.

lifeturnsonadime · 01/03/2023 11:33

Dignorantonio · 01/03/2023 11:28

Yeah I do wonder if it might just harden her views. Sorry you’re going through this too.

She was so misinformed though. Throwing out made up stats and inaccurate history.

Is she the one bringing it up?

If she is trying to impose her views on you then, as a young adult, she should be prepared for you to make a counter argument. If she isn't then just say that you are not prepared to discuss until she is prepared to have a rational discussion which doesn't involve producing false stats and crying.

Just say you are not going to talk about it till she is able to be rational and engage critical thinking. She can't expect to be able to impose her views on you any more than you can expect to impose yours on her. You don't have to engage with her if she is not being rational about it.

Radical0nion · 01/03/2023 11:35

You're allowed to have different opinions, she's an adult. You may think she's wrong and you're right but maybe you just have different opinions. Is there any need to ruin your relationship about this?

Ginger1982 · 01/03/2023 11:42

I would just ignore it as a topic of conversation unless she's bringing it up to start a fight?

HagoftheNorth · 01/03/2023 12:53

Your relationship is more important than individual opinions imo (having read many threads here about how this ideology can destroy parent/child bonds)

Otherwise, I agree with senua, tell her you want to understand more about it & especially her view, and ask questions. If she uses false stats then accept it at the time, but go back later to challenge. Maybe you can even agree to look stuff up together.

piedbeauty also makes a good point - try to find out why she cares so much, does she have a trans friend or partner and she feels you’re attacking them personally rather than questioning the ideas?

My DD was very #bekind, and still is, but as she tries to explain it, she gets more fundamentally GC.

people say that young people are more accepting, but when teenage girls and young women are faced with the idea of changing, eg for swimming, in a communal area with a much older man transwoman next to them & looking at them, they get a lot less accepting very quickly. I found questions like ‘I’m not sure how I’d feel, would you be comfortable? Do you think your little sister would be ok?’ Makes it all more real.

Questioning, but not directly challenging - let us know how it goes for you

HagoftheNorth · 01/03/2023 12:56

Sorry you’re having to deal with this OP. This ideology is evil, not least the way it intentionally aims to separate children and young people from their family and support network

Dignorantonio · 01/03/2023 13:24

What was particularly upsetting was insistence trans rapist Adam was a woman and must be called she. Really disturbed me to hear it said out loud.

Think she has a few LGBT pals at Uni and is deeply influenced by them.

I think we probably are going to have to retreat from the argument. She seemed utterly furious at us and for all we know is being encouraged to distance herself from us by her friends back at Uni now.

She really seemed unable to cope with hearing the other side. It was very troubling.

OP posts:
AmuseBish · 01/03/2023 13:39

She's crying because she knows she can't defend "a man is sometimes a woman but I don't know the criteria for when" . If she could defend it, she would. I would leave off and agree to disagree on this. It's a crisis of faith almost... she's heard the linguistic contortions and instructions to be kind that she was told but can't accept that they won't wash with you.

Either that or seriously id as a man and make sure she never misgenders you. Not in a facetious way - just that she's convinced you you can't be a woman either if it doesn't mean female. Follow the "logic".

HagoftheNorth · 01/03/2023 13:40

Probably not so many of the L to be honest. That group seems to be particularly badly treated by T

AmuseBish · 01/03/2023 13:41

Yes, does she agree with Stonewall that being attracted to only one sex is basically the same as racism? She might have to decide if she's going for full homophobia or just implied.

twelly · 01/03/2023 13:45

I really feel for these young people who I agree have been totally misled - I feel that at some point the tide will turn. What worries me is the some of them will go so far down this road that it will make turning back a problem. I feel that some teachers particularly at sixth form almost encouraged this movement and that parents have been excluded. At a time when debate an discussion should be occurring there has been a tendency to call anyone who disagrees biggots or phobic or whatever insult appears to be the best at silencing opposition.

HagoftheNorth · 01/03/2023 13:52

Yes, ideally universities would provide a place for exploration. #nodebate is hardly academia at its best is it?!

HagoftheNorth · 01/03/2023 13:57

OP, as you say, you don’t need to raise it - and if you do, just try to really focus on understanding, and questioning her point of view, not giving her yours. Hopefully she’ll work it out for herself 💐
Of course she might be scared that if she does, then that puts her whole social life in jeopardy. You’re right twelly, it’s really hard for them

VictorStrand · 01/03/2023 14:00

There's no point losing your relationship with her over this so just agree to disagree. There is a lot of pressure on young people and a real risk of being ostracised if they're GC. My friend has two DCs at university. They're both GC but only one of them is openly so. The other doesn't want to risk losing friends.

When you're asking your DD to accept facts, she may be frightened that if she does accept you're right, she then has to challenge her friends. And she doesn't feel strong enough to do that. Crying about these issues points to her not being emotionally robust atm.

There's a few ways our own DC have opened the lines of communication with their friends ie looking at female rights globally (eg rates of infanticide of females overseas and how they cannot identify out of that oppression); hate incident legislation and how it doesn't include misogyny; male rapists in female prisons (it's inherently privileged to think it's fine for vulnerable women to have to risk being raped to placate men); sports scholarships (again it's only very privileged people who can assume it's fine for disadvantaged girls and women to be cut off from financial support).

But prioritise your relationship with her. She sounds vulnerable and will be under pressure to lie to you and cut you off. Your aim should be to maintain your relationship with her imo.

PriOn1 · 01/03/2023 14:05

The best way to change someone’s mind is to gently ask questions that gradually bring them to the realization that they can’t actually back up the claims they are making with any kind of logic.

For example:

What is it about a male person that makes him a woman?

Reply will likely be related to “just knowing or feeling”

How can a male person know what it feels like to be a woman?

Answer will be “(s)he just does”

But if he was born male and everyone knew he was male, how could he actually experience what being a woman feels like?

How does “being a woman” feel to you and do you think every woman feels it the same way?

What behaviors are women’s behaviours? Do all women behave that way?

It’s likely that she will try to derail. I expect the shouting and crying might be related to that.

I would tell her that she doesn’t have to give you an answer straight away, but that you can maybe discuss it later.

She has to think it through herself and see the discrepancies in her own arguments. If she is protective of her friends, it will likely be painful for her as you are effectively asking her to cut herself off from them as she will have seen that anyone who questions is ruthlessly excluded.

If she did agree to watch something, I think O might go for something like the “Trans train” documentary from Sweden.

AmuseBish · 01/03/2023 14:53

I think the many questions is over complicating things - simply "what is a woman?" is what you are asking. Maybe "if you had some ideas but decided they were wrong, what were they and why did you decide otherwise? Can you think about why it's difficult to answer?"

ScrollingLeaves · 01/03/2023 15:22

Dignorantonio · Today 13:24
What was particularly upsetting was insistence trans rapist Adam was a woman and must be called she. Really disturbed me to hear it said out loud.

Have you seen the other thread about ‘woke’ students being interviewed? You’ll find she isn’t the only one. It is like a religious cult, and rational thought isn’t really part of it. You see them stutter as they begin to think. They seem to be desperately trying not to say the ‘wrong’ thing.

Diverze · 01/03/2023 15:56

IMO in young MC girls this view is usually based on a perception of oppression of transpeople, based in a kind of "be kind to the oppressed" conditioning of UK MC education and parenting.

If I were going to work on trying to get her thinking - which I would only do on a much separate occasion - I would work to undermine this argument.

So, middle class female from stable family sharing bathroom with transgirl - no clash of rights perceived. The female would not feel threatened and would perceive she is being inclusive to a less fortunate or less privileged "class" - transpeople.

However, flip that about a bit. Now, it's a Muslim woman in hijab in the bathroom when the trans woman comes in. Both religion and gender reassignment are protected. Religious Muslim women should not be undressed in a space with a male person who is not their husband. Who is more oppressed in this scenario? The religious minority or the LGBT minority? Would she recognise the internal conflict the Muslim woman might face in this bathroom scenario? Is it simply because she is bigoted? Should the Muslim woman stop using public bathrooms so she doesn't face this scenario?

Now it's a woman who was recently raped on a night out and who has PTSD. Her friends have persuaded her to come out for a meal and she has agreed after much anxiety. As she exits the cubicle, she sees a trans woman come into the bathroom. She feels a wave of fear as she can tell this is a natal male, and she is alone in a vulnerable space with him. Now who is more oppressed? The sexual assault victim having a physiological fear response, or the trans woman? Is the rape victim only feeling fear because she is a bigot? Should she not have come out at all if she didn't want to find herself in a secluded space with a natal male person?

Now it's a little girl, aged 7, who has popped into the ladies' loo at M and S while her Mum changes her little brother's nappy in the separate baby changing room. A trans woman emerges from a stall as she comes in. The 7 year old feels confused and scared. She runs to a cubicle and locks herself in, then starts to cry. Age is a protected characteristic alongside gender reassignment. Is she only crying because she is a bigot? Should she not have been allowed to use the ladies' loo alone unless she had been prepared that sometimes she might see someone she perceives as a male person in there, and that's ok?

I think sometimes people with great privilege don't consider that their experience is not the universal one; and that because they would not feel threatened by a transperson in a particular scenario, this doesn't mean that nobody would. That it isn't the case that all women as a class hold more privilege than all transwomen as a class. And if someone does feel threatened, is that only because they are by definition transphobic or bigoted, or is it possible that there could be a valid reason? If there is ever a valid reason, then there is a clash of rights, and a discussion should be had to work out a solution.

persister · 01/03/2023 16:22

I've been through this, OP, and I backed off as I felt I was at risk of seriously damaging my relationship with my child.

He was at university when this first became an issue for us - he finally found his tribe and they were all either 'queer' or very TWAW, and he enthusiastically adopted that position. I had many conversations with him, putting forward rational arguments, statistics, you name it, and he just wouldn't listen. We became very frustrated with each other and it came to a head on one occasion when I took him through the logical incoherence of his position and invited him to show me where I was wrong, and he finally admitted he could see that the case I was putting was a convincing one, but he couldn't move towards a more sex realist position because he would lose all his beloved friends.

That's where we ended up - he couldn't refute the sex realist perspective (obviously!) but he wouldn't risk the social damage he would sustain if he moved towards it. I realised if I tried to take it any further our relationship might be never recover.

Since then (three or four years now) we don't ever speak of it. It's the elephant in the room because we are a family who discuss current affairs a lot but never this one. He came to visit recently and I happened to be reading the Helen Joyce book so it was by my chair - he would normally be interested in what I'm reading but it might as well have been invisible. We discussed Sturgeon's downfall etc but never mentioned the Adam Graham case.

I will admit I mourn the open, unguarded relationship we used to have and feel this has caused a little distance between us at times, but we still have a very loving relationship and I think I did the right thing not to jeopardise that.

Delphinium20 · 01/03/2023 17:02

When my oldest DD was TWAW she also would cry when we discussed this. Which was very odd considering her personality. We'd had much more heated debates in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder. While we both care about BLM, her take was ACAB and DH and I were more like, "protect the Black teenagers and retrain police." Even in this very heated conversations (an Hispanic teen friend of hers was murdered, so she was very emotional), she never broke down like she did if her dad or I had a giggle at the word "cis" or rolled our eyes when she used a friend's neo pronouns. She would melt in a puddle of anguish if we said, "but honey, they aren't really women, you know that."

I think it's the cognitive dissonance that gives them pain. Other arguments are based in reality (Black men ARE killed by cops) and you're debating alternate ways to fix things. Even if you cherry pick facts to bolster an argument, you're still using facts. But not with gender woo.

FWIW, my DD peaked this summer and now is a radical feminist and arguing with whoever will listen. One friend of hers DID fall into the same puddle of despair when DD pointed out TW don't have periods and shouldn't be centered in abortion convos. DH and I did our best not to say, "we remember when..."

Hang on, drip feed your reasoning. She'll get there eventually.

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