More isolation tactics – or am I imagining it?

[Righthandcider]

This might not seem like a subject for FWR but bear with.

Yesterday my 12-year-old said, “I’m really interested in fighting climate change.” So I asked her about it. The first thing out of her mouth was, “Well, your generation has completely ruined the planet and my generation’s future.”
This kicked off a long conversation about over-simplification, the appeal of feeling like you’re part of a group with a common enemy, etc.

(I also pointed out how often we ask her not to leave lights on all over the house, or say no, we’re not putting the heating on in the whole house just so that you can have a warm towel, etc.)

The way she phrased it has really stayed with me. It’s so obviously a message she’s been fed via friends / SM – and it’s clearly intended to turn kids against their parents. It doesn’t seem like a stretch that this messaging isn’t really coming from groups interested in addressing climate change, so much as groups interested in driving a wedge between parents and children.

Am I paranoid?

Almost the whole political class in all the English speaking countries was captured, plus many of the other more social democratic countries.

To see this as mainly something that came out of political parties is a gross misunderstanding. All of them, at the same time, fell prey to this. That's what's so startling. The Tories, the LP, the Democrats in the US, the political class in Australia, NZ, Canada.

Where there has been some skepticism and push back from political parties even belated, it's come more from the right. The left has almost universally embraced it and shut down any of their own who did not. The various Communist groups in the UK being an exception, but in Canada the Communists seem as bad as the rest on this issue.

EdgeOfACoin I will continue to bang the drum about this every time I see posters erase, minimise or forget the damage done to women and girls by the Tory TWAW policies.

So I asked her about it. The first thing out of her mouth was, “Well, your generation has completely ruined the planet and my generation’s future.”

It's nothing new. I can remember in my teens in the 1970s that this was said all the time.

I spent a few years of my early teens living in Australia, and I distinctly remember watching a very "yoof" programme on the ABC equivalent of the BBC) which was a studio discussion programme involving a group of older teenagers and a well-known ABC journalist moderator (might have been a very young Bill Peach). It had a strapline "Leave something for us."

It was all about youth politics, anti-nuclear, Greenpeace etc etc, and that the teenagers of the 1970s were going to inherit a nuclear wasteland. So those teenagers are now in their 60s and 70s. It's us!

TooBig I get you hate the Tories. But it seems like every time I see your name it's blaming the Tories. It's like a broken record. The same thing over and over and over.
The TWAW crap crept up on everyone. Most times the spineless politicians of today will go with whatever they think will cause the least fuss.
When asked what a woman was Sunak said "Adult human female". Even if they are only pushing back purely to win votes, the Tories are the only ones pushing back on this. Starmer doesn't even know what a woman is. Rosie Duffield has been hung out to dry by Labour. You really think Starmer's going to push back on TWAW when he gets elected? They are displaying their intents right now.
Even some Scottish people who hate the Tories are grateful for the section 35 block.
You can agree with the Tories on this one issue, and still reject them, and still hate them, and still never vote for them. Agreeing with someone or something on one particular issue does not mean you support them on everything.
I think you are in denial. I think the positions of the Tories and Labour on this issue is causing you cognitive dissonance, and you are adopting denial as a coping mechanism.

Nobody is doing anything of the sort. We're all here because of our deep concern, just like you.

Thankfully, the Tory party have put a stop to Self ID, though - which is where the real and escalating dangers would have manifested. If we'd had a Labour or Lib Dem government a coupe of years ago, when the bill to amend the GRA was going through, it would have been passed.

Nothing new under the sun.

However, despite As other posters have said things were more frugal in our childhoods, and that was better for the planet, some of the things that anger my teen ds are how businesses and governments hide information that something is harmful, like the long term harms caused by leaded petrol, smoking and nitrous oxide were known about for decades before anything was done about them. In his mind it was the older generations once again prioritising their immediate interests over younger people's futures.

There is nothing new under the sun - except social media and the cult of the uptick.

I will continue to repeat the facts on how we've ended up in this position. I'm glad that Sunak says he knows what a woman is now but it wasn't too long ago he said it was whatever PM Johnson said. The same PM Johnson who couldn't say that only women have a cervix.

The Tories are not the only ones rolling back on this. Since Nichola Sturgeon and the disgraceful case of Isla Bryson, all the parties are reassessing their views.

I am suffering no cognitive dissonance and in no need of a coping mechanism. Nor am I in denial about which party sacrificed the rights of women and girls to the TRA movement. It was the party in power. It was the Tory party.