Older generations show resistance to trans rights

[Inauthentic]

"Millennials and Gen Z tend to be overwhelmingly supportive of trans people, having grown up in a more inclusive environment, while older generations show far more resistance to trans rights, likely intimidated by the speed of social change."

Is this your experience?
There appears to be an overwhelming support for gender critical beliefs on Mumsnet.
Is it because it's mainly older generations engaging in this debate?

How old are you and what are your views?

I am 45yo and I mostly support trans rights (with the exception of trans athletes competing in woman's events and I agree puberty blockers is a grey area)

This is my experience of growing up in the late 80's and early 90's. I was talking to my daughter (15) about how no one I hung around with questioned or cared if girls wore make up/had long hair. We all experimented with masculine and feminine looks and none of us looked the same. There was no doubt who was male or who was female. Clothes didn't define our sex and gender was (and still is) not a real thing.

I'm laughing at the idea that any woman if the op is actually a woman, believes there is an internal feeling to being a woman. Are women all soft and feminine on the inside? Are men strong and masculine on the inside? 🙄

The resulting gametes are that simple. If your body makes sperm, you are male and can never be female.

The law, sporting rules, prison allocations etc do not need to, and IMO should not try to, consider someone's feelings about their reproductive biology.

That was obviously true for many, particularly working class women, but I don't think it's the whole picture. When I was younger, all the women on prime time TV had a distinctly 'middle aged' style. Cilla Black, Esther Rantzen etc. If you looked at a picture now you'd think they were much older than than they actually were. There was a way that it was acceptable for women over 40 to look, and not to conform was seen as somewhat unseemly, and invited comments about mutton etc. If you look at TV today, women such a Tess Daly and Claudia Winklemen don't present themselves any differently to, or really look any older than, women decades younger.

This is often reflected in real life, where these days you would have to look pretty closely, squint, and basically guess as to the age of most women of my acquaintance who are over 30. The way people present themselves reflects the prevailing social attitudes of the day, and attitudes to 'older' women are changing for a whole host of reasons.

So you think anyone should be able to walk into women's changing rooms?
What about children's? Is consent needed then or still not?

I do not believe that individual women's consent needs to be sought before other people can use publicly accessible facilities alongside them.

They're not just "other people" they are men.

Bloody hell. You can’t see your own internalised misogyny and ageism, can you?

Some people use biological attributes (for example penis) as an only indication of how the person should identify

I haven't read any posts that proffer views on how people should identify or the factors that should/do influence identity.

I think a key difference that is being highlighted are beliefs around the degree to which that one's own self perception/ identity should be attend to by others.

They can say 'people with prostates' and 'people with cervixes' It's very simple.

Who has cervixes? How do we know?

‘Misogynistic’ says the poster who can look a collection of cross dressing middle aged men, claim that they are women and declare anyone pointing out the bleeding obvious ‘disgusting’.

Of course, because it undermines this poster's already poor argument for why a group of men should be considered women further.

For me it's misogynistic to force team women with these men.

@PurpleSparkledPixie My bafflement was rhetorical!

If language doesn't have a mutually understood meaning it's pointless.
If I tell my doctor I have pain in my arm but I actually mean my lower limb (or what the none fluid squares would call a leg) she is never going to diagnose the problem.

If the meaning of words is fluid we may as well stop talking and try to communicate via the medium of interpretative dance.

Words can and do change meaning over time but not randomly flipflop on a whim.

Yes, I think so, as long as they don't assault or harass anyone. You can't know someone's gender just by looking at them.

Children's services are different, but access to those should be based on clear safeguarding structures and who has got DBS clearance, not gender.

This is utter bollocks. The denographics of people voting for Brexit were largely regional.

I know 2 people that voted dor Brexit (30 and 40), everyone else vited remain (18-85).

Similarly GC women at Let Women Speal events, if you look at the women who have spoken, habe ranged from 13-80s.

You can try and turn it around on me if you want, but I'm not the misogynist here.

No, most people don’t. I didn’t; none of my close friends did; and none of my peers at university or 6th form college did. Not a single member of my family (7 aunts/uncles or 22 cousins) did. A minority of people did/do, and often got sent down or kicked out when caught.

It really isn’t ‘normal’ or accepted.

What is it about those women that you find so distasteful? You clearly find them distasteful, or you wouldn't be so offended at being categorised alongside them.

I only know one person who is openly transphobic, by which I mean does not accept trans men and women are really men and women. I know two other people who says transphobic things while claiming not to be transphobic. They are all my age (millenials.) All the older people I know (baby boomers and gen x) are sympathetic to trans rights and think we should treat people as their chosen gender, as are all the younger people (gens z and alpha.)

Statistically that's highly unlikely, as only the most extreme genderist activists believe that we should treat people of the opposite sex "as their chosen gender" in every way. Legal self ID is extremely unpopular with the public. Why would that be, if "trans women are women"?

I imagine you're not privileged to know what many people in your circle privately think about it.

You can tell a person's sex by interacting with them. Female people are likely to reliably be able to correctly sex a male person with a brief interaction.

Those hip diagrams posted up thread is just one of the reasons why female people can correctly sex a a male person. Just by seeing them walk.

Female people have the right to have single sex spaces away from male people. This is not transphobic. It doesn't matter how a male person presents themselves. If they know that a space is for female people only, they should respect that it is not for them to enter.

What is it about those women that you find so distasteful?

The people in those pictures aren't women, they are men. Autogynephile men who fantasise about themselves as their sexist, porn-influenced idea of a "woman". They don't belong in women's spaces where women are undressed or otherwise vulnerable. It's sexual harassment to make women participate in a fetish against their will.

I am an older woman who feels we fought long and hard for our rights as women in a mens world. To have men masquerading as women in sports, as one example, makes me furious. My DDS in their late 30s/early 40s are both supportive of trans 'rights' so we don't talk about the subject as we will never agree.

As an aside, to the PP who suggested most older people voted for Brexit, I know only one person of a similar age to do so, everyone else voted Remain because we saw through the lies or the Brexit camp and knew we'd lose out if we left.

I've written before on how using medical terms instead of everyday language excludes people whose first language is not English. It also excludes people who are learning disabled or just not very literate. Older immigrants often have their children translating for them and a child is unlikely to know what a cervix or a prostate is.

It is not OK for a tiny minority, who know full well what their own reproductive anatomy is, to risk the lives of immigrants and disabled people by making healthcare messaging harder to understand because they don't like the words "men" and "women". This demand to risk people's lives illustrates the inherent self-absorbed narcissistic individualism of gender identitarianism.

I literally don't know a single Gen Xer or millennial that didn't take recreational drugs in their teens and 20s, and I've lived in a fair few cities and mixed in different circles. A portion of Gen Z are a bit more straightlaced. I don't know anyone who 'got caught' or faced any consequences. Are you suggesting people who enjoy recreational drugs are somehow deserving of contempt?

If you want to understand the autogynephile experience you can:

Visit the trans widows threads here on Mumsnet (but please don't make a nuisance of yourself asking questions, they are support threads)

Read Debbie Hayton's book

Lurk on one of the many subreddits where autogynephile men congregate.

Very simple as long as you know what a prostate or a cervix is and who has one. Not so much for the people who don't, and who might actually die if they don't realise that this important information is relevant to them.

Everyone knows what a man is and what a woman is, even the people pretending they don't know.

Do you think a marginalised immigrant woman with poor English who comes from a culture where discussion of body parts is taboo is likely to understand that she is a "person with a cervix"? Because I don't. She's much more likely to understand that "women" includes her.