Caitlin Moran discusses her absence from the trans debates

[MotherEarthisaTerf]

20 mins and 30 seconds in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001zlw2?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

i don’t think the ease of communication by phone helps either. It’s too easy to WhatsApp’or call parents we had to queue for a shared phone with a phone card.

Some of Dd2s private school friends aren’t allowed on buses. At 15. Dear god.

This is because being GC is not seen by them as worthy of being called a faith position but as something as bad as racism. That’s the message they have absorbed and they act accordingly.

I agree that's a harsh point. But what has happened is that because so few parents dare challenge their offspring, those who do become isolated.
I'm a parent of young adults. And also was a teacher. I understand the challenges. But I believe collectively we've let young people down by allowing their naive unformed thoughts and beliefs to be fetishised and prioritised with zero (or limited) challenges.
We've done them no favours (thinking particularly of performative university staff with their nonsense trigger warnings etc) and are in danger of ending up with generations of young people cowed by fantasy ideologies, unable to exercise critical thinking, emotionally and socially unable to function in anything other than a passive, cushioned world.

I'm genuinely sorry that your son is finding it so hard to accept your right to hold different views to him and know how scary it is when they threaten to alienate themselves from us. I've no easy answers but do think that collectively as adults we and institutions need to tackle this - easier said than done I know.

She knew full well that she would be dropped by her publisher if she said anything.

She was absolutely totally scared and so didn't look at it, in case she realised she would have to say something.

No respect left for her.

Can I ask why? I don't understand.

@CurlewKate

I understand now from what the other posters have described.

I’m a times subscriber but. Won’t click on anything she writes. I have no interest in the thoughts of cowards

@MotherEarthisaTerf “Can I ask why? I don't understand”
At their age I would have cut off
my parents if they had been openly racist or homophobic. For them it
would be the same.

It is important to respect and tolerate different view points. Reports suggest our young people are taught that some fairly mainstream views are wrong /unacceptable and that the correct response is to judge, exclude and punish. I don’t remember my generation being so punitive. If someone had (in your opinion) dodgy views, you factored that in and maybe gave them a wide berth, you didn’t try to organise for them to be shunned by your year group.

I don’t mean racism or homophobia to be clear. More voting Tory, supporting Israel, decrying porn/sex work, supporting women’s spaces etc.

The thing about home education is you aren't obliged to hang out with anyone in particular.

You can also give your students a real education rather than what passes for it these days in school. Which helps a lot with making it possible to engage with differernt ideas.

But even the way these kids engage with what they call racism is shallow and often stupid.

A lot of the same people you can't talk to about gender ideology are the same people you can't have a discussion on race with. The kind of people Matt Walsh trolled in his film. They seem completely unable to understand that not everyone - even "racialized" people have the same views, or that some people might consider their id politics deeply racist.

They don't seem to really understand topics like the history of slavery from a historically literate perspective, or be able to understand why it was so ubiquitous in human history.

So I don't think it's quite that they think being GC is the same as being racist. They have very reductive views on both of these things. They seem to have no context or history for their beliefs.

@TempestTost "But even the way these kids engage with what they call racism is shallow and often stupid"

I can only speak with any certainty about my own adult (not kids) children, but they are not shallow or stupid. They are thoughtful, nuanced and well read, and understand the context of racism, sexism and homophobia-not least because their father and I have always been politically active and these subjects that have always been part of our family discourse. In part that actually explains the issue. I can't understand why they can't see the trans issue as different- they can't understand why I do see it as different. Obviously there are unthinking band wagon jumpers on both sides. However I don't think it helps to dismiss all the TWAWs as unthinking. Many are. But some are genuinely (and wrongly, in my opinion) seeing it as a civil rights issue. It doesn't help that it has been weaponised by the unscrupulous Right as an easy vote catcher.

Yes, and I agree with your second point. God forbid if your views don’t neatly align with everything allowed by the woke sheep 🐑

But they won't discuss the issues. That would be too threatening to their worldview. As well as parents (who mostly didn't spot the problem until their child announced his or her "identity") and educators, we have self righteous political positions which are taken as self evident. Progressive people accept all the mantras of progressive people. Everyone else is bigoted.

It is ironic that they don't see the bigotry of their position! If you refuse to have your views challenged, what describes you better than "bigot", if you condemn everyone else?

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic i addressed some of these points in my reply to @TempestTost here"
"I can only speak with any certainty about my own adult (not kids) children, but they are not shallow or stupid. They are thoughtful, nuanced and well read, and understand the context of racism, sexism and homophobia-not least because their father and I have always been politically active and these subjects that have always been part of our family discourse. In part that actually explains the issue. I can't understand why they can't see the trans issue as different- they can't understand why I do see it as different. Obviously there are unthinking band wagon jumpers on both sides. However I don't think it helps to dismiss all the TWAWs as unthinking. Many are. But some are genuinely (and wrongly, in my opinion) seeing it as a civil rights issue. It doesn't help that it has been weaponised by the unscrupulous Right as an easy vote catcher."

@maltravers "It is important to respect and tolerate different view points"

Is it always? I personally do not respect
or tolerate racism, sexism or homophobia.

CurlewKate I agree with this: "However I don't think it helps to dismiss all the TWAWs as unthinking. Many are. But some are genuinely (and wrongly, in my opinion) seeing it as a civil rights issue."

My DD and I are so close to agreeing on the meanings of gender and sex, but she is emotionally very aligned with trans people. She thinks that trans rights are gay rights 2, and that raising many of the issues with trans activism is Section 28 repeated. She doesn't however see the dangers of queer theory, such as a repeat of PIE's efforts to slide in on the coattails of gay rights, with "MAP" being pushed as a valid identity. So I can discuss trans issues with her, but we're often at cross purposes. And she just doesn't see that she's losing women's rights that are vital to some other women and may become important to her. And I think she believes in true trans, which also colours her wider thinking.

To add to my previous post, my DD is a trans ally who does think deeply, but as I said is emotionally on the side of trans people. My DS is trans identified, and I would have described him as a deep thinker until he got caught up in his "identity", at which point his critical thinking and scepticism deserted him (not instantly, but there has been a clear progression as he has got sucked further into trans groupthink). He was never able to articulate what his trans identity meant to him, but was tolerant of different views to start with. That's no longer the case, and he is cutting himself off from family, including his sister because she has little patience with the way he's treating his family.

Dd2 then 15 was a trans ally be kinder but I got to work. They recently did this topic in PHSE and she said people should do as they wish but girls need girls only spaces. All the other girls agreed. Much to dds bafflement
the middle aged teacher got abit weepy and said “I’m so proud of you girls I’m not allowed to say that”

Presumably the original #nodebate approach enabled so many anti women, anti child safeguarding aspects of all this to be uncritically accepted - especially by the young with limited insight and experience of society. If you're not allowed to discuss / interrogate an issue then of course you can't explore unintended consequences, reality vs fantasy, societal values, etc.

I assume you must have missed my post saying this:

“I don’t mean racism or homophobia to be clear. More voting Tory, supporting Israel, decrying porn/sex work, supporting women’s spaces etc.”

I suppose, but then you have said you and your kids would both cut off family you felt didn't have the correct views on these issues.

I'm just not surprised that someone who would do that as a matter of course would do it over so called transphobia too.

People come to the positions they are hold for all kinds of reasons.

What is the substance of racism, or homophobia? We're the blacks in America who believed in racial segregation and went off to set up colonies in Africa racist? Is Ibram X Kendi? When about when a white person holds differernt views? How much understanding and grace do we extend to someone who has grown up in difficult circumstances, a bad family perhaps, or in a war zone, or with some mental illness? How about a Catholic who believes all sexual activity should be governed by the possibility of procreation? Or a gay man who thinks that marriage is fundamentally for managing the imabalance of power between the sexes? What about a straight person who thinks the same thing? What about liberals who seem to think that black conservatives are traitors? ect....

Reducing people to these kinds of labels is so reductive, people are a lot more than that and have different qualities, good and bad, often contradictory ones. And it seems so deeply incurious. It's often possible to understand where they are coming from if you talk to them, or to have a healthy relationship despite real differences of opinion on important topics.

And I'd add, having relationships like this makes it a lot harder to pull the wool over your eyes about your own failings. It tends to drive critical self-reflection.

@TempestTost "People come to the positions they are hold for all kinds of reasons."

Of course they do. I can understand why someone is racist or sexist or homophobic without wanting that person in my life.