Are younger generations more regressive?

[bryceQ]

I'm in my mid 30s, my brother is in his early 20s. He believes in gender ideology, TWAW... But also agrees there are sex differences in sport 🤷‍♀️. Knows I've faced a lot of street harassment by men which makes me feel unsafe... Knows our mum faced domestic violence. I think his opinion is quite confused, but also think his opinions in general lack maturity which is normal at his age.

Anyway.... Today he was saying that his girlfriend has decorated her room in very "girly colours" - and apparently gen z call this "girly core". I found it really irritating that this generation seem to cling to gender stereotypes in a way that seems so regressive. It feels like we are going the opposite way. I find it so perplexing, for all the obsession with what you identify as...., all of the identifications seem to be rooted in outdated stereotypes. Girls like pink 🙄

I know this is just a silly anecdote, but I wondered those of you with grown-up children or younger siblings, have you noticed this too?

I think they're just generally more accepting of anything that someone wants to be /have /present. If they want a girly pink unicorn room /outfit fine. If they don't find ... they're less judgy in my experience

... they're less judgy in my experience

Not my experience - they like labels but if something isn't labeled or steps outside the label's parameters they seem judgy as fuck really.

Less shrugging and you do you much more conformist - though less so younger ones.

It's why DD1 years they all had same long hair style, all wore skirts - DD1 was rebel in that hers was below her knees and not a belt. DD2 4 years behind much more of a range of hair styles and many of the girls wear trousers and nothing is inferred about their sexuality or the gender from it by their peers.

@DadJoke
I think I know why you're refusing to be specific about what you're calling "some rights." In an argument based on emotion, being specific about what you're referring as you are throwing accusations around can only further weaken it.
Please list the rights you are referring to so people can answer as to whether they want those specific rights removed. You don't get to accuse people of wanting to remove rights when they don't even know which ones you are talking about.
If you won't be specific, that says it all then, doesn't it.

@fabricstash such an interesting point as I myself was part of the bekind brigade. My teenage son actually opened my eyes up to the insanity of it all. ( Plus a few debates on MN helped shift my view. )

Oh bollocks. Sexism was absolutely fucking rife and all around us in the 1980s and totally mainstream on TV. Such rose colour glasses nonsense. Oh we had a female prime minister. Whoopee fucking dee, everything was perfect then. Try being a gay man then. Try reading The Sun then and how they wrote about Mandy Smith and teenage girls.

What absolute arse.

And all the organisations who embraced trans ideology hook line and sinker without adequate thought to the consequences were not being run by Gen Z but by boomers, X and Y. The way of the world is our fault not theirs, they are just beginning to navigate it as young adults and to try to make sense of things.

It isn't Gen Z that has made abortion illegal in 14 states in the US. Now that is regressive.

I think it’s not so clear as a generational divide. Like PP says it’s not Zs who are running things. Though in some of those cases I do think it was cowardice from older generations in just giving into latest trends and making them policy eg non-binary as a legitimate thing.

For those who believe non-binary is legit you do get a lot of regressive talk. “I don’t fit in the woman box” and other such nonsense.

It is easy to hear a few young people (especially if you see YouTube clips) and write young people off but a lot don’t buy into the regressiveness. At a local university a group were handing out pronoun badges but very few students accepted them. It’s the vocal ones you hear from.

I think the issue is more that the vocal ones are extremely regressive, even if the majority aren’t, though at a certain point silence is complicity or agreement. And that they are expressing this internalised sexism and homophobia in ways that can be very jarring to those outside the generation which makes it more evident (compared to the homophobia and misogyny we grew up with).

I’ve seen gen Z argue that obscuring data regarding sexism and attacks on women is the same as fixing it (ignoring it would still be the female people facing discrimination); and I’ve certainly seen the argument that lesbians and gay men should date trans people because they have the ‘correct’ genitals repeated by gen z (though it may not have originated there). They are in many ways an incredibly sexist and homophobic generation in a way I did not face from my own generation (though experiences will f course vary).

Came to post this very interesting AMA with an 18 year old "socially detransitioned" young woman who still considers herself "trans" and to have "dysphoria" but she says the less she focuses on "gender" the easier it is to ignore it.

www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/s/Sy5OaPHl74

Particularly interesting that she says being a "man" socially is hard because they are under pressure to act in a repressed way. A couple of men (probably Gen X or Millennials) say that's not their experience, and she mentions how a lot of the Gen Z men she knows are into Andrew Tate etc.

www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/s/S2EduMFnmU