Please hold my hand. My daughter has drunk the koolaid, and I’m more upset & angry than I think I have ever been. (SC ruling)

[MarvellousMonsters]

This will be long, so I apologise in advance. I find myself in a grey area between radfems and woke-maidens. I don’t hate trans people, I don’t hate anyone, although as a woman in my 50s I’ve had enough male fuckwittery in my life to have a very low opinion of men in general. I do believe that there are some people with such intense dysphoria that counselling and support are not enough and surgical transition is their best solution, but I don’t believe anyone can change sex, or is born in the wrong body.

That said, I detest gender stereotypes and the confusion of sex & gender, I’m the generation of women that fought really hard on a day to day level to reject these stupid made up rules about what girls can and can’t do/wear/think, and seeing the ‘men in a dress’ become accepted as that meaning they are women is a huge step backwards, and it makes me furious.

I honestly don’t care who wears what, if a man wants to wear dresses and make up, that’s fine. I’ve spent the last 15-20 years in t-shirts and jeans, no make up etc, so I don’t see why men can’t wear skirts if they want to. As Eddie Izzard used to say, they aren’t women’s clothes, they are my clothes. (So disappointed that Eddie has now claimed to be Suzie)

I am not a dress.

I genuinely don’t care about sharing spaces like toilets, it’s possible to create safe unisex toilets, the focus on this is a distraction and needs to stop. But when men claim to identify as women and skew crime statistics, that bothers me. Men who claim to identify as women and try to insist that lesbians should date them, that’s controlling and gross. Hospital wards and bays are segregated for a reason, and demanding we use she/her pronouns doesn’t mean a man should be put in a bed in a women’s bay. Same with any communal changing area, be it the gym or a shop fitting room. Women don’t have a penis, it’s really that simple.

This morning the SC ruling was mentioned briefly and my adult daughter is furious with it. She claims it’s a step backwards, that it will cause hate crimes and violence towards trans people, that anyone who supports it is a hateful bigot and wishes harm on a vulnerable minority. I tried to calmly explain to her that no laws have been changed, only clarified, and that trans people haven’t lost any rights, nor will any MtF prisoners be immediately transferred to male prisons to be raped and murdered by the other prisoners. Women aren’t going to be randomly strip-searched by male police officers who will claim they thought it was a man, etc. She just refuses to believe that women’s safe spaces need to be just for actual biological women, because she believes trans women don’t pose a threat, and even when I explained that most trans identifying MtF don’t have surgery etc and are still fully functioning males, and showed her examples of MtF assaulting women, she won’t accept that the actions of these men mean that we should be able to hold safe spaces based on biology. I tried to explain that I understand that trans people are vulnerable to hate crimes etc, and that we need to take steps to keep them safe, but not at the expense of women. We’ve had a long and very heated argument where she has accused me of being a bigot and a bunch of other incredibly hurtful things, mostly by refusing to accept that there is a toxic sub-set of (mostly MtF) TRAs that are actually autogynephiles/INCELs with misogyny at their core, and that these people threaten actual physical harm to anyone (like JKR) who dares to question their claims of womanhood.

Help me. Help me find a way to reach her. She’s an intelligent educated young woman who has been raised with feminist values, I have modelled non-stereotypical behaviours and given her complete freedom to choose her direction in life, with no expectations or limitations based on her sex. I’m genuinely appalled to hear this garbage coming from her.

Really? Where have you got that ideological position from? Don't teachers study Paulo Friere anymore? Issues of social justice and democracy are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning.

Teaching isn't (or shouldn't be) about simply depositing bits of knowledge into a pupil, they should be active participants in the learning process. Which seems like the case in your example. They weren't sitting there in silence copying down a list.

Yet, what you posted were a series of prejudices. Against intersectionality (the understanding of the interconnectedness between a various forms of discrimination), against CRT (the understanding the processes that shape and sustain race inequality in society)

That's kind of rude.

Tbh we all have our own back stories. But how does letting middle aged men play sports with teenage girls have anything to do with your husband leaving you?

No, I suggested that the teacher is not a cup which pours forth their own perspective into vacant pupils who must not question. A teacher is there to encourage thinking and the development of knowledge. All sorts of different themes and perspctives can be explored and approached in a balanced, inforrmed way. Pure Left/Right analyses are often a straightjacket using crude representations and leaning heavily on tribal affiliation.

When my daughter did her English Literature degree and then her MA it had been co-opted into a very strange sort of hybrid...where quite often some staff were not really even reading origibal texts; they were only conducting critical analysis of texts using the sorts of models you talk about above. Everything has to be de-constructed using Intersectionalist types of analysis.

Fortunately, for my daughter, who loves Shakespeare and renaissance Literature there were still some professors who had a more 'pure' Literature approach - which was not predicated on looking out for structural oppression in texts, or reading texts only with a critical race theory paradigm, or patriarchal oppression focus. The abandonment of the classics if they show signs that in the past people did not conform to contemporary ideological imperatives.

I just told you I studied Sociology and Philosophy. I know all about intersectionalist models, it is simply that I no longer perceive everything through them. Intersectionalism is just another theory or way of approaching a subject or matter. Not the only way.

When you get to A level or certainly degree level you should be offering all sorts of different analytical models, not just pushing one.

To be able to describe how somethimg works, and understanding the foundations on which it is predicated or constructed is not to be prejudiced against it. How can you critique something if you do not really understand its premise? Unless you think some models or theories shouldn't be critiqued?

I'm pretty much on board with post modernism and intersectional analysis, but honest intersectional analysis has to include physical sex as one of the intersecting axis of oppression/power otherwise it's ignoring the most fundamental and longstanding oppression in humanity's history. If it fudges material sex into mixed-sex "gender", or hides the power differential between male and female people under the weasel word "cis", it's not truly intersectional, it's just naive playacting.

Gender as in social constructions and constaints around sex absolutely belongs in intersectional analysis as well. There are clear insights about gender non-confirmity and how it intersects with sex and power in different ways which are sympathetic and illuminating. But unless you recognise sex as well, those insights can never be found.

I find it incredibly telling that something as fundamental to human existence and as manifestly a source of power differences as sex can be ignored by people who are claiming to have an intersectional approach.

Regarding mentions of Paulo Friere, and his "pedagogy of the oppressed"...no, this was never standard in teacher training, for the reason it has been embraced only fairly recently by proponents of 'social justice'...which tends to position people as activists who challenge power dynamics in which ever realm they work or function. This in itself is a form of Intersectionalist analysis.

Critical theory developed out of literature studies. How does considering social, historical, and political schools of thought or looking at power relations in society not add to an understanding of a text?

Even if you don't agree with the premise that education should go beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics and to explicitly transform society, it still adds to a fuller experience of the text. It doesn't lead to an abandonment of the classics, it simply adds tools to the reader.

How do you read Othello without considering race, or renaissance novels without considering the place of women?

“Why bother with all the history books, when their authors—being men who are envious of women’s worthy deeds—do not talk about women’s noble actions, but instead consign them to silence?”
–Lucrezia Marinella, 1601

They do. You listed crt, queer theory & alluded to critical theory. All interdisciplinary approaches that draw on, or critique, practically every analytical approach that exists.

Really? I studied it 30 years ago on a Post Graduate teaching course.

@Mumble12 You started being abusive because your arguments are not coherent and you can not convince others.

Funnily enough when I was young and protesting against apartheid my mother agreed it was the right thing to do. When there is a good reason to change it's possible to defend it, change for changes sake is not always desirable.

I can't imagine you were training to teach in schools. Maybe in FE? It was certainly never standard when I trained. When my daughter trained, the university in which she did ther PGCE, was known for its adherence to trans ideology and very much into its 'social justice activism'....so It may well have been on the reading list. Though if it was, she didn't read it.

Students, staff and the teaching unions at that particular university also hounded some of its female lecturers when they would not conform to the edicts of gender identity ideology. Threatened them with discipline, and students tried to get them sacked. It was all rainbow lanyards and TWAW.

But those three theories all fall under the one post modernist label.......which has become ubiquitous in many places of higher education.

You must remember how silly things got.....with students at Manchester university, for example, wanting to ban clapping...and in which university campuses where decorated with banners declaring 'safe spaces'. And the Socialist Workers with their stalls declaring that TWAW, staffed by students and lecturers in science subjects; and at which speakers such as Julie Bindel or Peter Hitchens had their events boycotted?

What has tended to happen is those sorts of readings, or very certain schools of thought, have become central...to the extent that the text is no longer encountered 'naked' in the first instance, and only ever approached via such analytical models. Enagagement with texts has been confined and stunted and shaped entirely by adherence to such' social justice' models. So students come away from Macbeth, for example, and they can only view Lady Macbeth through the lens of 'patriarchal oppression'.

No, not schools, I think it was titled post graduate certificate in adult education. I don't think we're going to agree, we appear to have different views on what the role of educators and education should be.

I can well believe the experiences of your daughter, but in my experience that's got less to do with theoretical approaches and more to do with the capturing of Unions at local, branch & national level by trans activists. Combined with the culture of fear amongst management & staff.

Nobody encounters a text "naked". Even if you discount something like Derrida's idea that there is no outside-text, ignore the interconnectedness of texts etc, you're still a subject bringing your own experience, personal & cultural to that reading.

I think the main differnce in our attitude towards education and the role of the teacher is that you seem to centre and prioritise post modernist/social justice analysis and readings; wheras I'd be more inclined, if i were still teaching, to introduce them as but one type of model for engaging with a text - and that I would see pure enjoyment of texts for what they are, and the language and imagery they use, as coming first and formemost. Different readings should be secondary to the initial engagement.

I don't want trigger warnings on texts, or to be told that they might contain things which some might find offensive before I've even read it. At the level of higher education students should be prepared to engage with and encounter everything. And that includes classic texts from different times and cultures.

Also, those analysis and 'alternate readings' are not the be all and end all, or the defining statement, or judgment, of that work of literature.

Of course, that is the starting point. One's own response to a text. Not having someone tell you how to frame it or read it.

That culture, though, has been nurtured by the 'schools of social justice'.

Liverpool university now has a whole new building and department called the 'School of Social Justice' for example. I know of a lecturer in law there who was targeted for her work with GC activism.

Anyone seen how crazed they are on Redditt? Baroness Falkner and the Supreme Court would be banned from posting there even explaining logic to them. That's why I've got no time or sympathy for any of them. This whole dumb ploy where they thought they'd Piggy back on women's rights and pass themselves off as women without having to fight the way women have had to especially older women. The whole thing makes me puke.

It doesn’t, which is why I didn’t mention middle
aged men playing sports

People not agreeing with you doesn’t make them abusive.

I’m not bothered about convincing people who’s usernames are “any old dinosaur” that the world is evolving and that their thoughts from a generation ago aren’t going to stand the test of time.

I have just come back from lunch with a group of 16 friends, all from different walks of life, all living very different lives now - teachers, doctors, stay at home parents, policemen. All agree that this ruling is a step backwards. So this is clearly a generational thing in my opinion - because absolutely no one in my circle thinks this is a victory.

I read a tremendous book by David Mccraney, called "how minds change" - it's about how peoples minds really change and what definitely does not make them change. Find the book, read it. But basically, do this - she will come around:

(I have used some web AI tools to get the argument together to work for you, But I have read the book, his podcast, "you are not so smart" is also awesome in general)

1. Switch from “Explaining” to “Exploring”

Your daughter likely sees this issue not as a debate about policies or facts, but as a moral and emotional identity issue. She’s likely coming from a place of compassion and allyship, and any attempt to explain or “correct” her can be received as an attack on her values.

Instead of:

“I tried to calmly explain to her that no laws have been changed…”

Try:

“I’m really interested in how you came to see things this way—what was it that really made it click for you?”

McRaney’s research (especially on deep canvassing) shows that asking curious, non-judgemental questions helps people reflect on their own beliefs, which can make them more open to new information later. You’re not trying to win, you’re trying to understand.

2. Use “Street Epistemology” and Deep Canvassing Techniques McRaney spends a lot of time with people like Anthony Magnabosco who use a technique called Street Epistemology. Here’s how it works:

• Ask them what they believe.
• Ask what led them to that belief.
• Ask how confident they are in that belief.
• Gently explore what kind of evidence might cause them to shift their confidence.

You might say:

“On a scale from 1 to 10, how confident are you that single-sex spaces should include people based on gender identity rather than biological sex?”

Then:

“What’s the main reason you feel that confident? Was there something you read or saw that really made it click for you?”

Then:

“I really want to understand. Is there anything you could learn—any scenario or evidence—that would make you feel less confident, even slightly?”

This isn’t a trap—you’re not trying to “catch her out.” You’re helping her engage in metacognition (thinking about her thinking), which McRaney shows is often where belief change begins.

1. Work with Shared Values

You both believe in safety, dignity, compassion, and the importance of fighting injustice. That’s a solid base.

Try:

“I know you care about protecting vulnerable people—I raised you that way. I care about that too. For me, women are still vulnerable in ways we’ve spent generations trying to address. How do you think we can make sure everyone feels safe—women and trans people—without sacrificing either group?”

Appeal to mutual concern, not conflict. You can even validate her fear:

“I agree that trans people can be very vulnerable. It’s awful they face violence and rejection. But what happens when two groups’ needs conflict? How do we weigh that up fairly?”

This approach avoids framing it as us vs them, and instead opens the door to nuance.

1. Share Stories, Not Stats

McRaney highlights how facts often backfire when they conflict with someone’s identity or moral frame. Instead of showing stats or examples of bad actors, stories work better—especially ones that come from your own experience.

💬 You might say:

“I remember when I was young, we weren’t allowed in certain spaces or roles because we were female. We fought to change that. Now, sometimes I feel like we’re being asked to give those hard-won spaces back, and I don’t know how to feel about that.”

That’s personal. That’s emotional. That’s real. It invites empathy rather than resistance.

1. Let Go of “Winning”

McRaney’s whole point is that belief change takes time, trust, and many small moments. She may never say “you were right.” But if you stop trying to persuade and start building a space for her to reflect, she might one day say, “I’ve been thinking about what you said…”

🧘 Summary Strategy
Technique
What to Do
Stop explaining
Start asking open-ended, curious questions
Find shared values
Focus on mutual goals (safety, dignity, fairness)
Avoid identity threat
Don’t label her views, just explore how she got there
Use deep canvassing
Ask “How confident are you?” and “What makes you feel that way?”
Tell your story
Share personal experience, not “gotcha” examples
Play the long game
Trust that seeds take time to grow

@Mumble12 Your response to anyone disagreeing with you is to resort to childish insults. It's the action of someone who has no good arguments to put forward.

"No debate" meant that only people whose finances could not be cancelled were able to speak out, more older people able to do so. Maybe your friends are all as childish and bigoted as you are but it's quite likely that they are simply still scared.