I would just let her sit with it and don’t discuss it for a while.
But, have you got any older/elderly relatives, friends etc. who need visiting in care homes, helping with care/shopping/housework etc., or can she get a little bit more exposure to other aspects of life? A bit of childcare/babysitting? Some charity work with vulnerable people or helping in an environment where she can get a bit more experience of life?
I suggest this for a couple of reasons:— in a thread today I was really struck by a young woman posting how she honestly didn’t see why people would feel vulnerable in hospital, and it seemed to me that there’s a lack of life experience there, especially of different life stages, which maybe young women in particular used to have a bit more of in the past. Yes it was sexist in the past to expect young women to take on the burden of family caring work; but (for both sexes), maybe now we don’t ask enough for them to see outside their very limited bubble of young people?
We tend to shield kids now from the less palatable bits of life, and so maybe they end up not really knowing what it’s like to be ill, or old, or poor, or disabled (especially as a woman). I’m not suggesting putting them through a soup kitchen boot camp or anything, just visiting a neighbour in hospital or babysitting a toddler and learning how to change a nappy, or helping out singing carols at a care home, or all of the kind of things teenagers used to do when I grew up (and I’m in my 40s so not that old).
On that thread today, I thought that it’s a bit of a failing to get to the age when you’re posting on mumsnet, and not have any idea what it’s like in a hospital ward, or any idea that not all women are young and healthy. Or why a woman might not want to be partially undressed or ill in front of a strange man, however nice he is. Or have any sense of the loss of agency and privacy and dignity that women suffer in hospitals; and care homes, and hostels, and any other spaces where they’re vulnerable. Or why children are vulnerable. Or people who are poor or disabled or have limited options in life.
And okay, I get that things are more regulated nowadays, and it’s much harder for teens to get experience in places which require, for example, a DBS (as a teenager I used to do things like a programme for taking blind children roller-skating! Or doing drama and music af local care homes. I took part in a society at university where students ran activity holidays for children in poor city centre communities, and so on. I bet it’s much harder to just rock up and do that kind of thing now, and I do appreciate that).
BUT, I reckon an awful lot of young people’s obsession with the trans issue — and their inability to conceptualise why it’s (a) not the most pressing civil rights issue of our time; and (b) why women might object to it — is down to lack of knowledge about what life is like for many others. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it was hard not to come into contact with some of the realities of life. Whereas now I think many kids are insulated from seeing vulnerability, age, illness and poverty, because it’s not as visible as it used to be, and we’ve also simultaneously become a society which demands a lot less responsibility of teenagers in particular.