My DD hates that I’m a TERF!

[TheLizardQueen]

My teenage DD says she is embarrassed of my GC views. I’ve tried to educate her on women’s spaces, women’s sports etc but she doesn’t agree with me and says I embarrass her with my views and not to expect her to want to spend time with me when she leaves home. I’m gutted but she will not change my mind. I’ve told her that my views are that a person cannot change sex but she has some trans friends and thinks that I hate trans people. I absolutely do not hate trans people but I do not think that TWAW and as such shouldn’t be welcome in women’s only spaces. Please help me navigate this. I fear that she will hate me because of my views but I cannot accept her views but I don’t want her to be embarrassed of me either 😕

Be a parent first and an activist second.
Love has to come before the cause imo

Science proves that people are born different - one of the most basic differences is that they are born either male or female.

Science also shows that you can't change sex, so it is the opposite of love and acceptance and support to encourage a young person that if they do something - pronouns, clothes, puberty blockers, hormones, surgery - they will become the opposite sex. They won't. It's not possible. They will never transition out of the sex they were born with.

Families who love and support their children as they are, i.e. male or female, understandably feel undermined and angry when groups of people make it their business to misinform children with scientific inaccuracies about sex and gender.

Most likely.

This is a hill my husband and I willing to die on in our house.

Funnily our second oldest daughter formed the same opinions as us in school from watching so many of her peers identifying as trans. Since it was her social environment she built her own beliefs that it's attention seeking behaviour fundamentally forming new "cool groups" of being sooooooo different and hard done by.

She thinks the world has gone absolutely crazy to be honest and she's early 20s.

Our next daughter is much more likely to fall right down the rabbit hole. Because she's highly emotional, likely on the spectrum and would probably believe the sky was green if her group of friends cried and told her so.

Teens clash with their parents usually over some type of what they consider outdated thought process on what ever is deemed socially excluded order of the day. Be it music, or social changes.

If one of children decided in their teens they are trans. We won't support it. They can dress how they want call themselves what ever they want but we won't be referring to different pronouns, if it lasted until adulthood they obviously can choose to live how they want.

Sometimes you just have to state how you think, the boundaries you are willing to allow them move in and then leave it.

Depending on her age though I would be considering carefully what she is interacting with online and monitoring it.

In our house we just laugh and tell the DC that they all just have mental health issues. (Younger than your DD).
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it ain’t a rabbit, etc. They get it. Could change when they hit 15/16 though but I won’t be changing my stance.
Someone forgot to teach us to #bekind.

If you can, I would agree to disagree for now. Teens can be so black and white about everything, but unless we're completely close-minded, life forces us to challenge our views.

I used to think I could never be friends with a Tory, but these days, I do have a Tory-voting friend and she's one of the kindest people I know. I have decided that when it comes to politics, we actually want many of the same things - we just disagree about the best way to achieve them. Maybe you and your DD are similar and have more common ground than you think?

It's easy to research (and I'm not a scientist).

I am a scientist. And that's why I know it's a load of balls.

Please find me a paper that doesn't doesn't suffer from at least 1 of the following problems (most of the ones offered as 'proof' of some sort of testable, inherent 'transness' suffer from almost all of them):

• tiny, statistically meaningless number of participants
• lack of controls
• huge dropout rates
• raw data not presented
• looks at dozens or even hundreds of criteria, and cherry picks the only one that gives the result they want
• fails to control for sexuality and/or hormone use
• claims neurological differences in adults (with decades of life experiences that have shaped their brain development) as proof of inherent difference at birth
• reports a 'more female' result for transwomen than for men, but actually means that transwomen have an average score slightly closer to the average female score than the average male is - but still firmly within the male range
• conclusions that are not supported, or in some cases flatly contradicted, by the results.

We are all different in various ways. The actual issue is whether a social construct based on stereotypes (such as gender) maps onto a scientifically observable difference like, for example, being same-sex attracted or being female. There's no scientific evidence for this.

You mention neurodiverse people in your later post, saying they are more introspective and more in touch with their feelings, the implication, I suppose, being that they know their authentic selves better than people who are neurotypical. This is a gross generalisation that is no more than another stereotype.

What neurodiverse people really need is the freedom and acceptance to be themselves without being corralled into arbitrary gender boxes imposed by outside society, or pressured into taking medication or having surgery in an effort to conform to that suffocating stereotype. Society is cruel enough to them as it is without having that loaded on them too. If being 'male' or 'female' is truly nothing more than a person's belief I suggest that the concepts just don't exist and they should not be imposed on people who don't conform to them in the way that society expects.

Well, based on that view, adoptive parents aren't parents are they ? They didn't give birth after all. And yet somehow we all agree to pretend that they are.

Social reality can be different from biological reality.

Maybe OP should tell her teen that adoption is a myth and be sure to exclude adoptive parents from parenting spaces.

Nobody agrees to pretend adoptive parents are birth parents, no. And when it matters, like when screening for inheritable conditions, everyone is especially clear about the difference.

What are you talking about? honestly! Why wouldn't an adoptive parent be a parent? They are not biological parents but they can still be parents.

Why is it wrong?

Erm, because they're better off accepting that they are female rather than destroying their healthy bodies.

There is no evidence that thousands of young girls have always been trans and they're only "out" now due to greater societal acceptance. None whatsoever. You should be ashamed of yourself for pushing this horrible ideology.

But should "different opinions" be based on lies and make believe?

I think not.....

@Mumtobabyhavoc

When raising children/ teenagers, you HAVE to be honest and real.

Unfortunately, we succumbed to our teenage DD and we now have a 33 year old that we cannot under any circumstances discuss gender with.

It's gone too far, she's too far gone.
Ourselves and her brother have to keep off the subject at all times.

It's sad but this is what we have to do to keep her.
I'm so fucking angry and sad!

Interesting insights. Thank you

There aren't equivalent numbers in older cohorts coming out as trans now that "society is more open" and there should be if you were correct. It's mostly teenage girls and older males that have suddenly discovered they are trans.

You're "so angry and sad" that you can't discuss one political topic? 🫤

There are lots of topics I won't discuss with my family because I think their views are ridiculous and it doesn't bother me at all! I don't need to discuss everything with everyone.

Great post.

But adoptive parents know they are adoptive parents. They take on the role of mother or father but they wouldn't, for example, give their medical information when it comes to screening for genetically inherited diseases because they understand they haven't changed the chromosomes of their kids by adopting them.

I don't think anyone has an issue with a widening of gender identity. If a man wants to wear a dress, crack on. But you don't magically become a woman through clothing or hormones.

Oddly, if TRAs could stand to have some reasoned discussion lots of the issues are similar to feminism. Being a woman is not about lipstick and high heels any more than men should always be tough and never cry. There are many, many different ways to be a man or a woman and we'd prefer to see these embraced and a push back on toxic masculinity rather than forcing kids who don't fit with the majority to attempt to swap boxes rather than seek to widen the box.

I went through this with my then teenage son. He was appalled at my beliefs because he has a trans friend.

We have worked through it and he now accepts my position. I wouldn't say he agrees, and I do not agree either him. And that's ok.

But the breakthrough for us was when I likened it to creationism. I said that there are loads of people that believe god created the earth. And we know that's not true. But, it would be wrong to teach creationism in science, as fact and plenty of creationism would like it taught as fact. And it's the same with trans. Its wrong to teach it as fact (you can change sex). But both beliefs are deeply held and the world can continue to turn while we hold different beliefs. And I respect those beliefs. If that's what you want to believe instead of science, that's up to you. But it's wrong to gaslight everyone else in to stating it is a truth when we empirically know it's not truth. Which is the current trans position.

I accept that people do believe you can change sex. Even though we know that's not possible. That in hundreds and thousands of years when the analyse the bones of trans people who have 'changed sex' they will not be able to detect it. Because its biologically impossible. So don't call me a bigot because I don't buy into nonsense.

I haven’t read the whole thread, OP, only some of the first page, but my DD (mid 20s so no longer a teen) has recently cut me off, having put up with my views for many years. I see on the first page that there are now a lot of parents experiencing this and I have to wonder whether transactivist groups are increasing the pressure on young people to “be allies” and cut ties with their mothers.

It has been obvious for a while that those who transition young are often pushed hard to cut off their parents at the slightest whiff of disagreement (and then, of course present this as the parents’ fault and therefore a sign of oppression). The cult-like anti-parent behaviour they encourage is a particularly horrible aspect of transactivism.

I wish I had been able to stay calm and call it out for being ridiculous when it finally happened, but just as they are being programmed to pull away, women have been pushed into fear of the consequences of standing up for women’s rights and when the moment finally came, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Still do.

Tough love - as others have suggested - cutting off financial support sounds like the correct response, but incredibly hard to do. I hope your DD grows out if it.

She'll come back to you eventually, even if it means several years of no communication/talking you'll have us here.

If your child at age 18 came to you and said 'birth giver, I feel differently abled and believe in my soul I was not meant to have legs. I have been born in an abled body but would like to have my legs removed' would you be all for it - I mean bodily autonomy is the way right?

It’s really nothing like that. More like if your parents confirmed that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real.

No one can change sex, gender ideology is just an ideology that currently gives a licence to bully and the daughter is in the wrong. She’ll grow up one day.

Funnily enough if you look up the meaning of ‘bigot’ and then consider the absolutist demands of trans ideology, it fits perfectly. OP is not the bigot here. Her DD will grow up eventually and realise how right she is.