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 😕

Yup. There’s only one side that is filled with hate and intolerance here and it isn’t mothers.

Ok

So how do we define 'gender' then.

And why on earth would a transGENDER person think they had a right to same SEX spaces that don't belong to them?

@TheLizardQueenyour DD is a teenager, she’d be embarrassed if you breathed regularly.

My DD18 is on the fringes of this, hopefully heading to sanity and now I try not to discuss it with her but to work on our relationship and do nice things together. I’d love her to see reality and it would be safer in all kinds of ways but, at the moment, she doesn’t and I can’t reason her out of a place she didn’t arrive at by reasoning.

Ignore the usual scolders, they struggle to handle the idea that a woman can think for herself and have actual opinions. Good luck.

I've got the opposite problem - my teens are firmly in agreement that what sex you are matters sometimes and that humans can't change sex. My mother, however, thinks it's ok for men who describe themselves as women to be in female only spaces because she thought about it and decided she wouldn't be bothered by it. What I really can't get my head around is the fact that this is a woman who was in an abusive relationship for years, and yet she still doesn't seem able to grasp either how dangerous some men are, or how common and actually quite sensible it is for women to be wary of men. I knew both of these things by the age of about 13.

You seem to be struggling to understand words. Adoptive parents have the qualifier of ‘adoptive’ to signify that while they have taken on the parenting role, they are not the same as biological parents. Same with step parents.

But your analogy doesn’t work. People can’t change sex. There is no ‘social reality’ where men can be one women (or vice versa). ‘Gender’ is a regressive social stereotype and sex is important in many situations.

I approached it by talking to dd about trans rights - ie about how people shouldn’t lose out on employment or housing opportunities because they’re trans, about how it’s fine for people to dress however they want (within common decency) and not be attacked or abused for it.

Once she’d grasped that I didn’t actually support genocide (apparently t’interweb is awash with how terfs want all trans people dead etc) she was much more up for discussing women’s rights. She hasn’t changed her views - turns out she always had GC beliefs. She’d just believed the crap she’d been fed by TRA’s. I suspect that’s true for lots of teens

How old is your daughter OP?

I have 2 daughters, the one who called me a bigot (when she was teenaged) has since grown up, experienced more of the world, experienced sexism and harassment, and has now joined me in the biology rules camp. So there's hope.

(My other daughter on the other hand....)

I have 4 dds and have been through this with 3 of them. They know my views, they know that I am a kind person and have never hated anyone in my life, and we have mostly just agreed to disagree. I will not allow them to be rude to me or call me a transphobe, we have had the occasional row over specific cases but it never gets nasty. My eldest was full on twaw but has done a u-turn and now agrees with me after someone she follows lost their women only business due to TRA's. My second was always gc despite being friends with a number of trans people at college and work. She loves them as people, accepts them in women's spaces but absolutely rejects the idea that twaw. 3rd and youngest are a work in progress but I believe they will get there in their own time. Stay true to your beliefs and don't let her disrespect you.

Having posted my list of common methodology problems in trans studies, turned off my phone, and gone to bed, I of course immediately remembered that I'd left out:

• self-selection or biased selection criteria leading to non-representative, non-random trial groups
• failure to control comparison groups so they are matched for age, experience of the task, and other life factors
• inappropriate time horizons for longitudinal studies
• reliance on self-report instead of objective measures
• switching measures part way through.

@TransMother she is 18 but we’ve been having this conversation for the last 4 years and she’s not budging. I think for the time being we just need to not talk about it :(

Interesting - does she offer anything which she believes is a coherent argument? Is there any area she thinks maybe should be reserved just for biological women? I’d try to get her to talk - explain and justify her arguments. Maybe she’ll start to question it herself (or yes, just back away - your relationship is way more important)

@DragonRunor she doesn’t believe in boys/men playing in women’s sports but apart from that if they believe they’re female then they should be allowed in women’s bathrooms etc etc. apparently it doesn’t bother anyone else only me 🤷‍♀️

A cynical part of me thinks some youngsters crave something to oppose their elders on. They want the conflict. Gen x ers are pretty cool and liberal so inter generational conflict is massively reduced - except on this. It differentiates them from their boring illiberal parents who “don’t understand”. Hopefully it’s a stage they will grow out of especially if the “horrible terf parents” are the ones funding their lifestyles/university/letting them live rent free.

Is she aware of the 10 and 12 year old girls assaulted by a trans identifying man known as Katie Dolatowski in the women's toilets in Morrisons?

There's probably some truth in this.

Teenagers want to rebel against their stuffy old parents, except that the current young generation's parents are pretty sound, so the only thing they really have to rebel against is common sense.

I do think that toilets - while most frequently brought up - can be the hardest to understand if you’re a confident healthy late teenager without a history of SA, or particular religious needs.

If she wants to talk then ask her what she thinks about other scenarios - prisons, hospitals, communal showers….. As MissScarlet says, a brief introduction to Karen White and Katie Dolatowski can be illuminating, along with a consideration of why it is that we ask men to stay out of female single-sex spaces when most of them mean us no harm. At her age, I would have been fine with everywhere being mixed sex. Once you been using the toilet with a buggy jammed in the door, not so much! So some of it is just age/experience related. To misquote Dumbledore, it’s unreasonable to expect young people to know what it’s like to be old….

It is really frustrating! I think I’d be trying hard to understand her pov, but trying to (gently) get her to engage more critically, looking for logical arguments and evidence. Certainly don’t let it take over your relationship though! 💐

@MissScarletInTheBallroom she
does, but her argument is that if a man is going to do that they don’t need to dress as a woman to do it, they’ll do it anyway. But she’s never been a victim of DV or SA and I hope she never is, maybe she’ll understand better when she’s a little older. It seems to be “trendy” at the moment. I wonder if she would date a trans man!? I need to ask her that!

"What are rebelling against, Johnny?"

"What have you got?"

I was told the other day by an academic that even a weak conclusion was academically sound on another thread. I had pointed out the researchers themselves wrote that it was limited (it was that oft posted brain scan study) and that just because they didn't control for sexual attraction and that the results really only showed a weak skew, that saying that male brains were 'like' (my paraphrasing) female brains was valid.

I am afraid I lost great respect for academia that day.

Of course, but the point is that by banning all male people from women's spaces, we are eliminating all the innocent reasons why they might be in there. So we know that he shouldn't be in there, that there is no innocent explanation for his presence, and we do not have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Because, very often, sexual assaults occur during the period of time in which we are giving a man the benefit of the doubt.

her argument is that if a man is going to do that they don’t need to dress as a woman to do it, they’ll do it anyway

A man who doesn't claim to be a woman can't walk unchallenged into a nudist spa or supervise a Girl Guides residential, won't be given a room in a women's domestic violence refuge, doesn't get transferred to a women's prison or placed as a patient in a women's psychiatric ward.

What a ridiculous assertion.

It's true.

They are the same girls who used to self harm by starving themselves or cutting themselves.

@TheLizardQueen having been in your position (unless your daughter herself wants to transition), I think a few more years and life experience might change her mind. In the meantime, stand your ground, don't tolerate any abuse, and both sides respect each other's arguments (even if you don't believe in her arguments).

I don't care if that sounds patronising to your daughter (could we use the term "matronising" instead?!?) because I do think that more real life exposure once they leave school broadens perspecitves.

I'm paraphrasing another poster on another FWR thread, who said that just because one woman is OK with giving up her rights (and is ok with men in women's spaces), my rights are not transferable and I don't have to accept that. The other poster said it more succinctly, but I hope I get her point across..

No. And the word here is crybully. You literally came onto this thread, said something nasty about a poster and then cried bully when other posters called you up on it. I suggest you go take a long hard look in the mirror.