How do we think Gen Alpha will approach gender ideology?

[musicalfrog]

From what I've seen of some of my Gen A kid's online group chats, if it comes up (which is rare), 'identifying' as anything is largely met with derision and/or mirth. They are talking about third or imagined parties rather than anyone in their contacts. They're a pretty clued up bunch, from what I can tell.

I wonder if these kids are bored of it already, see it as unfashionable and are going to be less susceptible to the ideology (and indeed any belief system)? Or they just don't know about it yet (which is encouraging in itself tbh).

Our 3 kids are all in secondary school, where it seems to be fairly passé to claim a trans or NB identity. However they are all thoroughly comfortable with differing sexualities and I think that has been a hugely positive change since my own school days.

I continue to be amazed that anyone could deny the influence of social contagion on trans numbers over the past 15 years- particularly in girls, children with autism, or frankly anyone spending too much time online. Thank goodness we have Hilary Cass in the UK.

I don't think this necessarily reflects any particular ideological sentiment from the kids.

In fact this is partly the lack of understanding, among adults, that has led to these issues. All of the activism around differernt kinds of language control.

Curse words tend to revolve around social taboos. Be it scatological terms, sexual terms, religious terms. Shit, fuck, goddamn. Some of these are largely dead as curse words and some are on the way out - mainstream people say them on television, they have no real power.

So now we need new ones, and the most taboo terms are things like "gay" or "retard" or other identity based language.

It's kind of inevitable given the way adults have been banging on about correct speech, imo.

Agree and disagree. Using terms like “gay” and “retard” pejoratively is very much to rile up the Left and pander to the Right. Using “queer” pejoratively and “gay” descriptively would be much more effective as a fuck-you to both extremes.

Spot on.

I grew up in the 80s and anything from the 60s and 70s like peace, hippies, flower power not to mention the music, fashion etc was mocked mercilessly.

I would be amazed if gen Alpha are the first in modern history to think their non-binary demigirl gender fluid rainbow pronoun predecessors were cool and want to be just like them.

The difference is that in the 60s the establishment was very much not supportive of the long-haired hippie people. Here we have a situation where what in any other time would have been the “counter culture” is mandated from the top down. It didn’t grow organically from the youth.

They really don’t, you know.

Do you know many preteen girls? They very much have their own opinions! You should have heard my daughter and her friends on unisex loos when they were only eight or nine. The girls themselves pressured their primary school (which had unisex loos) to re designate them as male and female because they hated it so much. Parents only found out about it afterwards. My daughter’s friends were incredibly vocal about any lessons on gender ideology, and on what they saw (rightly) as sexist stereotypes.

Quite. Mid-teen boys are the least reliable narrators of girls' lives I can think of.

As if they know, or properly even care, what the girls think.

RobWaters · Today 12:03

I grew up in the 80s and anything from the 60s and 70s like peace, hippies, flower power not to mention the music, fashion etc was mocked mercilessly.

I used to have Never Trust a Hippie on 45, but its gone by the by.

My 12 year old daughter (Y8) is full on TWAW and was upset that her "trans girl" bestie wasn't allowed to use the girls' loos and this year, has to do boy's PE.

She was indoctrinated in first school, Y3; she came home telling me that misgendering is illegal and the Police would arrest her. The school denied anything of the sort and being new to GI, I didn't realise that only properly vetted, approved materials were taught.

I found out too late that No Outsiders had been in, to propagandise.

Interestingly, she's not keen on going into public toilets when TW are about. She's pointed out two to me locally, who were in the loos at Morrisons. I hope she'll work it out, eventually.

Maybe when your daughter is a bit older someone could show her Skirt Goes Spinny's 'What is a Woman?' film. That would put her off any idea of twaw good and proper.

That’s an interesting point, but may work to our advantage in that something is pushed on them from above might be more likely to be rejected as they find their own way.

Like if parents wore pronoun badges and asked all their kids’ friends their pronouns when they met them.

Until they have to get a uni spot or a job and the people in charge insist on the pronouns or you don’t get in.

I do genuinely hope that this BS is on the way out but I don’t think it has the same trajectory as most culturally bounded movements - there is something much to designed about it for it to just fade away.

I don’t think it’ll just fade away but I’m hoping the anecdotal evidence of gen alphas giving it a short shrift will be part of its demise.

Unfortunately the entire movement gives a certain type of man exactly what he wants sexually and that genie will be hard to get back in the bottle.

I think it also massively appeals to a certain type of munchausen mummy.

Not to mention the entire gender industry in all its manifestations.

No single thing will end it I don’t think.

Agree. Lots of roots to this knotweed.

Relatedly, Sarah Mittermaier (who has researched this a lot - used to write under the moniker Eliza Mondegreen) has an interesting article discussing Genspect’s push to re-pathologise gender dysphoria:

I think trans identification can be an Extreme Overvalued Belief for some people, a delusion in some cases, and an obsession (an unwanted fixation) for others, somethin that’s clear to me from my own research. But trans identification can also be a lifestyle choice, a political statement, the social glue of a strange subculture, an aesthetic, a youthful rebellion, an attempt (however misguided) at self-actualization, a maladaptive coping mechanism, a quasi-religious quest, a bid for attention or a plea to be left alone. Or any combination of the above.

From:

https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/some-thoughts-about-re-psychopathologization

I think there’s definitely hope!
My youngest DD is only 10 so it’s not come up much really among her friend group, but we have always talked openly about how humans can’t change sex etc. She has one friend who started saying she was a cat for a while which was generally met with amusement.
Older DD is 14 (technically gen Z I think?!) but anything to do with gender is met with eye rolling disdain (and when she saw a photo of nurse “Rose” from the Darlington nurses case her response was “urgh” which sums it up well I think)

There was a large outcry from the usual suspects about how flawed the analysis was, but I'm not persuaded. Non-binary is trans (non-cis) under the usual definition of trans. So, what was reported was real. How much that correlates to 'true trans' is difficult to ascertain because it wasn't measured directly, nor is it clear what the definition of true trans is - it definitely isn't having a GRC or being on the path to getting one. In any case the huge drop in people reporting as being non-binary is significant.

I don't actually know any right wing adults that are particularly inclined to think that gay or retard are ok normative words. So I don't really think it's pandering to them somehow what would that even mean? And why would they care about being politically even-handed in the first place?

They are less likely, overall, to think that bad words are "literal violence" so maybe less likely to get riled up about incorrect language, so less likely to be targets for teens to take the piss that way.