Daughter in early 20s lonely due to GC views

[Currentquandry]

My daughter is in her early twenties. She is GC and is struggling because so few of her peers have similar opinions. She is very lonely because of this. Are there any online groups she could join to give her a sense of community? She is also ND. Thank you in advance for your advice…

Please read - actually read - the OP's post at 9.52.

That is an incident the OP has mentioned. It’s unlikely that she has never articulated her thoughts to her friends in other ways.

However, even if it was the ONLY way she had ever expressed her thoughts on this particular topic, it’s an unfortunate reality that young people nowadays are very prone to “cancelling” each other for all sorts of completely normal expressions of opinion on controversial topics. It’s happened to one of my own young adult children (though nothing to do with GC views in her case). It can be devastating. And hard for a young person to have the reserves of resilience to cope with it, as resilience is usually borne of experience.

Did you even read the OPs update?

Yes, what now passes for 'the Left' is very much more to do with a very american set of rigid ideological creeds and the politics of 'identity' and oppression. Very authoritarian and set on suppression and conformity. Mantras, articles of faith, and group think.

Yes, I made the repellant comment before the update. I made another comment in response to the update.

No…just rape 😶

But the OP’s daughter isn’t doing that.

And you still put all the blame on the daughter.

Yes this 100%.

Be Kind is something one chooses to do from a position of power.

Being compelled to "Be Kind" to the more powerful in their interests rather than yours is not kindness, it is submission.

"Be Kind" because saying No to me hurts me, what kind of monster are you to want to hurt me? is exactly how coercive abusers control their victims.

I wonder if people dismiss it as ‘just bantz’ and don’t consider the impact (including chilling effect) of threats such as that being normalised through that type of dismissal.

Blaming OP's daughter for feeling isolated in the current climate is a bit DARVO imo.

Since the TRA orthodoxy is "Even just saying a trans woman is not a woman and shouldn't use female-only spaces is hate and means you are driving trans kids to suicide and is proof you want to trans people to leave public life and basically not exist", how exactly do you suggest GC perspectives should be phrased to avoid being (accused of being) "unpleasant"?

You think saying women should be raped with a splintered rolling pin is just ‘very unpleasant’? Dear Goddess, you people are sick!

Agree with others that it’s not clear why this subject should be coming up so often that it’s damaging every single one of her friendships. Unless she’s making being GC her whole personality and can’t stop proselyting about it, which is likely to put off even people who might ostensibly agree with her - is she coming across as obsessive or unable to talk about anything else? Or maybe some of the views she comes out with go beyond genuine concerns about women's safety and are actually just transphobic and nasty?

I think it is also worth having some understanding that someone who is trans or has trans friends or loved ones is likely to find many GC talking points unpalatable, and that probably is going to put them off friendships with people with strong GC views – that may feel unfair to you, but it’s utterly people’s prerogative to not want to maintain friendships with someone whose values don't align with their own, in the same way many wouldn’t want to develop close friendships with someone who frequently aired homophobic or racist views.

The OP mentioned 'GC views, and it was almost immediately transformed into 'being obsessed' - which kind-of proves the point! Views or opinions are not obsessions; even if you disagree with it, being gender critical is a logical and rational position to take; and saying it's right-wing, hateful or phobic is just silly name-calling.

The fact is that for a lot of complex reasons - future sociologists will have a field-day with the first quarter of the 21st century! - a set of beliefs about human sexuality, i.e. that it is a spectrum rather than a binary, that people can change their sex, and there is an inherent 'soul' that can be at odds with one's biological sex, took hold across a wide swathe of institutions in a [limited] number of societies around the world.

Somehow [happy hunting, future sociologists!] these beliefs influenced just about every facet of society: schools, universities, medicine, language, the law, the arts. Anyone who disagreed with them or challenged them, no matter how mildly or rationally, was - as has been displayed on this thread - accused of being transphobic, hateful, and right-wing.

People have lost their jobs, been attacked verbally, been attacked physically, for raising concerns about these unscientific and unjustifiable beliefs having such a disproportionate influence on so many aspects of society.

If you can't acknowledge that, if you can't understand that that makes having GC views difficult, isolating, at at times dangerous, you haven't been paying attention, or have been seeing everything through a lens that filters out awkward things like scientific fact, the law, violence and threats of violence against women, and women's unwillingness to let go of our hard-won rights, including our right to our clearly-defined identity as women.

Sometimes standing up for your rights is difficult, as women are finding out in the current misogynistic zeitgeist, but the OP's daughter sticking to her GC views is honest and heartfelt and, importantly, based on reality. There's a lot to be said for that.

I’m GC and I know that some of my friends aren’t- tbh I don’t think they’ve really thought it through but are very ‘be kind’ etc. however it has only ever come up once then we moved on. How often does it come up as a conversation topic?

how exactly do you suggest GC perspectives should be phrased to avoid being (accused of being) "unpleasant"?

There is no way to do it. The testimony from Dr Upton in Fife was that no matter how a woman expressed her views that a male remains male, DrU would have burst into tears and been terribly offended. At that point, I think a lot of those watching thought, sod this, why bother trying?

OP, my daughter also found the thought policing hard to navigate at university. It's easy to suggest ignoring it, but it does mean also avoiding any discussion to do with sex or medicine or most literature.

Are you rwalky comparing GC views to racism and homophobia? Shall we talk about TRA views then? Views like a male can be a lesbian and lesbians are bigots if they don’t date them, or that males with a trans identity are women because black women are women? I’ve heard and seen both those arguments from TRAs. Those seem pretty homophobic and racist to me. Maybe if trans allies weren’t so determined to compel everyone to accept their religious beliefs, people might be more willing to explore avenues of compromise

I think people went to "obsessed" because there's no particular reason someone who happens to have some GC views wouldn't have any friends, unless they are frequently communicating those views in a way that is fundamentally offputting, ie being unable to talk about anything else, or crossing the line into bigotry.

What do you think about her funding the rescue of a group of Afghan women who were at extreme risk?

What do you think of her funding a rape crisis centre?

What do you think of her funding a centre for research into degenerative neurological diseases?

I think people went to "obsessed" because there's no particular reason someone who happens to have some GC views wouldn't have any friends

Yes, exactly

Operation Let Them Speak - they tell on themselves

The obsessiveness is on the other side, in our experience.

It may depend on the university.

Thanks for providing an example of the kind of ranting proselytising that many would find offputting.

Ah, so the problem here is not that the man said it, because fair enough who doesn't get frustrated by uppity women and make the odd corrective rape joke out of understandable frustration, but with the women who are gauche enough not just to complain about it but to actually prove he said it rather than just looking the other way and tactfully letting it pass?

Good to know.

The thing is, P probably doesn't even really want JKR to be raped with a [checks notes] splintery rolling pin. He probably just got carried away with his own rhetoric and didn't really see any reason not to say it. Because women aren't real people, not people who matter. And women who say no are even less deserving of basic respect.