A generation of young women schooled in "be kind" rather than "stay safe"

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

Here's an excellent article that exposes how the younger generations of women have been presented with a version of feminism via "education, social media, and popular culture that's been reframed around the language of inclusion, allyship, and the rejection of exclusionary boundaries".

It's a detailed exploration, far too long to summarise, but looks at why so many young women have been caught up caught up in "allyship at all costs", to the detriment of their own safety. As an older feminist, it seems really helpful in proposing that we mustn't dismiss young women's views. Their social learning took place in an environment where their genuine compassion and care for the young who got caught up in thinking they could change sex was understandably their priority. They have a genuine compassion for these unwell young people and a desire to be supportive and helpful. These positive aspects were reinforced and anyone who posed questions, raised dissent or concerns was excluded and often punished. They were never allowed to explore the issues that are essential for an in depth understanding of the complexities and risks to safety.

"Young women's support for transgender identity claims, including claims that undermine sex based rights, is not irrational. It is the predictable product of social learning in an institutional environment that has framed affirmation as compassion and boundary setting as bigotry, transmitted through online cultures that punish dissent, to a demographic with high empathic responsiveness and incomplete access to the history of why sex based protections were established".

It deserves a wide readership.

https://x.com/prof_curiosity1/status/2058056297593864606

Archive link: https://archive.ph/tFywd

What is "ought" here?

People ought to refrain from breaking the law, obviously. And yet they do so consistently.

Alcohol is in fact implicated in a very large number of violent assaults, property crime, and other crimes. Reducing alcohol consumption to healthy levels is one of the most effective things we could do as a society to effectively prevent many types of crime.

If we were serious as a society about those crimes we would go it.

If you prefer a society where excessive drinking is normalised there are consequences around that on the level of society as a whole, including the costs of policing, the courts, the damage to property and people, as well as the personal costs to individuals who are victims.

Maybe it is worth people's autonomy to have the freedom to not feel socially inhibited about high levels of drinking, but if that's your argument you need to own the costs of it.

I think because older women have been in the position to see how it has developed. The old transsexual type who never made a fuss understood they hadn’t changed sex so kept clear of the ladies to the more aggressive activists demanding everything. Also the hyper sexualisation that has accompanied it. I think men are least likely to be on board because as men they have greater understanding of men and I think, as women get older they learn more about it too.

Yes. As a male teenager, I was overconfident in my ability to extricate myself from dangerous situations. On the occasions when I was walking alone after dark in an area with a very bad, and deserved, reputation, I was fortunate more than once that men only spoke to me inappropriately, and didn't follow up with assault.

This overconfidence is one of the reasons that young men are statistically a higher accident risk as drivers – they overestimate their ability to judge overtaking for example, and they often drive much closer to the limit of their control of the vehicle, so when something unexpected happens there isn't enough time to react. Careful male drivers are also often seen as "less manly", which is a disastrous cultural pressure.

Women should be able to get blackout drunk and still trust men not to rape them when they are unconscious.

Yes, but this isn't likely to happen any time soon so, meanwhile, it seems perfectly sensible to teach our daughters not to get so drunk that they put their trust in a male stranger. Just as we should teach our sons not to get so drunk that they might misread or even override a woman's lack of consent.

If that isn't feminist, then I'm not a feminist.

This thread is all about what we teach girls about being kind.

I deliberately posted about what I am teaching my son.

Teaching that being kind isn't ok as it misses crucial points is an important thing for them to know too and that it's not ok to use against women.

PP introduced the safe, respectful, kind hierarchy. I think that we should be teaching girls to put safety first. We should help them to develop boundaries, including boundaries around the extent of risky behaviour they are prepared to get involved in, especially when there are men around.

1970s: "What do you mean - "No"? I'm God's gift to women. You're a bloody lesbian!"

2026: "What do you mean - "No"? I'm a lesbian too. You're a fucking sexual racist!"

Sometimes it takes an old witch to recognise a shape shifter...

They have been sold the lie that trans women are some kind of unicorn creatures - men with all the "bad" bits removed. Because these men identify as women, this must mean they reject male patterns of behaviour and are genuinely taking on what are considered more female, and "safe" characteristics. And they don't seem able to look at the data and come to an informed conclusion.

Because they have lots of gay friends. Next!

Having lots of gay friends doesnt seem to have stemmed the tide of harassment, stalking, rape and murder. Why would you make this about having gay friends? How odd.

What does this have to do with stalking harassment rape etc

I am saying why young women support gender woo

Young women have more gay friends than older women? That seems improbable.

Given all the lesbians on here who don't support gender woo, this is a bit of an odd take. Do you think all their friends are straight?

Jumping off a bridge isn't comparable to other people choosing to hurt you.

Yep. Men who self identify as 'not bad men'

Oh interesting, I'd supposed the judge meant he thought the victim had thought Miller was a woman. But quite feasible she read him as one of the men who have been declared 'not a risk' by society at large.

Political lesbians are a different manner... "Organic" lesbians are all for gender woo, for the most part

Being subjected to personal violence is worse than being swept away by a river, but in both cases it was young (ish) men putting themselves in dangerous situations because they felt invulnerable.

The general point is that one of the things adults should do is carry out personal risk assessments of projected activities. Accepting that some of our fellow humans can be bad and dangerous is one aspect of risk, and being kind is a less safe response than avoiding them.

WTF is a 'political lesbian' when it is at home?

Are 'non-organic lesbians' silicon-based lifeforms then?

Why are you making sweeping assumptions about people on here whom you have never met, and who probably wouldn't discuss the history of their sexuality with you even if you did meet them? It doesn't make for a very convincing argument.

Its the 'be safe' half of the discussion on the thread.

Hope that helps.

I don't make the assumption, logic and statistics do

No. You swept away all the gender-critical lesbians on here as "political" rather than "organic" ( which I take to mean eschewing men for sociopolitical reasons rather than because one is actually same-sex attracted), and discounted them on that basis. Unless you actually know all those people, you are making an assumption without knowledge.

While we're at it, who has surveyed lesbians to see what they really think? And given the social cost of audibly saying you believe that sex matters, how many would admit that? Especially if the people running the survey were known to be pro- gender.

I know, it’s ludicrous isn’t it? I read a sad story on another board of a lady’s daughter who’d had a few drinks and gone back to a guy’s flat she’d met and shared a bed with him and very sadly was raped. While she absolutely shouldn’t have been, there are a lot of men who think bed=sex. Not good men and that isn’t how it should be, but unfortunately that is the reality you have to negotiate.

Studies indicate that getting to know someone who is trans is the strongest predictor of support.

"Support" or "terrified ascquiesence"? In my case, certainly the latter. Having an alcoholic AGP rage about Germaine Greer being a "dinosaur" did nothing to convince me that we should allow men into women's spaces.