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

I can think of three occasions when I went to bed drunk with not-a-partner men and nothing happened. In two of the cases, I was rather disappointed by this. Men are perfectly capable of not raping drunk naked women if they don't want to.

People going along to get along applies broadly but just because it does doesn't render all humans incapable objectivity….particularly women. Again we are talking about generations of millions of well educated women globally. And the idea that modern women are shrinking violets & lack personal autonomy in the face social pressure is utterly sexist not to mention a well worn misogynist talking point.

That you need to assume thought you don't agree with must be a result of coercion might be worth contemplating.

I see it every day on these boards. Women accusing others of being rude, unkind or misandrist if they have the temerity to shut down a man's shitty behaviour or unwanted attention. And then there's the trans handmaidens. And the sex work groupies. It's horribly depressing.

You can take your head out your own arse and listen to people telling you that their lived experience is that the coercive and abusive treatment by transwomen they know exceptionally well because they are related is the very thing that made them see that this activism is harmful because it means they are more vulnerable, or you can enable this abuse and silence those saying it.

Your choice.

This doesn't make women identifying abusive males as abusive males transphobic.

Studies have never actively looked at the experiences of close family members and the impact transactivism has had on them. Apart from the one run by a pro-trans charity which showed the rates of partners suffering from a mental meltdown of some description was astronomical.

We are supposed to go along with all the shiny good stuff and just wash over the dodgy shit.

Wow.

Someone tells you they are the victim of abuse and you tell them they are making it up.

Someone says look at the pattern of coercive behaviour which is well known and you go into denial that the behaviour you are seeing isn't coercive because transpeople can't possibly be capable of it.

No debate. Silence any dissenters and punish them for insubordination.

You can tell your daughters to go ahead then. If they head off with a stranger and find it turns out badly you can tell them the fellows involved were wrong to do it.

What a ridiculous comment. Jesus. What are we here, the Stepford Wives?

Agree that it wasn’t so long ago that neither pink nor blue was a thing. There was Prince and David Bowie and Glam rock with sexy male singers wearing velvet and loads of eye liner but still male. Annie Lennox had short hair and androgynous clothes but was female.

It is far far more sexist and regressive now and trans ideology the worst of all. Boys who play with dolls = trans. Girl who climbs trees = trans.

Unfortunately / fortunately my DC are kind and have fallen for gender ideology and support that men who say they’re women ought to be allowed into female spaces. These beliefs have wholly taken root because of social media aided and abetted by teachers in schools advocating for the gender illogic.

There are, however, tiny glimpses of questioning now and then as they get older and begin to wonder if all men who say they're women should be allowed in female spaces. It’s hard though to give up a cherished belief that’s bolstered a sense of being a ‘good’ person.

Prince and David Bowie and Glam rock

You are talking about androgyny here which is is hardly the end of the spectrum of masculinity & femininity being adopted.

Well it kind of does prove the point the GI movement is a load of sexist, regressive bollocks doesn’t it? Prince wore make up and feminine clothes, never said he was a woman. Bowie sometimes wore dresses, again never claimed to be a woman. Annie Lennox looked fabulous in anything. Still a woman. So rather than saying certain clothes and interests are for one sex or the other, why not just let anyone wear and do what they like? Surely that would be great for everyone’s mental health and their physical health. Instead of having to modify their bodies to match their “gender”, they could just accept themselves for who they are and do and wear things that made them happy.

Let's not confuse fleeting celebrity fashion trends with long held inclinations.

Well it kind of does prove the point the GI movement is a load of sexist, regressive bollocks doesn’t it?

on the contrary, its the gender critical movement that asserts 'men in dresses' are a perversion & hyper butch females as 'brainwashed'.

"Surely that would be great for everyone’s mental health and their physical health. Instead of having to modify their bodies to match their “gender”, they could just accept themselves for who they are and do and wear things that made them happy."

You could say the same about women who seek breast enlargements, vaginal plasty, face lifts & nose jobs. Ultimately part of living in a free democracy is accepting values differ.

Ah, there goes another interesting thread.

Nooo, men in dresses is fine. It’s when those men claim to be women and use women’s spaces it’s an issue. Why are they nor “men in dresses”? Why does wearing a dress make you a woman?

I remember the day, ca 1993, when suddenly the primary school children at the railways station were colour coded, pink and purple vs navy and dark green. Presumably Penneys (aka Primark) had spotted a marketing opportunity. Around that time Butler's nonsense was becoming a route to academic status, with gender replacing feminisim.

It wasn't for another 10 years that I first heard a mother refer to her daughter as a 'girly girl'. I thought is was as rude and reductive as if she'd referred to her little son as manly.

And it still didn't really bed in until all the young got camera phones and started projecting their very uniform and standardised images. All the girls at the local secondary school have identical long hair now (and until recently all the boys had that ridiculous shaved sides and puffy top hairstyle, I do hope that's gone out of fashion).

It's going to be interesting to see how AI affects things.

All the older woman are still mostly short hair, comfortable shoes, trousers and tops, no (or barely visible) makeup, as we always were.

So personal, anecdotal connections outweigh the hard facts? That's the Grace Campbell argument of "well the trans women I know are really nice".

It's anecdotal and very dependent on the social circles people move in. If you are at uni, mixing with students and lecturers, that's not representative.

Stereotyping entire communities is hardly factual. Experience points to the erroneous in these assumptions.

Trans activists are the ones who are stereotyping an entire community - making out that they are a particularly vulnerable, delightful bunch who wouldn't hurt a fly and who can/should be given access to women's spaces on this basis.

And it isn't true. The data shows this.

Quite.

But emotive anecdoting was a main marketing strategy for a long term.

Women could play that game too - plenty of us have lovely friends who have ended up in refuges, needed women's services, same sex carers, come from particular faiths and cultures and families, who have experienced abuse and live with PTSD, but women generally have more class.

They've tended to go with facts and reason and reality rather than the awwwwww bless feel sorry for me (and gimme what I want, without noticing or caring who I leave harmed in my wake) moment.

I do not believe that you are posting in good faith or really even thinking about what posters have said. For example l used the term androgynous clothing and you picked up on that without considering the main point at all. Is this a wilful and calculated sidestep of the actual point being made?

Sorry. Agree. And this poster has also adopted some of the GC response styles. It’s interesting.

Younger women grew up with normalised discussions surrounding sexual orientation, gender fluidity, and non-binary identities because they are more exposed to them as a result of increased societal acceptance

I'm one of these dreadful late middle aged women and grew up in a thoroughly diverse community, the uni LGB group (which was fab), many cultures and faiths etc, yes, there was a whole lot of acceptance and I rarely saw any real tensions on any subject, other than gay men occasionally running into issues and usually in the workplace. In fact it was, sadly, a way more genuinely tolerant and relaxed time than now. This is a dead argument.

They are more likely to have trans friends or colleagues as opposed to many older women

Nope, a number in the work and social circle who are men and women with gender identities.

The bit you're confusing is 'acceptance' and 'enablement'.

Absolutely no issue with anyone dressing how they like, identifying how they like, no problem whatsoever. The problem is with men insisting they have to be with non consenting women in a state of undress, that women can't say they are different to men and a group with a need for a name and policies and resources specifically to meet the needs of that group (because it upsets men); that any voicing of women about their needs that conflicts with the desires of a small group of men is wrong and should be silenced; wanting to prey on vulnerable and confused children and lead them towards decisions with permanent medical harm and life impact for their own adult agendas; and inappropriate sexualised behaviours involving non consenting others. Basically. I'm not remotely bothered how someone performing these behaviours identifies or presents themselves; it's irrelevant. The behaviour is not ok.

That isn't an 'intolerance' issue, that's having normal boundaries, caring about everyone equally, and refusing to unable inappropriate antisocial behaviour that harms others. Yes, young people are more likely to be easily manipulated and convinced by those who would benefit from their enablement of poor behaviour, of course they are: lack of life experience largely, and social naivety, they're good victims for this kind of thing. This is not however a 'good' thing, is it?

And it still didn't really bed in until all the young got camera phones and started projecting their very uniform and standardised images. All the girls at the local secondary school have identical long hair now

@DeanElderberry spot on about the impact of ‘smart’ phones and social media. I’ve also noticed the long, often platinum dyed blonde, hair amongst the secondary school students and feel AI will make it even worse. We have these strikingly beautiful but human women held up as norms atm, but AI will lead to impossibly perfect female images becoming the norm for every media image.

Amongst DC friends, there seems to be two broad streams of looks/identities. Going down the celebrity look of long dyed hair, tight tube top dresses, and even tweakments in their early 20’s on one side. On the other, rejection of that aesthetics leads to a queer, tattooed, sometimes furried identity and also dyed hair but of a different sort. As identity politics takes an ever increasing hold of our young people thanks to social media, the divided factions makes me think of that film ‘Divergent’. There always have been groups in secondary school but they seem to have swung to more extremes on both sides. And more rigid.

Deviating somewhat from the meaning of the thread title, I'd like to point out that the 'be kind' attitude has also'schooled' young women in post-factual anti-intellectualism - people can change sex, sex is a spectrum, there have always been transgender people, sex is assigned at birth, a man is a woman if he says he is, trans people are the most marginalised etc etc.

Young women and men should be learning to apply critical thinking to statements like that - identify their origin, check their validity, assess their value, weigh up their veracity.

Instead, they have to 'be kind' and not ask awkward questions like: what is the evidence? Does it hold up to serious examination? Is it based on fact?

It is often said that young people urgently need to learn the skills of critical thinking in order to navigate the online world, so they don't fall for any old online guff.

It's ironic, then, that they are encouraged to suspend critical thinking when it comes to trans issues, and replace it with 'getting to know someone who is trans' and being 'kind'.

He mentioned an interest in sadism this weekend, which I honestly cannot comprehend at all and which I am not happy to engage with. He seemed fine with it and said that he just hadn’t wanted to keep this hidden. We obviously talked about it for a bit but I’m still thinking that it’s pretty messed up and that no sane person would be interested in anything like this but maybe I’m being judgemental.
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This is from a young woman on another thread and it struck me as being an example of how lowered boundaries and anything goes liberalism is leading young women to question themselves and somehow doubting that it’s okay not to want to date someone who wants to inflict pain on you. I feel this world truly has gone mad.

on the contrary, its the gender critical movement that asserts 'men in dresses' are a perversion & hyper butch females as 'brainwashed'.

Men in dress are just men in dresses. They might be goths, Art College fashion students, rugby lads on a stag do or shameless perverts, but the one thing they are definitely not, is women.

"Hyper butch females" are just women with short hair who prefer trousers.

The advantage of being a hideous middle aged hag, is that I don't have to tie myself up in knots, mangle language and ignore the evidence of my own eyes.

I'm The Old Woman Of The Office now, and one thing I really encourage younger female colleagues is to say no confidently and to stop being constant people-pleasers.