Ageism often lurks within the ideas and rhetoric of trans activists - Victoria Smith

[IwantToRetire]

... In a recent interview to celebrate 80 years of Woman’s Hour, programme editor Karen Dalziel was quizzed on its handling of the “what is a woman?” question. When asked why the programme didn’t simply reflect the law as clarified by the Supreme Court, she offered a rather convoluted response:

One thing we have to remember here is that you’re on Radio 4. Many of our audience are over sixty. They don’t understand the terminology and part of our role in the preceding years has been to help people understand the terms and what all the different terms mean.

A generous interpretation of this could be that this is about complex legal terminology (who wasn’t an expert in case law when they were in their teens and early twenties? Funny how you forget!). Except Dalziel goes on to say that the Supreme Court judgment has “helped listeners have some clarity about what is meant, but this is moving”. For many people, she argues, it’s “a beginning”:

People said that women couldn’t vote. Other people have different ideas and continue to campaign. We follow the story. ...

Full article https://thecritic.co.uk/you-dont-have-to-be-young-to-understand-gender-identity/

Also at https://archive.is/Ye7A0

I don't think you can argue on the one hand that this is ageist while on the other pretending that prefixes like 'cis' are slurs. Either you can grasp language or you can pretend you can't.

And people say it's the younger generation who are incapable of joined up thinking these days.

Anyway, thanks for posting OP. The following chimed with me, for obvious reasons (and as evidenced by this thread already!):

It is not enough to tell us that words can have different meanings — who knew! — when we are questioning the meanings themselves, what possibilities they create, and whose interests they serve. If you don’t want to have that argument, then don’t, but please don’t pretend that fretful ignorance of “the terminology” is the reason many older women (and increasing numbers of younger ones) won’t say the words you want them to say. We know exactly what these words mean. We’re still waiting for someone to tell us why we’re wrong.

I agree the misunderstanding isn't just age related but its more the age old battle between conservative & liberal thinking of traditional values versus social change that is the product of psychological traits of low v high openness to change.

The tension between the two being part of the human condition makes conflict unlikely to be resolved soon without compromise which is the evolutionary point I suppose.

"Cis" may not be intended as a slur, but unless one embraces sexist ideas about what type of personality is acceptable for men or for women, it will be perceived as a sexist insult.

And it's entirely consistent that a person rejects both sexism and agism.

Its such a stupid argument.

At any point in history, supposedly "new" ideas take hold, and often the problem is naive young people get caught up the excitement of thinking they are being so "progressive".

Take for instance the hippy movement and free love. The media loved this as an idea to discuss and promote.

And guess why? As women learnt to their cost it was just another men's rights movement. ie sex on demand for them, and women being shamed for not being open to the idea.

Is it any wonder that the strongest group of women who became part of what was Women's Liberation, who realised that being liberated in men's terms wasn't liberating for women.

Even if it meant having to admit that maybe their mum had been right is suggesting caution around men.

The following chimed with me, for obvious reasons (and as evidenced by this thread already!)

I think it is obvious by now that for the sake of FWR threads being useful and positive, is not to rise to the bait of those who dont believe in women's sex based rights posting on a forum by and about women's sex based rights!

Why assume that knowing what words mean results in automatic acceptance of that meaning? ‘Cis’ has been given various meanings. The main 2 are ‘not trans’ and ‘identifies with the gender assigned at birth. I find both those offensive. ‘Not trans’ because, outside of a very limited usage, a) it posits T as the default & b) it defines people as a negative, as what they are not, rather than what they are. ‘GAAB” because it asserts several untruths: that sex is assigned at birth; that gender is tied to sex; that TM & NB (F) are not included in the F sex class; that women are a mere subset of their own sex class &, most offensively, that to be called a woman you must identify with all the Patriarchal stereotypes & sex roles which have accreted to the F sex throughout history. We must ‘identify as’ inferior, subordinate, obedient, inept, obedient to male wishes. Pink, frilly & clutching a kitten at all times.

Another entirely false equivalence.

Reading across threads, you're currently being generally cross about women helping other women have spaces away from men who wish to make undressing with them the price of access to any space or resource; cross about people minding about young children being exposed to sex toys; cross about lights that come from children's stories written by someone who funds women to protect their existing legal rights and resist illegal injustice in the workplace; and now cross about women mentioning ageism in ways that make activists look unpleasant.

The common theme would seem to be that you really don't appreciate women having boundaries that inconvenience activist men?

I thought from the thread title this was going to be about how the trans brigade tend to display their misogyny by insulting the appearance of older women - for example, that cringe video with Alastair Campbell's daughter.

This post exemplifies my point about misunderstanding issues not being an age issue but more of a political one. The idea that billions of women don't have individual agency in that in this instance are just slaves to the sexual needs of men is a conservative one. That they can't independently embrace their sexuality reeks of misogyny….& when women mouth such absurd falsities, internalised misogyny. Its just another conservative version of female sexual shaming to assert they know not what they do.

My aging parents had no issues understanding transgender identities once they were explained. Yes, statistically, older people are more reactionary, but it’s not universal.

This. Sexism and sexual predators don't change. But they shapeshift, and take on whatever guise is fashionable.
"You're only campaigning for the vote because you're too ugly to get a man".
"English women are so inhibited."
"If you really were liberated, you'd go to bed with me."
"You're a lesbian!"
"You want boring vanilla sex? Oh come on! Stop kink-shaming."
"I'm a lesbian, and you're a sexual racist".
And so it goes on.

After you've been round the block a few times, you begin to spot the underlying patterns. You've experienced some of it. You've talked to enough other women to know more than you've personally experienced. You know something about women's history and how it was for previous generations.

That's why older women are inconvenient; they don't know too little, they know too much.

Choppingwoodcarryingwater
"the age old battle between conservative & liberal thinking of traditional values versus social change"

And yet
Gen Z men hold most traditional views of both women’s roles in society, as well as men’s Relative to other groups, Generation Z* men are the most likely to agree with traditional ideas about not only women’s roles (such as that a wife should always obey her husband), but also men’s (such as that young men should try to be physically tough, even if not naturally big)
IWD 2026 Global Charts

48% of men under 25 believe there are “a lot” of false rape allegations, compared with 19% of adults overall.
The percentage of men under 25 who believe a person who is raped while under the influence of alcohol or drugs is at least partially responsible is well over double (37%) that of the rest of the population (15%). The figure is also higher among women under 25 at 25%.
Press Release: New national survey tracks attitudes to sexual violence in Ireland and highlights persistent barriers for survivors | Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

Research like this suggests that 'liberal thinking' and 'social change' are not as prevalent amongst young people as you suggest.
Maybe it's more about the 'age old battle' for women's rights, rather than a straightforward generational thing?

There are two things here being conflated by WH-

yes, people 'understand' TG identities. Even older women manage to get their doddery old heads around it.

That just does not equate to them hurling aside women's rights and child safeguarding.

And that's the bit the political movement struggles with. The idea that if you understood, you'd submit, you'd abandon all other concerns, you'd get your clothes off and shut up and just accept that excluding and harming women is a good thing if it helps these men. And when that doesn't work, it's straight to scolding and sneering and deriding with whatever names come to mind, followed by the sewage of sexually violent threats.

The grim superiority and snobbery of WH deciding it was their job to brainwash women into proper thinking and definitely not questioning or pointing out the many, many serious issues - it's like a bad reversal of the joke of the Margot Leadbetter character in the Good Life in the 70s, the Right Sort who believed implicitly in her own born entitlement and duty to sort out the unwashed and force them into better ways.

Some young men holding conservative views are indoctrinated to believe they benefit men so its no surprise many of them hold such views. That many young men hold misogynistic views is the product of capitalist interests relentless media campaigns that their lack of opportunities are somebody else’s fault (rather than economic exploitation) as in women's freedom, immigrants & 'hand outs': see a 'feminised society' for these not to mention their cultural saturation of porn.

The Cornell 7 male misogynisytic reaction is indicative of how nurture can be exploited to poison men against women & not unlike the OP they believe its women's freedom that's to blame.

The expression 'my aging parents' is unbelievably ageist.

My aging parents describe themselves as aging

I guess they must be ageist. Is internal ageism a thing now?

I thought that too - it brings to mind all the "JKR is a shrivelled crone and I'm prettier than she is" posts on Trans UK Reddit.

I agree that people with illiberal attitudes aren't born that way, they develop their ideas from society around them.

My point was that many young people have illiberal attitudes, although they are young, just as many older people have progressive ideas, although they are older.

That's bleak, Marie.

Agreed. But political positions are a matter of nurture & nature. There's been research that shows how political positions align with an individual's personal disposition towards openness to experience & caution that are the fundamentals of conservatism & liberalism.

Whilst no doubt life experience influences our politics there can be no doubt the individual innate lens which we understand the world also does.

in my view the writer the OP has linked is being over defensive about the intention of Karen Dalziel. I don't read that as a dig at older people not being able to understand new ideas but rather how they tend to have less access to them than younger people who are more media savvy.

I'm in my 60's myself & most of my female cohort rely on the nightly news sound bites for news & have no idea about the ins & outs of current affairs nor are they interested. My husband like many men these days are more likely to go to youtube for their news which is a whole lot of other evil once the right wing algorithms get hold of them.

It's important to spread yourself around for more rounded views that's why I frequent many conservative forums & news sites although Im a lefty in nature. But the thing is if you aren't open to hearing opposing views you won't seek them out….hence conservatives being less likely to be well informed about the progressive opinion.