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

When the message transmitted through every institutional channel available to a young woman is that transgender people face elevated suicide risk and that affirmation is protective, the empathic response is to affirm. Questioning the evidence base for that claim requires a kind of emotional detachment from an individual's presented distress that empathy actively works against.

Which is a skill that comes with maturity, and is part of learning to develop healthy boundaries that protect in abusive relationships, in working relationships, is a taught and necessary skill in many jobs as a responsible, objective way of meeting the actual need of the person in front of you rather than their wants and to be certain that you are ethically and consciously focused on their best interests instead of becoming lost in your own emotions and meeting your own needs using this client.

And it's absolutely key to safeguarding.

Excellent article. The work on VAWG should be teaching these 'don't get lost in your feelings' and 'don't unquestioningly and emotionally enable' skills in schools. Combined with a short course in 'games people play' and how to cope with a friend or loved one in the grip of addictive behaviour.

I have to say, even before "Be Kind" if you brought up the idea that staying safe was important in some feminist circles, it seemed to create a real pile on.

I remember saying once that I thought university girls who became very drunk at parties and went off to boys flats were being dangerously foolish, and discouraging drunkeness in general would be an effective step to reducing sexual assaults. I was pretty much accused of being tool of the patriarchy.

'Be kind' was about not bullying people online.

It was never about real life interactions or not keeping safe.

"Allyship at all costs" really defines the environment I felt as a younger woman especially online, and I'm 40. I think millennial women suffer from this too, definitely in certain subgroups (artsy, leftist, particular types of social justice-oriented friendship circles, anyone who used Tumblr and LJ a lot back in the day) and that's why a lot of them are TWAW and so venomous at disagreement. I don't think I would have found my way out of that mindset without MNET.

Yes. And as you say, much of this is learnt through experience. Yet we seem to have created an atmosphere where many young women's experiences are censored.
I suppose a good example is the experiences of trans widows and how hard men worked to ensure their partners were unable to speak about what was happening to them. Coercive control on steroids.

The article suggests it was much wider than this and I agree. So many schools / freindship groups had numbers of teenagers caught up in genderism and the pressure was on their real life interactions as well as online:

"The Tavistock referral data and the Cass Review both documented high rates of self harm as a presenting feature of the adolescent female clinic population. These were not three separate groups of young women. To a significant extent they were the same young women, and the peer networks and online communities surrounding them were the same networks. The older young women who now appear in polling data as strong supporters of the gender affirmative framework were, in many cases, the friends and peers of that population. They were responding to a real crisis in the lives of real people they cared about. What they were not given was an accurate account of what that crisis consisted of, or of what responses to it the evidence supported".

Really? I don’t agree. All I see is women - in particular- little girls and teens - constantly encouraged and even mandated by culture and media to put themselves second and to perform a support function for everyone else (well, every male).

They're two separate issues.

#bekind came about after Caroline Flacks suicide in 2020. It was about the hideous online bullying, often misogynistic, she'd endured which contributed to her suicide.

It was a good thing.

It was never anything about trans issues or genderism. Attempting to conflate the two isn't appropriate in my opinion.

And certainly never had anything to do with influencing girls to not keep themselves safe.

I'm as gender-critical as they come but this is nonsense in my opinion and is attempting to hijack a movement that came about after the often misogynistic bullying of a woman online that contributed to her death.

It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth and feels very anti-feminist to me.

Thank you for this @MrsOvertonsWindow. Prof Curiosity has been writing some seriously important long-form X posts recently.

Re the social/online contagion: Sarah Mittermeier (aka Eliza Mondegreen) has researched and written extensively about this - her thesis is available and is quite a straightforward read:

https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/m326m754q

Have you never heard of initiatives being hijacked by bad actors? The creator of the word "incel" was a lonely woman who probably never dreamed that the concept would weaponised against women and used to exploit lonely men by manosphere influencers.

#bekind as a concept and message has been hijacked. We are discussing the consequences of that hijacking.

To be fair to the author of the article, it was me that used "be kind" in the title for brevity.

I've heard the phrase used repeatedly by transactivists and others demanding acquiescence to the demands of gender identity. I've never heard any of them accused of being anti feminist or disrespectful to Caroline Flack for using the phrase. Maybe you know differently?

Anyway, what did you think of the article?

Thank you. Will have a read of this.

As an older feminist and mother, I've always felt so guilty about the "generation divide" about this. Almost feeling that we've abandoned young women to this ideology without having a clue about how to bridge that gap. This seems an insightful and respectful piece, reminding us to shelve our exasperation and to understand how the online and affirm at all costs demands have shaped the thinking of younger women.

I agree with the article.

I don't agree with you using a movement which was about online misogynistic bullying to support it when it isn't even mentioned in the article and has nothing to do with it at all.

The studies there are talking about 2012-2022 when the #bekind movement only started in 2020 and honestly, lasted for a few weeks. It was only a few weeks before MN, X, Reddit etc were saying 'no, let's not be kind because this person did x, y or z'.

So even if it did apply to trans issues, which it never did, it certainly didn't effect an entire generation of women.

It's gross that you used a movement about a womans suicide after misogynistic bullying and inequitable treatment by the Police to try and make a point about genderism.

Very anti-feminist.

Have you read Victoria Smith’s “Hags”? I’m in the middle if it now, and she has some very persuasive insights on how this disconnect, or “failure” of the older generation of women to pass their wisdom on to the younger generation, is in large part due to male demonisation of the older (and thus un-fanciable, un-fuckable, un-valuable) woman. We didn’t fail - we were prevented.

Quite! There's a thread in chat atm https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5533427-was-i-rude-for-dismissing-a-stranger-who-interrupted-me-on-the-platform

where quite a few posters are insisting that this woman was indeed rude for not engaging with a random bloke trying to get her attention when she had headphones in and was working

the pressure for women to be a support human at all times is unrelenting

I saw that and was horrified at the insistence that she wasn't being kind in telling him she was busy.
It just shows how far away we've got from knowing that women are entitles to be in the public space without obeying the demands of random men. And presumably all the posters insisting that she was rude have been schooled in the "be kind to men or you're a bigot" belief. Very depressing.

Assertion,.critical thinking and healthy relationships should absolutely be taught. There's a bit in.the Scottish curriculum, I think, but it needs to be enough to counter the deluge of social messaging.

I think this has been a very old story repeated through the ages.

Feminism identifies ways to help women.

'Be Kind' has been used to harm women.

Plus I hadnt heard of 'be kind' as any kind of organised movement. I've heard it used as a phrase to scold and berate women and girls who fail to act like doormats.

i think discussion of social movements and how they can be weaponised against women is fully valid. Thinking Caroline Flack was bullied online and treated poorly doesn’t preclude criticism of all the nasty people who’ve used it as a shield to target women.

What I'd like to see is more role models for girls who are defying stereotypes and countering the acquiescent attitude of much pop culture.

There may be a bit more for young girls - Disney heroines have got more ballsy in recent years. Elsa is a great heroine, especially alongside the cautionary tale of Anna's abusive relationship. Lots of good picture books and animated movies.

It's as girls move into the teen years it all goes depressingly & predictably towards objectification. Watching Miley Cyrus and others pornify themselves has been miserable.

Those circles tend to the more privileged and there is a fashion for self flagellation and abnegation that goes along with that. I do reckon this echoes through the ages - pemance, tragic heroines, and martyred women have long been tropes.

By limiting the possibilities of why trans identities have become acceptable to young women smells like agist confirmation bias with a twist of misogyny. Young women can't know their own minds without being 'indoctrinated' really? Young Women can't come to the conclusion on their own that biology doesn't define them? Isn't that the premise that gave birth to feminism?

It might be more comforting to assume those who don't agree with your point of view are some how mentally compromised but that's also called projection.

I'm continually amazed at the sheer range of attempts to stop women (and many man) from speaking freely. It's no wonder so many of the the younger generations don't speak out.
Fortunately for feminists well versed in refusing to be silenced over many decades, it's much harder to have an impact. But - as the article so well exemplifies - for the young it can be catastrophic. When it's alleged that someone's anti feminst, racist, bigoted etc. (even if the allegation has no credibility) it must be terrifying. It's the power of the language and allegation that's so destructive.