a man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality?

It is incredible to me that this is being sold as progression and acceptance.

If a parent approaches a GP or school with "concerns" that their child is chosing toys and toys associated with the opposite sex, surely the appropriate response is "boys can like dolls, why does it concern you that boys like dolls?" Not, okay, we will change his name on our roll call and tell all his classmates that he is now a she

Yes thing is I think it was MORE acceptable to not conform to gender steriotypes when I was a child or when my children were small before this concept of trans toddlers crept in and so many people started supporting the idea that women is not a sex but instead a feeling and a set of behaviours

I really must challenge these sweeping assumptions about female gender roles.

I would not disagree that a lot of girls have been brought up to be sweet submissive and quiet, but there has always been a significant number who have always challenged those assumptions and/or ignored them.

When I was at school good obedient girls were considered odd and rather drippy. They were certainly a minority.

And while over the last few decades there has been a lot of superficial pink princessery about, if you look at the way girls have actually behave it is very different, they are not sweet submissive and conforming to gender stereotypes.

I spent most of my childhood intensely wishing I was a boy and to an extent I was the boy in a family of three girls, at university one friend criticised me for thinking like a man, but I am so glad, so very very glad. that no one was at hand in my childhood to suggest I consider transitioning to being male. I was born bloody minded and bolshie and was content to be myself, whether it conformed with societal norms or not. With an unmutilated body and the hormones that go with a female body I was fortunate to meet someone who loves me for what I am and I am married and have children and grandchildren.

We should accept people for what they are and if some men feel more comfortable with things thought sterotypically to be more female. Fine. Let them be like that and the same for women who feel more affinity to male thought processes than female I cannot see that mutilating your body and being reshaped to appear to have the sexual features of the opposite sex can ever be as satisfactory as being at ease with the body you were born with.

The aggression and mysogyny from some MtoF transpeople is just so ironically male

There are of course quite a few gender critical transwomen out there. Also there are self identified transexuals, autogynaphilles and transvestites out there who reject the dogma that all tranwomen are real women. They self describe as men who have a kink or a liking for womens clothes etc

Initially I think that people think "hey! I support LGBQT rights, so obviously I support trans rights"
But look a bit deeper and you will see how at odds with lesbians rights and the rights of people to call their cross dressing a kink, the trans rights lobby actually is.

Google the cotton ceiling

www.objectnow.org/news/2019/4/28/lesbians-dont-have-penises

Read detransitioners own accounts. Read what gender critical transwomen have to say.

The trans rights lobby is pushing us backwards in terms of rights and acceptance

www.transgendertrend.com/lesbian-detransitioner-must-question-primary-solution/

The more accounts of detransitioned transmen I read the more a common theme emerges:

So many FtoM trans kids seem to just want to be less visible: to fly under the radar in a way they percieve boys to be allowed to. Boys arent expected to be meek and agreeable and coy and girly. Boys bodies arent sexualised as much as girls bodies.

Transmen (from reading their own accounts) mostly want to become less visable sexually to men to avoid all the problems that can bring a girl. They reject mysogyny and steriotypes and can be labelled as difficult or troublesome for doing so.

Being a boy presents an easier life. In theory but not in practice.

There is often a history of behaviour problems (and girls arent supposed to cause trouble). Often a history of sexual abuse (and not being a girl seems a way to avoid the male gaze). Often a history of autism that means they can very litterally connect these problems with being in the wrong body.

There is an account online of a transman who was shocked that he was raped and his rapist raped him "as if I was a woman". Having believed that transing was a way to avoid male on female sexual violence.

Another child who was a boy felt as if he/she were a girl. The child's room was pink and her/his clothes were girly-girly. Why must a child keep to gender stereotypes ?

Why couldnt that boy just be a boy who liked pink "girlie" things?

What kind of environment was that kid in that they thought it wasnt okay for a boy to like those things, therefore they must be a girl inside?

But the steriotypes are wrong. Not the kids sex.

Jack Monroe is a famous de-transitioner.

She is also autistic.

A high % of trans kids are autistic who take gender steriotypes literally and therefore think they are the wrong sex.

A lot of DE-transitioned transmen write about how they bought the trans idea that they could identify away from mysogyny, gender steriotypes and in some case male to female violence and sexual abuse, by swallowing the magic trans pill.

It often doesn't work out that way. And they are left with the same problems but also the physical side effects of testosterone and binding etc

I know almost nothing about trans people . I saw an TV programme featuring a little girl who believed that she was a boy. I wanted to ask, and maybe some gran understands this: may the little girl/boy not be permitted to behave as if she were a boy ?

Define "behave as if she were a boy"

Telling children that they may be trans if they dont comply with gender steriotypes is not progressive. Or accepting or any other positive thing.

Children should be allowed to dress as they like and play with what they like and aspire to whatever future career they like without adults suggesting that it means they were born the wrong sex to like those things ?

Listen to some of the trans activists on youtube etc.. "knowing" their toddlers were trans because they didnt chose gender appropriate toys etc... whatever happened to the idea that a boy can be a boy who likes dolls, and a girl who dislikes dresses is still a girl?

There is nothing liberal or accepting about the idea that children chosing non gender specific behaviours are trans.

Back in what the youth of today would consider the dark ages of my youth, I got to be a tomboy! Despite the word "boy" there, there was never a suggestion that my BODY was wrong just because I wasnt girlie. It was just "yeah, she's a girl who doesnt like traditionally girlie toys"

Nowadays if I was a kid I would, in the wrong hands, be raised as a boy, and potentially chemically prevented from developing in puberty! All for rejecting gender steriotypes! Its so wrong!

Fennel is there a defining motive for changing one's gender, let alone having plastic surgery for one's genitals?

I know almost nothing about trans people . I saw an TV programme featuring a little girl who believed that she was a boy. I wanted to ask, and maybe some gran understands this: may the little girl/boy not be permitted to behave as if she were a boy ?

Another child who was a boy felt as if he/she were a girl. The child's room was pink and her/his clothes were girly-girly. Why must a child keep to gender stereotypes ?

My mother who preferred boys to girls made me, aged about seven, for a limited time wear boys shorts in scratchy wool and complete with braces until after my heartfelt protests my father persuaded her to dress me more conventionally.
My point is that peer pressure and other social conventions tell the boy or the girl what a boy or a girl should be. It is a great pity that children are not allowed to express themselves without gender stereotyping.

Yes, I suspect that the transman who I know made the decision because she thought/knew that men have an easier life than women.
We often see her and her father, but I've always been reluctant to ask about it.
We've known her since she was a little girl.

Sorry, meant that green party reps are NOT referring to "women and non women". Its not men they are erasing. Its women.

Men arent resisting because there is nothing to resist!

Green party representatives are not referring to people as "men and non men" and avoiding the word women in any context other than "transwomen are women"

Male health charities are not bombarded with abuse about how triggering their biologically/medically factual language is.

When there are male and female toilets at venues, guess which one is made the "gender neutral" one? Its not the mens...

Transmen are very keen to pass as male and to be able to access male spaces.
They do not have to be so vocal about it because men are not resisting them in any meaningful way.
That is because men do not feel threatened, and are genuinely not at risk, from females who identify as men.
There is very little likelihood of a woman wishing to access male spaces or enter male sports for any underhand reason.

Alexa your post confirms what I've thought, at the back of my mind, for some time. ie the militancy of trans women is linked to the feminism movement in the UK.
And that's why trans men aren't so militant.
The Equality Act of 2010 gives legal rights to minority groups, and promotes feminism rather than masculinism (if there's such a word.)

JOE960 I agree that sex is biological and gender is social. My problem is where the line should be drawn between nature and nurture.

Discrimination in the workplace needs to happen in many special cases so that prescribed clothing suits variable health needs of the workers. For instance it seems obvious to me that air cabin attendants who seem to be biological females should not be forced to wear high heels. And it seems obvious to me that not only women should dress modestly , whatever 'modest' means, but men should do so too.

There were cases in the past when certain occupations were limited to biological women or to biological men and usually the women got the more menial roles which were symbolised by their attire. I deplore sexualised uniform clothing except for e.g. models in their work place.

Monica, it's easier to discuss these topics if the word 'sex' is used for a person's biology and the word 'gender' is used for how they like to look, act etc.

I dont even know what it means any more. Some are telling us its how people outwardly "present" (i.e. defining women as people who comply with steriotypes of how a woman should be, no wonder so many autistic kids and teens think theyre trans!)

But then we are told that all transwomen are women, even if they are big burley males with a beard and outwardly look very butch, just 'cos they said so, because being a woman is a feeling What feeling?? What doea that even mean. I dont have the "femme feels" so am I not a woman

We need to get rid of the word gender all together other than to desctribe harmful steriotypes.

Male and female and intersex. And then within that people can wear and feel how they like because gender is BS

"It's interesting that female to male trans people aren't making such a song and dance about getting into male dominated spaces".
Exactly Jol. Why so aggressive?
I only know one 'trans' person and she/he's female to male. Not at all militant.

As I see it sex is biology and gender is a social construct that tells women what they should be. It's a construct that feminism has been challenging since day dot. Our mothers and grandmother's daring to wear trousers, riding bicycles, driving etc, and our generation fighting for equal rights, reproductive rights, starting women's refuges and rape crisis centres were a part of this fight.

What I see now is an erosion of our sex based rights by group of people who are extremely vocal and couldn't care less that there are already cases of trans women in female prisons assaulting very vulnerable women (most incarcerated women have experienced domestic and/or sexual abuse).

Latest data suggests that almost half of the 125 born male prisoners currently identifying as female but not holding a gender recognition certificate, are sex offenders. If they are recorded as female it will skew the crime figures. Only 5% of around 82,000 prisoners are female and of that number there are a tiny fraction who are sex offenders. There are also prisoners arguing to have their records in their "dead" name expunged which is really worrying.

Sorry for the lecture but this whole issue worries me. If someone feels they are the other sex that's fine, however no woman or girl should be endangered in the process. It's interesting that female to male trans people aren't making such a song and dance about getting into male dominated spaces.

I agree Bridgeit we have indeed reached a dangerous place. It seems freedom of speech is being stifled in the workplace, universities, schools etc. I am concerned too about the effect of this intolerance on future generations.
So glad I am retired now, I would find it very difficult to hold my tongue.

Fra North a slip of the fingers. I know and understand what you are saying , am in total agreement and always use gender - except that odd occasion when ones fingers do the typing not ones mind.

No wonder there's so many mental health issues around amongst children and young adults-----they don't know who or what they are any more.
To broadcast this nonsensical awareness has been a dangerous practice and one which is a root cause of suicides among the young because of the confusion that exists.

To sack someone because of their personal views on the subject says it all for me !!

I don't think that people should be sacked for their views on anything (unless, of course, it's blatantly discriminatory, or hateful).

I do, however, feel that all this 'gender identity' issue is going too far.

We're now including children in this! Let them be. Let them decide when they're old enough to know what they want.

I watched a TV programme a few weeks ago about a 'sect' in America. These people, although they have partners, have sex with other people, and these additional lovers are invited to the couple's home to have sex with their new lover. (Not explaining it very well here.) Anyhow, a husband would move out of the marital bed for a couple of nights to make room for his wife's new lover. No complaints from him, as he is doing the same elsewhere. (I felt so sorry for the children involved in all this.) One woman got pregnant with a lover's child, and when it was born declared, "We haven't named it, as we haven't assigned it a gender yet."

For heaven's sake! Nature has already given it a gender!

Where on earth are we all going with all this?

Monica, it's easier to discuss these topics if the word 'sex' is used for a person's biology and the word 'gender' is used for how they like to look, act etc.

Employers, councils, schools, health authorities etc etc do not seem to understand the difference, however, and are doing as notanan2's employer did - they are replacing 'sex' with 'gender identity'.

Maya Forstater is taking a very important step with her legal action against her employer.