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

Notanan2, thank you for clarifying the difference between gender and sex. I agree that children should be allowed to select their own ' gender'. I'd guess that gendered preferences are not permanent until the child or adult has matured.

Do you think that sexualisation of children(and adults) is at least part of the cause of body dysmorphia and dysmorphia is at least part of the cause of dissatisfaction with one's biological sex?

It is a great pity that children are not allowed to express themselves without gender stereotyping.
Alexa, you say you know nothing about trans issues but you have hit the nail on the head concerning children.

There are numerous youtube videos of happy 'trans' kids and their happy parents. All the ones that I have seen are based on stereotypes. Parents say, in the videos, that they shouted at their children and/or made them wear certain clothes, have their hair short or long, play with certain toys.
Then the child's statement of being the opposite sex was accepted, and all was wonderful!

The recent TV play 'Butterfly', which claimed to show a trans child, in fact showed a dysfunctional family & society who couldn't simply accept a boy as he wanted to be.

I've copied a bit of Far North's original post because the sacked employees' claim is ambiguous.

"Her employer, the London office of the Centre for Global Development, said -
“You stated that a man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality. A lot of people would find that offensive and exclusionary.”"

"material reality" probably means biological sexual attributes. However biological sexual attributes are less important, obviously, to trans people than are their preferred genders.

"material reality" means the person's biological sex, regardless of changes to their physical body.

At least 80% of transwomen (men) have no treatment at all, not even counseling.
Whether they do or not, tho, their bodies are still male.

Instead of claiming to factually be women, why don't they campaign for their right to present & behave as they wish?

Free speech no longer exists in this country and certainly not on this site.

Are you being prevented from saying what you want, quizqueen?

"Instead of claiming to factually be women, why don't they campaign for their right to present & behave as they wish?"

Excellent suggestion!

Maybe she should try saying that to my ex husband!
At the age of 54 he admitted he had always wished he had been a woman and had those feeling from when he was a child.
It was a big shock, considering he has been married twice and fathered 6 children!

I do wonder if the number of men and boys now believing they are women is in fact to do with the increasing amounts of oestrogen now found in water. Fish have been shown to be changing sex because of chemicals in rivers and it seems to me to be highly likely that even a small level of increase in oestrogen could first affect the brain. It must be very difficult when your brain tells you that you are one thing but your body presents something different.

trisher, how do you see that relating to the increase in girls and young women claiming to be boys and men?

Trisher sets the nature cat among the nurture pigeons

In Britain, one well-known gender clinic reports that the majority of its adolescent population, once 50-50, is now overwhelmingly trans-male (female-to-male).

www.google.com/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-why-the-surge-in-gender-dysphoria-among-teenage-girls/

FarNorth I'm not sure that there is a huge increase in that area. There have throughout history been women who chose to live as men and I suspect that there may have been more who would have liked to do so. So perhaps the increase isn't that huge. I don't know.

03:10
Notanan2, thank you for clarifying the difference between gender and sex. I agree that children should be allowed to select their own ' gender'. I'd guess that gendered preferences are not permanent until the child or adult has matured.

^ that's not agreeing with me I pretty much said the opposite

if more people are identifying as female. I doubt it is chemicals in our water, more that in the past there was no way of expressing this feeling and certainly no route to living it, so nothing was said and in the end most people adapted to the dichotomy.

Oestrogen has nothing to do with liking frocks n pink......

Its a social contruct to associate those things with females. A new one at that.

Male to female transpeople say they are female for a variety of reasons.

Liking things they associate with femininity
- i.e. the steriotypes
A "feeling" (what is this feeling that makes you a woman, and how can they know what it FEELS like to be a woman, also how come so many natal women cannot relate to this feeling if it is apparently what makes a woman a woman).
A desire to see themselves as the woman in sexual situations. A wish to role play at being a lesbian etc..

Have I missed any?
Not ONE of the above defines women for most natal women!

Oh dear, Notanan! Back to the drawing board for me then.

Notanan, I found your previous post. I must have thought that the quote was your own.

If the rise in young FtM transitions is a question that interests you, look into this:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lesbians-on-chairs-tickets-59843824490

Sold out but will be others

When at crowded venues and the womens "area" has a line a mile long outside of it, I utilize the mens -- because theirs "never" has a wait time - When you have to go, you have to go ..

The OP particularly specifies a mans internal “feeling” that he is a woman. To me until he has the operation and hormone treatment he is male and capable of functioning as a male, so regardless of his “feelings” he should be regarded as a man. Just because he behaves and dresses as a woman does not give him any female benefits or privileges that he might want.
I feel really sorry for children who are in that position because they feel different from other boys and they are going to get bullied because of it, they cannot win either way.
Women and girls who want to live as men have a much easier time, they are just “butch”, they are accepted as such with very little notice taken.

Women and girls who want to live as men have a much easier time, they are just “butch”, they are accepted as such with very little notice taken.

Biggest load of tosh I have read in a while...

Since when do girls have it easier than boys?

Considering that its cross dressing boys and men who are doing the bullying and threatening lesbians and other "butch" women with rape violence and death in this "debate" I really do not know where you are getting your notions from...

Not to mention the post above about how it is disproportionately "butch" female girls who are being put forward for mutilatiin and chemical sterilisation.

Lesbians who are being bullied for not accepting that they should sleep with male "lesbians" who have penises

Women who are being stalked and threatened with violence for daring to say no to men redefining us...

WTF David??

Although the event linked by notanan2 has passed, here is its description which is quite informative :

Lesbians On Chairs
by Standing For Women
Description
"The very worst of Lesbian erasure is upon us as our society embraces the mutilation of young lesbian bodies with chemicals and surgeries. How did we get here and how can we stop it?

Our panel is chaired by

Anne Ruzylo, an Ex prison officer, who recently resigned as Women’s Officer of Bexhill and Battle Labour Party, has many years experience as a trade unionist, including serving on the TUC LGBT committee.

Our panellists are:

Sheila Jeffreys: a lesbian feminist writer and activist. She taught sexual politics at the University of Melbourne, where she is now a professorial fellow, before retiring to the UK in 2015. She is the author of 10 books, and her latest is The Lesbian Revolution: lesbian feminism in the UK 1970-1990, 2018.

Julia Long: a lesbian - one of the old-fashioned kinds that doesn’t have a penis. She has worked in education, local government, academia and the women’s sector, and is currently a researcher in the field of male violence against women. Julia is a long-time Lesbian Feminist activist and her book Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism was published in 2012 by Zed Books. She is currently writing a book on how men have managed to convince so many people – including most ‘gender critical feminists’ - that there is such a thing as ‘transgenderism’. Julia has the great good fortune to live in Lesbian Feminist community and wants all women to know that this is possible. Her hobbies include sitting on chairs, eating pizza and naming men as men.

Dovile Lapinskaite: graduate in politics, philosophy and history of art, lesbian radical feminist, activist and independent artists.

Julia Beck: a writer and organizer from Baltimore, Maryland. She helps produce a monthly radio broadcast for Women's Liberation Radio News. Last year, she represented lesbians at Baltimore Pride and on the Law and Policy Committee of Baltimore City's LGBTQ Commission. She is currently at the fore of the fight for women's rights in the USA."