Friend called TW 'man' and 'fella'

Nrtff. My Dad used to call blokes 'cock'. Now, that I would have paid to see. He knew Foofoo Lamarr from when he, my Dad, used to bounce.

Wrong naming conventions. Your clever, clever brain over-rides emotion and values to keep you safe. It's subconscious. It is a surprise when that happens though!

I wish I could channel that Geordie lad sometimes.

He did a pretend video apology too, I seem to remember, also taking the piss

What transactivism really requires is to be laughed at.

I completely agree.

I wonder if you’re just a kind person and recognised you were dealing with an individual with a mental health issue. A lot of anger about the broader TRA community is hard to direct at the clearly-struggling individual in front of you.

MN sometimes makes you feel you are either with women by being unfailingly anti-TW, or you’re anti-women. There is a spectrum. You can recognise an individual before you and not want to humiliate them publicly, but also passionately fight against TRA bullshit to prevent the erasure of women and our spaces.

If you'd spent any time around Camden over the years you'd have seen an awful lot of men in skirts and make-up with no intention of being seen as women!

You're right, of course, that it's been made into a minefield but to me it's no more controversial to assume that a man in a skirt and make-up wants to be seen as a man than to assume they want to be seen as a woman.

Assuming the latter just reinforces sexist stereotypes. This was once the case for women who started wearing trousers who were assumed to be "trying to be men" and i don't think it's any more progressive the other way around!

I think anger in this situation might be related to both fear and feelings of helplessness.

We have been programmed to fear these men kicking off, I think. We’ve all seen the “It’s Ma’am” video. We’ve heard about women being dismissed from jobs. We’ve seen companies falling over themselves to apologize to offended men who were not happy with being treated as the men they are.

I remember the first time I realized how harmful that fear reaction is and how much we all walk on eggshells when a geordie lad on a dating app turned down a young man in women’s clothing with a humorous take on how he’d been keen until he clocked his potential date was the wrong sex. He was then attacked by the usual activists on Twitter and obviously found it hilarious.

It was a lesson to me on how much our reactions are being controlled. Men are not being controlled in the same way, so I imagine you were anticipating something bad happening, which never appeared.

It’s very difficult to unpack it all. On the Trinny thread, someone else commented on the fact that, a few years back, they would have thought the show was sweet, but now could no longer see it that way.

I wish I could channel that Geordie lad sometimes. What transactivism really requires is to be laughed at. But women laughing is less acceptable than men doing so and also women have a lot more to lose. Probably your anger stems from there being so much emotion now on this topic. It can’t easily be switched off. And for me, there’s no worse experience than anything that smacks of coercive control and many of us are effectively being controlled here.

*I have to come back to this.

It makes no sense to me.

They want us to see them as women, that's why they do it.
Apparently misgendering is literal violence.

So when we see a man dressed as a woman they tell us to be kind and treat him as one.

But them people like you say 'don't make assumotions' he might be a man (duh) and just like women's clothes.

So what we don't use any sex based language or pronouns around anyone now? Incase we assume wrong??

But I thought pronouns and respecting them is soooo important?

It's like people have tied themselves up in knots so much that you don't even know what you're saying or want anymore?*

Quite. It's complete nonsense. So just say what you see. That's what third person pronouns are for, anyway. They're for the speaker's use to refer to what they perceive, their understanding of the world, not for the person they are referring to to dictate.

Is it's just the years of woman guilt and being told to be 'nice?'

Yup.

Your pal sounds polite and straightforward.

I can't be doing with people getting upset over gendered sexed greetings. It's a regional thing – and it tends to be common in the nicest, friendliest parts of the country. Don't like it? Stick to the places where no one makes eye contact with you.

The ‘inner Beryl’ thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3412053-Mumsnet-FWR-Guide-to-De-Programming-Yourself-From-Self-Harming-Kindness

Re: the cultural ways men interact - I expect I’ve told this story many times under various usernames but one of my husband’s dearest friends is married to the sort of transsexual male that pre: GenderBorg Era many of us women would accept on an honorary-woman-but-not-really basis, ie happy to accept them in the (loosely defined!) ‘womens’ group at a social gathering but in the same way some women will also happily accept a feminine gay man who isn’t trans (ie, fine for a fun social but not fine for a more serious, mutual support-type social, and definitely not if the support needed/given is related to our female bodies, which it so often is).

Anyway, this particular transsexual male, who I will call ‘S’ (and use he/him pronouns for reasons of clarity in communication) transitioned in very early adulthood about 20 years ago and is striking in appearance due to a combo of supermodel 6ft plus proportions and spending quite a lot of dosh on aesthetics.
S works as a make up artist for fashion magazines and catwalk shows and is usually the best dressed/most artfully decorated at any event where we see him (always with his husband).

S seems to be a nice person and doesn’t want access to women’s spaces (I’ve gone to the bar next door to the one we were actually at with S solely so that S could use the other bar’s unisex lav) & he doesn’t believe that children/adolescents should transition.
If you subscribe to the Blanchardian typology he is ‘HSTS’, so gender nonconforming from early childhood and exclusively attracted to other men, especially gender conforming men.
S grew up in quite a harsh working class family that refused to accept his homosexuality and he transitioned under the old system where the NHS expected you to do 2 years ‘in role’ before prescribing hormones. He had genital surgery in his early 20s.

S is, I suppose, the nearest the west gets to one of the traditional/historical ‘third genders’ that some other cultures have invented as a way for those societies to manage extremely feminine homosexual men.

You wouldn’t necessarily clock S from a photo or if S was sitting down but standing up it’s clear that S is much taller than the average woman (quite a bit taller than the average man, in fact) and this effect is magnified by the fact that S’s husband is rather short for a chap (he’s a hairy, rotund ‘bear’ in gay culture parlance, and a small bear accompanied by a extremely tall high-fashionista of a transsexual makes for quite an eye-catching couple).

Most strangers, on encountering S, would either use female language to refer to S or would politely avoid any sex or gender language at all.
It’s obvious that S is both naturally feminine (‘effeminate’ in less-kind terms) and also that S is consciously performing ‘femininity’ in terms of gender expression/presentation.

My husband, who has known S for over a decade, has only ever known S post transition and is generally happy to play along with S’s social femininity by taking on an old-fashioned, chivalrous role (opening a door, pulling out a chair in a restaurant etc).

Nonetheless, invariably and without fail, DH always greets S with the same hearty handshake and back pat he uses for S’s husband and other assorted chaps in his social group.

Every time we plan to meet up with S DH swears that this time he will break his habit and greet S in a less man-to-man manner (so either a cheek peck or a nod and smile) but every time without fail my DH’s primitive brain takes over and out comes the automatic manly-man handshake!

Thankfully, S is not one of the modern day TRA types and doesn’t seem to be insulted by DH’s handshake (perhaps S doesn’t even notice!) just as S is unlikely to be insulted by my choice of male pronouns in this post (out in public I avoid pronouns for S for safety reasons - no need to risk attracting any additional unwanted negativity from random homophobes).

So yeah.
Primitive brain.
Humans are social creatures and have all sorts of conscious and subconscious social responses 🤷‍♀️

You seem to be the main person tying yourself in knots about what language to use. Your friend used the language he would for any other man. I don’t understand why you are tying yourself up in knots because he did.

Your friend doesn’t need to buy into the ‘we must be kind and ignore the evidence of his eyes’

You don’t need to police your friends language

We don’t need to expend energy on trying to help you understand why you are so conflicted

This is all such a non-event that shouldn’t have taken any more than a moments reflection on why you’re still buying into female socialisation

Fizzadora · Today 08:27
Everyone should stop playing along.”

You don’t believe there are any genuine trans people?

Yes yes this!

Think of why women have been conditioned to be kind.

It's - at heart - so we don't get thumped, assaulted, raped or killed. That conditioning is SO strong, and for good reason.

I'd bet what happened today was your female conditioning (that's a man who will hurt me if I come against the wrong thing) came up against your friend's male conditioning (that's a lesser man than me, because they are presenting as feminine') and that's uncomfortable.

Your friend has more privilege than you. He has the privilege to be honest.

I don't wonder that makes you angry or uncomfortable.

odd how being misgendered by a man doesn’t result in a screaming “its ma’am” tantrum. I expect had the OP called them “mate” it would have been a different story

There's lots of dimensions to this.

As others have said, perhaps you're angry that men can get away with it. The rise in popularity of the trans movement mainly affects women, but it's women who are most at risk of challenging it.

I don't think it's a bad thing that women are taught to be kind. I think we should try and teach the same to our sons. Kindness doesn't mean martyrdom or acceptance of any demand, however unreasonable. It means being aware of the feelings of others and trying to he helpful and empathic where possible. In this case, using specifically male pronouns perhaps would seem unnatural to you, especially if you don't use them normally. And I think that's fine: going out of your way to indicate that someone is male when that fact is upsetting to them is mean. If you know someone is sensitive about being pale or underweight you wouldn't bring this up in conversation to them all the time.

But your friend wasn't going out of his way, he was just talking as he normally does, which is why what he said was also fine. I do think it's wrong to presume. If the TW and your friend knew each other perhaps he'd make effort to keep to gender neutral language, but this is no reason to eradicate culturally important regional conventions.

I have a TW friend who I refer to as "mate" and "dude". I use these terms for women as well. At first I hesitated, but then it seemed equally weird to avoid using language I'd use for both men and women in case it caused offense, so I just made sure that my friend heard me use those words to other women also.

Glorious posts on here.
it’s just your female socialisation OP. Nobody was hostile or unkind in this situation - far from it, your pal was signalling his welcome for other men to be widening the bandwidth of male self-expression.
Your mate is an actually genuinely kind and socially progressive person. If more men were like this, then women wouldn’t have to be worrying about this shit all the time.

An American friend nearly fell over when he realised in this area it's not uncommon to hear a man call his hulking great teenaged son sweetheart, and 'love' is getting increasingly unisex. I love the regional pet names too. Let's face it, most wouldn't be remotely bothered if they were 'love', 'mate', 'bruv' or 'darling' to the shop assistant or the postman regardless of sex; it only matters if you are someone highly focused on seeking confirmation of personal identity expression. Which is about using others really for your own needs rather than a neutral situation, which means you can't really kick off when a total stranger fails to do what you set them up and wanted them to do for you.

We have seen the video of the very large male person screaming 'call me ma'am' at the petrified, younger, smaller male shop assistant, but generally people hesitate to play games with a male they might not be able to physically best, as it can result in getting thumped.

probably scared of a confrontation kicking off, ending up on twitter and have your character assassinated and job terminated.

I didn't watch much, but when Caitlin Jenner was on I'm a Celebrity, all the camp mates treated them like a bloke - was quite funny to watch, sometimes subtle, but there nevertheless.

"Fellah" is a common form of 2nd person address between men in some parts of the country.

Like "mate". Though that one has slowly become unisex...

@Zombaes

They want us to see them as women, that's why they do it.
Apparently misgendering is literal violence.

So when we see a man dressed as a woman they tell us to be kind and treat him as one.

But them people like you say 'don't make assumotions' he might be a man (duh) and just like women's clothes.

So what we don't use any sex based language or pronouns around anyone now? Incase we assume wrong??

But I thought pronouns and respecting them is soooo important?

I understand your concern that a Genderist would be very offended if you 'misgendered' them and don't get how I can say don't assume.

I clearly failed to explain a key part of my philosophy on this matter:

Fuck what they want.

I think that while you can be GC you can also feel some empathy for the people who have bought into the gender ideology. Even though they are misled, they are still only human and the big majority of these people are. Just truing to get by as best they can. You can still feel sorry for people even if what they buy into is malignant for women, because they too experience hardship.

I think I'd have felt the same tbh. I'm also angrily GC, but your friend went out of his way to use male markers when there was absolutely no need. Nobody was pressuring him to comply with pronouns, to believe the man was a woman or to validate the man's identity in any way whatsoever.

I'd say so. Someone I know has been a transvestite for years (happily married grandfather of several) then a few years ago came out as transsexual.

The thing is, he still doesn't "live as a woman". He still lives with his wife who calls him by his original name, is "dad" and "grandad" to his family, he just dresses up/uses a female name for his social media and to go to pride events!