@CatalepticOnion
"Thing is… even if it is upsetting, so what?" Yes that's the point isn't it. If reality upsets you it really isn't the rest of humanity's problem such that we should have to tiptoe around pretending we can't see it. Human beings can't change sex and that's a fact of life. Most of us don't want to change sex happily, but those who do must seek to engage and overcome the disappointment with experiencing that it just isn't possible. By all means ask for our help in the effort to come to terms with reality, but don't demand of us to deny reality in the mistaken belief that this is kind and respecting. It's not at all in the long run in fact it's rather dishonest and patronising to make a pretence of agreeing with a point of view you actually don't agree with for the sake of not hurting someone's feelings. In effect you're telling that person you regard him as not fully adult and inadequate in some way such that you think he needs your protection from truth.
This, absolutely.
The whole "My feelings are upset therefore I demand special treatment" thing is infantilising, petulant and demanding.
I know many women who have experienced awful things - trauma, rape, stillbirth, miscarriage, sexual violence, domestic abuse. There's very little care given for their feelings - from schools to courts to hospitals. The number of times I hear about friends who have been scheduled for a D&C on a ward with pregnant women, fobbed off with painful medical procedures, told they have to work with the person who has sexually harassed them or listen to sexist jokes in the office, stuck in a court proceeding with no way away from an abusive ex -- and, apart from the occasional bit of lip service, women are largely expected to put up and shut up and their feelings be damned.
A man feels sad he wasn't born a woman and we all have to rally round and he can never feel an ounce of reality or inconvenience so that someone else can come first for a while?
Fuck that. If men want to be grown-ups, they shouldn't be lobbying to be treated like special children one minute and princes (princesses?) of the realm the next.
"Vulnerable adult" used to be a phrase reserved for those with severe mental or physical health issues, learning difficulties and severe trauma - people who were in the comparable position to a child. It wasn't meant to mean "anyone who's got any mild mental health problem or anyone wants to be thought of as needing special treatment" - eg. as in "vulnerable minority".
(Also - people belonging to a specific minority might be in general more prone to being vulnerable; but that doesn't make the individual people in this category all vulnerable adults, and there's been a kind of disastrous confusion between these two ideas, where you get people who identify as a specific minority also claiming that they personally are "vulnerable people"!) So you get this nonsense of strapping great male-bodied people who say they have "dysphoria" being treated as though they have extreme disadvantage and must be tiptoed around like inpatients who can't be told about reality in case it tips them over the edge.