How would you deal with T in a friendship group?

[FourSevenTwo]

How would you deal with T people around you? In general and in my situation?

The main question:
A male in a friendship group decided to go full TW, starting hormones and so on, changing name to the women's form and coming out with pronouns.

Unfortunately, our language is heavily gendered*. For example, instead of Hi Alex, you would say Hi Alexi for a man and Hi Alexo for a woman. If you want to say anything in past tense, like Where were you yesterday, you have to use men's or women's form for were.
This means it is not really possible to ignore it in direct interaction.

I'm not willing to pretend through language that I see him as a woman. I don't and won't. But I don't insist on calling him him. There are some not great alternatives (it, plural - with it's own verb forms, switching to English), but they are all very noticeable.

I'd like to find a solution for our coexistence in this friendship group. I'm not asking about a language solution here, more about an approach.

I'm considering

1. reaching him with a message, saying I've heard the news, and I can't affirm, but, I'd like to keep things civil, so is there some alternative we can agree on?

2. ingoring the issue and limiting communication on grammatically neutral constructions (which will be limiting and obvious after a time)

3. some other option?

To answer possible questions.

• I'm GC woman - in the adult human female sense, in the gender identity terminology I'd claim agender. I absolutely understand people are unhappy with gendered roles, I just don't believe that trying to become/pretend to be/claiming to be the other one is the solution. And I'm sure one can't change sex.

• It seems that majority of our shared friends are willing to be kind, some believe it, some just don't care, men with no skin in the game.

• *I'm elsewhere in EU, not a self-ID country. I don't ask about legal aspects, just personal approach. Discussing in my country's forums would be hard, as we are a small population.

• The group is about games, meeting at someone's home, so no issue with single sex spaces, and generally gender doesn't play a role in the group's activities.

• Yes, I'd like to try to keep the group if possible. I see it as a political topic and I don't need to discuss politics all the time.

• Edit to add : I've name changed for this one. Sorry it is long. And yay, I've managed to force the formatting to behave!

And apparently some people can completely detach their individual and uncoerced efforts from the overall collective effect on society.

I would call it abdicating their responsibility to society and a total rejection of equality. They want to be little dictators of their own empire.

They have no regard for how they create harm either directly or indirectly. Every single one of these people who DEMAND that other adhere to the fiction enables harm. They can be the 'nicest loveliest people' on one level but on another be thoroughly abusive. It frustrates me intensely when people talk about their lovely trans friend as it's this whole safeguarding fail in its own right by creating untouchables and prejudged scapegoats to blame.

This is not equality nor justice.

Language really has been one of the most powerful tools used to create this situation where some people in society have their subjective reality validated as being objective and material.

The list of words that have been destabilised through supporting this philosophical belief is long. However that list includes:

women / girl / female
man / boy / male
all familial labels
inclusion/inclusive
rights vs privileges
authentic
hate (including hate speech)
violence

These three are similar in change but are slightly different:

kindness
respect
tolerant

Even hormone replacement therapy has been destabilised because the term was intended for replacing the hormones in the body with the same hormone to healthy levels for that sexed body.

By changing the meaning of these and other words to include the very opposite of the original intended and established meaning, yet using those words as per that established convention, the situation has been created. That being the enablement of a group in society to convince a large proportion of society to impose their purely subjective reality as being material and objective. By creating falsity while convincing many people that it is truth or that it is imperative to act like it is truth.

Part of that dynamic of making people act as if falsity is truth has been to convince people that if they don’t act as if the falsity is materially true then the result is very poor mental health or worse. That has been the ultimate emotionally coercive tool.

Then comes the control of the words around what underlies this identity. Because so much effort has also strategically been expended to detach the words mental illness, delusion etc from ever being used in connection with this group of identities. So we should also add mental illness and delusion to this list.

All this power, where words no longer mean what they do in some people’s opinion and yet at the same time words have the ultimate power to harm, is hidden behind the words kindness, respect and tolerance. Where those three words also mean the opposite of what was intended

Atleast those three words always had subjective meanings and were then completely defined by the user at the time of use.

Also see 'progressive'.

Keeping in mind that eugenics went through a period of being regarded as progressive by western society within the last century.

Until it wasn't.

Ahhh yes. Progressive should be there too.

And liberal.

'Change sex'.

You can't change sex. Yet we have created a myth where some people, particularly children, believe you literally can change sex. And they are missold this lie. They only realise this many years later.

You can only have drugs and plastic surgery to intimate the opposite sex. You can't actually change sex.

The medical terms used are a long list.

‘Gender affirming care’ is another preferred way to describe extreme body modification. Also all the euphemisms of top / bottom surgery.

All described as life saving.

Yet, life saving how? To prevent poor mental health? Or mental illness. Yet the detachment of any hint of mental illness from this belief has been successful for some. As we can see on this thread.

These are all control mechanics to hide the reality. That a body is being modified to suit a philosophical belief that person has about themselves.

I know people will reject calling it ‘power’ and ‘control’ because they see this as being judgemental in nature, but that is ultimately what it is. It is like when discussing discrimination, people make the connection that all discrimination is negative by nature of the action. Yet it is simply the term to describe the action or dynamic. If those rejecting those words wanted to come
up with viable alternatives, I am happy to consider substituting them.

Anyone who tells you to “be kind” is not looking for kindness, they are demanding that you submit.

@MiloMann presumably the OP wants to continue being a member of the group, and not have a showdown where she risks acrimonious meetups, or being thrown out.

And yet when the autistic youngsters taught this in school come to believe they are trans they are denounced as despots, abusers and even "the enemy" FFS.

It would be the behaviour enacted upon others that would draw those criticisms.
That is where the choice is. Controlling and cry bullying is not appropriate, or excuseable, regardless of the label one has adopted or what one has chosen to believe.

This. ^^

Well parents need to unteach them this rather than going along with it don't they?

If a behaviour is abusive and authoritarian by the nature of the behaviour, what language can be acceptable to describe it?

This is the problem people are trying to highlight. Is the behaviour any less abusive because someone has stated :

-they need people to do this or they will harm themselves or come to harm?

-that the person fully believes their subjective reality is material because some people have enabled this falsity in a whole series of ways?

-that the group has come to believe this is their right when it never was but it is left to others to point this out while being subjected to harm for pointing out the truth and the falsehoods that have been perpetuated?

If the behaviour cannot be described accurately, it will simply continue. Who does this benefit when in the future those vulnerable people understand that material reality will abide despite their wishes? Will the realisation be worse than them having an accurate understanding of their situation from the start?

I think those who will be ok are those who don’t demand even language changes and understand that they can never be the opposite sex and not one person should be under any pressure to treat them in any way as if they were.

When “Be Kind” becomes normalised at an institutional level, madness ensues:

www.thetimes.com/article/9854e774-c18b-4fe8-a37b-08fcc64269a9?shareToken=c053917a06e8bf7c76220927c580ae0a

In case anyone is wondering what terrible things these members said that warrants expulsion: scottishgreenwomensdeclaration.scot

Adding to this, if people are trying to control the language we use to accurately describe the effects of the language and subjective belief affirmation is that to make the impact look more acceptable or dismiss it? Or do they simply don’t believe the impacts exist?

People's jobs and organisational memberships are similarly terminated if they don't comply with 'authoritarian' (...or 'woke' used pejoratively) 'demands' of women, peoples of colour, immigrants, lgb+, elders, etc... Why are trans people's cultural integration singled-out as culturally significant when the struggle for inclusion and personhood has affected so many others in the past and continues thusly?

(full disclosure, I transitioned over 40 years ago. I have existed through the last 40 years of 'authoritarianism.')

What exactly do I 'demand' as a woman in the workplace?

If you think women are 'demanding' I think you prove a certain point.

I was using the word in the context of the previous poster. 'Demand' is not a word I would choose, personally. My word would be closer to 'exist' —so, to 'exist' in the workplace.

‘Exist’ is another word to add to the list alongside ‘progressive’, ‘literal’, ‘kind’, ‘liberal’…

No one ceases to exist because people don’t go along with their fantasy. The idea that others must do your bidding in order for you to ‘exist’ is profoundly narcissistic.

Others refusing to use false language which harms themselves does make you disappear in a puff of smoke.

Asking others to uphold a fantasy does not stop you existing. Nor is it others even being disrespectful.

If you think acknowledging reality equates to being disrespectful then you've got bigger pronouns than pronouns.

Yes you demand every time you expect women to use wrong sex pronouns and no it's not ok. It's really offensive and disrespectful because it's A LIE.

You certainly have the right to believe that.

When I lived in the US, the abortion clinic picketers and protestors called us all sorts of names and damned us all to hell as we shielded patients and family from their abuse. During the 80s, gay men were discarded and disrespected due to the belief they would transmit AIDS to god-fearing straight society. How many women here were the first to exist somewhere no woman had existed before? I am betting most.

What's that got to do with pronouns or anything else?

We live in the UK.

I have nfi what you are going on about but it looks suspiciously like emotional blackmail or something.