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!

Yes, it is all a bit 'You remind me of these BAD people.'

Nice bunch of non-sequiturs you have there, @onepostwonder.
If you must attempt to argue by analogy, first make the actual analogy & secondly, advance a cogent argument.

It merely repeats the negative behaviour of requiring enablement. People are free to be themselves and believe what they wish - and so am I. People are free to identify how they choose - and so am I. If it is not reciprocal, it is an imbalance of power created by someone who believes they have greater power and the right to demand control and enablement of others. And instantly follows the cry bullying - the hard luck stories, the mention of how an existential crisis will follow unless the required submission occurs.

Why would anyone want to be around someone who behaves like that?

Well no other of those groups is demanding another group sacrifices their rights are they?

Emotional blackmail? no.

It has a lot to do with acknowledging a person, respecting someone's presence, pronouns and everything else.

I've been the first women to exist in a place. I've mentored and created space for the second, third and more women to exist in those same places through leadership and policy creation. I have existed in these roles in multiple countries. It's all been very similar.

I've also had the honour to be the second, third or hundredth women to exist in a place. My existence in those places has on more than one occasion been ascribed as a 'diversity' hire by a minority of men and their supporters. As an undeserved kindness to me forced upon the organisation through IDE/EDI/DEI policies. I took the place of a man who needed to support a family and that I should be at home supporting my husband and children.

As previously mentioned in this thread, genders are extended to cartoon characters and inanimate objects. I know nothing about the OP's friend group or the context of their formation. I suspect if the OP forms a hard line, pronouns will be the least of everyone else's concern.

All the other groups have demanded cultural equality with a majority who has treated them as a threat or undeserved of presence. In every wave, the majority has formed arguments and defined requirements and rules of acceptance for inclusion and participation. Subgroups within the majority either accept and promote or viciously defend the purity of a space.

The language and arguments are no different today with trans persons than they are with any one of other minority/maligned groups of people.

But the language and requests are different. Which of these groups demanded another group give up their rights?

Force-teaming doesn't work here.

Oh so we OWE you?

No. No we fucking don't.

I have a lot of personal experience on the receiving end of misogyny, you must know the men I worked with.

I suspect a lot of you also have experience with misogyny. I have also been a lifelong witness and sometimes participant in the quest for rights by other communities of people. I have heard the arguments of those who oppose minority inclusion. I have heard the arguments of those who oppose equality for all. I have heard the arguments of those who deny the existence of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

I have no experience with any of the trans-directed flogging foretold in the formidable speculative fictions of TERF Island. But, GC arguments against trans persons don't sound new or unique.

Owe? That's an interesting way to perceive what I wrote.

All minorities who have requested entrance and participation in a space are perceived to be demanding a slice of a finite pie protected and possessed by the preexisting majority. Some minorities merely defining themselves as people are seen as an attack on the personhood of the majority and a danger to society as they all know.

A minority doesn't merit inclusion by simple virtue of being a minority, that's the safeguarding point that so many men just can't let themselves grasp.

No they don't.

Are you arguing the minorities I've specified are safeguarding risks solely by virtue of their minority affiliation?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Sounds like a Slavic language? If so, I'll be interested to see how it plays out for him.

If it's Slavic or works in the same way as Slavic languages, it's going to be very difficult - sympathies. Option 1 is possibly your best bet.

I did a very basic Ukrainian course and one of the participants asked how to say 'non-binary'. She was happy with the answer.

Then she asked about pronouns and was dismayed to be told she'd have to choose 'he' or 'she'. Turns out that she's happier with Mandarin, since that (apparently) isn't gendered.

Aaah, Rutger Hauer.

He was never the first woman to exist in a space. #SadTimes

But he did a good job playing a rather troubled replicant who had been in actual space. #TearsInRain

Men are not a minority. HTH

No they aren't. 100% agree.

You said because you'd done a bunch of stuff we should be grateful and include you.

I understood perfectly between that and the guilt tripping.

The answer is still no.

I was the first woman to exist flying mini over the Pennines with a pink badger in the boot eating Yorkshire pudding.

I will leave it to you to work out which of us was eating the Yorkshire pudding but if you get it wrong I may cease to exists for I am an oppressed minority!

For the lurkers - this includes the subset of men who identify as trans (and the subset of those men who have had body modification/feminisation).