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!

Which just shows how the analogy doesn't work.

No-one (here) says TW are not people. They just aren't people of female sex and therefore don't belong to single sex spaces - the same way 12 yo don't belong to U10 category.

Replicants who think they are human. Science Fiction, of course.

I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run
Took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun...

happy days.

The sipping champagne from a yacht was good too.

That's pretty cynical, even for Mumsnet. I need no validation. I have an entire lifetime of experience.

I was hoping to share experience of prejudices that I know other women here have also experienced. My genuine belief is these prejudices are all similar and try to protect their status quo with similar arguments and methods. Trans people aren't a special unique target in the history of underrepresented peoples. They're just the primary target of this community in a wider group of targets variously maligned by cultures around the world.

More forced teaming.

No.

The two Slavic languages that I know best (but not fluently) are Russian and Serbian. I can tell you that avoiding gender in those languages would be impossible. As for neo-pronouns...Good grief.

@onepostwonder I find your posts very difficult to understand. What are you trying to say, it’s very confusing?

Quite.

Men aren't arguing that women are not people. They just aren't capable enough for a job or membership in a team. Gay men can marry women. There are no legitimate reasons for them to seek out publicly granted validation for their same sex relationships.

There are a gender critical people who argue trans people don't exist—that there is no such thing as 'a trans.' Some people ignore the various definitions of woman and man, female and male and ascribe a sole narrow definition that was scientifically impossible to inform a generation or two ago. There are a lot of gender critical people who refer to chromosomes as law never knowing what wonders their own chromosomes possess. Some gender critical persons never want a trans person to share their space, anywhere.

Since we're all girls together, how about sharing in that experience of prejudice where a man intentionally seeks out particular women in a women's space, having gone looking for them, and then uses them by not only expecting those women to join him in the magical mystery tour all around the wonders of him and his life - and that they will be interested in this - but also often gets quite excited by annoying them for a reaction, with the occasional man particularly loving being scolded, some men's sexuality being a bit unusual in that way? Doesn't that one just remind you why life in a female body is so much bloody fun? Good grief, let's put on the skimpy jammies and cut to the pillowfight and cheer ourselves up, shall we?

Except, hang on, if women have a pillow fight but there isn't a man there to enjoy it, did it actually happen at all?

I did wonder if we were heading for the pillow fight.

Some gender critical persons never want a trans person to share their space, anywhere.

Scared of being bored to death, no doubt

That reminds me - who was the female politician who (despite having had children, IIRC) wondered what her chromosomes could possibly be, and then concluded that they were probably 'XY'?

You know who also exists? Female people.

We are the half of humanity born female.

And we live with that, the physical reality and the social consequences, the good and the bad, from the day we are born until the day we die. Our knowledge of ourself is formed within the knowledge of what society constructs around our bodies. It informs how we are treated and so how we understand ourselves.

In other places and other times, we have been property. We have been banned from education, from economoc freedom, from cultural and poltical power. From telling our own stories in our own voices. And the shadows of that, of the history of people with bodies like ours, of the stories society constructs around our bodies, affect our freedom and our status even today.

There is a clear line that can be drawn between the history of female people and women's rights, protections and challenges today.

And I think that matters.

Regardless of what trans people may or may not suffer, I think the reality of female existence matters enough that we should be allowed to keep our own name and our own identity as the female half of humanity.

Whatever trans people feel to be true about themselves is not so important that it justifies un-naming and de-historying the most consistently marginalised and exploited group of humans there is.

Find new words to describe this thing that is not physical sex, because physical sex still matters enough to enough people to bear its own name too.

Which part of NO are you struggling to understand?

NO I should NOT be forced to use wrong sex pronouns because they are based on sexist ideas which harm women.

We are protected in law from sexism.

You need sex in law to protect your status in law, but that also rests on the recognition of your sex.

There is no definition of gender that isn't based on sexism.

Some gender critical persons never want a trans person to share their space, anywhere.

Note the language giving away the issue in this phrasing.

There is a recognise of 'their spaces' - as in not the speaker's space. The speaker knows they are an intruder who does not belong there, but still thinks they should be allowed to force their way in. Its an admission.

If women don't just roll over and accept it, then we get the bullying tactics, the 'you owe me because', the guilt tripping and the abusive namecalling. Its really not ok. It is not respectful.

We've just seen the demonstration of precisely what this is about - as we've said its about power and control over us and demands over us.

Honestly its incredible to see how it just is like a kyptonite weakness that trans identifying males do not see to be able to stop falling into the habit of trying on.

I've seen some interesting online discussion about Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian online, when "NB" visitors have asked boards such as Reddit how to manage pronouns.

On Reddit, I've seen people being advised that they'll be "misgendered" in villages, but not to worry about those oiks - they'll be fine in the cities...Yeah. Right.

My Great-Aunt couldn't get her head round the fact that her Grandniece had a forename which didn't end in 'a'. In the end, she solved the problem by giving it an 'a' ending which then had to be changed to 'o' in the vocative form. [I recall that the OP alluded to something similar in her first post.]

The result was that - instead of being called (for example) "Jenny", G-A referred to me as "Jenna" but when she called on me it was "Jenno!"

Of course, when she called my eleven-year-old me this, it utterly erased my sense of self. Actually, I thought that it was sweet.

The thing is that in B/C/M/S you don't always have to use pronouns, provided the agent is understood. However, the past tense is gendered. There's also the little matter of the word 'They' being gendered on those occasions when it is used.

When you try to force people to disbelieve their eyes, then with certain languages you're expecting people to take on a great deal of 'mental and emotional labour'...but it seems that in this case the need of the one is expected to outweigh the needs of the many? (There's another SF reference for you.)

I can't make head nor tail of what you have written.

Me me me me me

Yes. And they don't argue that based on women voluntarily identifying as (in their eyes) inferior women gender. The discrimination of women is based on women being female people.

Trans women arguing access to women's spaces and language are eradicating the oppression of female people. The question is - do you really not see it? Or do you ignore it, because female doesn't matter?

Honestly, will it hurt you to call people what they want to be called? Doesn’t mean you believe they have changed sex, and doesn’t hurt you to call them by their choice of name.

The first thing I'd say is that it's an extremely big ask to expect anyone to use common words in a language, usually used unconsciously over decades, in a very different way. It's like expecting someone to constantly be doing the stroop test all the time.

We've seen in the UK (and for the record I have seen myself in real time via court live streams) even the most fervent gender believers, people who have been desperately keen to see their colleagues fired and destroyed for wrongthink and misgendering, totally failing to adhere to the gender demands and constantly using normal sex-based pronouns in court. They just slip out, time and time and time again. This is only when they're in court for short periods of time and they simply can't do it. It's hard.

It's quite an abusive ask in and of itself, especially if natural mistakes are seen as 'hate' to be punished rather than to be expected. There is no reciprocity. What about people with sensory processing issues? What about people that struggle with what they perceive to be lying? What about people that already struggle with spoken language (whatever the language)? What about menopause and brain fog and women who go through at least 3 wrong names before they get their own child's name correct, you know the one they chose? Any accommodations for that or is it all one way?

More generally, yes there is often a fetish element and there's also often (not always) a level of emotional abuse in trans-ideology demands. Coercive control. Be careful of starting down that slope. Language compliance and forced bending of reality is the thin end of that wedge.

Most of the decent transsexuals (and I think due to all of the above they do prefer in general to self-describe using this term these days) are fairly clear they can't change sex and many have actually become more keen over time about people using the the correct sex language for them because they see the abusiveness of the above and don't want any part of it. They also have empathy for actual women and the erasure of our ability to describe our uniquely female experience and our sex class.

My observation is that there's a certain type of abusive man who finds transgenderism a particularly potent vehicle for his abuse. Has this man displayed any such characteristics in the past?

My temptation would be to just try option 2, I personally think it's the only real option here. If he's a decent bloke he won't mind even if he notices. Because you're human too and your beliefs are worthy of respect too, OP. Plus your comfort when speaking is something HE should be considerate of.

If anyone tried to demand I warp normal English usage by using wrong-sex pronouns I'd just say 'I'm going through menopause and I can't even get my own child's name right so you've got no chance, sorry, just can't do it these days'.

Then they have a choice to accept that it's too big a demand for me or to have a temper tantrum. But it's a hard no. Not only do I recognise I couldn't do it if I wanted to (most people can't, not consistently), I also don't want to and think there are safeguarding reasons why wrong-sex pronouns can be dangerous too, especially for children. That's far more important IMO than one bloke's mild discomfort if someone recognises his sex in language.

Also, this whole idea that people using a language in the way they always have is 'hate' is extremely harmful to people's mental health. The ideology positively destroys normal human resilience.

I have lots of people calling me things I'm not that keen on all the time, most people do ('hey you', 'love', 'miss', the pet's name). But we just get on with life because we're not the main character in a movie all about us and everyone else supporting cast.

@WearyAuldWumman
Yes, it is a Slavic language.

I'm planning avoidance. My feminist me wanted to play with the gender-free ways of my language for other purposes anyway. With the past tense there is a trick - never let that person be a grammatical subject in your past tense.
Instead of Where were-masculine/were-feminine you yesterday? I can ask How was your day yesterday? And instead of Have you read-masculine something interesting? I can say Have any interesting book managed to cross your path recently?

And if someone asks if I'm taking the piss, I can say "obviously " in Severus Snape voice.

I'm not able (nor willing) to consistently use grammar in the femininum form for male. If I just use their preferred name as you suggest, it would sound absolutely mocking.

Have you played-masculine yet, Alex-feminine?