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!

“It's one of the reasons why transgender ideology is so harmful to children, because it encourages a very unhealthy view of how they should interact and expect to interact with others. It will limit their friendships because it demands compliance and does not demonstrate reciprocity.”

indeed. There is a logically a level of narcissism or self absorption inherent to the expectations that people will centre them to comply with their wishes.

And then there are those who support the people making the demands who don’t like having these behaviours discussed accurately. Those who want language to somehow soften or hide the behaviour and the impact of the behaviour.

The support system is just as important to understand as the behaviour.

Adding to that.

Not every time a female person needs to feel they are in a safe space away from those male people who have a body formed around the production of small gametes, regardless of whether those gametes are produced or not.

Not everytime a female person needs to consider whether she has been subject to discrimination based on the sex her body is.

And so on. The list is endless.

And yet apparently, male people feel not only expert but also compelled to tell female people when sex matters or not.

I don’t think they have any understanding of the misogyny in describing when they believe sex class matters to a female person, while fucking declaring they are in any way female when they are male.

But hey ho….

My own sex has no influence on how the other wives in my community would feel if I were to start spending a lot of time with their husbands.

I'm a man. I spend a lot of time with some of my male friends. My wife has no objection or concern about that – why would she? These are not sexual relationships. Why on earth would she be concerned about me spending a lot of time with you? Are you pretending to yourself that no-one in your community knows that you are male?

There's a viewpoint I keep coming across in trans circles, that men are attracted only to secondary sex characteristics, mainly breasts. This may be true for some men on initial encounter, but I know that for many men who can be sexually attracted instantly, for that attraction to develop into a romantic or a sexual relationship, there has to be a longer term and deeper connection. If a man is heterosexual, I do not see how that long term sexual attraction can develop with another male person, no matter what hormone or surgical treatments they have undergone.

We have a choice each time we experience sexual attraction, to pursue it or to ignore or reject it. In my circles, the expectation is for faithfulness to ones partner. Sometimes someone will fall for an affair, but it is most unlikely to be with someone who is sexually attractive at first glance but who on closer acquaintance turns out not to be what they seemed.

My own sex has no influence on how the other wives in my community would feel if I were to start spending a lot of time with their husbands.

reads very different when accurate language is used. Eg.

My own sex has no influence on how the other wives in my community would feel if I, a married male person, were to start spending a lot of time with their husbands.

Hard to understand what the intended relevance of this paragraph was.

I really don't give a toss if Dave, the 56 year old, 6 foot four roofer, suddenly wants to be called "Petunia". Where my line is drawn is calling him by female pronouns or engaging in the make-believe game that he's as any kind of woman.

@FourSevenTwo I think something that does need to be taken into account by every woman who faces this situation, is that using female language for a male for the sake of friendship is not a neutral act. The trans-identified male will assume that you genuinely do see him as a woman. The other male group members will assume that women have no problem with the issue. Other female group members will feel more pressure to conform. Any TRAs in the group will use the experience to tell the world how the kind woman in their group is 100% in favour of men identifying as women.
You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. The decision is really about which damnation you can live with.

It just highlights why males can not speak for women. This matters in terms of representation and self advocacy.

Men are decision makers. They decide who is allowed to access the women's. They decide that since only one woman has complained officially (or not women) there can't be a problem. Even if there's lots of women complaining anonymous online. They don't count. They don't matter. The reasons why women only complain anonymously online don't matter. They can be ignored.

I should add this is why it is so damn important to stop this nonsense with the political parties shoving transwomen as if they are female representatives and banning gender critical women.

It stops challenges to the gross sexism and blindness to the needs of women.

Why object to sexism when it is that very sexism that you rely on to claim an identity and which you get affirmation and ‘euphoria’ from?

Not to mention the view often expressed by men visiting this part, that those women had no actual reasons, they were only doing it to annoy men.

Because those particular men showing a limited capacity for social connection (from Rapid pp above, this extends to men as well as women) and their view of women existing only in terms of their usefulness to a man, and the belief that the only thing women ever think about or do is about men, cannot conceive of why a woman might want to say no or express opinions that are irrelevant to a man. They aren't happening to a man after all, so it not only doesn't matter, it doesn't even really exist. So they must be doing it solely to annoy a man. (And the terra nullis issue of women's spaces: they're obviously not doing anything useful to anyone until a man is in them and gaining benefit, it's brownfield to build on, so what's the big fuss from the wims?)

Hence the belief of so many men that if they just 'educate' (programme with download) the women, the women service units will come back on line and comply as required.

It's quite sad really. The only answer is very clear boundaries and to be prepared to withstand the anger that you get from people with issues with boundaries.

Also worth linking this to the BBC report thread currently running, and how that report mentions that women in dramas, particularly women above 45, are frequently characters that exist only in terms of how they relate to and provide service to a man or to children. They have no life, ambitions, thoughts, feelings, aspirations of their own etc. We're still living in a misogynistic world in which Mummy has no life or existence beyond caring for baby, (even if baby is middle aged) and she definitely doesn't have sex! Or have any other independent, normal life of her own.

If you ‘accept them as a human’, why not have a chat with your supposed friend and find out what they’ve been dealing with? You don’t seem like your friendship was that great if you’re ending it based on this, and definitely not a great friend.

Ending a friendship based on poor behaviour and sexism (if the OPs friend does do this - they may not) is a good reason to end any friendship regardless of how someone identifies.

Being trans does not automatically mean you are incapable of poor behaviour and sexism. It isn't a free pass.

There are lots of people I accept are human that I wouldn’t wish to be in a hundred miles of. What has recognising they are Homo sapiens got to do with the price of eggs?

I am not personally responsible for your relationship with sex hormones.

My hormones have been monitored and eventually prescribed for over 40 years. Apparently I will be on them until the day I die. I don't know why my GP changed his mind after he started tapering them because 'it was time for the menopause' ten years ago.

Do you also feel possessive about cortisol and insulin?

Why are we responsible for your response to using correctly sex pronouns then?

Why does the world have to revolve around YOU?

I'm not surprised with where you've taken this. The redirection is world class.

My reality is so heretical and impossible to allow to gender criticals that you have to invent scenarios where I do not exist. Someone started to talk about male advantage and their upperbody strength. My puberty organized its development around the assumption I'd produced large gametes. But you must fold me into the only allowable trans woman charicature.

My restaurant comment was in context to interaction amongst other people, not internal, personal concerns that influence. You can redirect any comment I make and present it in the worst light you wish.

I use the pronouns that make sense for everyone I meet and know. Everyone else uses the pronouns for me that make sense to them. In a different life what makes sense would be different. I only go with the flow.

My puberty organized its development around the assumption I'd produced large gametes.

I guess it was bitterly disappointed then

The other male group members will assume that women have no problem with the issue. Other female group members will feel more pressure to conform.

I don't think this is fair, because it's very clear that there are lots of women round who enthusiastically support the trans agenda without needing any pressure at all. If that communicates to men and to women too that "women have no problem with the issue" then that's what they're doing. The conflict begins when the women who have the gender-critical outlook speak up about it. Men are more likely just to roll their eyes and say "Whatever".

“Someone started to talk about male advantage and their upperbody strength.”

And if you are male, you have male physical advantages that are simply not available to female people.

Also, thanks to sports studies we also know that testosterone suppression is unreliable. So, unless a male person was castrated before puberty, all male people will likely have had testosterone influence until such time as that have no working testosterone production remaining.

Even if a male person is fully castrated before puberty, there are also some physical advantages available to them over female people.

The point remains that safeguarding is partly for safety from physical harm and partly for other risks of harm. Whether a male person has suppressed their testosterone as an adult or not, they will likely have physical advantages no female person has access to.

Another inaccurate generalisation from you.

I am well within the average female upper and lower body strength distribution. Oh, and my Q angle is also quite normal. Thank you for asking.

Not quite sure what point you are making here. If some women are true believers and other women pretend that they are too, then men will assume that no woman has a problem with it, and women who have not yet formed an opinion will feel pressure to conform to the true believer stance.

My puberty organized its development around the assumption I'd produced large gametes.

Mate if you started talking about homeopathy or astrology it wouldn't be any more scientific than this utter nonsensical DRIVEL.

I have to reorganise my world around you no more than I have to reorganise my world around flat earthers and people who believe in Roswell.