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!

Well, @FourSevenTwo more eye-opening posts that are answering your question very clearly.

I don't really care what you think. He assaulted me because I was a young vulnerable woman and he preyed on that. Like he did for all the other young women he predated upon. Trying to explain away his actions makes light of what a vile predator he was. He targeted women, trying to say "ah no that can't be true as he also targeted transsexual women" is trying to negate the fact he was a misgoynist and a sexist that targeted women. This is why we say that anti transsexual is anti women when you try to explain away predators actions like this.

It's called transition. I took Oestrogen, had sex reassignment surgery and changed all my ID. Even people that know I'm transsexual forget most of the time.

What's the relevance here?

Society behaves in a gendered way even when it interacts with babies and toddlers. The person I'm talking about is well into middle age, so no, his gendered feelings won't make him a women even in gendered sense.

Sure, redefine "woman" and "man" and those words can mean anything you want them to.

Nevertheless, women (in the original sex based meaning) still exist. We are still half of humanity. Our sex, and the history of our sex and how that connects to the way our lives are today, matters to us. What happened and the people it happened to still happened.

You can take our name and deny our history but you cannot in reality change any of that.

And you are still no more like us than any other man (in the original sex based meaning) is.

Don’t blow up the friendship group by doing option 1 or just using masculine forms, unless you’re ok for these people to dislike you and not speak to you anymore.

Limit communication, use neutral forms when you can and otherwise acquiesce. Communicating with or about them as little as possible is the least worst option.

Of course not. I don’t hate transgender people. I just accept that it’s impossible to change sex.

I’m sure you understand.

I mean you can either accept who she is or be that person in the group that details it over your own prejudice.

Like the homophobe who refuses to acknowledge that a lesbians wife actually is her wife. It doesn't really matter how prejudice you are you can at least be respectful of someone else. If you're too blindsided by bigotry to do that you're probably best removing yourself from the group until you can be respectful of others.

"Of course not. I don't hate gay people. I just accept that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I'm sure you understand."

They say history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme. Then sometimes it does repeat as people like to be prejudice against people that are different.

"Colonisers" darling. The word you are after for people who forcibly take over someone else's space and culture, tell the original inhabitants that their spaces no longer belong to them, that their history is going to be retold, and that going foward they have a new subclass name and a new status in society that is being reconfigured to the new order, that word is "Colonisers".

Prejudice and bigotry are just words people use when someone doesn't comply with their unreasonable requirements. Not impressed.

Respect goes both ways. How would you expect that person to show they respect me and my position?

You can deny my womanhood as much as you want. But it won't change the fact that I live my life as a woman. That's how fully transitioned transsexual women live our lives.

It certainly repeats itself again and again with men telling women to put up and shut up, that women's perspectives are flawed, that men know what's best for women, that men know women better than we know ourselves.

"Men and "Women" in the original sex based meaning, obviously, that being the one that applied through history and certainly the one which female people have been oppressed, marginalised and exploited under.

That's literally what respect is. If you knew someone called Emma and repeatedly called her Em even when she asked you to stop doing so that's you being a terrible person. It's not some "unreasonable request" to call someone by what they want to be called.

What exactly do you want as respect?

You do know that anti-trans opinions are more common amongst men right? If this was some mens rights movement why does it have more support amongst women? And why are transsexual people themselves about 50/50 men and women? Surely if it was a men's movement it would be like 95%+ men?

Are you homophobic?

I don't deny your "womanhood", I just state the blindingly obvious truth that whatever you experience under that name has nothing to do with the reality of being female, nor with the history and experiences of the half of humanity that is female.

I do not have an issue with you and who you are. My only issue is that by your use of the word "woman" to label this thing you are appropriating of the name and history of female people, of half of humanity.

Personally, I think female people are important enough to keep our own name and our own history. I think it is a mark against you that you do not.

You do know that 95%+ of the people carrying out FGM are females, right?

So er is this a man’s issue then? If this was so misogynistic why would almost all of the perpetrators be women?

testosterone suppression can decrease muscle mass. Not to be ‘female’ levels and it with training, that muscle mass can be regained.

Again, please stop spreading misinformation.

Testosterone suppression and exogenous estrogen doses does not make a male person female.

Just like growing breasts and having fat redistribution does not mean a male person has gone through ‘female puberty’ as we have been told on this thread.

I want male people to respect that biological sex is real and that female people need our own spaces and language.

Just that.

It's clear enough you do care ... otherwise you wouldn't be posting here as you are.

OK, you think you've changed sex through "reassignment surgery" and change of ID. Some of us think, on the contrary, you're still a man for all that.

Who's right about this? Well, there are no known hermaphroditic species among mammals (or birds, irrelevantly). And the idea of "gender identity" is a non-starter. So ... sorry, but you're wrong.

You haven't changed sex. No human has, ever.

I know what my womanhood is, and whilst I haven't experiences everything that biological women have, frankly neither has many women. Women are diverse and have so many things that makes us special. I think that's brilliant, it's sad that you think that transsexual women existing somehow negates in anyway what women have gone through in history.

I read once that someone's grandmother has cried at the idea of transsexual women as she had been taught her whole life that women were of no value. The fact that someone would fight so hard to become a woman changed her perspective and helped prove that women were actually worth something. I think that's a beautiful story of women uplifting women and showing our worth.

And yet, I'm still a woman. Transsexual men and women have always existed. We're finally breaking out of the box now, you can't put us back.

I know who I am. I know it makes you angry but you cannot change that. I will be a woman until I die.

There's an interesting and relevant difference between being gay and being trans. As follows.

If a man sincerely says he's gay, meaning he feels he is attracted to other men, he is telling the truth. To feel attracted is to be attracted. But if a man sincerely says he's trans, meaning he feels he has changed sex, he cannot be telling the truth; he is at best mistaken. It's not possible for a human to change sex.

Do you see?

And that's relevant to your friendship group how?

I personally want a million pounds but it's not really relevant is it?