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!

I'm not a gay man, also Mr menmo is a really quite horrible man. I'm not watching someone like him.

Only if you redefine "a female body" to mean "a male body with artifically induced hormonal disruption and cosmetic surgical alterations that approximate some of the external appearance of female breasts and genitals"

Which you can do, but frankly sucks for the actual female-bodied who have a hell of a lot of things that are different to the above but now have no name by which to refer to ourselves.

But as long as you get to be called what you want, that's the main thing, right? Fuck the fomerly-known-as-female-people, why would anyone think their needs matter if they get in the way of what you need to self actualise, yeah?

No-one expects you to watch it, it was recommended to me.

I was recommending it to the OP, not you. You don't seem to be ready to view detransitioners' stories

I intend to continue to smash the patriarchy whether you like it or not.

A bold claim to make while firmly playing your part in upholding it. The irony is overwhelming.

How do you figure this out?

Mens Rights Movements aren't about men agreeing with each other. They are just about removing women's power!

It's got fuck all to do with how many from each sex support a particular way of doing this.

I just am attracted to men in the same way my brain feels like a woman. I tried dating a girl before I transitioned as a kid, it felt wrong even though at the time I thought I was attracted to women. It never went anywhere and I'm glad it didn't. It was much the same feeling when I tried to be a boy. It was just, wrong.

Being a woman attracted to men just feels normal. I don't feel uncomfortable living my life this way. I can focus on other things as I'm not constantly hating every part of my myself. I'm also not a man saying I'm a woman, I am a transsexual woman. I have physically transitioned.

There are some things you just know. This is one of them. It's been years, and I'm still happy living as a woman. Yes I did look up detrans people to understand their stories, there was that one guy I think his name was Richie? But the further I've got into my transition the more I've realised my own story just isn't the same as theirs. Some of us are transsexual, and that's okay.

Ah, colonisation. GC bastardisation of power dynamics theory.

Less than one percent of women are trans. So how did trans women forcibly take over women?

"Well actually, there's no such thing as a trans woman. They're all men. Men are co-opting women."

Name one trans woman in the ruling class of men. In all the world's corporations and countries; in social organisations that affect culture globally, name one trans woman in control, with socio-dynamic power over women as a class?

There are no trans women colonising women.

You know trans men exist as well as trans women right? MRAs target women exclusively, they want to make men more powerful. MRAs don't typically talk about destroying the patriarchy.

Also, you know that MRAs are all opposed to transsexuals right? Like if transsexualism was the ultimate destroyer of women's power why don't the Christian right in the USA support it? Why are they some of the most vocally opposed to it? Or is president trump suddenly a huge feminist because he also hates transsexuals.

I've also been sexually harassed by older men. But that wasn't misogyny because I'm male. Some men will abuse anyone. Them harassing you does make you a woman any more that it did me.

How am I upholding it exactly?

I'm not getting into a discussion about what sexual assaults means to each of us, but I did just want to say I'm sorry that happened and I hope you're healing from it okay!

This is going to be a very interesting thread for all those people who tell us that no male people claim to change sex. I think this has been an excellent example for the OP in that it is a live demonstration of the impact of language.

And how male people demand being centred in discussions about female people when they claim to be female people.

Oh, sorry!

Being a woman attracted to men just feels normal.

You are a man attracted to men. You do not know what it feels like to be a woman attracted to men

I've always said trans women and actual women should be great allies. Between us we give the lie to patriachy's gender constructs - you by showing these things that are "of woman" are also found quite often in the minds of men, and we by showing these things that are "of woman" are quite often missing in the minds of women.

Patriarchy's biggest fear is the feminine man because he is proof that the things patriachy rejects as of women are also of men. That is why feminine men are rejected and policed by patriarchy almost as hard as women are, because you are their fear that the power that men claim over women by right of some difference of sex is not a natural right at all. You are the proof that gender is false.

But that only works if you acknowledge you are a man.

The second you say "These things that are "of women" are also in my mind - and that must mean I am a woman too!" you have flipped from undermining patriachy's gender hierarchy to reinforcing it.

So, I'm afraid that you are missing the point. Transgenderism, special classes of men (or women) who are allowed to cross over, whether that is socially in special gender classes, or more recently now physically through body modification, are 100% aligned with patriachy and a common feature of rigidly gendered societies. It's a safety valve for a society that lies about who people are, a trap that allows the pressure to escape without being allowed to undermine the whole edifice.

That does not, of course, mean that men on the individual level are automatically going to be fans of trans women (or trans men). You are still devalued for your supposed closeness to womenhood, just as women are devalued by patriachy even though it needs us to play our role.

(Also, chin up - there are some really fucking rich and powerful trans women out there pushing for you guys against women! I'm kind of surprised you don't know that TBH).

Jennifer Pritzker

You're missing the point of transsexualism. I'm not a feminine man. Fuck femininity and fuck masculinity. Clothing is a bit of fabric I don't care what aisle of the shop I buy it from.

My transsexuality is because of my rejection of male sex characteristics. Not because I like pink (I don't), or because I like dresses or skirts (I prefer jeans).

Bad comparison.

Marriage is defined by the law, so the law was easily able to extend it to same-sex couples.

The law can't do magic. It can't turn a man into a woman, or make everybody genuinely believe that a man has turned into a woman.

It only has the power to punish non-believers, by calling it hate, and withholding protected belief status from them.

Forcing people to pretend to believe something which isn't true is tyranny (and an Article 9 violation).

(FTAOD trans people also have protected belief status, as well as a formal legal acknowledgement of their 'transition' and protection from discrimination under multiple headings. Why is this not enough?)

That's funny. Thank you for the lol.

I can certainly draw a line between Oprah (also a US billionaire) being the cause of Dr. Oz and friends dismantling medical research and healthcare in the US. But I can't draw any lines from Jennifer Pritzker being the cause of trans women dominating women as a class.

Male people who have taken estrogen are still in the male range of strength.

So, your point about decreasing muscle mass is now just an irrelevant point that you introduced as a distraction it seems. No matter, there are new posters and new eyes on this thread now thanks. It is always useful to present evidence because people will read it.

Ah. In that case you are a man with a body dismorphia.

I am sorry for you.

But thinking you should have had a female body, or even feeling genuinely better becase you have created a facsimile of a female exterior for your male body, is not the same thing as being female, no more than me thinking I should have been 5 ft 3 means I somehow really am 5 ft 3 despite having a 5ft 10 body and just needing the surgery to correct the error.

And whether you are prepared to acknowledge it or not, pretending it is requires a reduction of the diversity of the embodied female experiences of half of humanity into something that fits the reduced scope of "womanhood" that can be achieved by a man.

And no matter how sorry I may feel for you, it is not ok to do that to us. We are more than that.

You're not a woman and you don't belong in women's spaces.

@onepostwonder @ATranssexualWoman thank you so much for explaining your position. You have 'lived as women' for the whole of your adult lives and would have joined @FourSevenTwo's friendship group as 'lived women'. She is discussing a completely different scenario. There is a member of the group who has always been male and is now demanding to be treated as female. Do you think that this is reasonable?

I know, right.

Because apparently female puberty just means growing breasts and having fat redistributed around a male body....