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!

Mate. Stonewall hadn't even accomplished its primary aim of the appeal of Section 28. They were busy fighting homophobes. There were no barriers when services were offered. You folks are irrevocably broken.

No one asked what our sex or gender was. Not the rapists, not in the hospital, in the court, nowhere. Our sex/gender was targeted.

At the hospital, I was told they were going schedule me for a pregnancy test along with std tests and I responded saying I didn't need a pregnancy test because I never had a uterus. They did one anyway.

So yeah. You're suggesting Stonewall is the org that is countering gender critical efforts? I may give them a ring and some support.

Hahahaha. You’re saying medical professionals offered you a pregnancy test as a male? Sure buddy. There’s jumping the shark and then there’s whatever this is. Maybe use your time more productively by creating crisis centres for men rather than telling lies on the Internet.

Any person who doesn’t declare their sex category and full medical history to medical staff is negligent of their own health and potentially causing harm to others.

Telling medical staff that you don’t need a pregnancy test because you don’t have a uterus is not giving that team the truth. I can understand why they are going to give someone a pregnancy test if their medical records say female even if that person declares they have no uterus. If the records stated that the patient is a male person with a cavity sewn into their groin that is not a vagina it indicates that there are specific needs to be followed.

It seems we need a reminder on this thread :

No male can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman.
Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is fucking misogynistic!

Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.
Even when they have extreme body modifications, it is to be their own concept of what a female looks like to them. It is not what a female is.
How can it be?

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, (regardless of if that body produces those gametes) even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is - their concept of being female.

They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life). It really doesn't matter though. Their motivation is irrelevant to the outcome.

Which is that they will always be a male who believes they are something they are objectively not.

How can the material reality be any different? This is why someone's gender is only based on someone's philosophical belief. And philosophical beliefs are fine for people to hold, but not one person in the UK has to comply with another's philosophical belief.

The logic cannot be any different than that I am afraid.

💯

The man who claims "womanhood" because of his mind or his surgery is rewriting what it is to be a woman. A way of thinking. A superficial external presentation.

The man who leverages this new "womanhood" to claim the rights, accesses and protections of female people absolutely is exercising power over those people.

His "belief" that he can claim not to be doing these things while literally doing them is just the same old tedious smuggery of entitled men claiming some sort of moral high ground because treating half of humanity like we don't matter is so ingrained they can't even see they are doing it.

Sure, if you change what words mean you can be anything you want.

Nevertheless you are in reality not the same as us.

When you take the word woman to mean what you are, a man with external surgery to fake the external appearance of a woman, you turn it into something that no longer means us, the female half of the species.

You cannot change that reality. Your beliefs cannot change that reality. It is a material fact in the world. Anything you do to take our name simply pushes out out of it.

And while the things that make us different may not matter to you because you can never experience them, we who do experience them know they do matter and that we do deserve, morally, legally and culturally, a definition and identity that fits us properly and fully even if it excludes you.

Every time you deny this, you are simply demonstrate that you are hapoy to overwrite the reality of female existence for your own needs. You prove our point for us.

A person who rejects their body’s male characteristics is not a female person.

The very act of rejecting their male characteristics makes that person a male person within the range of male people.

No male person is a female person and the word woman is part of the exclusive language referring to female people.

While you are free to hold whatever belief you wish, not one other person should be expected to act as if they believe your subjective reality is material reality. And material reality will abide, male people are not female people.

It really keeps coming back to that. After pages and pages, there is nothing in your posts that is convincing that you are female.

However, this has been an excellent example of what happens when a male person joins a group of people and demands that language be changed to suit themselves and how the presence of that person shapes the group interaction.

I'm so sorry that happened to you. 💐 Whatever I think about your actions towards women, you have my undiluted sympathy for that and my respect for taking it to court.

Rape is among other things a tool of patriarchy and is deployed by some men to prove their masculinity and power over others. Men rape men, women and children. The man who raped you may indeed have seen you as a woman, or wanted to. This still does not mean you are.

That is the outcome of your actions.

Again, you can believe what you want. However, your personally constructed subjective reality is not material reality. Any male person accessing female single sex provisions because they believe they are female when they are male is that male person disregarding, for whatever reason, the needs of female people to have single sex provisions.

Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it is true.

If you were a woman, you wouldn't need to change language or come up with long explanations of why you are a woman, or lie about your sex to medical professionals.

You need to do this in order to have the power to silence women and tell them they are not allowed to define themselves on their own terms. It's only you, as a male, who is allowed to define what a what a woman is.

By definition this is misogyny.

I have just read this and I am sorry you have experienced this. None of us should feel the need to discuss our traumas in a group that is not specifically for support.

What is also concerning is that in reading back, you don’t seem to have disclosed that you were a male person to your emergency health team. Please always give your health care team full information, you risk your life by not disclosing your full medical history including that you are a male person.

“Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it is true.”

Oops

‘doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

What was the tactic last night? Oh yes.

That is your belief.

From reading this, your attitude to female people is that if they don’t know the truth that is ok. That if they didn’t take the time to establish the facts they don’t deserve truth.

Male access to female single sex provisions is never acceptable and access by deception is still deception. Consent is important and lack of consent should not be dismissed because ‘those people didn’t know’

This thread really has highlighted to those reading it just how little male
people respect female people. It was a great example of how respect is demanded by a group of male people yet never given by male people to female people. Plus ca change.

Same. I've been in loads of women's spaces, no one cares or really even notices.

You have destroyed women’s spaces, you have never been in one. It is no longer a women’s space as soon as you enter. Every woman notices. Every woman shifts in their behaviour as soon as a man enters the room - you won’t have seen this because you can’t see what it is like when you aren’t there. Every woman goes on alert including those you think are ‘welcoming’ - they are trying to reduce the risk to themselves by being ‘nice’.

Pregnancy test?
🙈
🦈 jumped

Apparently, what we don’t know about cannot harm us.

And male people can make the decision as to what harms female people ‘know’ or not and feel righteous.

If a medical record says ‘female’ and all the male patient says is ‘I don’t have a uterus’, what level of trust should medical professionals have in that answer?

Someone saying they don’t have a uterus can mean several different conclusions can be reached.

• the person has ovaries meaning etopic pregnancy is still a risk.

-the person may be mistaken or misleading about their medical history and precautions still need to be taken.

-the person is male but staff may feel they cannot ask this question so will follow the process for female patients regardless.

If the medical records stated accurate sex categorisation, ie: male, then that would mean a discussion about pregnancy testing would be unnecessary. If someone cannot be truthful on their medical records, this is very concerning. Because perhaps somewhere a group of male people have been so poorly treated by experts that they genuinely believe they are female when they are not which puts their lives at significant risk. Or perhaps those who are supposed to be supporting those male people have failed because those male people cannot work out what is material reality vs their subjective reality in any part of their life.

Nobody is denying the fact that men rape other men as well as raping women.

This fact does not entail that men should have access to women’s rape crisis groups.

Failure to disclose sex to medical professionals should be regarded by medical professionals as a red flag for deeper issues as it's an act of self harm in its own right.

It is an issue that could put doctors and nurses at risk of being accused of malpractice or harming a patient. There should be a mechanism for health professionals to identify transwomen and transmen for their own safety and to protect themselves.

It also takes resources away from women - which could actually be spend more effectively on issues related to transpeople if there was accuracy in language.

It is not a neutral act to lie about sex in a medical setting. It has consequences to others.

Once again this isn't the same as being gay.

“It is not a neutral act to lie about sex in a medical setting. It has consequences to others.”

It does indeed have consequences for others. I agree that someone doing that is a red flag for many reasons.

The irony here is women are actually more concerned the health and wellbeing of the opposite sex than the opposite sex is concerned about their own health and wellbeing.

Whilst we are berated for hating transpeople.

The actions of women don't get recognised do they? We can never deliver support and care in a way that is acceptable or enough. Whatever we do it's wrong...

I imagine that the NHS would do this because to do otherwise wouldn’t be affirming and the medical staff would be scared to lose their job

Just to also point out that a male person who believes they should not be pregnancy tested on the basis of saying ‘I don’t have a uterus’ being considered an informative answer, is showing just how little they know about female bodies and female reproductive health.

It figures though when you also see male people using terms such as ‘female puberty’ for themselves to mean the side effects of taking estrogen. Similarly like mentioning ‘menopause’ as being when they cease taking exogenous estrogen.

Yet, female human biology is now labelled as ‘gender critical belief’ and not scientific fact.

This thread has been very illustrative

This.